(The following is an experimental rewrite of a recent section of the story with more contemporary dialogue and more detailed descriptions of characters. Just trying some stuff out to help my brain breathe a little.)
Scarcely before he could react, a woman appeared before Terakiel. She was slender, but of average height, with wispy pale brown hair falling just below her ears. She had large, expressive eyes--deeply brown, in sharp contrast to the muted color of her hair. Her expression was a complicated one. There were traces of fear, of surprise, but above all else she seemed. . .curious.
She was dressed in a loose-fitting lavender tunic that rested on her delicate shoulders, the neckline exposing her collarbone and a rumpled white undershirt. It was trimmed in white with a series of small holes in the cloth forming a looping diagonal pattern. Over this she wore a dark blue cloak of coarse, tough fabric, which hung all the way down to her crumpled leather shoes. Her legs, which were obscured just above her knees by the skirt of the tunic were ostensibly bare--but upon closer inspection could be found to be covered in a sheer white cloth. He'd never seen anything like it in Tombolin, where garments were available in such varied shades as "dirt brown" and "soot gray." Unlike Terakiel's tattered rags, this woman's clothing was in very good condition. It was clear she had not been on the road recently--or perhaps, he silently amended, ever.
Terakiel was suddenly uncomfortably aware of just how haggard and ragged he must look to this woman. The ridiculous nature of the situation was not lost on him. He had lost control of the terrible powers within and unknowingly willed a human being to hurtle wildly through time and space--and he was worried about how he must look in front of a pretty girl!
It was true, though. Terakiel's cloak and tunic had long since been discarded. The cloak had been postively sodden with rainwater, making it difficult for him to continue on without letting it go. The tunic, on the other hand, had been ripped into shreds to serve as a makeshift bandage for the wound on his lower back--an area of his body that continued to dully ache even now. It was only one of many scrapes and bruises that crisscrossed the weary man's upper body.
He ran his fingers through his tangled and grimy mane of red hair, grimacing at the texture of it. Unlike this woman, he had been on the road--although only in the most figurative sense. The road in this case was the great Lakara Wood, and it had not been forgiving to his physical or mental state. The tall grasses, the brambles, the inclement weather, the lean meals, the days of travel--all had taken their toll. He imagined this must all be written so clear on his worn face.
Surely it was obvious to this woman, whose dark eyes seemed to reflect his thoughts. She knew him. In some ways, she was him. This woman, this Strander--she too was capable of channeling terrible, destructive energies. For her, perhaps, she did not balk at the thought of surrendering to those violent impulses. What kind of person must that make her? What kind of person could hold death in the hand and direct it willingly?
Was it the kind of person that presently seemed to be directing a knowing stare in Terakiel's direction? It was as if she knew everything about the person he was but she wasn't recoiling in terror. Sure, she was curious, and perhaps even a little scared, but she wasn't ready to run. She wanted to know why. She needed to know why.
She pursed her lips and then opened them--paused, for a moment, as if she were about to speak but was silenced. Terakiel shivered as a draft of chill air drifted in from the fractured cavern window behind him. There was little he could do to enliven the situation; what could he say, after all, to the woman with which he'd just shared such a strange experience? It was entirely unclear to Terakiel what she must know--and how she must feel about what she had learned.
"I--I'm sorry," sputtered Terakiel, his words punctuated by a dusty cough. He'd just awoken and found it monumentally difficult to force words from his throat. He felt flustered because he could not begin to imagine what else he could offer her other than a half-hearted apology. It was his fault she was here and unfortunately there was little he could do about that.
The woman seemed hesitant to reply. Terakiel imagined she must be confused and upset by her new surroundings, but she did not seem overly distressed. Her expression was as mild as ever. it was as if she had been given a particularly complex puzzle to solve and she hadn't the faintest idea where to begin in solving it. Did she feel as if she was not in danger? Perhaps she did not comprehend the seriousness of her situation. . .
"Do you--do you know where you are?" Terakiel offered helplessly, his palm pressed to his forehead in a somewhat sheepish manner.
The woman opened her mouth once more as if to speak. Instead, she affixed Terakiel with her gaze and her expression softened. She suddenly seemed very sad, and unless he was mistaken, sympathetic. He was once again uncomfortable because it was not clear what she had learned about his past. However, he had little time to consider his feelings on the matter before the young woman had wrapped the man in an embrace.
Confused, Terakiel was hesitant to accept the gesture at first--but he sensed no malice in her whatsoever. She seemed to have no intention of pulling away, so he wrapped his arms around the stranger as well, his hands coming to rest on the soft, silky fabric of the back of her tunic underneath her cloak. Unsure of how to proceed, he patted her back awkwardly.
He felt the wispy strands of her hair and her soft breaths tickling his bare neck and the fullness of her chest pressed against his. Truthfully, it was the warmest he'd felt in weeks. Was she so perceptive and empathetic that she could sense the struggle that he'd been through over the past few days and simply wanted to comfort him? Or had their strange communion given her unique insight into his past? Maybe it was neither of those things and she was cold and scared--and needed him for comfort instead. He held the woman tightly and mumbled oncoherent reassurances to no one in particular. Although they had just met, he could not call her a stranger.
She pulled back suddenly. He wondered for a moment if he had misread the situation and proceeded in the wrong way, but she didn't seem insulted or upset. In fact, she seemed taken aback--as if her impulsive action was as much a surprise to her as it had been to Terakiel.
"I'm sorry," she said finally. Her voice had a commanding resonance to it. Even if Terakiel had not the direct subject of her statement, he imagined he would have had no choice but to listen. "Something just came over me. I just--"
"I brought you here," Terakiel blurted. "You're here because of me."
"Well, I'm flattered, but I don't think. . .What do you mean 'you brought me here?' "
"It was an accident. I'm sorry." It wasn't a very good explanation, Terakiel had to admit.
"An accident? I'm afraid I don't understand. . ." She surveyed the dimly lit environs of the cavern, her eyes coming to rest on the crumbled remnants of the planar stone. "I just--I don't understand. What happened?"
"I'm sorry," Terakiel repeated. "I. . .I don't know much about this myself."
"Just what is going on here?" She seemed to be asking herself as much as anyone else. "I was in the Exod and I--I couldn't move. It was terrible. And then, I did--I did a terrible thing and--"
"I brought you here," Terakiel interrupted. "But I don't know how. I have these--these powers, but I don't know how to control them. I'm a--a Strander. I guess."
Her entire face contorted in surprise. "You're a. . .Wilder."
"A what?"
"A Wilder. You have the talent but you were never disciplined. It's unheard of--almost entirely."
Terakiel was unsure of how he might respond to that. As Aisen had told him, many cultures beyond Lakara were inundated with the use of energies channeled from the Strand, a strange artifact that Terakiel himself knew close to nothing about. Evidently he was "communing" with it on a semi regular basis, although he would much rather sever all ties with it completely.
"I'm so. . .sorry." She seemed genuinely devastated. "We've gone through so much."
"We have. . ." Terakiel agreed before stopping to think what he might mean by that. Of course--the communion. They had shared minds for the briefest of moments, but that moment had far eclipsed the moment he'd shared with Aisen. He knew things about this woman--but only if he stopped to think about it.
She was a Sidean girl, eighteen years old, and loved her sister very much. There were a thousand inconsequential details that he couldn't quite bring to the forefront, but they were still very much there.
This woman must surely be experiencing the same thing. She knows things about me, perhaps most things about me--but she can't quite organize the data in a meaningful way.
The woman's brow furrowed in confusion as she came to realize what she had said. "I mean--I guess it seems like you've been through a lot. I'm sorry if I--I mean, we're strangers."
"It's okay. Really, it's fine. I have been through a lot. I think you have too."
"Yeah. . ."
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