The blazing sun beat down mercilessly upon the baking sands of the desert. The wind howled, sending sprays of sand over the massive dunes, like foam on the crest of breaking waves. A trio of vultures were circling high overhead, hungrily spying on the motionless body below them: a naked woman lying face-down, half-in and half-out of the sand. Her skin, the color of polished oak, was a stark contrast to the bone-white desert attempting to swallow her. Her long black hair was untied and tangled, splayed out in every direction.

With a jolt, the raven-haired woman shuddered, and air rushed into her ravaged lungs. Rivers of sand poured off her back as she tried to pull herself free, desperately scrabbling to find grip against the soft sand. She clutched at her throat, gasping for air, before finally wobbling unsteadily to her feet.

"W-what... what the..." she coughed out, gagging on the last of the sand in her throat. She tried to look around with her ruby-red eyes, but the sands reflecting the sun were blinding, and she squinted through the fingers of her upraised hand to try and adjust. Before too long, her hand shifted away from her eyes to clutch at her temple, in a vain attempt to get the incessant pounding to stop. "Ugh... my head... what happened?"

Eventually, her eyes (or, one of them, at least) managed to adjust to the light, and she tried to get her bearings. But that just made her even more confused. This desert was entirely unfamiliar.

"... what the hell?" she muttered to herself, furrowing her brow as she looked around again, her eyes now fully adjusted. "Where am I? What is this place?" She briefly glanced down. "... and why am I naked?" She seemed more confused than embarrassed about that last one. "I don't recall any point last night that would've gotten crazy enough to warrant this..."

Tuera Ashama is having a bad day.

"Hang on..." she said, looking down again and catching a glint of metal in the corner of her eye. "What's this?"

She raised up her left hand, and stared at the bracelet wrapped around her wrist. It appeared to be made of a single piece of brass, with a large jade gemstone set within it. The metal was molded into the shape of what first appeared to be two serpents, but as Tuera turned her wrist around, she realized: it was a single serpent with two heads, coiled around itself several times. She couldn't determine how it even got on her wrist. It seemed to be a single piece of metal with no seams, or clasps, or hinges, and it was molded to the shape of her wrist exactly... almost as if the metal had been cast directly onto her arm.

"Is this one of mine?" she mused aloud, taking in every detail of the bracelet. "I mean, I know I own a lot of jewelry, but I don't recall owning something like this..." She shook her head vigorously. "Whatever. I'll figure it out later. Focus." She inhaled sharply, ran her fingers through her long black hair to get it out of her face, quickly slapped her cheeks several times and shook her head once more before finally exhaling loudly and slowly. "I need to get my bearings, and determine exactly where – and when – I am."

She raised her right hand, and snapped her fingers.

Nothing happened.

Tuera furrowed her brow, confused.

"What the..." she stared at her hand expectantly, as she tried snapping her fingers again and again. Nothing continued to happen. She waggled her fingers and tried waving her hand back and forth, but... still, nothing. And then she looked down at her left arm, and the serpent bracelet wrapped tightly around her wrist.

The gem was glowing.

She tried snapping her fingers one last time, her eyes fixed on the gemstone. As the sound of the snap echoed into nothingness, the gem pulsed brightly with an unnatural light, before fading away. Tuera's eyes went as wide as pie plates.

"Oh, that's not good," she breathed in a hoarse whisper. "That's not good at all."

Tuera Ashama is having a very bad day.

She had been walking through the sands in silence for several minutes, trying to collect her thoughts. Whoever had brought her to this place – where and when ever it might be – was powerful enough to have affixed a device that nullified her magic without her knowledge. Some kind of localized anti-magic field? Or something else? Whatever the case, she was going to have to do this the hard way, and that would mean calling on survival skills she hadn't needed to use in a very long time.

She was also going to need to find some clothes, as she was still completely naked in the middle of a desert. Her constitution was certainly hardier than her svelte frame would suggest, but heatstroke would, eventually, set in. She definitely needed to avoid that. Not to mention, there was a high probability that the locals (assuming there were locals) might potentially take issue if she showed up with naught but her winning smile.

About the only thing she had accomplished thus far was getting the hair out of her face. Normally, she'd wrap it in a tight bun at the top of her head, keeping it in place with a pair of enchanted rune-spikes, but those were missing... just like everything else. Her solution was to tie it all together in a braid that fell to the base of her spine. This served the dual purpose of keeping her hair out of her face, and obscuring her pointed ears, on the off chance they'd draw the wrong kind of attention. So, that was... something. At least.

She still had no idea where she was going. When she set out, she had decided to pick a direction at random... but it didn't take long for her to spot an object in the distance. It seemed to appear as if from nowhere, having been obscured by the heat-haze rising off the blistering sands. The closer she got, the more distinct it appeared, until she was finally standing at its base.

It was a large pillar of black stone; an ornately decorated stelae standing at least 30 or 40 feet high. It might have been smoothly carved jet-black obsidian, in ages past, but this was very old... and the ravages of both time and the swirling desert sands had clearly taken its toll. Large pictograms, weathered just as heavily by age, had been carved into the sides, and the top of the pillar almost looked like a stylized face, with six squat, flat horns sticking out of the head: three on each side.

Most worryingly of all, however, this large pillar of dark stone seemed to be the boundary marker for a wall of semi-transparent green light. She hadn't noticed it until she was practically right on top of it, but now that she was here, it was unmistakable: there was definitely a shimmering barrier of energy that seemed to stretch out in every direction. She looked to the left, to the right, and straight up... and could not see where it ended.

"Hmm..." Tuera glanced down at the bracelet around her wrist. The gemstone seemed to be the same shade of green as the energy wall. "I wonder..."

With some manner of trepidation, she cautiously reached out to the barrier with her left hand, so she could keep an eye on the bracelet. As her fingers inched closer, an electric tingle ran up her arm that caused all her hair to stand on end. Suddenly, the pain became sharp and laser focused, like she was pressing her hand against a hot stove; the gemstone glowed brightly and sparks flickered underneath her palm.

"Augh!" she shouted, pulling her hand away as swiftly as she could. Trails of smoke spilled off her palm; she turned over her hand, and saw several mild burns. She closed her eyes, let her hand fall her to side, and sighed heavily.

"Okay then," she muttered, turning on her heel and walking away. "Guess I'm not going that way..."

"My situation has not improved."

She had come to a series of ruins poking out of the desert sands. All around her were broken and cracked structures, constructed from the same black stone as before. She could also see paving stones beneath her feet, like an ancient road half-buried by the desert. A few scattered shrubs had taken root and were growing among the many cracks and shadows of the ruins.

But there were also bodies.

Ancient and desiccated corpses were scattered all around her. Each was little more than a skeleton with skin stretched tightly over the bones. The ancient flesh had solidified to the texture of rock in the baking desert heat. Most of the bodies were in pieces and were either mounted on spikes or hanging from crucifixes. Some had been further impaled with arrows and spears. But more important than that, they all looked like they were once human.

Or, at the very least... humanoid. No cause to be making assumptions just yet.

There was only one truly intact structure here: a large tablet of stone, sticking out of the ground at an angle. The surface was engraved with pictograms, like the stelae from before. She couldn't quite make it out at first, but the closer she got, the more distinct the carvings became. And then she realized: it was because the edges were beginning to glow with that same eerie green light as the energy wall and the jewel in her bracelet. A strange, alien script that she didn't recognize suddenly appeared along the edges of the tablet. It created a frame for the scene depicted in the center: half a dozen small figures on their knees, praying to a much larger humanoid figure towering above them. The large figure was raising its fist in a commanding gesture, and its elongated head possessed the same six horns as the pillar. When she walked closer, the gemstone on her wrist shone more and more brightly.

She took one more step, and an intense pain shot through her entire body, like an ice pick had suddenly been jammed into the back of her skull. Her world shook, vibrating violently in and out of focus. She cried out, gripping her head in pain as a voice began speaking to her inside her mind. The voice was booming, authoritative, and commanding:

"Behold, bonded one," the voice echoed inside her head. "The very boundaries of civilization. Beyond the passage of our highways lie the wild places of the world, where untamed savages make endless war upon each other. You cannot pass into the endless wastes, Enslaved. Your bonding prevents it. Return. Follow the road. Any road. All roads lead into the city."

With this last word, her knees gave out, and she toppled backward. What was that? Telepathy? No... that wasn't someone speaking to her now. That message was prerecorded; linked to the bracelet somehow. But why did it hit her so hard? She was used to communicating telepathically. Was it simply how unexpected she found it? Or was it to do with the bracelet, shackling her here and nullifying her powers?

Still, this appeared to confirm one suspicion. She was very definitely a prisoner here, wherever here was. And this also meant she now knew what she had to do. She needed to find whoever it was that thought it was a good idea to lock up Tuera Ashama, and strangle him with his own entrails.

It's always important to give yourself a goal.

As she lay there, head resting on the sand in an attempt to regain composure, a tiny glint of silvery metal off in the distance caught her eye. She rolled over, slowly getting on her feet, and made her way to a flat rock, half-hidden beneath a coarse shrub. It was a handmade water-skin, with a metal top fastened to the end; it was sitting on top of a piece of filthy, bloodstained parchment, which had yellowed in the sun. Based on the weight, and the sound of liquid sloshing from side to side, it still had something in it. She unscrewed the top and took a drink, and a sense of relief washed over her as the lukewarm water poured gratefully down her dry and parched throat.

She wrapped the strap of the water-skin around her wrist and refastened the top, to save what little there was for later, and turned her attention to the parchment. As with the tablet, she didn't recognize the script at first. But then... the gemstone in her bracelet glowed. She winced, preparing herself for another psychic blast, but all that happened was that the writing on the page shifted before her eyes, into a perfectly legible text. She recognized this as a universal translation enchantment. But... that just raised more questions in her mind. She took hold of the parchment, and began to read:

I am beaten. Left to rot among the ruins of the past.
There are others here. Slaves, bandits and cannibals. Exiles from lands I've never heard of. Some of them try to scrape a life from the wasteland, scrabbling in the rocks and sand for their own place.
I cannot go on. The life that I left behind haunts me. The sun over the glittering spires of Belverus is forever denied me. The smell of my daughter's hair...
I will pass the ghost fence and this cursed land will finally end me.
To whoever reads this note, I leave the last of my water and this message. Stranger, you have my pity. You do not know how cursed you truly are.

Tuera furrowed her brow as she read the note, over and over again. That word, "Belverus," stood out to her like a sore thumb, and she started racking her brain trying to make sense of it. It seemed so familiar, but she couldn't quite place where she remembered hearing it... The only thing that came to mind was the country of Belarus. But she couldn't recall any "glittering spires" in that eastern European country, last time she visited... was the word simply misspelled? Was that even possible, with the bracelet translating for her? Was she on Earth? Sometime in the distant past, or an alternate reality maybe? A timeline where the world had been devastated by an apocalypse? There was a mention of a wasteland, but that could mean any number of things...

And why was the bracelet translating for her? After all, she was a prisoner here... right? Why would her jailers want her to understand any language? Unless... she glanced over at the tablet that spoke to her, then down at the bracelet. A theory was starting to formulate in her mind, but she filed it away for later. She needed more information before she could pull on that thread.

At least the note answered one question, despite giving her several others: yes, this planet (whether it turned out to be Earth or otherwise) is inhabited, and there are definitely people living here, somewhere. Not very friendly people, by the sound of things, but it was a start. It was certainly more information than she had a minute ago.

She got back on her feet, tossed aside the parchment, and began walking with the water-skin in hand. The obvious choice was to follow the path of this broken road, so... that's exactly what she did. It's not like she had many other options.

"All roads lead to the city..." Tuera muttered to herself. "I wonder..."

There was something moving in the ruins ahead.

She couldn't see it yet, but she knew it was there, just out of sight behind a crumbling wall and half-collapsed archway. She could hear it... and she could smell it. The wet smacks and grunts of a large creature tearing into flesh was unmistakable, and the carrion odor of a fresh kill lingered on the wind. She crouched low to the ground, trying her best to keep out of sight and move as silent as she could muster, approaching the sounds to get a better look. She flattened herself against the pillar of the archway and, very cautiously, peered around.

A large hulking beast was perched atop a flat dais, hunched over as it tore into a body on the ground. Its grey skin had the texture of leather, and it seemed to have wings instead of arms. She could see tufts of black hair sprouting out of the ankles of its digitgrade legs, as well as what appeared to be a mane of tangled and dirty black fur, obscuring the view of its head as the beast devoured its meal.

Suddenly, the beast grunted loudly, and its tall, pointed, bat-like ears perked up. When it turned to glare directly at Tuera, she understood why: the creature was, essentially, a 12-foot tall bat. Blood and offal dripped out of its fanged mouth, and its wide nostrils flared as it snorted loudly, glaring directly at Tuera's hiding place behind the pillar.

A brief instant of terror gripped her. Time seemed to slow down as her mind raced, weighing her options; they were very, very limited. She couldn't run, because the beast had wings and was almost certainly faster than her in the air than she was on land. She couldn't really fight, because she couldn't cast any of her magic, she had no weapons, and she didn't even have any clothes; she couldn't hide, because there were literally no places to hide in this desert of broken ruins! She clenched her fists and braced herself, because it seemed like being forced into an unwinnable fight was inevitable.

And then the instant passed.

The bat-creature let out a loud snarling hiss, sending blood, spittle, and chunks of meat flying. It spread its wings and took flight... but it didn't fly towards Tuera. It just took to the skies and left in the opposite direction, off towards the mountains in the distance.

"... h-uh." Tuera said aloud, watching the giant bat fade into a distant speck. She waited a few seconds, scanning the skies above her, fully expecting another bat to swoop in while she was distracted. But the skies seemed clear. Even the buzzards had disappeared. Cautiously, she stepped into the open and started making her way to the dais. She could see outlines of imposingly solid mountains, very far away, half hidden by the haze.

The dead body on the platform was lying in a pool of blood, already starting to oxidize and turn brown in the heat. It certainly looked like a human male, before he was turned into a chebureki. His stomach had been roughly torn open, his guts were either gone or mangled, and one of his legs was missing.

But most important of all: he was wearing clothes.

Much of it was ruined (and there was only one boot, thanks to the missing leg), but it was better than nothing. She set to work carefully stripping the corpse, studying the pieces as she went, trying to glean whatever information she could from them. Based on the style and construction of the materials, she was reasonably certain that this world was either post-apocalypse or pre-industrial, but she still couldn't tell which, and those were very broad categories anyway. The scraps of cloth she managed to salvage were rough and coarse, constructed of a sort of makeshift hemp. There were some rudimentary armor pieces, made of cured leather and animal hides, either crudely sewn together or held in place with what appeared to be studs of iron. The metal was far too heavy to be aluminum, it was the wrong color for silver, and it didn't feel like steel to the touch, so... probably iron. There were certainly other metals that it could be, of course, but she wouldn't know for certain until she performed some tests on -

"No," she said aloud, shaking her head. "Focus! Survival now, experiments later."

After a few minutes of fiddling, she had cobbled together an outfit. It wasn't much, granted, but at least now she had some semblance of support for The Girls, and a few scraps of cloth that almost resembled a skirt. She tried to salvage as much armor as she could, but it amounted to little more than just a few scraps and straps of leather.

She still didn't have any shoes. As soon as she tried pulling the solitary boot off the dead man's leg, it practically disintegrated.

Shade.

Tuera breathed a sigh of relief. She had been walking for several hours, following the path of the ancient road, even as the paving stones became more and more scarce. She was out of water, and hadn't had anything to eat since she arrived. She was afraid the desert was going to last forever, but now she found herself at the banks of a river and, joy of joys, there was actual vegetation! Not just scattered shrubs and a few patches of grass, either! Those were here as well, but there were also many palm trees, a few aloe plants, even some colorful flowers. The canopy of palm ferns was dense enough to provide some respite from the desert sun.

Without hesitation, she rushed to the river. Falling to her knees, she cupped her hands and started drinking her fill; the water was crisp, refreshing, and surprisingly cool. Or maybe the water was simply cold compared to everything else. She unscrewed the top of the water-skin, and dunked it in the river. Bubbles of displaced air rushed to the surface, and she waited patiently for them to stop.

A strange reflection in the surface of the water caught her eye. She looked to her left, and then up... and then up some more. There were two enormous sandstone statues, about... a half-mile upriver? It was hard to gauge the exact distance. They looked like a pair of massive cloaked figures with elongated skulls. Each statue was holding a pole-arm in one hand, but she couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a glaive or a fauchard or what; it was a stick with a curved blade on the end. They were standing on each bank of the river, facing each other, like soldiers on watch. They didn't possess any horns, but these were clearly the same sort of giant figures depicted on the tablet.

And then, something else caught her eye. Something at the base of the statue on her side of the river... what was that? A boat? No, not quite. Not an intact one, at least. A shipwreck, and... she could just make out a figure moving in the wreckage. She couldn't see any details from this distance, but it certainly seemed like the silhouette of a person.

In a flash, Tuera secured the cap on her water-skin and made her way through the foliage to the campsite.

The sun was beginning to set.

As Tuera carefully made her way to the campsite, she encountered strange animals that had made nests in the damp and muddy undergrowth on the riverbanks. They were green, leathery reptiles with hardened shell-like scales, a head like a turtle, squat legs, and long, thick arms. They slowly and deliberately lumbered around, walking on their knuckles like a gorilla. In fact, the creatures looked almost like a deliberate hybrid of a turtle and a gorilla, as if they had been created in a lab or altered with transmutation magic.

A few of them looked up as she passed them by, but they didn't attack. Most of them quickly lost interest, and went back to eating the ferns around their nest.

She was almost at the campsite now. A bonfire had been lit, and she could see a makeshift canopy hung from the capsized shipwreck, creating an awning. The man sitting at the bonfire, tending to a piece of meat roasting over the fire on a spit, was wearing a loose-fitting outfit of whites, dark reds, and grays. A turban was wrapped around his head... and around his wrist, Tuera spotted a glint of metal.

Crunch.

Tuera froze. Despite trying to be unseen in her approach, she'd accidentally stepped on the absolute loudest, driest branch imaginable. She cursed under her breath and dropped down, trying to hide in the undergrowth as the man at the campsite immediately looked up in the direction of the sound.

Why was she having such terrible luck being stealthy today? First the bat-creature, and now this.

"It's alright, traveler," the man said aloud with a sort of weary exhaustion. "I'm willing to share my fire, if you come in peace. And if not, well..." He let out a grim chuckle, as his hand came to rest on the hilt of a scimitar hanging from his belt. Clearly, he had extended this offer dozens of times in the past, only to be met with the Bad End.

Cautiously, Tuera stood up straight. She very slowly and deliberately made her way to the man, one barefoot step through the squelching mud at a time, scanning the rocks, the trees, and any other nearby hiding places. This could be a trap. He could be bait. Don't let your guard down. Know where the exits are. Be prepared to run.

"You're new here, aren't you?" the man muttered, taking the meat off the fire. Tuera didn't say anything, but the man simply nodded. "Yeah... I can smell it on you. Those of us who've been here a while... we tend to smell just a little bit more like despair." He chuckled grimly, as he shaved a piece off the hunk of meat, impaling it with a wooden skewer, and handing it to Tuera. She took it cautiously, and slowly sat down on a nearby rock. "My name is Arcos. Before I was dumped here in the Exiled Lands, I was a sailor. But now, I just... wander. What's your name, stranger?"

"Tuera," she said quickly, sniffing the meat. It smelled a bit like crocodile to her nose, but she couldn't be certain.

"Two-era, huh?" Arcos said her name slowly, sounding out the syllables on his tongue. He shaved off a slice of meat for himself, and put the rest back on the spit. "Are you a Stygian?"

"What do you think?" Tuera said quickly, stalling for time, waiting for him to eat the meat first. She definitely recognized that word, 'Stygian,' but... was he referring to an actual river Styx? Like the river in the Greek underworld, or something else? There were far too many possibilities. She needed more information to narrow this down.

"You certainly look to be from that land of sorcerers," Arcos said, biting off a hunk of his meat. "Dark hair. Dark skin. Those brands on your cheeks..."

Of course the tattoos on her face were conspicuous, Tuera cursed to herself. Each cheek had a black silhouette of a heavily stylized three-toed raven claw, tracing the line of her jaw, with the three toes pointing to her eyes. Even after so many years and countless adventures, she refused to get rid of them; it was a constant reminder of...

"Hardly matters now, does it?" she said with a shrug, taking a bite. Yep, this was definitely crocodile. "Still, at least I'm not the only one here." Arcos let out a genuine laugh at her comment.

"You should go up north," he said, gesturing with his head to the mountains in the distance. "There's whole cities of Exiles up there. And then there's Sepermeru, to the west..."

"Whole cities of..." Tuera trailed off, furrowing her brow. "How big is this place?"

"Big enough," Arcos said, taking another bite of his crocodile meat. "I'm sure you've seen the pillars. They keep all of us confined here. I've heard some call it the 'Cursewall,' some call it the 'Ghostfence,' and others just call it... the boundary. I suppose it doesn't really matter what we choose to call it."

"And there's no way past it?" Tuera asked, already dreading the answer. Arcos shook his head.

"I walked all the way around it, once, years ago," he said. "Had to fashion myself a boat to get to the pillars in the swamplands to the east, and I had to be careful not to cross it, but..." Arcos shook his head again. "There's no way out. None that I could find, at least. Still..." he paused, returning to the spit to slice himself more meat. "When I was in the north, in the frozen tundra near the volcano, I saw people on the other side. They were wearing bracelets just like ours..." he lifted up his left arm, as if to show it off. "... only with gems of amber, rather than jade. So, who knows."

"I'm guessing we can't get rid of the bracelets, either?" Tuera asked, taking another bite. The meat wasn't bad. A little tough, but... still edible.

"Saw one fool cut his arm clean off trying to get rid of it, few years back," Arcos said. "Bled to death, right there on the sand." He looked down, shaking his head. "Nasty business. Should've just left it on, like I've done. I suggest you do the same." He looked back up, taking another bite of meat. "Don't worry. You'll start to hear the voices soon enough... then you'll start seeing the ghosts."

"Voices... like from that tablet I found?" Tuera asked, pointing a thumb over her shoulder.

"Probably," Arcos said with a shrug. "You ask me, I don't think the voices are for... us. Not for us here and now, at least." He looked up, staring at the giant statue on the opposite side of the river. He pointed at it with his meat-skewer. "I think they were talking to... I don't know. Somebody else. Back then. Wherever it was." He paused, then added: "Whenever it was..."

"Do you know what they are? Who built the ruins?" Tuera asked, hoping that her continued probing for answers wasn't too conspicuous.

"Not really," he chuckled. "I'm no scholar, but I've met a few here and there. They all have mad theories about what these Exiled Lands are... or what they used to be. Who built them. Lemurians, Giant-Kings, Khari, Valusian Serpent-men... Do any of those names mean anything to you?"

And just like that, a corner piece of this jigsaw puzzle fell in her lap. She didn't say anything, but tried to keep her expression neutral. She recognized every single one of those names. She didn't have a complete picture of where and when she was, but that was a huge step in the right direction.

"It all sounds like nonsense to me." He took the hunk of meat off the fire and held it up with a cheeky grin. "It's my experience that men who have their minds in the past get eaten by crocodiles in the present."

"Yeah... that can happen," Tuera chuckled despite herself, spearing the fresh cut of meat with her skewer as he sliced. "So, if you don't mind me asking... if you know of those cities to the north, what are you doing down here, on the edge of the desert?"

"Well, I tend not to stay in one place for long, but..." he said, carving another slice for himself. "I saw a shooting star in the sky last night. I'm fairly certain it fell in this direction, so I thought I would look for it." He paused, taking another bite. "Merchants and craftsmen in Sepermeru will always pay a kings ransom for Starmetal."

"A shooting star, huh?" Tuera said quietly to herself as she munched on the meat. If she had to guess, she would put money on the 'shooting star' being her. It certainly wouldn't be the first time she's fallen to a planet like that. Then again... if 'Starmetal' was a common enough occurrence to have a name...

"Truth be told, I doubt I'll even find it," Arcos said, with weary resignation. "It's probably been swallowed by the desert by now, but... it's something to do. Plus, you know..." he coughed nervously. "I'm one of those who enjoys a bit of solitude..."

Tuera took that as a none-too-subtle hint that his hospitality was nearing its end. Probably best to leave before it disappears completely.

"Well," she said, finishing off the meat. She got up off her rock, handing Arcos the empty skewer back. "Thank you for the food and the company, Arcos. This has..." been incredibly informative towards piecing together what universe she was in. "... it's helped. More than you may realize." Arcos just waved it off.

"Don't mention it," he said. "There are a lot of desperate people out here, and not all of them are as friendly as I am. But there certainly are a few. And I always try to pay that kindness forward, whenever I get the chance." Tuera chuckled, as she began walking away.

"Take care of yourself, Arcos," she said, waving back at him. He nodded, waving back.

"Farewell, Tuera. I won't pin my hopes on seeing you again."