“Oh James,” he cries out and comes forward, tears streaming down his face.

James takes him in his arms, concerned for his friend as wracking sobs come from him. “Here, here, it’s alright,” he says in a soothing manner. He glances back to Perrilin.

“I found him in the Empire,” he explains. “I was playing that song of yours and he came forward. Thought there was something odd about the way he was acting so I investigated. It was hard to piece things together, he doesn’t speak the common tongue at all and only a smattering of the Empire’s. But the fact he didn’t speak any language I knew well, plus his reaction to the song all made me realize something was odd. Then it hit me that he might have come from where you did.”

Taking his friend over to one of the chairs by the table, he sets him down and then takes the seat next to him. “Are you okay?” he asks.

Dave’s face comes up, tear tracks down both cheeks as he asks, “What?”

Then it hits him, Dave was still talking in English and he had asked the question in the common tongue. Having been so immersed in the language of this world for the past month or so, he has to consciously work at getting the correct English pronunciation out. “Are you okay?” he asks again, this time in English.

Dave nods his head, “I am now.”

“What happened?” he asks. “How did you get here?”

“After you went through the door for the interview, I sat there and waited for you,” he explains. “I must have waited there for an hour before I started getting impatient. I got up and went over to the door to listen to what was going on inside but couldn’t hear anything.”

“I knocked on the door and when I didn’t receive any answer I opened it. You could believe my surprise when all that I saw on the other side was an empty office with no other way out.”