Welcome to Gaia! ::

Alex walked into the tavern he'd been led to by Edward Smith. The pilot wasn't exactly sure what Edward did for a living, but he assumed he was some sort of wood cutter perhaps. He dusted himself off. Spending a full day in the forest had made his coat a bit dirty, and his hair hadn't faired much better as parts of the hair were spiked in wrong directions from wayward tree limbs.

The old fashioned look of the place bothered Alex, even as he moved over to a table to sit down. No electricity. No air conditioning. Not even a table that might have been manufactured in a far off country and was sold at a bargain price. It was enough to make the pilot hang his head, and take slow deep breaths. Maybe it was the air being hot and heavy from the cooking of the food, the pilot was still feeling drained from his ordeal.

"I really gotta find out where I am at some point", he mutters to himself, rubbing his face of any grime that he might have had been left there over the day's travels. But since he was sitting down, it was a good enough reason to take off his leather coat for few. It was a bit too warm to be wearing it.

"Thanks for showing me the way here", he said to Edward, his mind trying to figure out what he should do, resting his head in his hands some. At least now he had a chance where he could sort out his thoughts, and that was a welcomed event indeed.

Damn, what she would give for some Advil right now. After making her way through the forest in some random, spontaneous direction and getting lost for a whole hour (she timed it on her watch, just to see,) she came to a road - but it was the most crude, accidentally-made looking road she had ever seen. For one thing, it was dirt. Even in rural Colorado, most of the streets were half concrete at the least. Hell, the only reason this even looked like a road was because it was trampled. But the weirdest thing by far wasn't the road. It was the people. Though it was true that she hadn't seen many, the ones she did catch a glimpse of were odd, to say the least. They wore medieval looking clothes - like the ones she remembered from her textbooks in grade school. None of them seemed to notice her though. Maybe this was some sort of Renaissance Fair? With really, really eccentric people who actually took the stuff seriously?

While Evi wasn't particularly an outgoing person to begin with, the headache made it even worse. Instead of joining the weirdos on the road, Evi followed beside, hidden amongst the underbrush. At least, until she saw the castle... thing. Now that was weird. Maybe she was dreaming. Or maybe she was dead! The latter seemed very possible. Trying to look as inconspicuous as she could (though she figured, if she was dead, then it didn't really matter what she did.) She slipped in with the people - which had grown in considerable size since the road way back were she had first come. Slipping in, she couldn't help but utter a small gasp. It was weird. Like something that came out of the that one movie... Timeline, was it?

Trying to shut her eyes to all the strange things and focusing on only one thing, Evi gradually made her way to the first open looking building she could find - just her luck, a tavern. Her head started to spin again, and she grabbed onto the door frame for support.

Standing in the doorway like that, she just kind of froze, the shock finally getting to her. It felt like her legs were lead, too difficult to move.

Alex was far too distracted by his hunger to worry about Edward's observation of his shirt. In fact, it wasn't until he looked up from his hands that he realized that Edward had asked for his name. "Me? Oh, I'm Alexander Barrett, of Air-Asia Cargo." The last part, he realizes a bit too late, will probably mean a whole lot of nothing to the villager.

The sound of the door opening drew his attention to the person standing in the door, wondering who was there, but then focused his attention to the barkeep who was sitting down at the table, bringing food, and offering said food for a story? Ok, that was too good for Alex to pass up.

"A story? Hmm. Well, where should I start? Oh geez. Lets see, I guess I could tell you about a few of my travels." Alex's mouth watered at the smell of food. Real food. Food so rich in smell that it made the pilot lick his parched lips in anticipation.

"Well, I started a business in Manilla, flying cargo and people from place to place. Had a nice old plane I patched up to fly around in. A PBY. A lovely plane. It was a mess when I first got my hands on it, but I managed to rebuild it with a lot of time, a ton of money, and a lot of sweat. Mmm. The purr of those engines as they roared for the first time was heavenly..." Yes, Alex has unfortunately started talking about planes, specifically his. Villagers were probably going to be lost by the 6th or 7th word.

Boones was absolutly drinking the words instead of his ale. As a veteran storyteller, and former explorer, he knew better than passing an oportunity to hear new tales, specially from someone as excentric looking as Alex

He just nodded as he heard. This man could be a great storyteller by the way he believed in it, but he should pay more attention to what he was telling. Flying plains... tsk

"I dunno what ye mean by a plain, but there's only one place I've seen with flying vessels. Caevory has a load of them, going up an down the floating isle. Been there once and it was a breathaking sight"

"But ye dun look like one of the capital's folk. What are ye doing so far up to Loghedge?"

Edward supposed it was possible he was from the capital. Perhaps some of the people there wouldn't know too much about smaller places like Loghedge. But why wouldn't he say he was from there.

And he was off talking about things Edward had no clue about again. He had never seen the flying vessels of the capital, so he was in no position to disprove what he was saying. 'Balloons' were another thing he'd never heard of before.

"Ye joking, right? This is Athlalias." The look on his face said he wasn't joking, though.

Alex looked at the two villagers, even as he put a few pieces of food down into his stomach. "Athlalias? Never heard of it." He rubbed his chin a bit. There wasn't any place called Athlalias. He would know if there was. He had to ship to many a barely visited land before, but this wasn't right.

"Confused? I know what I know. I just don't know how I got here. One minute I'm relaxing in my chair on the PBY, the next minute, I'm falling through colors and land on the ground. I think I still have the bruises on my back to prove it." He didn't want to mention his confusion over the 'floating rock' comment. If anything, it might only confirm that he was very confused.

He shook his head, like he was shaking out the mental cobwebs once more from his brain. He needed to sit down, relax, and work out some of this in his head. So much stuff was coming at him, and none of it added up. "Is that the name of the forest? Ironwood? What happens there? I mean, other than having a ton of trees there that seem to love to smack me in the face with low hanging branches."

Back to the food. Food was good. It meant he was alive, because food wouldn't taste that good if he was dead.

Boones coughed some of his drink. Not knowing what Athlaias was? Falling through colors? This guy must have bumped his head harder than he thought

"We're in Athlaias. It's the name of the kingdom and of the world. Even a babe knows that"

"As for Ironwood, it's the forest all right. The biggest, thickest, wildest forest that you could ever set yer eyes on. And like Edward's telling ya, it's most dangerous place in these here parts. Just last week the Grandbell's lost their farm to the trees and the Smith's had their whole flock taken by the wolves. Never underestimate the forest lad"

He sat down again, taking a large sip of ale to calm himself down. A man not knowing the dangers in that forest was the same thing as suicide

"Yes, the Church will know what to do. It's a good thing we have the full circle of mages in this town. Best solution for this tricky case, I'd say"

The church? Alex wouldn't have thought that the first place someone would want to turn for problems with being lost, being confused, or just having a totally weird experience would be a church. Maybe a police officer, or a doctor, or even a psychologist, but the church?

The pilot listened a bit more, although the confusion on his face at the discussion was evident as he did. Athlaias was a word without meaning to him, and he sure that the world was called Earth. Stuff still wasn't adding up, and that wasn't good. At least the food was a good way to keep himself from rambling on about how what he was being told was wrong.

He just nodded some, and as Evi shouted at him, the pilot jumped a bit in his chair. He erfed a bit, as he hit his chest some, unlodging a piece of food that was being swallowed when Evi scared him. "Gah. Don't scare a guy like that. I'm sitting right here." Looking towards the rather loud individual, Alex could only raise an eyebrow at the her and the fact that her clothes looked too much unlike the villagers, and she seemed to know what a 'pilot' was.

"What I meant is what I said. I was just hanging out in the cockpit of my PBY in Manila, and the next thing I know, I've got a Mo Min Chi Meow* technocolor light show that would make the end of 2001 look downright boring." It took him a second to realize that Evi seemed to know what he was talking about, and that caused him to stand up.

"Wait... You know something about it? You've seen it too?"

* Chinese for "Ridiculously Strange, Illogical, or Nonsensical"