Was it being jerked off her first trip back to the states in years, to be shoved into an alternate dimension filled with undocumented zoology, real magic and snotty elves? Or was it that her smattering of ten human languages and knowledge of dozens of Earth’s more obscure cultures weren’t worth a damn with the Elfhome natives? Or was it that this time around, her native guide managed to always make her look frumpy?Stormsong came up the mountainside with all the fluid grace of a big cat, annoyingly beautiful in the muggy August heat. The nimble elfin bitch didn’t even pant. She paused at the edge of the kuesi’s blood, and murmured, "I told you that your ‘tracer’ would not work," and continued up the rock face in bounds that would impress mountain goats."I found this much!" Kate shouted after Stormsong."What an idiot couldn’t see of the blood trail" --the elf’s voice came from somewhere above-- "a blind man could smell."Kate picked her way through the swimming pool’s worth of viscera to rescue her tracer off of the massive kuesi skull.
