The laugh was slightly jarring to the peri's ears, mostly because it seemed so incongruous with the situation. There was nothing humorous, there was nothing to be taken lightly, and with his mind slowed by dehydration and the sheer trauma that he was reliving, he could only wonder: why? Why was she not turning around as instructed? Why was she claiming that what they were experiencing right then wasn't real, and could it really be that she was so capable of pulling a trigger without remorse? Closing his eyes, Ishiah's gaze wandered to and fro as he pieced everything together. She was...

His eyes flew open with the realization that she couldn't have been from that time, her language too modern, her clothes not at all fitting the age— and more importantly than that, he remembered now that she wasn't of his world. That they had met on a beach, a bottle of liquor in her hand. Squinting his eyes, Ishiah tried to look past the scene in front of him, almost as though if he tried just hard enough, then he'd be able to differentiate between dream and reality. He tested his binds carefully, trying to ease his hands out of the ropes and letting his wings disappear in a shimmer of light.

Meanwhile, she hit one of the attackers, his face increasingly indistinct as the man hit the ground. When the others slowly began walking in her direction, Ishiah pulled harder, until the skin on either wrist was bleeding, but in a second he suddenly broke free, wings returning in a flash and spreading in a wide arc.