Cora, like every morning about this time, had already been at work for hours. That morning had been a particularly busy morning. She’d taken the time to run a test procedure on a very important piece of new equipment to go with the infusion pump her company had built. As usual, everything was going entirely wrong and Miska Moosaria, the principle engineer on the new equipment, had broken things on the back end and had left Cora and her team to fix things. She’d organized her team, giving all of them very distinct tasks in the project, been up in Miska’s office screaming at him for what seemed like the billionth time, and wrote so much red pen over the new test procedure that hardly any of the procedure was going to be the original piece.

So it was that by 11:00 AM, when she sat down for a minute to eat her lunch, that she was in a particularly bad mood. As was usual, she pulled out her lunch and arranged it on her desk next to her. Today it included Spicy Thai Chili flavored tuna fish, a handful of almonds, and a small container of grapefruit juice. She was sipping lightly on her grapefruit juice when she clicked on the internet to go on Menewsha to do some forum checking or other Mod duties. If she had been home the fact that she had to sign in when she first got to mene would have seemed rather odd to her, but as it stood from her work computer she thought nothing of it. She was just getting a bite of her tuna to her mouth as she clicked on the Log In button.

And then it happened. A jolt went through her like lightning and she closed her eyes. A dizziness went through her that made her feel like vomiting but as quickly as it had started it was over. She was sitting on the ground at this point and simply kept her eyes closed, her head on her arms leaned against her knees. She stayed this way for a brief moment making sure the dizzy spell would pass. When was the last time she had had a dizzy spell of that nature? She honestly couldn’t remember.

It was there sitting with her eyes closed; on what she thought was the floor that she heard the ocean. Ocean? Why was she hearing the ocean? Was Jenna playing on her computer instead of working? Then again Jenna could be on lunch. Regardless, she opened her eyes to look in on what Jenna was doing when she realized she was no longer at work at all! In fact before her eyes was not just the sound of the ocean, but the ocean itself! Her eyes went wide with shock. How does a person go from sitting at a desk in a perfectly normal office to looking at the ocean?

She put her hands on her knees ready to stand up and start exploring her surroundings when she was in for an even bigger shock. Her skin, which after a thorough examination of herself to make sure it wasn’t just her hands and arms, was discovered to be a deep dark shade of blue, like the night sky. Her legs weren’t like human legs at all, in fact they were scale-y and protruded into long talons. The ocean….the ocean….and blue skin? She studied her appearance and clothing and then it hit her. She knew exactly where she was though she didn’t want to believe it. Menewsha was nothing more than words on a computer screen with real life people to transform them. Was this some trick of Inso’s or Yanyan’s to make it so the staff never stopped working? Did Jelly wish upon a star and have her dream to transport them all here come true? She guessed time would only tell.

She looked towards the others that seemed to be in the same predicament as she was. She didn’t recognize the avatars of the others, which meant either they were not staff, or the staff had changed avatars while she worked. Either one was plausible but she couldn’t be sure. She pinched the bridge of her nose and then remembered a few other oddities about her own avatar and reached up to feel the horns on her bald head, and then to the feathery wings along her back. She took a deep breath, whether she wanted to believe it or not it was true, she had somehow been sucked into menewsha.

She stood, brushed off her skirt, and then walked towards the others on the beach with her, “erm….hello. I’m not sure by appearances who you are, but I’m Cora.”