Oh, man... Let me point something out here. This is either a mistake that winds up being genius, or genius disguised as a mistake, which winds up appearing genius anyway... (I’m not making sense.) Basically, I love this sentence because of its ambiguity - it fits the feeling of the story you’re going for. Is this saying the walk was 4 hours and twenty five minutes total? Or is it saying that a normally 25-minute walk took 4 hours? Frikkin’ brilliant, Brien. I don’t know if you wrote like this on purpose, but I think it’s awesome.
I fell through the door to my apartment after the four hour long twenty-five minute walk.
Hey so where was his pile of ... uh... vomit? ((I wonder if Inkshares will post this on the Buzzing page, and everybody’s like ’what the he...?!’. Hi, everybody!)) Anyway... Did he ’leave it behind’ in the other time/dimension? On the dirt path? Man, this is disorienting! I love this paragraph.
Back on my feet I headed into the men’s room where my stomach tried to empty out anything that could possibly been still in there.
Man... You’re setting up one of my FAVORITE narrative techniques of all time - The Unreliable Narrator. This chapter’s barely started and already I’m squinting at the words on the page, as if hearing Adam’s words are making me wince with doubt. He’s not even sure if he can believe what he’s saying, so I’m not sure, but I’m DAMN sure that I want to know why! So you’ve hooked me, Brien. You’ve hooked me deep, man! Good opener!
True or not it’s more of an explanation than I was able to come up with. It did make sense though at the time. Probably how he even knew I could do this too is from the disorienting sensation I felt and I guess he did too when he was within an arm’s reach. The same dizzying feeling you get when you start to get pulled. I think back and wonder if I hadn’t been as wasted if I’d have more answers or at least someone to talk to about all this.
I get the sense that this would make a perfect back-jacket quote, Brien. :D The whole paragraph, actually.
Good dialogue here! You’ve nailed how natural their back-and-forth ought to feel, considering how close they are. Even though she’s tired, though... Hmmm... I dunno, this seems a little rushed. Shouldn’t there be a trillion questions Keleir (awesome name, btw) wants to ask her? Like "gee, you just saved our army’s ass back there." Or even just spend a little more time scolding her not to push herself so hard. I dunno. Just seems over too early.
Oh hwahwhaat?! I thought they were being attacked for a sec! Make it a little more clear that this is like a teleportation spell, if you can. Reminds me of Yennefer in the Witcher 3 and those awesome fire-ringed portals she throws up. Good stuff! (Also, you mean ’alone among nature’ right?)