Welcome to Gaia! ::

The elves ushered them down the length of the gorge, and eventually they arrived at a cave. It had really started to rain now, and they were all a bit wet, but the cave was large and dry, and as soon as they entered, one of the elves lit a fire and it began to warm up immediately.

"You will stay with us until the storm is past," said the man who had climbed the cliff, motioning for Shoneah and Eron to make themselves comfortable. "Allow us to make some introductions. I am Jabek, leader of this party. Our physician, Sabor."

The man with the pouch nodded his head respectfully at them.

Jabek introduced the rest of the group: Azok, a man with two curved swords; Goren, a man with a recurve bow and a double-quiver of arrows; Talmon, another archer; Uri, who had a brace of throwing knives on each hip and a broadsword down his back; and Tal, a gentle-looking man who had naught but a thick knife sheathed at his side.

Shoneah nodded to each of them in turn, and then took her turn to introduce herself. "I am Shoneah Adoeete Silverbirch," she told them. "You may call me by whichever name you can pronounce."

She was starting to get used to people not being able to pronounce her first two names.

"We're from a world called Gaia," Shoneah explained. "We have no idea what happened, but somehow we both ended up in your world yesterday, probably about ... fifteen or twenty miles north of here."

"No wonder you ran into a dragon," Tal murmured softly. "Thirty miles north of here is where the northern volcanoes begin."

"Another world?" Sabor frowned. "How is that even possible?"

The last of Shoneah's hopes of returning home were fading away fast. If these people weren't even aware of the existence of other worlds, they almost certainly would not have a magi who could send her and Eron back to where they belonged.

"Can you tell us where we are?" she asked the men quietly, rubbing her arms both for warmth and comfort. "What this world is called, this land - anything?"

Sabor went deeper into the cave as Tal answered for the group.

"Our world is called Arda," he told them. "Our continent is Arkandia, and we live in the country of Wolsic. We are Earth Elves, which describes both our appearances and our abilities."

Sabor returned then with a blanket, which he put over Shoneah's shoulders silently. Then he looked to Eron to see if he would need one as well.

"Yes," Tal nodded, "that is our affinity. Each race has their own affinity, not necessarily with an element."

He watched as Sabor went for another blanket, then turned back to Eron and Shoneah. "So tell us about yourselves. Who are you? More than your names. What are your people? What are your lives like? Your homes?"

"How do you open this thing?" one of the others muttered, kneeling next to the rolly case and turning it this way and that way, trying to open it.

Uri, the man with the case, looked over at Eron. "Zipper?" he repeated blankly.

"You know, for not being from our world, you seem to know our languages," said Tal suspiciously.

Shoneah didn't understand. "What do you mean?" She nodded at Uri. "He asked how to open the case, Eron answered. What's so surprising about that?"

"Because he didn't ask in the Common Tongue," Tal replied evenly.

Shoneah's brow furrowed. "Common Tongue?"

Tal nodded. "The language we're speaking now."

"He doesn't even know the Common Tongue," Tal said quietly.

Azok told Uri to pull the little metal thing up, and Uri opened the case and looked inside.

"Dragon scales," he said, surprised.

"You needn't sound so surprised," Shoneah told the man. "We told you I killed one yesterday. We had almost nothing by way of supplies, so we took some with us."

Tal raised one eyebrow at Shoneah, then turned to Eron. "Did you by chance drink the dragon's blood?" he asked him. "While it was still fresh?"

Tal sighed, then smiled faintly at Eron. "That explains it," he nodded. "Dragon's blood, if consumed when still fresh and warm, bestows upon the consumer the gift of tongues. No matter what language is being spoken, you will understand it and be able to speak it."

"That will be of great help to you," Sabor said knowingly as he brought a blanket to Eron. "Here."

"But now perhaps you could tell us a bit about yourselves," Tal tried again, sitting back against the wall of the cave. Outside, it was raining quite heavily now, and there was a low rumble of thunder.