Ground-shaking as the thunder was it thrummed through her, punctuated every so often by a distant (but growing closer) crack of bright light and noise that announced the coming storm. The wind had picked up to a brisk notch, carrying on it lost leaves and petals of flowering trees knocked loose to the distant white noise of branches shaking in the distance. The first thunks of bullet-like drops struck the ground infrequently for a time, but it did not disguise footsteps padding over the terrain toward her - slowly and then at a quicker clip.
The woman's body wound tight as a drawn bowstring as the footsteps drew near, her eyes snapping open as the blurred figure with long pale hair reached down toward her. It was a sight of startling familiarity and a feeling she could not entirely place - not quite hostile and not quite relieved she was instead felt a deep and viscerally painful pang of confusion as her body lunged away from the grasping hand, clumsily swatting at the outstretched fingers with the dagger. The steel clattered against glass to little effect as it fell from an unpracticed left hand.
With great effort the witch drew herself up onto her elbows, staring with one wide, searching eye at the stranger, rubbing the place where his fingertips had brushed an exposed shoulder, the sleeve ripped away at the seams and sagging into the crook of her elbow. She made a motion as if dusting that spot off - a brief and rote wag her left hand that seemed more part of a program than a conscious thought - looking at the hand with baleful mistrust, watching his hands a while longer before turning her attention to his face.
"Do not touch me..." the witch trailed off, baring her teeth and offering what seemed to be an automatic growl, for she did not skip a beat following it to even attempt to look ashamed at her lapse of manners. She stared at him, her expression screwed up in concentration as she struggled to focus on the face before her. Sometimes if she blinked she could glimpse fine details, but she quickly gave up on attempting to piece together his face - the effort of concentration was giving her a stellar headache, blooms of white pain spiderwebbing her vision.
So she improvised. Long white hair, lanky, fit- she understood the general gist of the man, speaking with firm confidence her guess. "Do not touch me elf." Haughty and remarkably eloquent despite the creak of misuse in her voice and the vague spacey bewilderment one might expect of a person waking up in a strange land in a completely different season with presumably heavy head trauma and bloodloss.
Her gaze went distant for a moment, tracking somewhere beyond his left shoulder as if in a daze only to snap back to the general direction of his face and then the dagger she had sort of flailed in his direction, then his face again. "God's less fortunate-" she parroted the phrase, head tipping to the side - the woman grimaced, her good eye squeezing shut with dog-like whine. If only she could remember-
"What regional dialect is that?" She blurted the question suddenly, having drawn a blank and lulled into a vacant stare for a short while. Her tone had far changed from the defensive hostility with which she had greeted his approach, instead suggesting an interest piqued and a natural curiosity, as though his answer might reveal the answer to some intriguing riddle or puzzle.
The woman's body wound tight as a drawn bowstring as the footsteps drew near, her eyes snapping open as the blurred figure with long pale hair reached down toward her. It was a sight of startling familiarity and a feeling she could not entirely place - not quite hostile and not quite relieved she was instead felt a deep and viscerally painful pang of confusion as her body lunged away from the grasping hand, clumsily swatting at the outstretched fingers with the dagger. The steel clattered against glass to little effect as it fell from an unpracticed left hand.
With great effort the witch drew herself up onto her elbows, staring with one wide, searching eye at the stranger, rubbing the place where his fingertips had brushed an exposed shoulder, the sleeve ripped away at the seams and sagging into the crook of her elbow. She made a motion as if dusting that spot off - a brief and rote wag her left hand that seemed more part of a program than a conscious thought - looking at the hand with baleful mistrust, watching his hands a while longer before turning her attention to his face.
"Do not touch me..." the witch trailed off, baring her teeth and offering what seemed to be an automatic growl, for she did not skip a beat following it to even attempt to look ashamed at her lapse of manners. She stared at him, her expression screwed up in concentration as she struggled to focus on the face before her. Sometimes if she blinked she could glimpse fine details, but she quickly gave up on attempting to piece together his face - the effort of concentration was giving her a stellar headache, blooms of white pain spiderwebbing her vision.
So she improvised. Long white hair, lanky, fit- she understood the general gist of the man, speaking with firm confidence her guess. "Do not touch me elf." Haughty and remarkably eloquent despite the creak of misuse in her voice and the vague spacey bewilderment one might expect of a person waking up in a strange land in a completely different season with presumably heavy head trauma and bloodloss.
Her gaze went distant for a moment, tracking somewhere beyond his left shoulder as if in a daze only to snap back to the general direction of his face and then the dagger she had sort of flailed in his direction, then his face again. "God's less fortunate-" she parroted the phrase, head tipping to the side - the woman grimaced, her good eye squeezing shut with dog-like whine. If only she could remember-
"What regional dialect is that?" She blurted the question suddenly, having drawn a blank and lulled into a vacant stare for a short while. Her tone had far changed from the defensive hostility with which she had greeted his approach, instead suggesting an interest piqued and a natural curiosity, as though his answer might reveal the answer to some intriguing riddle or puzzle.
