Slywyn sat up slowly. She felt mostly rested, but like she'd been hit by a steam tank. Which, now that she thought about it, wasn't really all that far from the mark. Her joints ached, her head was throbbing, and when she wiped her hand across her face, she realized she'd had a minor nosebleed at some point.
All in all, she was in pretty rough shape. On a world she knew next to nothing about, hiding out in a building on wheels that hadn't been touched in ages, in less than stellar fighting condition, with the only way home she was aware of nonfunctioning. She took stock of her current situation. It sucked. And to top it all off, she felt sick. She'd been sick all of once in her life, and it was one of the least pleasant experiences she'd ever had the privilege of having. She really didn't need a problem like that on top of everything else.
She checked the can near her bed, her day brightening just a fraction when she saw it was completely undisturbed. She pushed off of the bed, groaning. Her back was stiff. While the bed had seemed soft at first, there were metal springs inside it that had poked and prodded her all night, hard enough for her to tell through her armor. And they made her sleep awkwardly, being used to sleeping on feather or straw mattresses.
It was well past sundown outside, and she could barely make out the stars in the sky. It saddened her, even if she didn't recognize any of them. She made her way into what she guessed was the kitchen. This is where food was, even if the vast majority was far gone from being edible. She opened some of the cabinets and cupboards, checking what she had on hand that she could probably eat. There were pictures on some of the cans and boxes of things that looked slightly familiar. Carrots, some vegetables of other kinds, and there even looked to be a can of soup.
There was a sink buried in the counter, instead of standing free like she'd seen in most Human homes before. She opened the door underneath, noting the plumbing. Some of the homes in Stormwind had had a much more rudimentary system than this seemed to have, and there were more pipes than she was used to. Just to check, she turned the faucet on one of them, and strangely enough water flowed.
It looked dirty and smelled of rust, but it was running. She frowned a little, but was buoyed by the fact she wouldn't have to go drink from a river of indeterminate sewage content. If the water would run clean any time soon, that is. She turned it off, deciding to leave it alone for now.
She walked to a small switch on one of the walls, curious as to what it was for. She flipped it and immediately switched it back off when lights in the room came on. Surprised and a little afraid she'd set off some kind of trap, she crouched in the room to wait.
She gave it about five minutes with no movement before she stood back up. Apparently this place also had electricity, though from what she'd seen the lights here were much brighter than anything Gnomes had been able to produce so far. She wondered if she'd ever run out of strange things to find and study here.
After a few more minutes of exploring, she'd found another few rooms with more objects she didn't understand, a room that was apparently used for bathing, and another bedroom on the other end of the building. It was completely empty save for a bed, devoid of some of the little knickknacks and other things she'd seen in the first.
Now outside, Slywyn made her slow way down the dirt path to the house, checking to be sure there weren't any new tracks. Other than those of a deer, she didn't see anything. Though she happily took note of the fact that wildlife existed here.
Satisfied that no one had found her yet, she returned to the mobile home. She'd decided to call it that even though it didn't seem capable of self-movement, simply because it possessed wheels. Even if those wheels were deflated, dry rotted, and useless.
Making her way to the kitchen area, Slywyn took out her small pocket knife and set about opening a few of the cans to try to find something to eat. She tried the soup she'd seen first, getting a bit on her finger for a taste-test. She almost choked on the amount of salt in it, closing the can as best she could and setting it back on the counter for later.
However, none of the cans fared much better. It seemed everything in a can was heavily salted like marching meat had been when she'd been in the Sentinels. With a grimace she ate cold canned food, though if she set the factor of much salt on the side, the food itself wasn't all that horrible. All the bagged, boxed, or otherwise open food had spoiled long ago, and there was a large white box with two doors that she was dreading opening.
Even though it was closed and seemed to be sealed, there was a horrible smell coming from it that she suspected was from more rotting food. She reached into her satchel that she was still wearing at her side, and dug around for a minute. She pulled free her collapsible multi-tool that she'd built about a year ago. It had a shovel, an axe, a wire cutter, and a hammer. She'd built it after a customer had requested something similar for camping use, and she'd kept one around for her own uses. It was made of a mix of Mithril and Steel, making it both strong and light. And somewhat expensive.
After a few minutes of searching through the building, she came up with a large enough box to use to put all the food inside, and then piled everything she could carry that was rotten into it. She brought that outside, and set about digging a hole big enough to bury that food and quite a bit more she suspected to reside elsewhere in the house.
Earlier that morning, Dwayne's doorbell rang, and he pulled his headphones off to go see who it was. Making his way through his house in his socks, he opened the door. He blinked several times, a bit confused. There was a guy in a suit, complete with sunglasses and militarily-short haircut.
They stared at each other for a moment before the guy produced a picture. Dwayne's mouth fell open as he recognized the elf from the video he'd seen yesterday. The guy spoke first. "I see you recognize it." He pulled a notepad and a pen from a pocket on his suit. "We're investigating a matter of national security, and based on your town's proximity to the initial crash site we're going door to door to find out as many details as we can. If you could please provide me with any information you may have, it would help us immensely. No detail is too small."
Dwayne blinked a few times, a bit taken aback by the guy's attitude and dress, both completely cool and professional. It reminded him of the Men in Black. "Uh... we heard about a car crash on the news, and then all those pictures that got onto the internet about it, and then we saw a video."
"I see. Could you please tell me who 'we' are and what exactly you saw in the video?"
Dwayne scratched his head. "Colin is my friend. The both of us watched the video and the news about it. He's at work though?"
The Suit nodded, writing all of this down. "And what exactly did you see in the video?"
Dwayne could feel his cheeks heating up a bit. He was about to reveal his nerd-status to some government suit on his doorstep. "Well, it looked a lot like one of the elves from a game that came out a few years ago. Warcraft? Maybe you heard of it? The company went under a couple of years later, but I swear she looks exactly like the elves from the game."
The guy's mouth drew into a thin line, and then his head tilted down a few degrees to look at Dwayne over his sunglasses. His hand began scribbling all the information down, even if his expression was skeptical. "I'm going to take your name down, if you don't mind. Any information you can provide could be critical in our investigation."
Dwayne nodded a few times, now confused. The guy's expression had shifted from bored, to skeptical, to curious, before it walled up again to look bored. He stood up straight, looking to the side of the door where Dwayne's house number was. He wrote that down too, before turning back to Dwayne. "Thank you for your assistance. Have a nice day." He turned on his heel, moving back down the pathway from the sidewalk to Dwayne's house before moving on to the next house down the street.
"Huh..." Dwayne shrugged his shoulders a little before shutting the door and heading back inside to get some lunch. "They sure seem worried."
Slywyn was back inside 'her' building, resting a bit. All she'd done was dig a hole and then bury the rotten food, and she felt drained and tired. The large white box had been cleaned too, though it had given her quite a shock when she pulled it open. She tried the top door first simply because it had looked smaller, hoping that would also mean less work.
When she pulled the door open, she'd been met with a blast of cold air. She had hurriedly shut the door again, thinking it was some kind of magical trap. But when nothing inside exploded or made any other noise than the dim hum that the whole thing was making, she pulled it back open.
The entire inside of it was caked with ice, which amazed her. The building itself was cool, but not cold. Definitely nowhere near cool enough to support ice inside of the thing. There had been food inside of it, but it was all frozen completely through and covered in frost. However, none of it had seemed expressly bad, so she left it in there. As long as they stayed frozen, she didn't see any reason why they'd be particularly in danger of spoiling. And some of it was meat.
The larger door, however, was a different story entirely. Practically the whole thing was full of rotting or rotten food, and she'd had to plug her nose to work past the smell. The entire contents had been buried outside, along with the towel she'd wet in the sink to wipe it out. It wasn't perfectly clean, but at least it wasn't leaking a stench like it had before.
She didn't know exactly how long she'd be staying in this place, but she'd decided to at least make it habitable in the meantime. It wouldn't do her much good to ignore a problem now and have it come back to bite her in the ass later.
After venturing back outside, she'd discovered a small shed just inside of the treeline. It was full of bees, but aside from that it was practically a treasure trove of machinery and tools. She'd had to force herself to not make a sound, as she wanted to scream for joy. Many of the tools were things she recognized. Wrenches, sockets, screwdrivers. Most of the tools she was going to need to fix her wormhole generator. The problems were going to be parts, wiring, and power. Power would be the largest problem by far.
Something else she noticed about this place was the seeming lack of magic of any kind. She'd done some very minor studies in the Arcane when she was younger. Just enough to detect magic. This place seemed entirely devoid of any kind of magic at all. She vaguely pondered if that's why she felt so tired.
Without any source of magic in the smallest amount, she wondered if she'd feel any effects, and how badly. Night Elves were magical creatures by nature, having grown up near the Well on Azeroth. It was something she'd never understood about the banning of magic. They used it every day, and yet all those sources remained. The only thing that'd vanished was the Highborne.
She shook her head, deciding she had bigger problems than magical quandaries centuries removed in the past. She headed back inside the house, deciding to try and take stock of what else she had in her possession here.