Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hardly a mile from where she had woken up, Julia forged her way through the brush with great swings of her stick, each tiny cut and scrape only adding to her fury. If she hadn't been so angry, exhaustion and fear would make her drop on the spot; as it was she was lucky for the weight of the stick, which yanked her forward a step with every swing. The sun beat down from its highest point in the sky, making her hot, itchy and even more furious - if that was possible. Plus, her new shoes were filthy.

Who the hell had done this? Warren and Janet had to be behind this - what would be the use to a kidnapper in dropping here out in the middle of nowhere and just taking off?

Whoever did this would be sorry.

But they would have to wait. A particularily hearty swing sent the stick flying from her hands. It hit a tree and dropped to the ground. She crouched down to pick it up, but her legs chose the opportunity to buckle, sending her thumping to the ground next to her weapon.

'Maybe a break wouldn't hurt.' Julia winced. The impact had made all of her aches start complaining...any break couldn't possibly hurt more than that.

The noise of the stick covered the sound of Alex's pounce, but there was no hiding the fact that something was coming in this direction. Bushes rustled, leaves crackled - Julia sat upright, automatically reaching for the stick. The rough wood was reassuring under her nervous fingers. Making as little noise as possible, she picked herself up from the forest floor and took what she hoped was a threatening stance.

Wild animal or kidnapper, it was going to get one hell of a welcome.

{Julia: Elderly?!! scream Oh, you are asking for a beating!

She's actually 30 xd }


The arrival turned out to be human. Oddly enough, he didn't look anything like a kidnapping thug, but then her eyes went to the goggles around his neck. A pilot? That would explain how they'd gotten so far from the city...

"Cut the crap." Julia snapped, pointing the stick warningly at Alex's chest. "You know exactly what's wrong, so don't pretend I'm stupid." Some warning bells went off in her head as she studied him closer, noticing his odd hands and misshapen ears. Ugh. He'd probably been the one to drag her off the plane - which was just great if he had some disgusting disease.

"Just name your price." she said more quietly. "This has gone on long enough."

{Julia: Uh huh. stare Well, Alex (or whatever your real name is), I hope you remember this when someone 'ancient' comes over and tears your legs off for talking too much /<

^
l
*totally acting like a grumpy old crone right now, but dares you to point that out*}

The stick followed Alex wherever he walked, like a compass. He was still playing the stupid card - fine, they could do that. But she wasn't going to let her guard down. One phrase of his, though, made her wonder. "A lot of us seem to be rather angry when we first get here." "Us?" Julia repeated suspiciously. 'Us' meant they were somehow alike. A kidnapper wouldn't say something like that.

Add in the weird details (was that a tail? it sure looked like it) and they added up to a picture she did not like one bit.

"Oh?" Julia lifted an eyebrow and glanced at his scaled hands, hoping he got the message: even if he offered a hand up, she wouldn't dream of taking it. Horrible. "You aren't learning a thing until I'm convinced. What's the story?"

"I didn't." she replied stubbornly. But then she thought about it; what were her last memories before waking up here? Julia cast about in her mind for them, and what she found made her go pale. And with her Scandanavian descent and fondness for the indoors, that was very pale indeed.

"Actually..." She coughed, mind filled with the swirling images of the void. "Maybe that did happen, yes." The more Alex talked, the more innocent he seemed; maybe it was the drooping ears that did it. Mandy always wore that expression when she got yelled at.

Julia gave in and dropped the stick. The lack of it made her uneasy. To hide that, she folded her hands in her lap and wound her fingers tightly together. "If you really were the shady type, you'd do your best -not- to look creepy." she said wryly. Maybe in Alex's world people were clearly defined, but the monsters she knew always hid their true colors.

in response to his request for questions, Julia just shook her head. Not in the negative, though - just amazement he had to ASK if she had questions. Of course! Like who was this mysterious 'us' - he still hadn't answered that one - who were Jade and Damien, where on earth was this place, and why did he have a tail for Gods' sakes?

"When you say home, you mean the United States?" He must be from America and just work overseas; how else could he take two places from two different sides of the world and lump them together as 'home'? Hopefully he'd only guessed she was from America, and didn't actually know where she lived. The kidnapping story still had some merit.

It was amazing how the man could talk for 10 minutes and yet say nothing at all. Julia played with a lock of blond hair, not bothering to conceal her disinterest in Alex's reminiscing. Until he mentioned Loghedge, that was. Then she sat bolt upright, a look of total disbelief on her face.

"You mean there's a town nearby? Do you...how could..." she sputtered. "How could you forget to MENTION that?! The sun's going down!"

Forget the stupid tail. Oh, and also his muttering about how the townsfolk would react badly to his strange looks; might as well forget that too. The stick may have been set aside for a little while, but Julia immediately snatched it up and pointed it at him imperiously.

"Forget the questions for now. You are going to lead the way there. Got it?" If he didn't, there was always the threat of legal trouble to back it up. She had no idea how useless that was in their current situation.

Julia shook her head. "The Church'll be the least of your worries if you don't." Talk about paranoid. Sure, plenty of people didn't like churches and had a problem against religion in general, but that didn't mean they were going to lock Alex up behind bars. She waited for a moment, but it didn't look like he planned on budging anytime soon.

"That's just great." she hissed. She slapped the stick back against the ground and rose to her feet, not even looking at Alex, off into the woods. The way he said lead to the river looked exactly the same as everything else. Without a doubt, as soon as he had gone back to this 'camp' she'd be lost.

Even sticking with a paranoid freak of nature sounded better than a night all alone in the forest.

"Where..." Julia choked down the irritation in her voice. "Where is this camp of yours, then?" She eyed him discreetly, more disturbed by his strange looks than before. Scaled hands and deformed ears could be explained away by a disease, and a birth defect for the tail, but where on earth did the feathers come from?

Nothing added up, and it was starting to wear at her. There had to be some explanation, some sort of logic that would bring sense to this situation.