Laurel

Gaheris flops onto the bed again and scooches to the very edge, to give Medusa plenty of space to finally lay down. She's totally exhausted!

“Today’s been so much to take in, but I’m glad it’s happening! And I’m glad to have made such a good friend too along the way.” She tells Medusa, beaming. Things finally feel like they're turning around, even if only a little bit. Medusa lets out a long sigh and flops face-first into the bed.  This has all been terribly tiring. She turns her head to look at Gaheris.

"I'm... glad, too. I haven't ever met anyone like you. The people where you're from must be terribly nice." She pauses. "Your world... What is it like? Um, you are a linked, right? I didn't want to ask then, but..." Her voice trails off, a little bit embarrassed to be asking such a personal question. Gaheris, however, takes it in stride, and turns to the side to allow Medusa look at the fluffy wolf ears atop her head. 

“Yep! I’m linked to this wolf that chases the moon. Pretty cool, right?”  She stretches and bit to get comfortable, thinking hard about what makes her world so different. “Well! My world, huh? First of all, there’s a LOT more women. There’s hardly any here! I mean, like, half the shopkeepers at least were men. So, that's weird. All our great leaders were women, and men would kinda just. Sit there? I guess. Except Sir Peredur! But, male fighters are kinda rare” She explains, waving her hands in front of her. 

"A wolf chasing the moon... that suits you." Medusa absentmindedly comments, and then blushes a bit at how inane that comment was. Of course it suits her. God damn it. She hears Gaheris chirp out a, 'Thanks!', but it doesn't really register, so she keeps talking.
"More women... That sounds like a nice place. There's no important women here. All the important figures here are men. Women are usually seen as too weak and frail to fight..." She sighs.
"Um, I guess times are sort of changing... But lots of people are unhappy about it. They want things to stay the same, you know, and it makes me... mad."

Gaheris moves in a little closer to Medusa, and speaks softer as the night approaches faster and faster. It's getting pretty dark. But, Gaheris feels empowered by Medusa's worries and concerns.
“We’ll be the change. After we're through with this guild, it'll make it so that women are taken a little more seriously, by everyone! You might have to teach me some customs, but I’m a fast learner!” She gives a wide grin. “we’ll do just fine, Medusa, just you wait and see!” she boasts. Medusa seems unsure, but nods all the same.

"Do you really think it's possible...? Um. Well, maybe... I'd like it to be, anyway. There's a new king, I think his name is Jobidion or something. Um... He's a little less old-fashioned, apparently." Hey... Isn't that a historical figure? This LARP is... maybe she should ask about the other famous people in this era...? Didn't the Gorgon Medusa... Didn't he live in the same era as Queen Jobidia? Gaheris frowns, feeling a sense of vague dread... Can it really be? She gulps, suddenly a little unsure.

“Um… Hey, hey, Medusa. Who... Who came before the current king? And are they... all men?” Gaheris is trying her best to scrap together the ancient history that Bedivere always tried to get her to understand. Why is this LARP so... historical?

Medusa nods slowly. "Um... Well, apparently there was a man called Donelius before this one. and before him... Well, a few kings before him, actually, was a king called Oedipus... He was, um, he exiled himself because he discovered his wife, the queen..." she pauses awkwardly. 
"was his mother..." 

No way. This has to be a LARP. Oedipus? That sounds suspiciously like Queen Oedippa. She grips her forehead a bit. What does it mean? What does it...
“So, wait. Every ruler has been a man? This can’t be right...” Even as she wracked her brain, she found those inconsistencies hard to explain. Everyone seemed to be... Swapped, somehow. She thought it was weird how women were subjugated instead of men, but, everyone's genders being swapped? That's impossible!
“Wait, wait. What about like, current day. I get not knowing Halsgrof, but like... What about the PM of Heimwell? The empress of Meimen?” She stops and really thinks about the implications. “What... What year is it?” She asks, not knowing what answer she's hoping for.

"Heimwell...? Meimen? I've... Never heard of places like that." She blushes, feeling sort of dumb. "Um. This year... it's the 45th Olympiad. Oh, I um. Guess that doesn't mean much to you..." Medusa ponders for a minute. 
"How about, it's been 600 years since the Linked Progenitor died...?" She suggests. Surely everyone knows him.

Gaheris wracks her brain, trying to remember this class from ninth grade. The linked progenitor… Wait, the original linked? But that was like, a million bajillion years ago... Is she? No. Merlin couldn’t have been so clumsy as to send her to another dimension, to the wrong time period… Could she? She takes a deep breath, and tries to articulate her thoughts. Finally, they come out:

"Am I... In the past?" She asks out loud, more hypothetically than anything. It would make sense, no technology. No electricity. Everyone wearing silly clothes. Maybe it isn’t a LARP... It’s genuinely their lives.

Medusa finally speaks as well. "The past...? Um. What Olympiad— Um, how many years since he died for you...?"  Medusa is completely bewildered. Travelling through time... She thought that every mystic in this world had found it to be impossible for certain, years ago. Isn't it? But, she's decided to believe Gaheris...

Gaheris responds, unsure. "Umm. Maybe..3000? Or so? No way, uh... It's definitely way more than that, I think?" She quickly tries to think about a more solid number, but it really was hurting her brain to think about being stuck not only in another universe, but another time entirely. No wonder she wasn't getting cell service before! Medusa's mouth opens in shock. It's really true... All her strange items, alien clothing, weird tools... They're really from the future. Medusa is speechless, and they sit in the shocked silence for a minute or so.

"You... leapt through time... Ah. Your world... It must have really amazing magic, to let you do something like that. All the mystics and magicians laugh at the idea of walking through time, here." She says, a bit quietly. Her words cause Gaheris to laugh a bit. A sad little laugh. 

“Yeah well, it wasn’t really... A thing people thought was possible for us, either. It was because of my mentor and a very funny wizard that I even got to go to another dimension... The time travel part wasn't really. Supposed to happen.” She explains, and Medusa listens carefully.

Medusa dares to pry a bit, filled with curiosity. “You keep mentioning your mentor… um, what was she like? What’s the future like…? What kind of people are famous in the future? Ah—” She shakes her head. “Sorry. I don’t want to overwhelm you.” Gaheris listens to her questions, easing into the tension and looking off wistfully, through the open window.

“My mentor's the most thoughtful of all Knights of The Round. Uh, the Round Table, that is. We all gathered around it for meetings. A-Anyway, she's named Dame Bedivere. She's linked to a crazy tree, or something, but she would sometimes get these visions of the future of other worlds, that no one else ever got. She taught me to be the knight I am today...”  Gaheris wipes a tear from her eye and smiles sorrowfully, and Medusa sombrely listens to Gaheris recount her memory. “She sacrificed everything for me to go on my mission. She saw the horror herself... Never really the same after that. Even when I do get home, she'll probably never be the same, anyway...” She sighs. Then, hoping to change the subject before her worries for her home universe consume her, she chuckles a little ruefully. 
“Y’know. In my world, Medusa was a man." She mentions.

Medusa looks very surprised when she hears her own name. 
“Me…? I’ve never been a man… Is that true? How have you heard of me?” She leans a little closer to Gaheris, curious and a little bit nervous. Gaheris wracks her brain again, for when Gawain would read stories to her of olden heroes. Medusa was... Who was he, again? 

“I think... Medusa was a gorgon, and could turn people to stone with just a look! And, and. Uh.” She thinks about the ending and decidedly skips past it. “He was turned into a gorgon, because of Poseidon, I think? She’s an ocean goddess, or something. Not really sure why she turned him into a snake-guy, but I guess that's just what goddesses get up to in their free time?” She shrugs, watching Medusa look a little bit emotionless. And then, Medusa sighs a little. 

“Huh. Um, well… I can turn people to stone. That’s true. That’s why I cover my eyes like this… And the ocean… Um, I did sort of come from the ocean… No gods involved, last I checked... Maybe all the genders of everyone are swapped around in your world. I wonder if that means that there’s a boy version of you in this world…” She posits, and Gaheris' ears perk up at the idea of a fun, boy version of herself to train with. 

“Huh! I guess I didn’t think about that. Maybe there’s a boy Gaheris running around somewhere!” She says, tail wagging vaguely with a mix of excitement and sleepiness. Gaheris looks over at Medusa, noting her blindfold; guess she's not actually blind. 
“Don’t worry. I know you wouldn’t turn me to stone. I trust you!” She smiles, hoping to maybe make the stress of having rock-eyes a bit less, well, stressful. Medusa, however, just sighs in response.

“It’s hard to control… Whenever I get angry, or start feeling sorry for myself… It just comes out.” She sighs. “Well… I’m working on it…”

The time has passed smoothly, and now, it is fully dark out. Despite how hot it was during the day, the sea air has become crisp and cool, and just out the window, the moon is rising over the sea. 
When Gaheris sees this, the weight of her exhaustion, as well as the implications of it all starts to creep up on her. She’s not only in another world, but she’s stranded. without all the modern comforts she enjoyed— well, at least she still has her aura charger. But what good is that? If any of her technology starts to break, she has no replacements! So much to think about. Shoot, if only she took those robotics classes... She yawns. 
Gaheris tries to relax and try to think of what relaxed her back in Camelot. It's not really all that healthy, but she opens her dumb little games folder, and starts clicking on apps seeing if they took internet.  At last, she found and opened her favourite little time waster game, allowing the repetitive, brainless game-play ease her tired mind.

The slightly harsh glow of her phone in the dark feels comfortingly similar to how life has always been. Medusa watches her idly. The repetitive motions begin to lull Gaheris to sleep, which brings a whole plethora of thoughts and worries. But, there’s hope for tomorrow, right? She wonders how she’s going to get home without Merlin… Since they’re so far in the past, this world’s Merlin definitely hasn’t been born yet… She thinks about how she may not have a choice but to stay in this world, educate as many people as she can, and hopefully they can do something with kick-starting their own industrial revolution...or something like that. Her head hurts from how much she must do, but is unable to grasp how she can do it.  

Baby steps. It can only get better from here, after washing up on a beach, in the past, in another world. At least she's not totally alone! Medusa is a really good ally, and she got really lucky with that Circe lady, too. Out the corner of her eye, she can see Medusa getting ready to go to sleep, getting under the covers. It’s really, really lucky they met, and Gaheris feels grateful. The air feels different in the past, she thinks. Maybe there’s more magic in the air, or maybe it’s just less polluted. Either way, it feels extra energizing. Maybe it’s time to get to sleep. Medusa seems like she’s about to, anyway.

Gaheris goes to tuck herself under the sheets, careful not to bump into Medusa. She then has an amazing idea. She recalls all those funny memes people used to make back home, about how if you gave a caveman a bag of Doritos, he would explode. Well, Medusa isn't a caveman... Woman? But, the effect might still work! She tilts the phone over to Medusa, poking her with the corner of her case, and turns the sound up a little, letting the quiet yet abrasive joyful music fill the space.

"Wanna play? It's one of my bad future habits." She giggles, trying to cheer herself up. Medusa seems to peek at it a bit, and tries to shield her covered eyes, an action that Gaheris thought was kinda funny in some way. 

“Um… what is it? It’s bright…” She reaches out to grab it, her hand filled with trepidation. Gaheris hands it to her, naturally.

"It's uh... Subway surfers. You're the little character there..." She taps the screen and does little tricks to amuse her old-fashioned friend. 
"You kinda just. Try to escape the guard chasing you. I guess you have plenty of practice, huh?" She jokes, and feels a bit worried, hoping that that wasn't too bad of a joke. But, Medusa laughs gently at her joke, despite the content matter. 

“The, um, city in it… Does it look like this where you’re from?”  She starts trying to play it, but it seems like the game-play eludes her a little bit, and she keeps running into stuff. As for her question, Gaheris shrugs a little at it. 

"Well. The city is a weird mashup between a lot of different cities! But when it's a snow background, it kinda does look like my home." She sighs a little and sinks into the bed. "It'll really suck to not see snow anymore. Doesn't seem to get much weather here, huh? Just sunny beaches... Forever." Medusa frowns a bit at Gaheris' sudden sadness, and tries to think.

“Well… um. If that Circe lady really does manage to get us into the guild… They do go on expeditions all over the world. Maybe they could take us to where you lived… It wouldn’t be the same, um, but there would be snow.”

Gaheris perks up at that, and doesn't quite notice as a tear or two drip down her cheek. "Heh, I guess you're right." She says, smiling a bit in the dark. "Maybe... If there's no way to really go back home... Maybe I could settle there after I get all old!" She laughs, hoping it comes off as a joke, and Medusa laughs and smiles at her as well. 

“I bet your ancestors live there, at least…” She very very carefully puts down the phone between them. (even though it is encased in the thickest otter box you have ever seen.) 
“Well. We won’t know until we wake up… Let’s sleep. I think they will probably let you in, at least… Um, maybe don’t tell your story right away, though. They might call you crazy…” She suggests, tucking herself back into the bed fully, getting comfortable. Gaheris giggles a little and picks up the phone, throwing it into her pile of clothes for later. She tucks in tight and hopes the stress of interdimensional travel will allow her to pass out quickly.

"Goodnight Medusa. Thanks for helping me."  She says, and allows the night to envelop her, the horrors of her mind kept at bay by Medusa's friendly comfort... If only for a night, anyway.