As soon as Shane stepped through the portal, a cool breeze blew past his sweaty skin. He smiled lightly and actually wanted to close his eyes to enjoy it for a bit, but he soon realized that Rowan was coming through after him and he would be in her way if he stayed there, causing him to quickly step aside and watch her as she came through as well.
The portal closed down to a crack until it disappeared entirely. Despite his relief after feeling the nice breeze, he still felt the panic and confusion he had woken up with. Rowan sighed loudly. They had escaped the potentially deadly situation, but did they just walk into the next one?
“What just happened?” Shane asked.
“Ugly, blue beetles that seem to live in groups and like to eat people sitting in caves, that's what happened,” Rowan answered.
“Oh.”
Shane looked around, trying to figure out where they ended up. They were standing on a seemingly ordinary grass field with normal green grass beneath their feet and a dark sky above them. It was still night, so they were probably around the same timezone as before. The cool breeze made him feel less sleepy and he shivered, but it was a welcome shiver after the heat from the last dimension.
Rowan was also looking around, but in a different way than Shane did. She analyzed the environment quickly and as accurately as possible so she could identify the most important elements to try and determine their location.
“No skyline,” she muttered, starting to list her findings out loud and stomping Shane's hope of being back in New York City deeper into the ground... “No visible industry… Just some grass and some trees in the middle of the night.”
There was a lonely group of trees a bit further away, but it was mainly just a lot of grass. Shane soon realized that Rowan was eliminating places out loud.
He was starting to do the same, but not out loud. So he could tell at the very least they weren't in New York City, but they could be in the same state somewhere, if it was the right dimension at all. The timezone seemed right at least. It made him think for a moment, spinning around slowly, looking around, and turning to Rowan.
“The Tuner can’t travel in time, right?”
Rowan chuckled softly, mockingly. Shane pressed his lips together because he knew what the answer would be. She could just say ‘no’, but that always seemed to be too difficult for her. She always had to make a mockery of what he said and it made him feel dumb.
“Of course not, everyone knows it's impossible to travel through time.”
“Yeah, just like everyone knows that you can travel through dimensions,” Shane said, clearly irritated. “Not everyone is used to the world as you know it.”
He was getting tired of her mocking everything, he had only just entered this world full of unknown dangers and there was no way he could know everything right away. His annoyance with her made him turn around and began to walk away across the grass.
Behind him, Rowan looked at Shane hesitantly, then began to follow him. Her long legs could easily keep up with him, even with the big, angry steps Shane was taking. He hoped they would soon be back to his starting point, his dimension, as he wondered how much longer he could last around Rowan. They walked on in silence, but he slowed down a bit because he couldn't keep the pace up for that long, while they both wondered where they were actually going.
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