Crossover

 

I wrote this to my Trope Bingo prompt of “Crossover”, and it came in at 1,925 words.  I believe that it stands on its own, but it is directly related to a piece I wrote back in 2014 that is only on Livejournal and is called “Firenze”.

If Bhargarbh was anything, it was an interchange.  It wasn't a space between worlds, although those did exist, but it was a small, finite world with many doors linking it to other worlds.  Roald Dhogassohn had arrived here through a door from Maerche, which wasn't unusual because Maerche had doors to lots of other worlds, but Bhargarbh was unusual as a destination for one of those doors because most of the worlds you accessed through a door were alternate versions of each other.  A series of worlds all much the same as each other with a few significant variations, like different peoples, more or less magic, asteroid strikes, or technology choices.  Bhargarbh had a surface area that was sixteen to twenty kilometres across, depending where and in which direction you measured it.  It had a slightly orange sun, a day length of 24.7 hours by the time keeping standards of Roald's homeland, and it was surrounded by a two and a half metre tall wall of quartz.  Rumour suggested that there was nothing beyond the quartz – visitors were dissuaded from looking.  Roald didn't pretend to understand it, he just used the place as a quick, safe way to get from one world to the next.

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