[ Drink neglected, fully in story mode, Nate's use of his hands in the description becomes wider, animated, and much more frequent. ]
Okay, so. They're shooting around all this moving crap and one of them hits something important. It blows a hole in the side of the plane and it lists to the side, 'cause it took out half a wing in the process and we start tanking, hard.
[ Maybe they hit a fuel line, maybe it was an electrical main, Nate never stopped to ask when the whole thing shifted and every one of Marlowe's men began to slip out of the tear in the cargo cabin. ]
I try to grab a strap and I get sucked out. So I'm just- falling, in the middle of Yemen's Empty Quarter, and then I slam into a cargo box wrapped in mesh and pull the paracord. It floats me all the way down to the wreckage and then I realize I'm in the middle of the world's largest contiguous desert and I've got nothing but the clothes on my back.
[ Ridiculous as his life might be, this is on a whole other level. When you're a sorcerer, the entirely unfathomable is standard practice - he lives a fantasy life, he knows that. Normal, human peril, this kind of peril, is something he'll never encounter.
He'd get out of it the same way he got out of dying of exposure on Mt. Everest. A sling ring, easy. But Nate is no magic-user. He's a man who, and this is becoming a notable pattern now, has just survived the highly improbable, only to find himself facing a slow demise at the hands of Mother Nature.
That this man lived long enough to make it to his second cross-universal abduction is honestly astounding.
In spite of the dire situation, Nate's telling of the story is animated and engaging. He shoves a wedge between the tale and the gravity required of considering reality in the way that all good storytellers can. Stephen doesn't feel the need to keep the obvious rapt enjoyment out of his expression. ]
Okay, Bear Grylls. How did you make it through that one?
I can see where you're going with that, so let me be the first to reassure you that I didn't resort to drinking my own piss.
[ Seriously, even Bear Grylls should know better. There isn't enough legitimately helpful water content to do anything more than dehydrate you further, and by that point you should either accept your inevitable death or walk until you can't walk anymore.
Nate did the latter. ]
Couldn't get much from the wreckage so I just...walked. For days. Realized I looped back around to the same empty well twice. Hallucinated a little.
[ The last person he ever wanted to hear talking to him in the waste land was Katherine Marlowe, all petty derision and wicked laughter and annoyingly apt T.S. Eliot references. It was her, then Sully. Sun-baked red rocks. Small wonder they call the Rub al' Khali the sun's anvil. ]
Came across a ghost town and thought I might find something there, ended up running into the same damn mercenaries who had been trying to kill me this whole time. [ Nate waves his hand. ] Gunfight, armed trucks, rocket launchers. I think it was the explosions that attracted the attention of the local Bedouin. Saved my ass and took me to their oasis.
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no subject
Okay, so. They're shooting around all this moving crap and one of them hits something important. It blows a hole in the side of the plane and it lists to the side, 'cause it took out half a wing in the process and we start tanking, hard.
[ Maybe they hit a fuel line, maybe it was an electrical main, Nate never stopped to ask when the whole thing shifted and every one of Marlowe's men began to slip out of the tear in the cargo cabin. ]
I try to grab a strap and I get sucked out. So I'm just- falling, in the middle of Yemen's Empty Quarter, and then I slam into a cargo box wrapped in mesh and pull the paracord. It floats me all the way down to the wreckage and then I realize I'm in the middle of the world's largest contiguous desert and I've got nothing but the clothes on my back.
no subject
He'd get out of it the same way he got out of dying of exposure on Mt. Everest. A sling ring, easy. But Nate is no magic-user. He's a man who, and this is becoming a notable pattern now, has just survived the highly improbable, only to find himself facing a slow demise at the hands of Mother Nature.
That this man lived long enough to make it to his second cross-universal abduction is honestly astounding.
In spite of the dire situation, Nate's telling of the story is animated and engaging. He shoves a wedge between the tale and the gravity required of considering reality in the way that all good storytellers can. Stephen doesn't feel the need to keep the obvious rapt enjoyment out of his expression. ]
Okay, Bear Grylls. How did you make it through that one?
no subject
[ Seriously, even Bear Grylls should know better. There isn't enough legitimately helpful water content to do anything more than dehydrate you further, and by that point you should either accept your inevitable death or walk until you can't walk anymore.
Nate did the latter. ]
Couldn't get much from the wreckage so I just...walked. For days. Realized I looped back around to the same empty well twice. Hallucinated a little.
[ The last person he ever wanted to hear talking to him in the waste land was Katherine Marlowe, all petty derision and wicked laughter and annoyingly apt T.S. Eliot references. It was her, then Sully. Sun-baked red rocks. Small wonder they call the Rub al' Khali the sun's anvil. ]
Came across a ghost town and thought I might find something there, ended up running into the same damn mercenaries who had been trying to kill me this whole time. [ Nate waves his hand. ] Gunfight, armed trucks, rocket launchers. I think it was the explosions that attracted the attention of the local Bedouin. Saved my ass and took me to their oasis.