Like The Loop, Outsider was inspired by DARK, not based on it. But, in a much different capacity, it manages to be an uplifting and beautiful vision of change and creation. That is, if you understand what it means. I'm probably not going to help you out with this one; just know that this story means the most to me out of possibly everything I'll ever publish. Good luck.
I reach up to wipe the spit from my face.
There would be no reason to spend too much time angry with the old man who disrespected me. His white hair is matted with mud and leaves and a thin film of dirty sweat covers his face. His clothes display a systematic arrangement of rips and twine tied fumblingly to fit him. Children's clothes. Most of the others on the sidewalk have resorted to similar methods. His face is contorted with rage and grief.
I turn away and continue down the narrow alley. As I pass, its occupants cast me varying glances. Anger and sorrow seem like shallow words as I'm faced with their glares. I'm about to pass under the gate at the end of the alleyway when I see a young girl of about nine standing apart from the others. She wears clothes that clearly belong to someone much older, but a loop of twine is tied like a makeshift belt around her waist, and a gathered clump of the waistband of her pants sticks out on her right side, twisted into an auxiliary pocket. The expression on her face is flat and emotionless. Her hands twist together in a nervous motion, and her face is covered in such a thick and persistent layer of dirt that it's impossible to tell the color of her skin or hair. I move to comfort her, but she shrinks away.
"Outsider," she says. Her voice is as flat and empty as her expression. She doesn't appear capable of saying anything else.
Seeing how useless my attempt has been, I straighten and pass under the gate at the end of the alleyway, into the busy street. These sidewalks are scrubbed clean, the people wear vibrant clothing, and market stalls line either side of the cobblestoned road. It's some type of farmer's market, I infer; the people meander, as if they're not looking for anything in particular and instead want to browse among the stalls. When I step into the street, the steady flow of inaudible conversation emanating from the stalls slows grindingly to a halt. Everyone pauses to stare. Malice in every face.
It's shocking, really, the kind of treatment I've received. I'm not one to complain or try to convince people things should change, but I'd at least appreciate if people were less eternally pessimistic. The phenomenon is related in some way to the fundamental attribution error, but applied to themselves: the good that happens to people is their own doing, but the bad- it's all the fault of Fate. Outsiders. I can understand how angry people might be in the alleyway I passed through to get here. But when the fortunate act this way, I'm inclined to think of them as ungrateful.
I calmly ignore the angry stares of the market-goers and carefully make my way down the wide street. It's almost as if people are frozen in place; they don't move to the side to let me pass through, but simply stand still, waiting for me to find a way to weave through the crowd. I know that if I so much as brush against someone, I will be at fault for everything that happens to them in the next year. If their cat dies, if they lose their job, if they break a finger, they'll remember the figure that brushed against their sleeve that sunny day in the autumn. They'll remember my face, and distort it into the face of hate. Of cold, uncaring indifference.
In all the worlds, even my own, there is more good than evil. More people live than die. More people love than are lonely. But they don't seem to notice that here. For every time an incredible coincidence happens, there are thousands of similar circumstances that we ignore which could have been coincidences of the same magnitude. For every time an event of great sadness or great evil occurs, there are thousands of trifling acts of good and kindness that no one sees. Belief in coincidence and belief in evil are facets of bias. None of us are immune. No matter how much anger and hate I inspire here, these people will experience more happiness over the course of their lives. I realize too that my complaints and sadness while I am in this world will be outweighed by a greater amount of goodness throughout my life. Beginning with the fact that I had the ability to become an Outsider.
Bolstered by these thoughts, I make my way through the thick crowd without touching so much as a hair on someone else's head. They all glare at me, some with mere frustration, some with deep anger, and some with grief. I can't control what others think of me, I tell myself. This is a good world and these are good people. They are simply biased, like all of us. I keep my expression uniformly emotionless; there's no point in trying to alter their beliefs. I don't believe that any of them would or could listen to my explanation.
They all want so desperately to be real.
I know the feeling. I remember when I first realized the truth about the link between my world and all the others. I've come to peace with it through a simple tenant: everything is real. Imagination is a fantasy, yet another facet of bias. That, I have learned, is why I can change the other worlds.
I reach the end of the road. A tall, impetuous facade rises before me, a poor choice of location, the house set just at the base of the hill. It appears as if a hole has been dug out of half of the ground specifically for the house to be slotted into; its white pillars look supremely unnatural, rising out of the ground like sick, lifeless trees.
I turn into the walk of the slight, narrow, angular house on the left of the facade. The unnatural stiffness of the larger house is something that I almost expect to see. Houses that aren't as important can be described beautifully, but the actual sight of such a building ruins the effect. There's nearly always something just a bit wrong with it. This house, on the other hand, looks perfectly natural. I'm sure there's some house like it in my world- the cottage next to the hairdresser's, that no one knows about and everyone looks at. It looks vaguely familiar, and I'm sure I've seen it before.
I knock. A single time. The sound penetrates throughout the walls and sets the thin-wooded door vibrating. I run my fingers over the aching knuckles of my other hand.
When the door opens, it's almost a compromise between a wide, welcoming opening and a narrow, suspicious crack of an opening. The door is swung at an angle which is almost the exact width of the woman's body that stands inside it.
It's difficult to call her a woman, because I'm so inclined to think of her as a girl. Her hair is clearly uncombed, and her lips are cracked and dry, but she's pretty, in a young-looking kind of way. She's wearing a thick shirt which is completely inappropriate given both the weather and the remainder of her outfit. She asks a question, with her eyes.
I nod, and she shows me in. A thin table sits in the corner of the front room next to two chairs which are entirely the wrong height, both with respect to the table and to each other. She sits in the lower one, offering me the hospitality of what appears to be the most normal chair in the house. I place both hands on the edges of the chair and ease myself down, setting my suitcase beside it. She eyes it hungrily before her gaze snaps back up to me.
"You're an Outsider," she nods. Like me, she feels the need to state the obvious when it helps her think. Her eyes rove over my face. "I'm not going to hate you like the others."
I dip my head in acknowledgement. She understands. Unlike the others in this world, those who glared at me in the streets, she is trying, very hard, to be free of bias. I know why.
She tilts her head and offers a question I've always wished I could ask. "And which are you?"
I gesture to the two of us and then around her house. "Friend. Of course."
Her brow knits in confusion. I realize with some surprise that in time I will need to explain myself to her. After all, I muse, we look nothing alike.
"Why are you here?" she asks. No wasted words, no "what are you doing", no "I'm confused about...", simply a directed question.
"You are not biased," I state simply. "You don't believe in coincidence and you don't believe in evil."
She concedes, as if this should be obvious. She clearly doesn't know how unique her beliefs are. "Will you at least tell me how many levels down this is?"
So she knows. The expression on her face is one of complete acceptance, even hunger. She understands exactly what it means to be an Outsider- and she's creative enough to realize that my world might be just like hers.
"I don't know," I answer. She doesn't look surprised. "The world above mine is blocked. I can't travel there. In common speech you might say that that world has no magic."
"Why would you call it that?" she asks.
"You can travel down from your own world, but you can't travel up without help. No one from that world has ever come to ours. I don't believe that they can travel at all."
Her eyes rove over my face. "Perhaps," she notes sagely, "the story of your world has not begun."
I nod. A perspective that I haven't even considered. I notice, with a pang of some bizarre self-envy, that she's more creative than me.
"My name is Cassia Fayne," she says with absolutely no preamble, and apparently no expectation for me to identify myself.
"Call me Aussen for now," I request. When she begins to look confused, I explain. "The German word for Outsider... it appeals to me. Aussenseiter. Or, for you..." I gesture vaguely in her direction. "Aussenseiterin."
She seems pleased by this, as if the word appeals to her as well. I would be something less than surprised if it does. She tries it out, almost hungrily, and the word rolls off her tongue in perfect rhythm. Her smile betrays that she's experiencing a level of power she's never felt before. The power to change worlds.
I lift my suitcase into the space between us, and she grasps the handle, her hand beside mine.
⚞⚟
"What is this place?" Cassia Fayne wonders, trailing her fingers along the shelves. Her expression is one of naive curiosity, her eyes wide with simple interest. The shelf she's so absently fingering is lined with a cluttered array of bottles, all carefully labeled in my cramped, neat handwriting. I have to resist the urge to tug her hand away.
"Storage," I answer briefly. "When I need something for a trip, I can usually find it here."
She lifts a bottle to the light, carefully examining the amber-colored liquid inside. She scans her eyes across the label, mouthing the words in silent awe.
"Where did you get this?" she asks after a moment, without turning to look at me. "Does it work?"
I don't immediately respond, staring back with narrowed eyes. "It comes from here," I say eventually. "And yes, that's the idea."
"So you just found this?" she realizes.
"If you know what you're looking for," I remind her, "you can find anything."
"And what are you looking for?" she asks innocently. There's a much deeper meaning behind the question; the serious expression of her eyes and the sharp edge to her tone of voice make that clear. Without answering, I turn away.
"You must do this for some reason," she presses. "There must be something motivating you. You don't need to be an Outsider, you know."
This simple statement catches me off guard. Noticing my confusion, she continues. "You could look for enough food or enough money or enough ideas to support yourself, and then go home. You don't need to take care of the garden."
I've said nothing at all about gardening. It's an analogy I regularly use to explain who I am, who the Outsiders are. And yet, even without an explanation, she seems to intuit who we are on a deeper level.
"So why, Aussen?" she reiterates, cocking her head in an unnaturally familiar mannerism.
I respond with a sigh. "I think you know."
And it's true. She does know. She should know. If she's truly more creative than me, as I judged her to be, she should understand that I do this for the same reason as her.
I do this because I care.
Stories have always held more weight than real life. It has always been easier to care about fiction than reality. I've wished to be an Outsider since I was a child. And now that I am, I have a responsibility to help those in need. And I have a responsibility to grant that wish.
She still doesn't know who I am.
Would I? If someone arrived at my house and offered me a power so great as to change worlds, would I imagine who they might be? Would I even give it a thought?
I wouldn't, I remind myself. Maybe Cassia Fayne is more creative than me, but she's not astute enough to recognize my identity. Just as I wouldn't be astute enough to recognize hers.
She begins to speak, but is just as quickly silenced by her own thoughts. It's so incredibly easy to see her thought process that I'm surprised she hasn't already realized our similarities. She isn't giving up; she's simply deciding that it would be more productive to wait until I'm willing to give her a clear answer. The only thing overriding her curiosity is her logic.
"Where are we going?" she asks instead. Without fail, every time she references one of the journeys, her eyes flick unconsciously in the direction of my suitcase. The one I've so generously shared.
I lift my hands in an ambivalent motion. "You should choose."
Her lips tighten ever so slightly. I recognize the motion; she's stopping herself from offering me the choice. She doesn't trust me to offer her the opportunity a second time. And she's right.
After a minute of silence, I realize that I'll need to be the first to speak. "Where are we going, then?"
Cassia Fayne's lips curl into an unnaturally familiar smile. "I think you know."