"Spring." She parroted the word, considering the possibility that she had lost time along with with everything else. Addled as her thoughts were, the witch was convinced that he wasn't correct about a great deal, but was willing to accept his answers until she could find her own.
Still, she evidently found a great deal of humor in her brush with death and subsequent reawakening as he rattled off a list of creatures that could perhaps have been familiar by name if nothing else. It was as though he had told a lovely joke, eliciting a disbelieving note of laughter. At least she seemed a cheerful sort. "And you don't think you owe me a dagger? 'Oh, everything will try to murder you and you're practically chumming the water - why would you need a dagger of all things?'" She laughed again, shaking her head before tipping her head back against the stone. "Eh-" She waved her left hand dismissively and closed her eye, attempting to quell the throbbing headache that mirth had wrought.
Still, the thought of the landshark lingered in her mind - strangely she did not associate it with an animal but a scene, emotions, and briefly a face. A girl, dressed in green. Almond cookies in a metal tin. A grave with wilting lavender. Guilt. Remorse. She hugged herself, murmuring a drowsy apology to no one in particular.
As the rain beat the scorched earth into mud outside she grew quiet, and for a while it wasn't certain if she had dozed off or if she was merely listening. Even she probably wasn't too certain of which until she broke the silence, her words careful and slow, slurred with exhaustion as the window of lucidity offered by adrenaline began to close. "How would you know if I was going to help you?" When she did look at him again, she studied the fuzzy blob color until the pain forced her to shut her eyes again, and feeling quite helpless and overwhelmed by the thick, suffocating blanket of discomfort, she turned her face the other way to hide any hint of emotional duress that she could feel pricking behind her eyes. Feeling very much lost and alone the last thing she wanted to do was cry in front of a stranger with the unrealistic expectation that strangers were not inherently dangerous, especially when you could scarcely recall who it was that landed you here in the first place. Sure, it wasn't him specifically that she remembered, but for some reason she did not feel particularly trusting of her own perception of things. People lied, illusions existed. Trust got you killed - it was a lesson that had been beaten into the very fiber of her being and did not associate with any specific memory but rather her existence as a whole. Her arms fell limp in her lap, pinching the webbing of her right hand and glued her tongue to the top of her mouth with a clicking swallow.
She tried to listen, she did, but most of the words and names meant nothing special to her. She could understand them if she concentrated, but it was becoming very hard to concentrate. Still, it kept the tears at bay. The words magecraft and magic seemed to bolster and soothe her worried mind if only slightly, something familiar in a sea of strangeness for her to grab onto, but it was the mention of the efas herb that drew her attention the most. "Efas herb - where does that grow?" Her voice creaked, and she again seemed willing to at least listen to him, swayed by a snippet of knowledge.
Still, she evidently found a great deal of humor in her brush with death and subsequent reawakening as he rattled off a list of creatures that could perhaps have been familiar by name if nothing else. It was as though he had told a lovely joke, eliciting a disbelieving note of laughter. At least she seemed a cheerful sort. "And you don't think you owe me a dagger? 'Oh, everything will try to murder you and you're practically chumming the water - why would you need a dagger of all things?'" She laughed again, shaking her head before tipping her head back against the stone. "Eh-" She waved her left hand dismissively and closed her eye, attempting to quell the throbbing headache that mirth had wrought.
Still, the thought of the landshark lingered in her mind - strangely she did not associate it with an animal but a scene, emotions, and briefly a face. A girl, dressed in green. Almond cookies in a metal tin. A grave with wilting lavender. Guilt. Remorse. She hugged herself, murmuring a drowsy apology to no one in particular.
As the rain beat the scorched earth into mud outside she grew quiet, and for a while it wasn't certain if she had dozed off or if she was merely listening. Even she probably wasn't too certain of which until she broke the silence, her words careful and slow, slurred with exhaustion as the window of lucidity offered by adrenaline began to close. "How would you know if I was going to help you?" When she did look at him again, she studied the fuzzy blob color until the pain forced her to shut her eyes again, and feeling quite helpless and overwhelmed by the thick, suffocating blanket of discomfort, she turned her face the other way to hide any hint of emotional duress that she could feel pricking behind her eyes. Feeling very much lost and alone the last thing she wanted to do was cry in front of a stranger with the unrealistic expectation that strangers were not inherently dangerous, especially when you could scarcely recall who it was that landed you here in the first place. Sure, it wasn't him specifically that she remembered, but for some reason she did not feel particularly trusting of her own perception of things. People lied, illusions existed. Trust got you killed - it was a lesson that had been beaten into the very fiber of her being and did not associate with any specific memory but rather her existence as a whole. Her arms fell limp in her lap, pinching the webbing of her right hand and glued her tongue to the top of her mouth with a clicking swallow.
She tried to listen, she did, but most of the words and names meant nothing special to her. She could understand them if she concentrated, but it was becoming very hard to concentrate. Still, it kept the tears at bay. The words magecraft and magic seemed to bolster and soothe her worried mind if only slightly, something familiar in a sea of strangeness for her to grab onto, but it was the mention of the efas herb that drew her attention the most. "Efas herb - where does that grow?" Her voice creaked, and she again seemed willing to at least listen to him, swayed by a snippet of knowledge.
