A friend in need

Victor wasn't too sure about this whole situation, but there wasn't much else he could do. He definitely couldn't remember where the cave was he crawled out of and staying here beat staying out there. Looking around town there weren't many buildings that stood out from one another, all of them built from the giant timber from those heavenly trees. There were some small ones compared to others that Victor assumed were for farm animals as there were fences nearby them, but the building they were heading to was a very big and well decorated log cabin with mounted animals heads on top of it. He was astonished that none of the animals looked like anything from earth, they're was a blue blob with a fin going across its chin looked like a beard and two beady black eyes along with a mouth filled with tiny bristles that looked like an iron cleaning brush. The other heads were all different and massive, the smallest one was at least double the guards size.

Upon entering the building a couple of guards spoke to the one escorting Victor, he could tell they were talking about him as all of them kept glancing at him and an occasional "Victor" could be heard from his escort. Eventually the couple guards from inside the building waved the him through a small corridor where a fire could be heard crackling at the center. At what looked like an office desk sat a really old man who was very tall and slim with more wrinkles than Victor's grandmother.

The old man looked up from his papers to the both of them and a warm smile spread across his face, a few words were exchanged once again then the old man looked at Victor and beckoned him to come closer. Although Victor was worried about something bad happening to him from this relatively nice looking grandpa, he didn't have much of a choice and proceeded forward. As he got closer the old man reached into his desk and grabbed a dim blue orb the size of a tennis ball. A couple feet away from him Victor stopped walking, and the old man mimed Victor to place his hand on the orb. Once again left with little choice, he accepted and grasped the orb.

The dim orb glowed a bit and peering into the orb he could see some strange symbols listed neatly in rows. Not sure what to do Victor looked up to the grandpa who began drawing on a piece of paper. Lifting the sheet up Victor saw he drew a symbol and proceeded to point to Victor then pushed his finger on the sheet and finally pointed to the orb. Victor guessed that he wanted him to push that symbol on the orb, looking closely to the symbol and trying to find it in the orb he eventually spotted it near the bottom and pressed his finger on it. To his amazement his finger slipped through and the orb grew even brighter until it felt like it ejected his finger and died down again.

Not entirely sure what was going on he looked back to the elder sitting there smiling back at him, that's when he spoke

"Can you understand me now Victor?"

The old man spoke in perfect English with a slight accent of what sounded like Italian maybe? Victor's face must've been visibly shocked as the old man started laughing.

"I'll take that shocked expression of yours as a yes."

He said while still holding the warm smile. Victor was way too stunned to even say anything, looking back to the orb he could now see that everything was written in plane English and regular numbers.

At the very top of the list was his name and a strange symbol by it, then below was a list that looked like an evaluation of himself. It had his strength, agility, intelligence, and so on along with numbers right next to them. Underneath that was labeled skills and the number 0 then at the very bottom was labeled abilities and listed 'universal translator'. Is that what happened? He got an ability to translate everything? Why was there still an odd symbol then shouldn't he understand that too? With questions popping up he looked to the old man and asked

"What's going on here?"

Without missing a beat he replied

"You have bought an ability to understand what we say." he said all with a smile

"Yes, but how? It should be impossible."

The old man's smile slipped a bit and a started asking questions of his own.

"I've got some questions for you first Victor. Where are you from?"

"Earth." he replied quickly. "Specifically Ontario, Canada."

The old man's smile fell completely.

"How far away is that, I've never heard of that place before."

Victor knew he wasn't on earth anymore, the giant planet in the atmosphere was a dead giveaway. Not really sure how to answer that question he just shrugged.

The old man searched his eyes to see if he was hiding something, after not finding anything he sighed and said

"It's late, you can rest here tonight and we can talk in the morning." With that he led Victor to a small room with a bed, and before leaving the old man said.

"My name is Mend, this is my home and the town is called Thrush. Goodnight Victor." The warm smile returned as he left.

Victor thought about everything that was happening to him, but it didn't take long before sleep finally got to him. It seemed Mend let him sleep in as Victor got up by himself then exited the door and headed back to the room he was in last night to finish the explanation with Mend. After explaining his whole adventure starting from him climbing through the cave hole and appearing in this world, Mend just listened quietly. At the end of the story there was a bit of silence as he processed the information. Eventually he stood up from his desk and said

"Come with me Victor, let's go eat breakfast and I can help fill you in on this world and how it works."