Elen sighed, leaning down to scrape a clump of mud from boots that had once been a dusty suede, but were now so covered in mud they looked like mud themselves.
"Typical" she muttered to herself before slinging her harp case up more securely around her shoulders and setting off again. The sun was already setting below clouds tinged pink and creamy yellow and the girl knew in her heart that she would never reach the mission by dark. Another night in the cold and damp of the redwood trees awaited her, but she plodded on, not willing to accept that fact until she was truly out of options.
"Stubborn, that's me. As if that's done me any good." She said, glancing around her. There had to be a ledge or something around here…anything to keep her dry.
"Home is behind, the world ahead." She whispered, quoting one of her favorite novels to the empty air.
"But home is very, very far, isn't it Helena?" A voice spoke from the shadows. Elen, or more accurately, Helena, jumped, letting out a muffled scream and spinning on her heels. Her meter-long saber was out of its scabbard before she had even thought of drawing it and she stood, feet braced shoulder width apart, scanning the surrounding trees for her adversary.
"Could you put that away please? I don't like weapons." A man appeared from behind one of the many trunks that lined the road. Well, at least it was marked a road on her map. In all honesty, Elen thought it was barely a trail, if that.
"Who are you?" Elen asked, trying her best to make her voice sound threatening, which is no mean feat when one is all of five feet tall.
The man wore a strange coat, very long and loose, hardly fashionable and his hair stuck out strangely from a face that, if not hansom, was attractive. Elen silently cursed herself for noticing. Attractive. Here she was with her sword pointing at an unknown man who had just appeared in the unlikeliest of places, and she was contemplating his physical attributes? Her mother always said she was a dreamer, her head more in the sky than on the ground.
"I said, who are you?" she asked again when she realized he hadn't bothered to answer.
"They call me the doctor." He replied, smiling the devil-may-care smile of a man who has no other motive than to enjoy himself. Hardly the sort of person Elen expected to meet out in the wilderness of California.
"Doctor who? Doctor of what?" Elen asked, wondering when she had last seen a doctor with such warm brown eyes…she shook her head, trying to break free from the hold his face seemed to have over her.
"Just the doctor," he spoke with the sort of calm laziness that said he didn't fear her in the least, wickedly sharp blade or no,
"Now tell me, what year is this?" he asked, eyebrows furrowed, glancing around with a ridiculous frown on his face. Elen rolled her eyes. Just her luck to run into a simpleton, attractive or no.
"1625 you idiot."
"Steady on!"
"Not my fault you've been living under a rock. Where are you from?" She lowered her sword but did not sheath it. If there was one thing she had learned from traversing the forests, it was that you never knew what form danger would take.
"I think the real question is where am I now." He looked speculatively around the trees, taking in each leaf and branch with the intelligent gaze of a scientist. "Hmm….sequoia sempervines, am I right?"
"What? Now you're talking gibberish? You aren't one of those philosophers, are you?" she studied him closely, looking for any trace of the self-importance or mental vacancy that usually accompanied philosophers. She found neither.
"Well…" He jerked his head in a non-committal sort of way, "If you'd like." Elen let out a snort that would have made her mother livid, if she had been alive to hear it. Sadness gripped her briefly, before she banished it to the back of her mind, choosing not to look at it until she could be alone to cry.
Still, her traitorous eyes let loose a single tear that she angrily brushed away, looking back at the strange man with hair that was, in truth, slightly insane now that she noticed it. He inhaled briefly,
"coastal air…possibly from the pacific ocean." He continued his analysis of the countryside, whipping out a pair of spectacles, apparently to examine the trees more closely.
"What kind of doctor did you say you were?" Elen asked. He didn't talk like any of the doctors she knew back home: vapid, self-satisfied men who lorded their schooling over their lessers. But neither did he seem like a philosopher to her eyes. No, this doctor was something altogether different, if only Elen could figure out what.