Author's Note: This started out as a series of drabbles on Tumblr that became something of a series, but there's not a whole lot of cohesion, so very sorry XD His Dark Materials/Sherlock crossover. I hope you enjoy!

It wasn't that it was uncommon for people to cross over. The sliver of a rift between worlds was just tall enough, just wide enough for a child to walk through, and impossible to ignore once it'd been discovered. It was just that not many people were able to discover it, only those with a keen eye and a knack for noticing when something small was very wrong.

Sherlock Holmes had a very keen eye.

So it was that the young man, barely twenty years old and restless, all lanky limbs and bird nest hair, wandered into a new world. It was so very different from his own. No, but London was there, just as it always was. And there were even cars, trains, planes; there was indoor plumbing and electricity. But there was more, and as he stumbled into it, the first thing he was made aware of was that his whole life, he'd been missing something.

Someone.

A woman screamed, a man paled and covered his mouth, and it wasn't that they'd seen Sherlock cross over. He stared back at them, wild eyed. Beside her, an antelope nudged her elbow, closing the small distance between them, and she clung to it. Sherlock frowned, his eyes darting over to the man, noting the shrew sitting in the rim of his hat, shaking. Woman, man, animals were shaking in the streets of downtown London.

"What is he?" She whispered to her husband. "God, what is he?"

Sherlock ran.