Matt Koeler didn't know where he was. One minute he was walking to his university campus, and the next he fell through a portal that appeared mid-air. He sat up on a grassy hill overlooking what he assumed to be a small, well populated village on the edge of some kind of jungle. He blinked, and got up, checking himself over. All seemed well, no cuts or bruises. 

He began to walk down to the village, admiring the view from the hill. He noticed that the hill seemed to be bigger than he had previously expected, with his walk to the village taking five minutes longer than he thought it would. As he reached the nearest building, he noticed that everyone in the town was glancing at him. He assumed that he must look like an obvious outsider to them.

Finally Matt reached some kind of tavern. He stopped to look in the window and saw a child, about nine or 10 years of age by the looks of him, staring right back. He quickly ducked as he saw Matt looking back. He walking inside and noticed how spotless everything looked, for a medieval tavern. He turned to the child, who was hurriedly washing the window he had previously been peeping out of. Just then a woman came in through the back door of the bar and clapped her hands. 

“Ah, how wonderful.”, she cried loudly. Matt studied her for a moment. The woman looked in her early 40s, with brown hair pulled back in a bun. She wore a red tunic and a dress underneath, with woven sandals. Matt's immedient attention however, was drawn to her large breasts, which were the largest he had ever seen. Not ridiculously big, but big enough that they were the first thing you would notice about her.

"Chubo, stop cleaning for once and help our guest". She barked. Matt assumed she was talking to the young boy, Chubo, who dropped the sponge and bucket and immediently stood to attention. 

"Hello dear, my name is Clarina, and this is my nephew Chubo", The woman introduced. 

"Would you like anything?", She offered, "Directions to somewhere? A nice hot meal? A place to bed down for the night?" She seemed very nice, and Matt thought he could hear a very small Nordic accent. 

"Matt shrugged. "I'd love all those things, but I have no form of compensation for you". 

Clarina kept smiling. "Well of course you don't deary, you're an offworlder. We get lots of offworlders here in Brookshire. Matt assumed that was the name of the town.

"Right", He countered. She laughed and ruffled Chubo's hair, who immediently glared at his aunt. "Well if you'd like, you could work for board. Chubo here keeps the place spotless all the time, so maybe you could cook?" She offered. 

Matt quickly aggreed, and was lead by Chubo to an attic room, which was just as spotless, if not more than downstairs. "I see you like cleaning" Matt said. Chubo just flipped him off. 

Matt looked out the window that was located above his cot. He wondered if he would every get back home.

Matt woke late the next morning, to find Chubo climbing the stairs with a wooden tray overflowing with buttered toast. The little boy unceremoniously dumped the tray on Matt's bed and ran out the door. The tray had a note attached next to the toast. "Thought you might like a little snack - Clarina". 

He walked down the stairs from the attic and found the tavern as empty as when he had walked in. Strange, as it was nearly lunchtime, according to a clock mounted on a wall. He walked into the kitchen and saw Chubo scrubbing away at a plate, that looked as if it were about to disintegrate from all that scrubbing. To the young lad's right, Clarina was busy making a pot of soup, though the ingredients were not of Matt's knowledge. Purple pear shaped objects, a leg that used to belong to some kind of spotted pink bird, and some red leaves. 

The woman turned and gasped in surprise, embracing Matt in a tight squeeze. "Oh good, I thought you might have combusted." She said calmly. "Combusted?!?" Matt cried in alarm. 

"When a traveller appears unequiped, often their atoms and whatnot can't handle being in another dimension, so they catch fire." explained Clarissa. Matt slowly nodded, not yet fully grasping his current situation. "I didn't want to scare ye, so I thought best not to tell ye." She continued. "But don't worry. If you were going to combust, ye would have done so by now."

Matt nodded in understanding. Immediently after that, he was put to work, cutting the pear shaped objects, which oddly enough tasted like baked potato, skinning the legs of the bird creatures and mixing them in the soup as Clarissa added the leaves. Right as the soup was done, a man stumbled into the bar, wearing a sort of armour that Matt could only describe as half roman and half medieval. The man was obviously drunk, and fell over himself several times to get to a bar stool. 

'Gimme beer" He slurred in a thick scottish accent. Right on que, Chubo was there, filling up the man's mug with a foamy, sweet smelling liquid. He chugged it down, then called for a meal. Matt saw this as his turn to serve the customer. He filled a bowl with soup and served it to the man, who slurped it down as fast as the beer. Clarissa walked in through the back door and saw the man, soup splashed all over his trousers. She yelled and began to chase the man around the tavern with a broom, telling him to "GET OUT YOU MISERABLE DRUNKARD!!!" The man slumped down on one of the tables, defeated, as the barmaid told him off. 

"I got the coin this time", he panted, and Clarissa stopped beating him with the broom. "You sure?" The woman asked cautiously. "Sure as egg is eggs". The man said gleefully. He got up and noticed Matt standing there, having watched the whole affair. "Watch those eyes boy, or I'll have 'em for me lunch". He warned. 

Matt went back to the kitchen, but couldn't help overhearing a conversation between Clarissa and the drunk man. 

"Ernie, you've been drinking on the job again, haven't you?"                               

"Fuck off, you're not me mother".                                                                       

"No, but I care about you."                                                                                 

"You call beating me half to death with a broom caring?"                                     

'Come on now Ernie, you can't live like this. And don't go threatning my staff again."   

Ernie sniffed. "You call that runt staff? He won't be able to defend himself if a giant comes again". Clarissa sighed. "Ern, it was an earthquake alright? Not a giant". 

"But they're real I tells you." Ernie slurred. "Real as the sky above my head." He walked out the door and tripped over his own two feet.