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"Reuben!" It was more of a furious cry than a concerned one. The mountain was at her back- hardly hidden from sight by the thin veneer of trees that stood between her and the rock. Emelyn had only just come down off the slope, and walked the few feet into the woods to call out with an unharnessed call. Reuben had run down ahead of his 'mother' about halfway down, intent upon a smell that Emelyn's nose wasn't privvy to. No amount of yelling from the hedgehog-woman had made the little dog respond- he'd yipped and barked happily all the way down and out of sight- through the thick.

"Reuben, you are in SUCH TROUBLE!" She called again, staying where she was but balling her hands up in slight fists- only releasing the pressure when her claws met the furred flesh on her palms. No need to gain an injury today.

"For crying out loud," Em said- more to herself than out to the wayward dog, "I'm not going to wait here all day." A birdcall from the distance filled the imminent silence, and Em looked up, wincing, at the sun.

"Well... maybe just for a few minutes," she murmured crossly.

Emelyn would not realize that she had been struck until she felt her world collapsing underneath her. For a moment, she thought that the sun had made her dizzy- or perhaps she was in the midst of a foggy, half-nebulous daydream that made the world swirl around her. But as the ground quickly approached, her reason reached out beyond her senses, and shoved her hands out before her to half-catch her fall. Then, as her stomach struck the earth, she realized why her weight had collapsed in upon itself, buckled. A sharp pain echoed up from her ankle, and Em looked back only to see a bloody gash that wrapped around one half of her ankle, slightly curving down to strike a bit of her heel, as well. She did not see how it had been made- and her mind had not yet stopped to wonder why; the unexpected pain wrapped Emelyn's mind in a sort of fog.

It was several moments before Em would roll up upon her knees and then let the weight of her body fall over the side of her legs onto the earth. It was difficult to manuever a graceful sit-up when all of your back is covered in an impossibly dense mass of spines. When she was finally in the right position to look at her left ankle, she was half-wobbling on her hip, her left leg bent around in a tortured 'L' to bring her foot as close to her inspection as possible.

The cut was deep- not so deep that any bone was exposed, but there was a furious amount of blood. Emelyn couldn't imagine what it had been from- and she looked around, only now realizing that she might be in danger. But she saw nothing: hedgehog eyes, though sublime in the darkness, were no better than that of a human's while the sun hung high. Even so- Emelyn made to stand, to head back up the mountain to see if she could tempt the wound to pause its pour with the supplies she had there. But her body would have none of it, and the pain put her back in her place on the jungle floor.

She swivelled on her hip, and it rolled beneath her- almost painfully, as she turned. During her long stay in the wild, Emelyn had been able to take care of herself- at least, to keep herself alive and well, for the hedgehog's state of mind. But there were those parts of her that had physically suffered: namely, those pieces of her anatomy that were still human, and did not take kindly to a half year of a forager's lifestyle. The cushy, padded flesh on the hipbone had been one of the last hold-ons... but, even still, Emelyn had been without the majority of the swell of her hips for some months, and as she turned to face her attacker, she winced for the sake of raw bone against the hard earth.

A gasp followed her wince- and a terrible creature known as Fear wrapped his warm, moist fingers about her throat. Emelyn did not recognize the creature before her- not at first, as her mind conjured up images of demons and long childhood nights staring at the door of her closet, fearful of 'the Boogeyman'. Emelyn did not move- did not think, just felt her heartbeat pump in the back of her throat, and listened to its pithy, warbling thump in her ears.

It was not the words that flipped the switch of recognition in Emelyn's fogged brain- nor some sudden flash of realization at the form of her friend. Truly, there was so little to reconcile her mind with the connection of 'Joliette'. Not when not only the features, but the very humanity had been drained away, leaving only the lizard-like movements and hungry eyes to stare at the frightened girl. No- it was the one cling of the journalist's former self that gave Em pause to set aside at least a minutiae of her fear- if only for the brief- not shining- revelation.

"Your hair... Joli? Joli, is that you?"

She prayed that the look of near-hesitation on the part of 'the beast' was not a procurement of her own frightened mind. All the same, Emelyn kept perfectly still so as not to rouse Joliette's 'komodo'- the only part of her that moved was the furious cavalcade of her lips as words poured forth- feverishly, hopefully.

"Joliette. Joliette Rigiel. That's your name. You're Joliette. Joli. A human being. A person. And I'm your friend. I'm Emelyn. You're not so hungry that you'd hurt a friend." Emelyn reconsidered using the word 'hungry', and temporarily banished the word from her vocabulary. "Joli. You're my friend."