It hadn’t sunk in at first, the concept was just too foreign, to absolute to register. “You can never go home again.” A flash of black, a rising tone, and a suddenly everything she had done, everything she had been was gone.

No more high school, no more after school jobs, no more baby-sitting unappreciative siblings. No more siblings period. No more dog to walk or horse to clean up after. Gone, all of it.

Now she had a new language, a new culture, a new life of medieval and magic that was unlike anything she had been before.

And when it did sink in the Shepherds were there, reminding them that this was a chance to start over. No one knew them, and no one would judge them on who they had been before. This time they could be whomever they wanted to.

It wasn’t much, but after a while, it was enough.