Theona slowly returned to the world, waiting a short time before she attempted to sit up.

She noticed the man was leaning toward her, almost as if to help her to rise. She looked at him more closely, and soon realized that he was positively huge compared to her. At a guess, she thought he might be 8 feet tall, weighing somewhere between 350 and 400 pounds.

Then she realized that he was speaking to her again. "Lass, are ye well? Ye swooned for a bit!"

This caused her to look closely at herself again, the fact that she was female disturbed her greatly. She looked around her, then up at the darkening sky. Already, a moon was climbing up the sky, to her eyes, it shone pale gold in the night air.

She could still see the grass in the deepening gloom of the evening, and it still looked purplish to her, even more so than before.

Once again, his voice broke through and she raised her head to look at him. "Lass, are ye well?"

"I believe I will survive," she replied, "but as to being well, how can I be? I was born a man, and now, now I am a woman!"

He chuckled as he slowly knelt in the grass before her. "Aye, and a rather pretty woman, for all that ye are so small! I am Tanris."

"Hello, Tanris, or perhaps I should say good evening, as it seems the sun will set fairly soon."

"Aye, that it will, lass, in about half a cycle of the great clock which I saw in the capital three years past."

"Half a cycle? I'm sorry, but I don't understand you!"

He thought for a moment. "Lass, do ye know what a clock is?" She nodded, and he continued, "Well, we have very few of those here, but the one that most everyone remembers is the Great Clock in the main feast hall of the High Lord's Palace."

She stared at him, then shook her head, she definitely was not at home now. "I assume you measure your days using that clock?"

"Ahhhh, so you do understand. Yes, our day is split into 20 cycles of the clock, and we have about half a cycle before the sun sets."

"So it will be full night in a little while. Thank you for explaining it to me."

Tanris looked at her oddly, then laughed. "Lass, you are quite a pleasure, I think you may know far more than old Tanris here, and I've had the pleasure to celebrate 230 year-days. I am no young pup, and I have learned much in my travels."

Theona's head snapped up in shock as she heard him say that he had lived for over 230 years. "Did I hear you right? You said 230?"

"Aye, girl, I was born a bit more than five tendays before High Summer 230 years ago."

She shook her head again, that just didn't seem possible. "It is very rare for people on my world to live to see 100 years."

"Well, your size alone says you are not of this world, lass, you look like a girl of maybe twelve summers here, except for the obvious fact that you seem to be fully grown," nodding in the direction of her breasts, his face turning pinkish with embarrassment.

"Ahhhh, I cannot keep calling you lass, do ye have a name, girl?"

A name? Ummmm... yes, my name is Theo... na," she spluttered, her own face colouring in the dimness.

"Theona, you say? Well, may the Lady bless you, then, Theona, and keep you well."

"Thank you, but who is the Lady?" Theona asked, her curiosity rising.

"Well, lass, we have few gods in these lands, but the one most folk follow is the Lady De'mitra, she who tends the crops and animals. When she blesses us, the harvests are so plentiful there is often grain left outside the granaries because there isn't enough room in them. And any animals that we might breed somehow manage to produce more healthy offspring in those years, creating a surfeit."

"De'mitra is how you name her? Interesting, in my world, there are some who worship Demeter, an ancient goddess of harvest and agriculture. She is said to hold sway over the grains and the fields of the earth, I suppose that could extend to the animals in the fields."

Theona realized that the talk about food, harvests, etc., had made her hungry and she turned to look around for her pack. She was a bit irritated because the deepening night made it difficult to see anything more than a few feet away clearly, even with the moon.

It was at this time that Theona discovered that she could feel things, things like the fact that there was a large tree on the cliff's edge just around the turn up the slope, that there were several large mushrooms growing amongst the tree's roots, and those were edible. She could also sense the nearly dried blood from a carcass hanging on a hook at the front right corner of the wagon.

Yet, even more than these, she could feel something else, a sense of earthly power, she could point to the places on or under the ground nearby where that strange sense of power could be found flowing in lines and streams. She also felt as if she could pull the power to her.

That caused her blood to turn to ice. That damnable prophecy, turning her life upside down, willy nilly, and nothing she could do!

She wasn't really paying attention, but eventually, the change in the level of light caused her to look down at her hands. Her left one was glowing brightly enough that she could now see much farther around her than she could a few minutes before. She spotted her pack lying about fifteen feet away on the ground, next to where the great rock had been before she shattered it.

She stood slowly, so as to give her body a chance to adapt to being upright, and walked over to the pack. The heavy cloth of the pack was torn in many places, she could actually see some of the things inside, such as pieces of her male clothing. She picked up the pack, pulled the main zipper back to open it, and started pulling things out, paying no mind to the fact that there was a man standing nearby.

She had brought a few plaid flannel shirts,a s they were comfortable and helped to stay warm in the cool mornings and evenings. She also had put two pairs of faded jeans in there, and as she pulled each item out, she could see that all of them showed many rips and tears.

The few things she had brought for food, mostly MREs and easy to carry items like cereal bars, were not in any better shape. Most of the MRE containers had gaping cuts in them, bits of the food falling out, and the cereal bars were beyond any redemption.

Damn it all, here she was in a place where she had no food of her own, she'd either need to find some or depend on Tanris. Then she realized that she could find food, she knew there were edible mushrooms nearby, Tanris had meat available, maybe he had vegetables too?

Well, there was only one way to find out. She turned to him and asked, "Tanris, what were you planning to eat tonight?"

He shrugged, pointed to the carcass she knew was there, "I was going to cut strips from the meat, and cook some with a vis'nif."

"That's all? Did you even know that there are perfectly edible ri'gezna mushrooms by that tree you passed on the way here earlier? Do you carry any vegetables with you at all, ones that might last a few days while travelling, to eat with any meat you might acquire?"

Tanris turned to face her, his face very pale in the light of the one moon. "How... Wait a moment. You say you are not from this world?"

"That is correct."

"Then how... how did you know the mushrooms were there, or that I had meat here, and some vegetables that travel well?"

"Tanris, I can feel things that are linked to the ground, like the mushrooms, the vis'nif, and the body of the animal you killed early today. Not only that, but I can sense other things, like energy streams? That is how."

"You are truly odd, lass, ye do things that I have never seen anyone do, and I have seen many a witch in my travels. Perhaps... no... it must be, it is the only thing that makes any sense, perhaps you are the one foretold in the prophecy."

As he said the word prophecy, Theona's head snapped up like a shot. "Prophecy? What prophecy are you talking about?"

"Hmmmm... I'm not sure if I have a copy of it in the wagon, I'll look." He turned and walked back to his wagon, shaking his head at all the tears in the heavy covering, it would cost a pretty coin to fix it all, for sure. Some time passed before he returned to her, holding something.

He then passed it to her, she could see it was a heavy piece of thick paper, folded three times, slightly different to how she had folded letters when writing or sending them was still a normal part of life. She opened it, read the first few lines and blanched, it was the family prophecy. She staggered, wobbling badly enough that Tanris grabbed her to keep her standing, she grabbed his arm, shaking with terror.

"How!?", she cried out, "how is it that this prophecy is the same as the one Simon Longlock wrote almost eight hundred years ago in my world? Where did you get this? How long has this prophecy been known to your people? I must know!"

"Girl, what has you so distressed? The prophecy came from the hands of a man much like you, small and slender, I believe the historians said his name was Simon; we called him Farwalker, as he wandered across many of the lands. Six hundred of our years or so, I think?"

Theona, still shaking, recalled that Simon was said to have vanished not long after he wrote the prophecy found lying on his desk.

"Tanris, oh Tanris, I cannot bear this! I am the girl in that prophecy, Tanris, I AM!"

"What makes you so sure, lass?"

"Tanris, I am here, in your world, and I... I am the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. I told you before that I was born male, but when I woke up here after hitting my head on that rock, I was already female. My mother had nine children, six girls and three boys, I was the middle boy. When I became female, the prophecy had already started, as I was now the seventh daughter of my mother, a seventh daughter."

"A little while ago, when I could not see well enough to find my pack, my hand began to glow, becoming bright enough to see around me. I said I can sense the energy streams, the power lines, if you will, one lies about ten par'k'neks over there, another six par'k'neks that way."

"I know not what you mean by power lines or energy streams, lass, I have no ability that way at all."

"Tanris, if I were to get some of those mushrooms while you cut the meat and wash the vis'nifs, I think I can prove what I say."

He shook his head and wandered over to the wagon to prepare the food for her.

Theona wandered up the second path, the one Tanris and his wagon had used to get here, and after a brief walk, turned a corner in the path, being sure to stay far away from the edge as much as possible, then spied the tree about fifty feet or so ahead.

Watching carefully as she stepped around the old tree to the side near the cliff's edge, she spotted the mushrooms and picked three. They were quite large, the hood being a good six inches across, the stem about eight inches along. She knew the whole plant was edible, She wasn't entirely sure she understood how she knew these things, but as long as they were safe, she wouldn't worry about it.

She worked her way onto the path, then followed it back down to the wagon to see Tanris laying several small to medium sized stones in a rough circle a short distance from the wagon. She nodded, a fire pit made sense. Tanris wandered up the other path and returned soon after with several chunks of dead wood. He grabbed a small hatchet from the wagon, chopped the wood and arranged it to burn effectively.

Once he had set several pieces in the middle of the stone circle, Theona told him to step back unless he wished to be burned. She stood there quietly for a moment, then her hands began to glow a bright red-orange; when it was big enough, she cast it at the pile of wood.

The effect was quite startling, to say the least. The ball of flame in her hand struck the wood, and a brief CRACK! split the air as the ends of the stacked pieces in the middle of the fire pit seemed to explode, then the flames began to eat hungrily at the wood.

Tanris stood several feet behind her but off to one side, watching. His jaw dropped when he saw the wood light so very fast.

Theona turned to face him, her back to the slowly growing warmth of the fire in the pit. "Do you believe me now, Tanris?"