stormaktstiden | Some time ago, in a jamjar far, far away....

"Okay, assuming that really happened, did they look like anything that you've seen here?"

Different perceptions or different worlds wouldn't occur to him, but there's a much easier concept at hand here: She might have encountered that in another place, or she might be crazy, but if nothing here resembles what she thinks of, it's not relevant.

In other words, a dead end.

"Not yet."

She just out her chin and gives him a pointed look. "I'm listening if you have any good ideas."

Aside from shooting down mine is the implied finish to that sentence.

Well, all his ideas right now are catching someone who came out of what seems to be a gathering house of sorts and make them give up some information. But he doesn't need her for that.

He looks around the place. There's nothing that he could tie her up with to perhaps use her later, and if he disables her from walking she might start shouting for the people below. It might be best to just kill her and leave her up here - the place looks like nobody has been here in ages so she should take a while to be found, and he has the gifts to make it look like someone stabbed her instead.

"Maybe."

He's turning towards her now, still crouching down, his left hand crossing over his feet to in a few moments be placed on the ground on their other side. The look that he is giving her is definitely not pleasant - there is no malice in it, only the look of a predator about to go in for a kill.

"They don't include you, though."

She simply is of not enough use to him to let her run around any more, and even if he didn't figure that killing her would be a good option to begin with, he couldn't let her leave with the knowledge of him being around, and what he looks like. Even if anyone else also witnessed him to remember back in that arrival place, they only saw his Crinos form, after all. She's seen almost all of them, now. And besides, he's hungry, and there's prey right before him. Why would he not?

Ray scrambles to her feet and stumbles backwards a few paces, holding the journal up in front of her as if it could be a shield.

"W-wait, why? I didn't do anything to you!"

She didn't, did she? Even when he attacked her she didn't try to hurt him in return.

(Not like she did before, though the thought vanishes from her head nearly as soon as she thinks it.)

"I tried to help you!"

"You saw me."

That last comment is a bit ...well, it's true. "And I appreciate your attempt at helping me." But that doesn't change that she's going to die now.

He's starting to change as he puts the hand on the ground - he'll not need to be in Crinos form for this, so he's aiming further, which will give Ray a bit more time before he's done and lunges at her, a giant wolf multiple times as high at the shoulder as she's tall. As in, she gets three more seconds.

Ray takes another step back until she feels her shoe hit the lip of the surface they're on. If she falls off, she's sure she'll die. It's a gamble, but if she talks fast--

"B-but it wasn't just me! What about everybody else back there? Please!"

A sick, twisting feeling creeps into her stomach when she realizes that he could've done anything while she was unconscious--maybe he did kill everyone on his way here.

No, he thought about that already, and it isn't a valid reason at all to let her live.

But looking at where she stands he could make life a bit easier on himself by just letting her fall to her death. People fall off high places all the time, he wouldn't have to do anything to hide how she died.

He growls, slowly walking towards her. If she tries to escape to either side, she'll find him leaping forward, not quite lunging at her but so that he bars her way and can try to shove her off the top of the building.

That's answer enough. Ray's stomach feels like it's dropping to the ground--she has to do something.

It seems stupid, of course, but the alternative is surely falling off the roof. So she ducks down low and runs toward him, aiming to try and run right beneath him. With his reach, she doubts it'll work, but maybe she can surprise him enough that he won't react. It's her only chance.

It does surprise him, but not for long enough for it to make a difference. It only means that he rises a bit on his hind legs and she's hit by one of his front legs, catching her under the chest and hurling her off the rooftop.

A very observant onlooker might notice that she falls in a strange angle, as if she had a running start into nothingness, but he'll just hope that nobody will look or think that hard about it.

Ray would scream, but the force of the shove and the fall knock the breath right out of her. She hits the ground.

...And wakes up in a temple. It's not like the ones she's seen at home, but the basic idea behind it seems recognizable enough. Waking up

She picks herself up and starts walking. It seems that she has a second chance here, and she should take it. Maybe here she can finally have the place where she can ignore the past and simply live out her life...

A few days later, she's searching the shops for provisions again. She's had some time to get established and start a routine, but there's still a lot about the city that she's exploring. She inspects a strange can as she steps out of the shop; slim pickings, but at least she found something.

The city is creepy and makes him want to growl at it all day, but that's not an option and pointless besides. He knows by now that all the humans, and the few creatures that are sentient but not humans, have been brought here the same way as him, and that that they claim that it has to do with gods that they can sometimes talk to in their little Weaver boxes - cell phones. He's verified the claim that the tunnels only loop back more than once yet.

He knows that the only edible food is to be had from the shops, because the things in the tunnels aren't edible and the humans are a fairly tightly knit community and nothing else exists.

What comes as a surprise is walking up a street at the shops with a box with various cans in his hands, shuffling along in homid form, and coming across someone smelling, and then a moment later when she comes into sight also looking, exactly like the human he threw off a roof the first night here.

WHAT.

Ray freezes when she sees his face. Whatever form he's in, she's not going to forget him any time soon. Her voice catches in her throat, and all she can force out is, "Y-you! You..." You killed me, you jerk!

If she retreats into the store, it'll be a dead end. Ray's not much of a fighter; she prefers indirect means or running away. But she's cornered, and she doesn't want it to end like it did last time--so she throws the can at him.

It falls short, but it's the thought that counts, right?

It's probably for the better that the can falls short and doesn't even register as a proper attack. It's also for the better that he's so dumbfounded by seeing her - smelling her, and that's how he knows that she's very clearly still alive (and that is probably yet another lucky point, that he's anxious enough to activate the Gift that gives him a wolf's senses in homid form).

Her words don't really manage to drive anything home but the realization that yes, she is instead still alive and over there and... Doesn't seem to pose any kind of threat, still.

"You should be dead."

So that's ineffective. Her eyes flick around looking for another weapon, but she comes up short. At least she knows she'll still come back if she dies, she thinks with resignation. But she doesn't want to do that again!

The thought--and having the person responsible for it in front of her--have her straighten her back and unconsciously broaden her shoulders.

She's scared, sure. She's mad too.

"Yeah, because you killed me! What was that for?!"

Well, that's obvious, isn't it?

"I thought you would stay dead."

At most, he could have imagined her to linger as a ghost. Someone unable to communicate with the people that he's run into throughout the last couple of days, at least.

The bald explanation catches her off guard--that's what he wanted?

"But..." She blinks and sets her jaw. She doesn't want to whimper--it feels better to be angry. "I didn't do anything to you. I tried to help you. So why?"

It feels strangely unfair, like her parents fighting, like Wei dying. She's sick of it.

She recalls something else too, and now both of her hands ball into fists. "And you made me lose the book list, too! That could get even more people killed if somebody finds it!"

Normally, he would see no issue with telling her that it is because she's human, but where he is vastly outnumbered by them and doesn't understand the place yet, and most of all has no place to retreat to, he should probably not say that.

"I'm not answering that."

He can't even remember that she had anything on her person when he encountered her, or at least nothing that would have struck him as dangerous.

"What does that book list do?"

If she weren't so wrapped up in the list now, she'd be offended by his first remark. As it is, she notes jerk in her mind and moves on.

She shakes her head. Her shoulders loosen, but not in relaxation. "It has prohibited reading on it. You should know how dangerous that stuff is."

Doesn't everybody live in a rigorously censored world?

"It's not mine."

Some people are barely literate. And really not interested in reading in the first place. Sure, he gets why reading can be dangerous. It puts science and philosophy and dates in peoples heads, turning their brains into little Weaver factories - generally a problem with humans, even with homid werewolves to a degree.

But why would there be specific prohibited items of reading?

"...You stole it?"

If anything, she'd been afraid of an accusation that the list was hers and that she was a communist. The thought that someone would think she stole it comes as a shock to her. Her hands fly up, as if for protection.

"I didn't steal it! It was--my friend--" She shakes her head. Wei? Why is she thinking of him right now? "I just found it in the school. I was going to turn it in."

"...what could someone do with it?"

As much as reading puts bad ideas into people's heads, he doesn't see why she is so upset about all of this. If it's just a list of books, even.

"I..." She trails off and looks away to the side. She's unwilling to think too hard on what would happen.

Exasperation enters her voice. Why does this guy ask these questions, anyway? Everybody knows this stuff. "...You really don't get it? If someone thinks you're a commie, you're in trouble."

Okay, he can absolutely mirror that tone.

"We don't have those." Whatever they are. "So nobody would think that anyone is one.

What are they?" And why do they have book lists that other humans don't like?

"We don't have many of them where I'm from either. They're on the mainland."

For all her patriotism as a kid, she doubts that there are too many real communists in her country.

"They're..." She bites her lip. They're bad, they're evil, they're saboteurs... That's what people like Instructor Bai say. But she's never learned too much else about them. "The people who live on the mainland. A lot of the people in my country used to live there, but they chased us off. You've really never heard of them?"

"No."

...And that's really not very informative on why they're dangerous. "Why did they chase you off?"

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