Feora

Terry's eyes flickered upon to alight upon the slightly flushed faced of Lara Croft.

It felt like someone was someone kicking him in the ribs and waves of discomfort flowed upwards, he felt the beginnings of a headache coming on.

"Terry? Terry?" the familiar voice said, "Can you hear me?"

He went to speak but felt his throat constrict and suddenly noticed the roughness and tension that he had not noticed before. He settled for simply nodding instead. Even that hurt however, and his headache instantly increased tenfold. He couldn't help a small groan of discomfort escape his lips as his face twisted in frustration.

"Feora... have you got any pain medication?" Lara asked, knowing that the answer would be yes. She heard another groan coming from the body below her and altered her request. "Strong, pain medication..."

"Yes, sure," came the answer from somewhere to Terry's right.

Lara looked up from the once bloodied body on the ground beside which she knelt, that was now quite clean, and watched the other woman make her way over to the pair of them, her rucksack on her back.

Feora was an old friend of Lara's from a long time ago, back when her mother and father had both been alive. Over the years, although they had stayed in contact, each helping the other out on different occasions, their contact was rare and normally only when one required the services of the other. It was true that people did grow out of each other. Regardless, Lara still enjoyed her company every once in a while, and this time, her residence in Africa was a godsend.

As Feora knelt down and began administering a syringe of Morphine, she asked the question that Lara had been expecting for the past few hours.

"So, who is he, and what are you doing here?" After so many years in Africa, Feora had almost developed an African accent, nearly completely eroding her old, Irish one, but there was still the odd trace of her home brogue left.

Her skin had become very tanned over the past years, the normally pale skinned woman looking odd as a golden shade of brown. Her blonde hair, which before had hung long and lose, was now in complicated braids, strung with beads. Her eyes shone with a wildness and freedom that Lara had never seen there before.

"His name is Terry, and I'm here for-"

"-Pandora's Box," Feora finished for her. Looking up as she pulled the needle out of Terry's arm. The man had relaxed visibly.

"How did you know?" Lara asked, watching the other woman's face closely.

There was a pause where Feora didn't answer and instead busied herself with tidying up the packaging from the syringe into her backpack.

"That's why everyone comes here. They don't come for the view anymore, they don't come for the animals," she paused again, as she stood tall and surveyed the beautiful landscape before her that was being gently caressed by the coming evening's breeze. "They come for what they think is money. But is instead a curse," she spat the last word.

Lara wondered if Feora was accusing her of the very same thing.

"Is that why you think I'm here?" Lara asked, voicing her thoughts. She stood also, expecting the coming conversation to become quite heated.

Feora's slight features twisted into something that could have been a sad smile.

"I don't know. Not anymore. Nor do I care, it is not my business," she answered, turning away and throwing her backpack into the large black chopper that she had come in.

"Feora," Lara said, trying to reason with the obviously uptight woman, "you know I'm not in this for the money."

"I know that you weren't," Feora said turning and looking her in the eye, "now I'm not so sure."