"Jace! You're...here." Felicity blew a stray strand of hair out of her face, disbelieving eyes wide. "Wait, you're here? You're not supposed to be here!"

"That I am," he replied, not missing a beat, and threw his arms out to the side as if to illustrate the point.

Felicity could only blink, gaping like a fish.

She shook her head, a million questions fighting to jump off her tongue. But the question she most seeked an answer to was one most recently posed.

She looked him up and down, finally grasping at words that kept escaping her to say faintly, "That you are." But to which one?

(as in "you're here" and "not supposed to be here")

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(this line indicates the beginning of another snippet, there is no continuity between the two.)

She awoke to a dull aching pain pounding away all over her body, as if an army of lizards had been armed with mallets and decided to play whack-a-mole with her flesh.

With a grimace, she thought, stupid concussion.

Wait...concussion? She tried shifting her head only to hiss from the flare of pain that raced up her neck. Yep, most definitely a concussion. And a stupid one, too. Who ever heard of lizards with mallets? It was simply absurd.

As her head returned to the ground with a dull thunk, she realized she was lying in a pile of mulch and dry leaves. A forest. Great! Just great. A pack of hungry wolves would find her and then where would she be? Oh, that's right, scattered in pieces in the wolves' bellies.

Life was looking bleak. Well, not that she could see, anyway. It was then she remembered she had eyes, the little buggers. Upon creaking them open, she immediately snapped them shut again, squeezing them tight. The world was much too bright for her liking.

How had she ended up here, anyway? But she never found an answer, as she had drifted off into the clutches of sleep.

                                                                    ***

Dimly, she registered the dull pounding of boots to the ground, growing louder by the second. Just another hammer to the ceaseless beat in her head. What was the deal with that, anyway? 

Right, boots. Concussion. And then, voices. Voices that she recognized, calling her name? Suddenly she heard them veer to a stop, and a gust of hot breath fanned down her face. Ugh, what’d they have for breakfast, rotten yuck? She grimaced minutely as she felt a finger prod none too gently at her cheek.

“Is she dead?” A voice asked, a waver concealing barely contained panic. Not one she recognized, either. Where had the other gone…? “No, you dolt, and get your grubby fingers off her!” Ah, there he was. Sounded just like Jace, too...Wait, Jace? Jace!

With that, she cracked her eyes open, donning a wry smile and a dry lilt to her voice. “No, lad, as our dear friend Jace has just confirmed, though I must say not for lack of trying.”