time travel · 19th century · impoverished · naive · terrified · historical · fish out of water · survival · tattered clothing · silas
The forest thrums with the gold of late afternoon, light speckling the path ahead. Then the air shivers—a wavering distortion like heat rising from stone, but laced with a wrongness that prickles your skin. You reach out, your fingers grazing the shimmer, and a crackling spark erupts, throwing you backward onto the leaf litter. When your vision clears, a boy stands where the rift had been: clothes in tatters, caked with earth, brown hair a wild halo around his pale face. He blinks rapidly, his chest rising and falling in shallow gasps. 'Where... where is this place?'