\r\nThis was written December 31st, 2025<\/i>\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\nThe Interstitial Plains<\/h2>\r\n
\r\n“3! 2! 1! Happy New…Huh?!?”\r\n<\/p>
\r\nThere had been a large song, as expected. But it wasn’t the fireworks that I was\r\nexpecting. And where was the building he’d been staring at just a moment ago?
\r\nI looked around. I was now surrounded by a dark plain, all alone.
\r\n“Testing, testing, can you hear us?”
\r\nI looked around and around, but couldn’t find the source of the voice.
\r\n“Hello?”
\r\n“Oh good, sounds like you can hear us.”
\r\n“Where….who…what’s going on?”
\r\n“Guess it’s time for a quick explanation. This in front of you is the Interstitial Plain.\r\nIt was accessible because so many of you were regrouped and focused on the same thing.”\r\n“Ugh, I knew I shouldn’t have gone out tonight.”
\r\n“On the contrary. We need<\/i> you!”
\r\n“Need me? A nobody? Why?”
\r\n“Well, to find our way back home, no less! We’ve been stuck on your world for about two\r\nyears now, trying to find a crack back here. Yet, despite how populous your world is, it\r\nseems like you’re all so disparate and divided…”\r\n<\/p>
\r\nDuring this explanation, I looked at my surrounding. It was too dark to see much of\r\nanything, but there was a sulfurous smell all around. It felt rather unpleasant. I kept\r\nlooking around and gradually, my eyes adjusted. Yet, all I could see was a deserted\r\nplain, nothing noteworthy to see, really. Then I looked down, and more closely, at the\r\nground. From what I first thought of as grass seemed to be emanating a little bit of…\r\nsomething. Not quite light, but similar. I would describe it as them releasing\r\n“darkness”, except each with a different sort of color. Yet this too couldn’t exactly\r\nbe described as a color. None of this really makes sense, yet that was the impression I\r\ngot, and the closest I could describe it.\r\n<\/p>
\r\n“….the New Year celebrations and found you, whom we pushed into the Interstitial Plain\r\nto hitch a ride.”
\r\n“Wait…you PUSHED me here?”
\r\n“Well, yeah, we couldn’t exactly come here on our own…”
\r\n“So…how do I go back home?”
\r\n“Well…you can’t. We need your help first. To reach back our own! And possibly save it!”
\r\n“Are you fucking kidding me? This isn’t enough? You actually need me to bring you all\r\nthe way back? What about me? How am I supposed to head back after? How can you guarantee\r\nI won’t be stranded after?”
\r\n“Well…we can’t exactly guarantee it. After all, we need a hero to save us. Yet, from\r\neverything we saw on your world, we would have expected one of you to be excited! A\r\nchance to fall into the unknown, a chance to explore new worlds, a chance to become a\r\nhero!”
\r\n“Sure…in video games or on tv! But…this is my actual life! And…and…ugh!\r\nCan you at least tell me about this place, and how it works? You see to know about it.”
\r\n“Well, as we said, it’s the Interstitial Plain. It’s a sort of Nexus between different\r\nworlds. You see below you? Those blades waving on the ground? Each of those is a different\r\nworld. The closer they are to each other, the more they can influence one another.”
\r\n“What! Was I stepping on my own world? Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”\r\n<\/p>
\r\nI tried to step away, but there was world grass everywhere, and I just couldn’t avoid\r\nstepping on any. Nor did I know which one was my homeworld.
\r\n“Don’t worry, worlds are not brittle. You could never destroy one so easily, you couldn’t\r\neven pick one up if you tried. Now, let’s look around for your world. You can rest a bit,\r\nand then, in an hour or so, we’ll be heading off into our world. We have much to tell you\r\nabout it, yet for now, we too must rest. We’ll then be looking for our own world. As fellow\r\nresidents, we should be able to pick it out from the rest fairly easily. You should be\r\nable to do the same with your own world. Once ready, we’ll harmonize with it, it should\r\nbe a simple matter.”\r\n<\/p>
\r\nAfter this, I inspected this world some more. In the distant, I could see a cliff, along\r\nwith what looked like a sea. I have no idea what those might have been, or represented.\r\nAlas, maybe I never will.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nI then took a closer look at the world grass, at each blade individually. One of them\r\ncaught my attention in particular. It looked more “right”, it was more “pleasant”-looking.\r\nI suspect this is my own world, and that I’m either still linked to it, or resonate with\r\nit.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nNow, I have no idea who those people really are, or what they want of me. I can’t see\r\nthem, and I suspect their voice is coming from inside my own head. Yet, I’m also not\r\nsure what to do. I should probably wait, instead of heading back to my own world. They\r\nare right, an occasion like this doesn’t arise every day. Yet…what do they want? For\r\nall I know, this is a weird trap, and they’re looking for a new source of food, or maybe\r\nare creating some weird zoo. Somber ideas are definitely not lacking in my mind.\r\nStill, I’ll take a chance. However, I decided to write this journal in case anyone else\r\nends up stranded here. Luckily I did have my backpack with some supplies in it.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nWhile my information is limited, maybe this can help the next person. And if you’re from\r\nmy world and make it back with this, my name is Jacob Tesser and I disappeared on December\r\n31st, 2025. Please try to give my family some closure.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nThis journal was found by the first expedition into the Interstitial Plains. It was\r\nsurprisingly well preserved, considering it’s already been over a decade. We suspect this\r\nis due to properties of the Plains themselves. This served as our first source of\r\ninformation on, and gave us a glossary for some basic terminology. Jacob himself never\r\nreturned, and by the time we found this, no surviving family members remained.<\/b><\/i>\r\n<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was written December 31st, 2025 The Interstitial Plains “3! 2! 1! Happy New…Huh?!?” There had been a large song, as expected. But it wasn’t the fireworks that I was expecting. And where was the building he’d been staring at just a moment ago? I looked around. I was now surrounded by a dark plain, … Continue reading Writing Challenge 2025 \u2013 34 – The Interstitial Plains<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2644"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2677,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2644\/revisions\/2677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}