Salia woke with a start. All she could see was a black box, around her, and it was narrow – she kept hitting it when she stretched. She? She cautiously tried to sit up, and found the box was low over her. This all felt wrong – but she also knew she needed light. And it was getting hard to breathe – she needed air.
Unbidden, she felt a spell pop into her mind, and she cast it at the wall opposite her. A green fern appeared, then turned gray, greening and brightening rapidly. As it did, the air became cleaner, and she took deep breaths. The light revealed – a couch? – she was on a couch?? Also, she was definitely a she, wrapped in a blanket, but the rise of her bosom was clear, and the shape of her body – the long dark hair was visible. It was a green light, so she couldn’t really make out the color, but at least she knew what she looked like.
Well, first order of business is to find out where she was. And the light revealed the wall was a black slate of some kind, around the couch. She felt like she was beginning to float, and had a premonition of danger. First, then, she had to think about it. She was clearly a wizard, and decided what she most needed was either to know if she was safe in the box, or out of the box. She felt much more safe in the box, but she needed to see outside of the box. Her next spell she aimed at the wall around her, shaping it to become thicker, stronger, fill in the void under the couch and held it as long as she felt wise. Then, she cast another spell to give it “engines”, like it was some kind of magic starship out of a tv show. A gauge appeared on the wall to her right, from “Full Reverse” to “Full Stop” to “Full Ahead”, like it was some kind of ancient ship. A joystick popped out of the wall, even, so she could pilot.
Salia couldn’t help but think it was odd that it worked this way, but the more she cast, the more she remembered about her past. But before she moved about, she needed to see outside the box, and she felt faintly stressed. Her magic must not be infinite then, and she needed to see to food, water as a priority thing. First, she thought about it. She needed to know if there were threats, but she might just want to look outside. Something like a viewport, and radar. And then the spell appeared in her mind, and she had to focus. She could think of many ways to be hidden, so she would need a simple Intent, but more Power. After the spell’s release, she spotted the window and sensor indicators on the far end of the couch from her and with a start, moved the box? ship? to partial ahead and moved the joystick to move it away from the red zones appearing on the radar. The window showed for a moment a star – the Sun, and the Earth, although it was burning, and with a pang Salia realized something major had happened, and then after the box finished reorienting, she pushed it to full ahead.
What had happened there? Why did she seem to remember only fragments of what had happened to her? Why was she here in a box? Almost absently, she considered food, and .. well, created food and drink. She took a bite out of it, and made a face when she realized that it tasted like nothing. The water was.. just water. Her memory began to suggest she’d need to somehow expand this space, and she could feel some of her magical strength return to her as she ate the curiously bland meal. She couldn’t remember it at all, but she did concentrate on this. It reminded her vaguely of something she had once seen – a ‘TV show’, but she couldn’t remember what a TV was.
Still, the box, at least on the inside, expanded, forming rooms, including personal ones she vaguely remembered – they had a bed, a desk, and a dresser, but she wasn’t sure what designs were in there. They were curiously bland – some blue material for jeans, and a too short T-shirt, a black jacket that didn’t close? But still, she put it on, out of some memory that she shouldn’t be naked, even though it felt difficult getting this on over her body. Almost as if she was too big for it around the chest and bottom, but that couldn’t be it. They did look faded, though. Maybe they were just older?
It took a moment for her to find a empty room that had the controls echo’d, but like most of the rooms, it was just a gray void with overhead lights. She did spot she had violet eyes, tanned skin and long red hair, though. It didn’t help with her memories, and felt vaguely off. But now she had a dilemma. She couldn’t really sense very far around her with the existing spell, and was beginning to feel the drain of maintaining the spells. She needed some way to convert the energy of space around her. It took some thought, and she had quite a few false starts before she got two ‘reactors’ working, and connected to a wiring network that she had to also create. Not only did the pressure dimenish, but the sensor display covered an entire wall, and she could see planets now. There were a host of red dots moving around, and she distantly realized that her “Bridge”, a joystick sticking out of a wall, needed to be an actual bridge.
A bit of thought, and then she formed a spell to create a bridge she seemed to remember from memory – screens against the walls full of information, wtih a two seater up front with access to the controls, which were now a touchscreen and joystick controls on the left seat.
What worried her most was her speed. Even with the new reactors hookedup, it didn’t seem fast – she’d estimate she had four weeks to get to the next planet, Mars, and even then, she wasn’t sure that’d help.
What was she to do?