"Thank you for bringing him here, Miahome," A deep voice spoke, drawing Rasnel from his sleep. Something was wrapping his arm, and something was in his hair; a hand, gnarled and calloused, ruffling his hair.
"Oh, you're awake," Another spoke, a female. The thing on his arm tightened, then ceased to move. "Drink this," She ordered, bringing a glass of water to Ranel's lips, which he greedily drank.
"Dilys, thank you," The male spoke again, nodding to the woman as Ranel tried to figure out what was on his arm. It was white, now with red blotches scattered around the entry and exit points of the blade that had previously been embedded into the limb. His arm was swollen, achy, and too painful to move. Didn't these people have the automatic healing solution that cleaned, healed, and sealed the skin back together in a matter of nanoseconds? It was revolutionary, and made so many previous medical advances obsolete.
"Excuse me," Ranel began to speak, his entire body aching with infection-aided fever. 'I should have known, as primitive as this place is, that it would get infected,' he thought, looking up at the green clad woman. "What is this, on my arm?" To epmphasize, he nodded to the white bindings.
"That's a bandage, of course," Dilys wrinkled her nose, finding it obviously odd that Ranel had never seen one before. "I've heard of them, but never seen one." He looked at the bandage some more, then her. "Where are we, and what year is it?"
Dilys exchanged a glance, with the old man, who spoke. "We are in Tir Chonaill, Erinn, Ulahd Continent." It was all unfamiliar to Ranel, nowhere even close to ancient England, if even existent at all. "I am Chief Duncan," he put his hand on his chest, "This is Healer Dilys," he gestured his arm to the woman, and as his gaze focused upon someone on the other side of Ranel, someone he could not move to see, a harsher voice, cold, even, spoke.
"I can introduce myself, old man," she hissed, and walked over so that Ranel could look at her. She wasn't tall, and very thin, with her arms across her chest and a broadsword along her back. "I'm Miahome, the Huntress." She glared at him. "And you owe me for my ruined kill, foreigner."
Foreigner? That was nice. "My name is Ranel Alistair," He said, forcing himself to sit up and hoping that his accent wasn't so unfamiliar that they believed he was from a country attempting to bring harm. "And... I was brought here from a white place, by a woman named Nao."
"Nao! She sent you here?!" Chief Duncan stared at him, then smiled. "Then you must come from another, troubled world. Miahome said you fell alone, so you must be a single survi-"
"Survivor? So you're saying... you're saying that my sister, Riné, she's dead?!" Ranel got up right away, body aching horribly, ready to go back to London. "No, no, she's go to be alive, she's got to be alive..." He bit his lip. "She's got to be here, she's got to be here somewhere, I've got to find her, I've got to fi-"
Rather roughly, he was pushed back down onto the bed by Miahome, who glared at him. "Are you deaf? There were no other survivors. There's no point in getting up and searching for a corpse that's not here."
After a pause, Ranel gripped Miahome's shirt and pulled her down close, burying his face into her shoulder like he'd known her all his life and sobbed, his head throbbing and his body shaking with illness and cries.
And somehow, as though she understood his feelings merely through his touch, Miahome wrapped his arms around him and held him close, humming one of the bard songs that flowed over the land.
