Side Story 7 – This Is So Unfair

Lyura sat in an outdoor café in the Piazza San Marco in Venice. She was drinking a lovely marocchino and eating a decadent chocolate cake. It was a beautiful summer day with perfect weather, and the Piazza was breathtaking.

She enjoyed and appreciated all those things, but inside, she was still fuming. She wanted to Gate-hop home, grab her mother, shake her until her teeth rattled, scream in her face, and demand an explanation.

Lyura grew up in an unintegrated backward world in a small and dirty town. The town residents only washed in the river from late spring to early autumn, and the rest of the time were dirty and stinky. They treated every male who came into town as a dangerous bandit and every woman as an evil witch who wanted to steal their souls. Every time something good or bad happened, they said the spirits of the forest, the rain, the sky, the land … caused those things and would leave offerings on their windows. Her mother told her never to believe those superstitions, but it was all around her.

Her family loved her, but the other children were jealous of her. They called her a ‘spoiled princess’ because she was always cleaner than them, had nicer clothes, her family was the richest in town, and she was the only one who knew how to read and write.

Every early Autumn, her mother would leave to buy stock for their store and return in late Spring with lovely things that even the nobles came from afar to buy.

When Lyura was seventeen, her mother told her that it was time for her to find work, and that she had connections in a good noble family that needed a governess. She also warned her and her father that the family was planning to sail overseas and that it was unknown when they would return.

Lyura refused at first, but her mother insisted. She said that if Lyura didn’t like the work, she could always return, but she insisted that she go with her on her annual buying trip to meet the family.

Instead of traveling on the road, her mother took her into a forest, and when they reached two big stones, she led her through them. Lyura experienced the most incredible pain she had ever felt in her life, and when she came to, she had a blinking light in front of her eyes. Her mother instructed her to touch it with her mind, and she got a message about being a Gate Traveler.

Her mother taught her how to view her information and how to access the information about her class and skills. Then, she took her through a three-Gate chain to a world called Gaia, showed her how to sell in pawn shops, and buy the great things they sold in their store. On Gaia, those things were called ‘Mass-produced’ and came from a place called China.

On their way between Gates, her mother told her about being a Traveler and about the different worlds she visited. She taught her the spells she knew, trained her in archery and short sword fighting, and taught her how to camp in the wilderness, build a fire, and hunt. She taught her to interact with people in magical worlds and understand technological worlds. She told her how she came to their world, fell in love with her father, and decided to stay.

She took her back through the Gates and showed her how to sell the things they bought to earn many coins until they reached home. They traveled for two and a half months, but five months had passed at home. Her mother told her always to remember the time jumps between worlds and that if she traveled long, she might come back and find that her father had died.

Lyura spent another month at home with her father before leaving to Travel. When they visited Gaia for the first time, Lyura fell in love with television, so she returned to Gaia. For three months, she watched television and went to watch movies on a big screen, and through them, she learned about this world. She understood the money system and traveling vehicles but was still very confused by the ‘internet’ and electronic devices.

She traveled all around Europe and its many kingdoms countries, eating new and exciting food, seeing beautiful architecture, visiting the theater and opera, learning to appreciate the abundance of books and music, and enjoying every moment.

But she still fumed at her mother every moment of every day. How could she allow her to grow up in that backward “dump” – to use a local term – without magic and WITHOUT TELEVISION!!