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She is putting her hair up for now, but something stops her and it cascades around her shoulders, free.Everything goes dark. She’s one of the only people on her block with a computer, but that never matters in times like this because it shorts out as the Moongate comes into focus outside. Once it’s there, in her yard in the circle of stones she made as if in her sleep, it pulls her outside.And everything is the wrong color.She knows Iolo must be calling. (Everything is the wrong color.) He always calls. He’s got the strongest link to her and to Earth, although he was the first to leave it behind for happier pastures and safety with his seeming soulmate, Gwenno. Becoming a bard who was well-respected in Birtannia took time. But with Gwenno at his side, Iolo had had an easy, joyous time of it.Her heart aches for someone, several someones; chosen family and the adventure that they will inevitably bring. She has no plan for when she returns to Britannia, because the plan, like the Moongate, always comes to her and calls her home; to her almost-home. It’s not quite right, Britannia, for her. She doesn’t stay. She’s the one they call in times of danger and peril. The times of rest are for those who stay--the all-the-time citizens.She thinks about it as her heart pounds. Adventure is coming.They send her home, always, to earth. The same not-quite-home feeling follows her there.She slips through the Moongate almost without thinking, the night air sliding past her and becoming red red red red red red red and she falls--home-not-home. Into the wrongness.It takes over her thoughts and stops her from doing much else--packing properly, and of course there is no armor in her house on Earth. That will be acquired over time, piece by piece, some of it coming with the sheen of magic to settle just against her skin.Iolo is the first person that she sees on the other side of the Moongate, and she knows in her heart he’ll bring her the rest of the way she needs to go, with songs and love and enough arrows to keep her going.He’s troubled, deeply troubled. She’s seen that look on his face before, but this time it’s worse. He looks traumatized. He’s gaunt. He looks--for the first time--old.And fear enters her heart, and she wonders where Gwenno is that Iolo looks this way. She will find out but her fear thuds in her chest, bringing her back to the racing of her heart. It is fear. She sensed it first when the Moongate was Wrong. And there are eyes. Someone watching her. Home doesn’t feel right. Everything is unsettling.She needs to be with her friends, chosen family. Her mind goes to each of them in turn, and she knows she will need to find each one.When she sees Iolo (recognizable but so old and harried, she doesn’t tell him it was only just), she thinks of Dupre as well. And his liver.It will be best to get to him, and soon. She’ll open every tavern door until he appears.“Avatar!” Iolo says, a note of desparation in his slightly-too-loud exclamation. The fear and worry are with him as well. Maybe coming from him, all of it. No, not all, but a substantial amount.Quickly, he explains: there has been a murder. A grisly murder. A sight painful to behold. Something that only the Avatar can get to the bottom of.Iolo doesn’t mention Gwenno until later, after the blood and the gathering of evidence is over. And Iolo’s beloved is not here. Not at a murder scene and perhaps that is a small mercy. There is a boy in tow with the Avatar and Iolo now, tiny but fierce, and he’s lost his father. Together the adventuring party will ensure that he is cared for. The Avatar, as she is, will find her other friends, and many others. She would not abandon a little boy, newly orphaned or not.And so she sets out, and the hum of the land under her feet is peaceful yet slightly off, as it will always be.*~*~*For the first time she hears the voice in Brittania, it’s still booming and horrible, and she half-remembers it and its pronouncements. He fancies himself The Guardian, but she knows there’s nothing safe about his wishes for this land.*~*~*Introducing the little one to the companions, Shamino and Dupre and Jaana and everyone else, takes some convincing. It’s not that any of them would leave a child either--it’s just that Dupre especially is a bit dubious of children and sometimes that sentiment spreads. She is amused at how little they have changed, how well she still knows them.And there are many adventures yet to be had, some that make her heart flutter and some that make her sick to her stomach. Yet the land is lush and wonderful as she remembers it, and the adventure is welcome after life on Earth.Still, always this land will be theirs and only partly hers, whether it be in pubs with Dupre or practicing combat, selling bows or baking bread, singing songs of bards or picking herbs.The quaint moments are punctuated by the intrusion of the voice, but she does not tell them--not even the companions. The voice is for her alone to bear. She will use it. She will learn to use it to her advantage. She will pick it apart on long nights in her bedroll and find the way to win back this place.Forever her home and not her home. Forever not where she will lay her head beside someone for very long. And yet the place calls to her, just as Iolo seems to do. She will always be the one who saves them. She will always be the one.