How did I get here? (Mdu_ntr)

[Anonymous]

Louhi woke up, squinting into the harsh light. What was she doing sleeping out in the sun? Predictably, her face and arms were badly burned, but that didn't tell her how long she'd been there. Laying in full sun, she burned very quickly. Where was her walking stick? Seeing nothing around her from her current position, she slowly sat up. The whole area was rather desolate and dry, but she didn't recognize any of it.  This was not the same place she'd been before. Had the boar dragged her off somewhere?

Spotting her walking stick, she grabbed it and struggled painfully to her feet. She could see some greenery in the distance. That seemed a far better place to be than in the desert, but it looked like there was also a city out there in the greenery, and that could be bad for her. She sighed and fell into a coughing fit as she inadvertantly inhailed the sand that had been on her face. The wind was picking up. She glanced behind her and saw a billowing cloud of sand coming her way. This was not good. She saw nothing she could use as shelter and started running for the little green patch, having no idea how far away it actually was.

[Anonymous]

Thanael was sitting on the ship with his arms crossed, watching the window. His thoughts were focused entirely on the job ahead of him. It was just a basic reconnaissance mission: scout the desert for any movement. There was none yet and he doubted he would find anything. It was just something for him to do while they assessed mages to see which would suit him.

His last mage had been sent to TRIM for having far too many subversive thoughts, and acting on them. He had tried to train the man without being cruel but nothing seemed to stick. The mage's loathing had just run too deep. The last straw had been when the mage actually attacked Thanael, who had been taken to hospital with burnt handprints on his back. It didn't really bother Thanael but the other Mordecai had been outraged.

'Set a course back for the base. There's nothing here.'
'Yes, Master Sergeant Thanael. At what elevation would you like to ascend?'
'Zero. There may be something on the way back.'

Thanael went back to watching the window. There was nothing but sand. Sand for hours on end.

'Ship, slow down and decend at seven degrees. Turn to manual control. There's something there,' ordered Thanael. It was probably a piece of an old ship but he was on a mission to scan everything. He took note of the time and co-ordinates and took control of the ship. 'Extend legs and prepare for landing.'

The plates on the bottom of the ship sank slowly into the sand a few feet. Thanael ordered the ship to raise the door before going into standby.

[Anonymous]

Louhi nearly panicked when she saw this giant thing coming down towards her. The closest thing she could relate it to was the automobile that had run her over the first time that crazy man had flung her through time.

She glanced back at the sand storm making its way quickly closer and decided the motionless ship was a safer bet. Besides, sand imbedded at high speeds into a burn would was bound to be bad. She darted down between the legs of the ship, hunkering down and trying to protect herself as best she could, unaware of the shield that had sprung up at the end of the ship closest to the storm.

[Anonymous]

Thanael went down the steps and scanned the area. The wind was howling and sand struck his face. He lifted an arm to keep it from the eyes so he could try and find whatever it is he has seen. 'Ship, survey the area,' he shouted over the sound of the wind.

'There is a thermal difference coming from my back, left foot.'

Thanael bent forward against the wind and pushed himself towards where where girl was hiding. What was a girl doing in the desert without a ship? He ran over to her and squatted down. 'Come inside before you kill yourself,' he shouted. Perhaps that was her plan, she looked like she'd been through a lot. He stood back up and offered his arm to her.

[Anonymous]

Louhi was shaking, but she glanced between the storm and the man, but then hesitently took his arm with one hand, clinging to her walking stick with the other. Her leg really wasn't up to much running, particularly not on sand, so it would be acting up for the next little while, but her long skirts kept her leg well hidden. It had been magically healed once, but that had been done by the man who had thrown her out of the time she was familiar with and left her who knows where. The healing had been reversed and she suspected there was something of a spell over it to prevent it from being healed again.

She wasn't sure it was a good idea for her to be in one of these contraptions, with all their lights and dials, but it wasn't good for her to be out in the storm either.

She tried to look up at him through the wind and the sand. She was nervous. She'd been rescued from wandering the wilderness once before, but it had ended badly. She wanted to ask questions, but she was afraid to as he had not invited her to do so.

[Anonymous]

Thanael helped the crippled woman to her feet. She was surprisingly light but that was probably due to her hieght. Whatever her reason for being stranded, he couldn't possibly leave an unarmed, wounded woman lying in the desert, especially with a windstorm coming.

'Hurry up, I'm not going to hurt you,' he shouted. The girl seemed as scared of him as she was the storm. Surely he didn't look that frightening? He ended up putting his arm under her armpits to help her get up. The storm was getting closer and if they didn't leave soon he'd have to wait until it passed, which meant waiting and possibly being late for his report.

OOC: sorry it's so short. I will try to make them bigger from now on. Now to bed.

[Anonymous]

Louhi nodded meekly and scurried up into the ship with him. She was really more girl than she was woman, despite that for her time period, she was practically of age to be getting married already.

She didn't let her leg slow her down much. She'd been given an order and she obeyed almost without thinking.

"Thank you" She dared to whisper once inside the ship, though she didn't seem to know where to stand, she just siddled out of the way, releasing his arm and holding onto her stick as if it were her life line.

She glanced back towards the rear of the ship, as if to check on the sand storm, nervous.

((No worries. I don't mind "short" posts. Good night))

[Anonymous]

'Ship, close up and prepare for take off on autopilot. I want to be back before that storm hits. I also need a first aid kit and fresh water. Food would be good also,' Thanael ordered.

The ship slowly ascended without his guidence and several unseen cabinets became visible. Thanael went through them to get some dried biscuits, water and the kit. He close d the cabinets and they disappeared. He squatted next to the girl and placed the packages him to here. 'Your welcome. Here, eat these and let me take a look at that leg,' he offered. 'Wheer are you hurt?'

His manner was polite but indifferent, he had a job to do and he didn't like seeing people in pain. Other than that, he wasn't yet paying much attention to her. He was keeping watch on the storm coming behind them. 'Ship, increase speed to sixty percent and contact the base. Let them know I have wounded here.'

'First of all, what is your name? I can't go calling you "girl" or "woman" for the rest of the trip,' he said as he poured some water on a cloth. He waited for her to show him any of her cuts of burns so he could clean them.

[Anonymous]

"The leg wound is old and there is nothing for it." She stated quietly, though her speech seemed rather old fashioned and out of touch with the current time period. She used her good foot to pin her skirt down over her ankles with no intention of allowing him to see the horrible burn scars there, nor the crookedness of her leg that had once suffered a spiral break and never recovered. She shrugged slightly, trying to ignore her legs and her instinct to hide them as she brushed her hair back from her burned face and held out her arms. It was a sunburn, but severe, bordering on blisters. "Other than that, I do not think I am wounded" She replied with that same whispering volume. Her burns were of course peppered with sand, which complicated the matter somewhat.

She didn't know what to make of this man. So far, no 'normal' woman had been kind to her. Her own mother and the mother of one of the men who had shown her kindness was about the extent of her experience so far. "My name is Louhi" She finally replied after some internal debate. She opened her mouth as if to ask his name, but then closed it and dropped her head, her face flooding with a blush, the space around her heating up a couple degrees.

[Anonymous]

Thanael raised an eyebrow at her when he felt the air warm. That was worrying, moreso for her than him. He'd have to ask her about it later when she trusted him more but for now he settled for checking her temperature with the back of his hand. 'I'm Master Sergeant Thanael and until we get back to the base, it is my job to look after you. If you don't trust me to take a look at your legs, at least trust me with your burns,' he said.

He took one of her arms and started wiping it down with the soft cloth. He reached inot the kit and got some spray-on disinfectant, if it blistered any more at least it would not get infected. Most of the skin wasn't broken so it shouldn't hurt too bad. He looked up at her. If she didn't trust him now, this could probably make the situation worse. 'I'm not going to hurt you Louhi. The stuff in this bottle is medicine. It will stop infection but it will sting, understand?'

Without waiting for a response he squirted some of the liquid up her arm and started bandaging it up with wet cloth. He then turned to the other in hope that she wouldn't pull away. If she was going to remain frightened of him, she would probably have to do it herself. Hopefully by the end of the trip she would even let him take a look at those legs though. It would be hard to make a report and miss out such a big detail.

'There were no signs of another ship landing, how did you come to be in the desert?' he asked. His eyes flicked to the window to check on the storm, they were easily getting away from it now.

[Anonymous]

Louhi was very self-conscious of her leg scars, and in her frame of mind, legs were a rather private thing and meant to keep covered by long skirts. Showing a stranger her legs was rather promiscuous almost and it made her uncomfortable more so than the simple fact that everyone wanted to know how she got such a horrible scar.

Louhi nodded and held still while he cleaned her burns. She knew cleaning wounds hurt and she'd sunburned to blisters more than once due to her inordinately fair skin. The sand issue was a new one though, and when he wiped it away, the feeling of the sand sliding across her sensitive skin made her wince, but she said nothing and only allowed herself the tiniest whimper with the first spray of the stinging disinfectant on her arm, remaining silent for the rest of the treatment.

"I am not sure how I came to be here. The last thing I remember was looking for a place to weather the day, get out of the sun, and I encountered a wild animal and it charged me and I was trying to fend it off, and..." Her eyes narrowed as she tried to remember, but the memory seemed to have a gap in it. "And I woke up here." It sounded rather suspicious even to her, but that's what she could remember. She reached up and felt over her skull, looking for a bump, but finding nothing. She'd seen people forget after taking a hard blow to the head, but normally there was a sign of the blow afterwards. "I cannot remember anything between the wild animal and waking up here, but I don't seem to have struck my head."

[Anonymous]

'That is indeed strange,' Thanael said as he went onto cleaning her next arm. He tried to be as careful as possible. 'Where were you, do you remember? Can you describe the area for me?' What he really wanted to know about now was the magic that had been used. He was starting to think that she was a mage and had teleported herself. How she had done it without knowing was unusual though. Perhaps her powers had developed later in life.

He went up to the burns on her neck. They looked worse than on her arm, her hair must have blown away from her face. How long had she been there? It must have been a long time if she had managed to get this burnt. He got a fresh cloth and doused it with water then passed the rest to her. After being so long she must be parched. 'Here, drink this Louhi, just not too fast,' he said before starting on her neck.

He moved some hair away from her neck and started wiping away sand. When he finished he used the spray on it but didn't wrap it up. If she moved too much it would more likely just rub against her skin than protect her. When he was finished he packed up the emergency supplies and left the water and biscuits with her. 'They're not going to make you sick. You should eat before you get sick,' he said. 'Come, there is a spare seat up here. It will be more comfortable than the floor.'

[Anonymous]

Louhi sipped at the water slowly and nibbled on a biscut as she followed him up to the seats. She had a definate limp, but she moved almost as if the limp were simply a part of her she'd had it so long. "I do not see much of the land usually, living instead, underground. When it is windy, people die from breathing the air" She explained. "And there are very strange animals, most seem to be intent on killing anything they can catch, but I believe it is because they are hungry and there is not much of anything to eat." She paused a moment and sipped at her water again, though she shot a glance up at him, not sure if she was actually supposed to be drinking it in his presence or not. "The ground does not smell right...it's...it's like arsenic, it stings, poison" Louhi fumbled. She lacked terms for some of these concepts.

"I don't know it's name" She admitted "but most people do not like going out onto the land unless they must." Why she had been out there, she wasn't entirely sure at the moment. Maybe she had been looking for food. Food was a good thing to find. "Many of the plants are unsuitable to eat because of the way the air and the ground is. Some cannot breathe the air, others seem to suffer no ill effects."

[Anonymous]

'Hmm, that sounds more like Earth than Mars. I'm afraid I don't know much about Earth,' he said. 'It sounds very likely that they would hunt for food if the greenery is poisonous. How do you find food if everything is as bad as you say?'

Her story was starting to get a bit far fetched for him to believe. He was starting to think she was a defective. TRIM wouldn't have trashed her, even if she was and she didn't appear to have any holes where a headband had been attached. 'Move your hair aside, Louhi. I just want to see something,' he ordered.

'Do you know what the place you lived in was called?' he asked. Perhaps she would let something slip that would help him understand what she was talking about. He would take her to the hospital for a check up while he went to report to his superior officer.

'Ship, estimate the time it will take to get back.'
'We will arrive at 1820 hours, twenty-two minutes from now, if continuing at current speed.'
'Slow us down to fifty percent capacity when we're within ten minutes of the base.'

[Anonymous]

Louhi nodded "Massachusets was where I used to live with my mother. What is Mars?" She asked as she tried to shift her hair out of the way. There were no bolt marks on her head.

"Well, sometimes people bring food and we can trade, and sometimes, things are not poisonous, or at least they aren't to me, they are to some people, and sometimes, I can grow things in the good dirt of the caves." There wasn't a lot of light, but she found that she could fix that sometimes, and there were openings that allowed light in at some places.

"Where are we going?" It seemed a reasonable question, though it made her a little nervous. She had after all, climbed into some unknown contraption with a man she'd never met and he was now taking her to a brand new place.

[Anonymous]

It was mildly interesting listening to her speak. She certainly believed what she said, which was probably not a good thing. Possibilities swam around his mind like a school of fish, each as unusual as the next. IF she was a mage though, many of them would seem far more likely. He felt pity for the woman, which was strange because he rarely thought of them enough to care about them at all.

'Mars is the planet you are on now. You must have lived a very sheltered life if you do not know that. Do you know of Earth or any of the Serunian space stations? Tell me about the people who ' he paused and looked at her before reaching for one of the biscuits he'd given her. 'Louhi, are you a mage?' It was an important question but he made sure he said it as lightly as all the others, if she didn't know what being a mage meant here, he didn't want to startle her just yet.

He raised an eyebrow again, thinking that she may be after information herself. 'You are going to a Military base on Edanith. I'm afraid for now that is all I can tell you about our distination,' he said. His tone cautioned her against asking any more questions about the topic. 'You can however, ask questions about anything else you wish. I cannot garauntee I will answer though.'

[Anonymous]

"No, I am afraid I don't know much at all about places. What is a space station?" She asked, though she seemed nervous to do so. After all, it seemed all these things were supposed to be common knowledge, and she had no clue. At his next question, she shrugged "I don't know. What's a mage?" Her eyes were wide, blue and suprisingly innocent as she looked up at him. "I've never been called a mage before though" maybe that helped. She'd been called a witch, but she wasn't about to bring that up. She'd already been partly burned at the stake once, she wasn't eager to repeat the experience. Her hand went selfconsciously to her thigh.

She had no idea what a military base was, but she obediently refrained from questioning him further on the subject. "Am I...captured?" She asked awkwardly. Technically, she was a run-away servant, wanted dead by most of the household she'd grown up in. She was also on a heartless, murdering sourcerer's grudge-list, which was how she had ended up in such a confusing situation in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Thanael was surprised that she had never heard of a space station. There would be no harm in explaining it to her. 'Have you ever seen the sky, Louhi? A space station is a large mechanical ship that people live in. They float up high in the sky between the planets of the solar system,' he explained. 'A mage on the other hand, is a person who uses magic. Can you control the elements, read people's minds, transform or do things that others cannot?' He didn't go any further into it just yet. If he did she would probably deny it no matter what.

'For now, yes. You have been rescued and captured. You have no need to worry though, nobody is going to hurt you,' he said. There was no use giving her false hope and having her stress over the possibility of what might happen to her could be dangerous. If she was a mage there was no telling what she could do and he didn't want to sedate her. Bringing in a sedated mage would not look good to his superiors, especially when he had already been attacked by his own one.

[Anonymous]

"And this is a ship" Louhi clarified, tapping the floor with her foot once. She'd barely gotten to the point of understanding what cars were and lights and this was so much more confusing than that. Planets? Solar Systems? What happened to simple things like roads and trees?

"Oh...like a witch" Louhi said softly, her eyes shifting color from blue to a dreary grey. He was using language and terms that went way over her head, but she was simply doing her best to keep up, but now she was nervous and nervous was never a good thing with her. Things happened when she got scared or nervous-- which was probably how she had managed to end up in the martian desert when she had started on the earthen wasteland.

"What do you do to witches..I mean mages?" It was a valid question and one that she was afraid to hear the answer to. It wasn't like she could jump out of a ship like she could a wagon. Her heart was beating faster now and she was sure any second, lights were going to start exploding. Torches had just flaired up, that was simple enough, lamps often broke when the fire hit the glass, but lightbulbs, they tended to explode...but maybe she was lucky and they had engineered a Louhi-proof form of light finally, but she doubted it.

[Anonymous]

'Yes, this is a ship. It is a very small one compared to the space stations though; they are entire cities,' Thanael explained. 'How is it that you do not know of these things? Even while living underground, surely there must have been tales. Didn't the visitors tell stories of where they'd been?'

'Witch? That is a very old term but yes, I guess they would be the same,' he said calmly. The next question he paused before answering. He now had no doubt that she was a mage. This particular ship did not have any protection against magic from the inside, it only had force fields on the outside. In the case that she decided to attack, he would have no defence against her magic; he would only have his physical training to help him. He reached for the keypad and pushed some buttons on the keys before replying. If anything went wrong he wanted the ship ready to give her a sedative.

'Louhi, you are not going to be harmed. You need to remain calm,' he said in a calm manner. 'The Mordacai train them, look after them and control their powers to protect our nation.' It wasn't exactly the truth but it wasn't a lie either. He never liked the idea of harming mages but there were others who did.