Chapter 3:
Isekai'ed (Eventually)
Saturdays in Gribbleton were typically peaceful. The kind of slow, golden days where nothing much happened unless someone burned a pie or forgot their keys in the grain mill again.
But this Saturday?
This Saturday, I saw men sword fighting in a field.
I had gone out on my usual post-biscuit walk—part digestion, part exploration, part avoiding Ron’s insistence that I learn how to clean the oven filter “like a grown adult.” I’d just turned the corner past the old cider barn when I heard the unmistakable sound of steel clashing on steel.
Naturally, I assumed the kingdom was under siege.
I sprinted toward the sound, expecting goblins, orcs, or maybe at least some minor enchanted woodland creatures.
Instead, I found a clearing where five grown men were clashing wooden swords with a level of seriousness usually reserved for tax season. They wore padded vests, makeshift cloaks, and two of them had cardboard shields with glitter on the edges.
One man stood off to the side with a clipboard, muttering to himself. I watched in stunned silence as another combatant took a dramatic tumble and rolled into a bush.
Then the guy with the clipboard shouted, “Critical hit! Dragon’s stunned!”
My eyes widened.
Did he say dragon?
I stepped forward cautiously. “Uh… hi?”
The nearest fighter turned to me, panting, sweat on his brow. “You here to join the ranks?”
“The… ranks?”
He motioned dramatically toward the others. “We train every week. Just in case the prophecy’s true.”
“What prophecy?”
He pointed to the hill behind him. “There will come a time when the Dragon of the Mountain returns. When the beast awakens, the only ones ready will be those who’ve trained with blade and valor!”
Another man raised his sword and shouted, “FOR THE REALM!”
I nearly fainted.
I looked down at my boots. Looked back up at the makeshift knights.
“This isn’t Earth,” I whispered. “It can’t be.”
Back at the bakery, I burst through the door with flour still stuck to my hoodie from that morning’s muffin mishap.
Eva jumped, nearly dropping a tray of snickerdoodles.
“Whoa! What happened?”
“There are men,” I said breathlessly, “fighting dragons!”
She stared. “Like... metaphorically?”
“No! Literally! They had swords. Cloaks. Shields with... glitter. One of them said the word prophecy.”
Eva’s face shifted slowly from concern to... something else.
“Oh no,” she muttered. “Did you wander past the Walnut Grove?”
“Yes! That’s where the dragon was!”
She groaned and put the tray down. “You found the Troupe.”
“The what?”
“The local tabletop roleplaying group. They call themselves ‘The Order of the Hollow Hearth.’”
I blinked. “They LARP?”
“Hard. Once a week. Sometimes twice if someone brings snacks.”
I sat down at the prep table and rubbed my temples.
“But they looked so real. The one guy did a perfect barrel roll. And another had a sword that made a whoosh noise!”
“That’s probably Steve. He has Bluetooth speakers in his hilt.”
“...This world is amazing.”
Later that afternoon, I returned to the field with cookies as a peace offering. The “Order” welcomed me like a lost prince.
Their leader, known only as “Thorne of the Thistle Swamp,” explained their mission: to keep the skills of courage, diplomacy, and snack management alive in the face of mundane living.
He handed me a foam sword and said, “Should the day come when fiction becomes fact, you’ll thank us.”
I bowed. “Loafnir the Unleavened accepts this charge.”
Eva just watched from the fence, sipping iced tea, her expression somewhere between fondness and secondhand embarrassment.
Back at the bakery, as I helped clean up for the day, I found myself still rattled.
“They really believe it,” I said. “Even if it’s just pretend... they believe in something.”
Eva wiped the counter beside me. “Is that so different from you?”
I blinked. “You think I’m pretending?”
“No. I think you need to believe. It’s not about whether this place is Earth or not. It’s about whether you feel like you’re finally somewhere you belong.”
I was quiet.
Then: “So you’re saying this is my emotional questline?”
She smiled. “Exactly. And I’m your NPC.”
“I’d rather you be the love interest.”
Eva didn’t say anything—but her smile got a little bigger.
That night, as I helped Gert close the shutters and put the kettle on, I couldn’t stop thinking about those men in the field. The foam swords. The glittery shields. The clipboard prophecy.
Maybe it was Earth.
Maybe I’d just landed in the most wonderfully weird corner of it.
I opened my journal.
Day 28 (maybe Earth, maybe not):And with that, I placed my foam sword beside my bed like a knight preparing for dreams.
Because who knows?
One day… the dragons might be real.
Chapter Sixteen: The Festival of Slightly Wrong TraditionsHarvest Week in Gribbleton had a kind of sacred chaos to it.
The official poster read:
“GREAT AUTUMN CELEBRATION & PIE JUDGEMENT – Thursday through Saturday!”
And underneath, scribbled in smaller handwriting:
“Costumes encouraged. No goats this year. Seriously, Trevor.”
Naturally, I volunteered for everything.
When Eva asked why, I answered honestly: “It’s important to make a strong impression with the local guild.”
She didn’t even blink anymore. “We’re calling the PTA a guild now?”
“Absolutely.”
By midweek, the whole town was in motion.
Hay bales appeared like migrating furniture. Corn stalks lined fences. The pastor’s front yard was transformed into a “Maze of Mild Startlement” featuring signs like “BOO” and “You Dropped Something.”
I was assigned to the most honorable station: Pumpkin Weigh-In.
It sounded majestic. It wasn’t. Mostly I just sat next to an ancient bathroom scale on a folding chair while locals dropped off oversized squash and said things like, “This one ate better than me this year.”
Still, I gave each pumpkin a nickname, logged its weight, and declared its destiny. Eva eventually took my clipboard away after I tried to label one as “Sir Gourdon the Rotund.”
Midway through the afternoon, as I was helping Gert hang paper lanterns, I saw something that threw me off entirely.
Three women walked by in tall boots, green robes, and what looked like silver leaves woven into their hair.
I turned to Gert. “Do we have druids now?”
She squinted. “What are you talkin’ about?”
“The three with the robes. They just walked past the cider booth.”
She stared in that direction, then cackled. “Those are the bank tellers, boy. They always dress like that for the opening parade. One of them has a glue gun collection that could melt your eyebrows off.”
“…Right.”
My belief in reality wobbled again.
The day continued in a blur of apple fritters, acoustic folk music, and a brief power outage caused by someone plugging too many crockpots into the old community center wall.
That evening, the townsfolk gathered in the square for what they called the “Great Reading of the Autumn Story.” I assumed it was a poem. Or a parable.
It turned out to be a dramatic reenactment of how the village once chased a wild turkey through Main Street, eventually naming it Councilman Gobbles and awarding it honorary citizenship.
I laughed until I cried.
And then cried until I hiccuped.
And then someone handed me hot cider and a muffin, and everything made sense again.
Afterward, Eva found me sitting on a hay bale near the old fountain, holding a paper lantern shaped like a loaf of bread.
“Why do I feel like this is the part of the story where I find out this is all a dream?” I said quietly.
She sat beside me. “Because it’s hard to believe something good could be real.”
“I saw a pumpkin named Gerald, a parade led by a goat wearing a sash, and a woman dressed like a moon elf grilling bratwursts.”
“Gribbleton,” she said, “is an acquired taste.”
“I’m acquiring it aggressively.”
She smiled, but then her expression softened. “You okay?”
I shrugged. “I just keep looking for the wires. The cracks. The part where someone says, ‘Alright, roll credits.’”
“And?”
“Still haven’t found them.”
She bumped her shoulder against mine. “Maybe you don’t need to. Maybe this is just a really weird, really beautiful life.”
I looked down at the lantern in my hands. “If it is... I don’t want to miss it by overthinking it.”
“Then don’t.”
Back at Gert’s house, she had left the porch light on and two caramel apples on the steps. Mine had a note that read:
“For my favorite confused helper. Don’t eat the stick this time.”I sat down and took a bite. It was messy and perfect and sweet.
Inside, Gert was humming as she boiled cider on the stove. “Good turnout?” she called.
“Beyond anything I ever imagined,” I said.
She chuckled. “This town’s strange. But it’s ours.”
I looked around the cozy kitchen, then down at the sugar-smeared paper lantern still in my hand.
“Yeah,” I said. “It really is.”
That night, I wrote in my journal with fingers still sticky from caramel:
Day 29 (or 30?):And outside, the wind rustled the corn stalks like they were whispering secrets just for me.
Chapter Seventeen (Expanded): The Phone Booth of Unanswered QuestionsI didn’t mean to find the phone booth.
I was just walking. Not brooding, exactly—just doing that kind of long, thoughtful amble where your hands stay in your hoodie pocket and your brain keeps trying to rearrange everything it’s seen in the past month into a single, logical answer.
Spoiler: it couldn’t.
Gribbleton made less sense the more I stayed in it.
This morning alone, I’d seen a man walk past the bakery wearing full plate armor made of cardboard. Eva said it was part of a costume challenge at the rec center. Ron claimed the man had just lost a bet.
Then I turned the corner behind the old feed store and found a red phone booth standing alone by the treeline. Perfectly clean. Glass uncracked. Receiver still hanging in place.
It looked like it had been dropped there straight from 1986.
I approached it slowly, cautiously, like it might grow legs and gallop off if I startled it. Something about it felt… wrong. Not dangerous, exactly. Just wrong in the right way. Like it was here, but not of here.
There was no graffiti. No bugs inside. No dust on the floor. As if someone had just stepped out moments before I rounded the corner. I opened the door, half expecting a whoosh of cold air or a magical chime.
Nothing.
I stepped inside and picked up the receiver.
The line was dead. Just static.
But I could’ve sworn I heard something faint beneath the buzz. Music? A voice? A hymn?
I held my breath.
Then, quietly—so quietly—I thought I heard it again.
“You’re not lost.”I dropped the phone.
It hit the booth wall with a dull thud and swayed there, hanging from its coil. I stared at it like it might speak again, half-expecting a secret door to open or lights to blink on. But nothing happened. Just wind in the trees and the soft creak of the booth’s hinges as I stepped out.
I told Eva about it later that afternoon while helping her sort jam jars in the back of the bakery.
“There’s a phone booth,” I said. “Near the trees. Just... sitting there.”
“A red one?”
“You knew?”
She shrugged. “It’s been there for years. Nobody really knows who put it there. Gert says it was installed when the village tried to become more tourist-friendly back in the nineties.”
“But it works,” I whispered. “Kind of.”
Eva glanced at me. “Like... spiritually? Or it actually dials?”
“I think it’s haunted.”
“Of course you do.”
She passed me a jar labeled “Blackberry Lightning” and said, “Let me guess. You think it's a divine communication relay or a cosmic phone line?”
“I’m not not saying that.”
She smiled gently. “You always want things to mean something big.”
“Don’t you?”
She paused.
Then: “Sometimes small is big enough.”
I leaned against the counter and stared at the sunlight warming the flour-dusted floor. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I mean—I’m happy. I’ve never felt more at peace. But I keep expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Alright, nice try. Back to the real world.’”
Eva didn’t reply at first. Then she walked over and tapped my shoulder lightly. “There. That’s me. Now go back to the muffins.”
That evening, the town held a hymn sing-along on the chapel lawn. Folding chairs filled the grass. Old folks brought their own cushions and thermoses. Kids chased each other in wide loops around the fountain. Someone brought a big cooler labeled “Unlabeled Lemonade – Try It Anyway.”
I stood near the back, hands in my hoodie, notebook tucked under one arm. The smell of freshly mown grass and cinnamon cider wrapped around us like a blanket.
When the group started singing “Be Thou My Vision,” something in my chest ached. Not in a sad way. More like… remembering something I’d forgotten I missed.
I sang the first verse, quiet and shaky.
By the second, I closed my eyes.
And by the third, I let myself believe—just for a moment—that maybe this wasn’t about figuring out where I was. Maybe it was about letting this be enough.
Then Eva appeared beside me, her voice soft but steady as she joined in.
“I found something,” she whispered after the hymn ended.
She held out a slip of paper. It was faded, yellowed at the edges, and clearly torn from a notebook. In loopy handwriting, someone had written:
“If you feel like you don’t belong, maybe you were meant to build something new.”She nodded. “Found it tucked behind one of the hymnals. No name. Just… there.”
I stared at it.
The phone booth. The glitter shields. The Cheese Nips. Julia with her pointy ears. The bread. The kindness.
Maybe this wasn’t Earth.
Maybe it was a halfway place.
Or maybe God just knew I needed weird to heal.
Back at Gert’s, I helped carry in a few folding chairs she’d loaned to the church group, then sat down on the porch while she fussed in the kitchen.
The air was crisp. The stars looked close enough to poke.
And the phone booth buzzed quietly in the back of my mind.
I pulled out my journal.
Day 30-ish:And from the kitchen window, I heard her shout, “Don’t mock the beets, boy. They’ll outlive us all.”
I smiled into the dark.
Some days you fight dragons. Some days you weigh pumpkins. And some days you find a dusty phone booth that speaks truth and static in equal parts.
Whatever this world was—it was mine now.
Chapter Eighteen (Expanded): Of Maps, Mushrooms, and Misleading MysticsIt started with mushrooms.
Not the magical kind. Just the kind that pop up after three days of rain and look like umbrellas for particularly classy snails.
Gert had sent me out that morning with a bucket and instructions: “Only the kind that look like they belong in soup. None of those frilly fairy caps or toxic booger-looking ones.”
I nodded solemnly and ventured into the woods behind the chapel, where the earth smelled rich and wet and like something older than me. I had a stick, a small shovel, and a half-baked belief that maybe—just maybe—I would find another clue out there.
I was always looking for clues now.
The phone booth. The Cheese Nips. The duck uprising. Julia’s ears. They all floated in my brain like puzzle pieces from different boxes. Every time I tried to put them together, I just ended up with a collage of weirdness and muffins.
But out in the woods, I could think.
Until I tripped over a tree root and landed on something hard.
I sat up, brushing dirt off my knees, and looked down at what I’d fallen on.
A tin box. Old. Rusty around the edges, but with a clasp that still worked. It looked like the kind of thing someone’s grandpa would bury behind a barn and forget about.
Naturally, I opened it.
Inside was a folded map. Not a modern map, but one drawn by hand—brown ink on thick paper. It showed Gribbleton... sort of. The roads were off. The landmarks were half-recognizable. But the chapel was there. So was the bakery.
But instead of “feed store,” it said “The Grain Vault.”
And instead of “park,” it said “Meeting Grounds of the First Gardeners.”
The phone booth was marked, too.
Next to it: a symbol. A small spiral.
The same symbol I’d seen on Julia’s necklace.
My heart thumped once. Then again, a little harder.
I looked around like someone might be watching me, as if the act of unearthing this forgotten treasure had triggered a magical countdown or a secret quest notification. The forest didn’t answer. Just rustled its branches, patient as always.
I turned the map over in case there was a message or ancient curse. Nothing. But the paper smelled faintly of cinnamon and pencil shavings—like a kid’s desk drawer. Which only made the mystery weirder.
I carried the tin box back like it was full of gold.
Eva was at the counter, rolling out pie crusts with focused determination. She looked up when I walked in.
“You look like you found a secret portal.”
“Better,” I said, dropping the box gently on the counter. “I found a map.”
She opened it carefully, smoothing it out with her palms. “This is... artistic.”
“It’s a coded document of deep historical significance.”
“It’s a kid’s treasure map.”
“I choose not to believe that.”
Eva leaned in closer. “Where did you find it?”
“Behind the chapel, under a mossy root, three steps past the stump that looks like a goose.”
She blinked. “That’s... weirdly specific.”
“I felt like it was leading me there.”
She looked at me, not quite teasing anymore. “You really think this means something?”
“I don’t know,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “But look—see this symbol?”
I pointed to the spiral.
“I’ve seen this before. Julia wears it. On that necklace.”
Eva leaned away from the map. “Okay. So what do you think it means?”
“That we’re standing on a place that’s more than it seems.”
Eva was quiet.
Then she said, “You ever think you’re meant to see signs?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like… some people need math. Or logic. But you? You need stories. Symbols. Little nudges. Maybe God speaks to people the way they’re wired to hear.”
I stared at her.
And then quietly: “That might be the smartest thing anyone’s ever said to me while holding a rolling pin.”
She smiled. “Well, you’re not the only one around here who thinks this place is magic.”
“Wait—who else?”
She hesitated. “There’s a woman who comes in sometimes, older, always buys rye and honey. Says she sees a light over the chapel roof every third Tuesday. Gert calls her harmless, but she gave me a walnut once and told me to plant it on my twenty-seventh birthday.”
“What happens then?”
“She wouldn’t say. But I still have the walnut in my sock drawer.”
Later that day, I took the map to Gert.
She didn’t flinch. Just looked it over and said, “Oh, that.”
“You’ve seen this before?”
“Yup. The Harvest Kids drew it years ago. Made up their own names for everything. Used to have a whole game where they’d pretend the town was built on sacred roots or some such.”
“Sacred roots?”
She nodded. “Yeah, the story went that all the peace in Gribbleton came from a giant underground tree that blessed the soil or something. They’d run around, bury jars of apple slices, wear robes made of blankets. Very organized nonsense.”
My stomach dropped a little. “So it’s… just a kid’s game?”
Gert smiled kindly. “Maybe. Or maybe they just saw something the rest of us forgot to look for.”
I held the map a little tighter. Even if it was nonsense, it was good nonsense. It had order. Curiosity. A kind of truth that didn’t need to be verified to matter.
That evening, I wandered back out to the chapel grounds, map in hand, and followed its markings to the base of the large oak behind the old bench.
There, half-buried in the dirt, was a flat rock with the spiral carved into it.
Tiny. Rough. But real.
I sat down beside it, legs crossed, map on my lap.
“I don’t know what You’re doing,” I whispered. “But You’ve got my attention.”
The wind picked up gently, rustling the leaves.
Somewhere down the road, someone started playing a harmonica badly. A dog barked in the distance. And over everything, the sun dipped low and painted the sky with a kind of soft fire.
For a flicker of a moment, I felt known. Not like someone who had it all figured out—but like someone who would, eventually. Someone being patiently nudged toward something bigger than he could name.
That night, I wrote in my journal with the map folded beside me:
Day 31:Gert hollered from the kitchen: “If your dinner glows in the dark, throw it out!”
“Copy that!”
I smiled.
Whether Earth or Elsewhere, I was right where I needed to be.
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