With the familiarity of his handwriting taken away, combined with how difficult he is to read over text even in the best of situations, Julie starts to feel the panic rise in her body. It's one thing to be comfortable being alone with herself; it's a different thing entirely to fear abandonment. And no matter how many times he stays, no matter how directly he tells her that he won't leave her, the fear remains, a piece of her that's deeper than any single relationship. It's not logical, she can't simply will it away.

Normally, she hides it fairly well. After their discussion about the demon, she felt much more secure. Less terrified to upset him. But she knows when she has crossed a line, and that is where the ground becomes shaky for her. This wasn't supposed to happen -- she wasn't supposed to be sent back to the blob. Her hope had been that those notes would sit undisturbed long enough for her to return, in what should have been hours. That would have been best case scenario, of course, but she was prepared to have this conversation whenever she did get back to Cadens. Where she would be freshly returned and could utilize everyone else's relief in the discussion. Where she would be there. This particular situation had not really occurred to her, and once she got here, she didn't expect to be able to communicate with anyone else for a while. She was supposed to have more time to formulate her strategy, which would have included a lot of stuff she can't really do from a different plane of existence.

Fuck, she's not even sure how long she's been here.

Time seems to go on endlessly. She has no way to gauge it, not really. She waits until she starts having mild hallucinations (just lights and shadows, nothing she considers particularly bad) before she asks for him to just say hello once every few days. Just enough to keep her sanity in check. But otherwise, she initiates no conversation, does little to further the exchange when he says anything. Maybe if she's quiet, he can use the time she's stuck to stop being angry at her. Somewhere inside her head, it feels like, if she can prove that this adventure was about her, wasn't meant to put him at risk, then he'll still love her. He won't be so furious that he leaves her.

So she says nothing. Spends her time practicing magic, drawing in the sand. Talking to the blob, with her thoughts tightly locked inward, so they can't reach Geralt or anyone else by mistake. Honestly, she's felt worse in her life.

It's been eighteen days, fourteen hours and ten minutes since Julie put her hand on the monolith when she is abruptly thrown back into her physical body (though she herself is unaware of the timeline). It doesn't hurt to be returned by force rather than choice, but it is terribly jarring. Almost like a hypnic jerk from an especially vivid dream.

And it really doesn't help to have it happen in midair.

Julie's body is not ejected from the crater with any particular delicacy. The angle is not high enough to break bones on landing, but there is enough force behind her that she skids across the sand on her side for several feet when she hits. Ultimately, she ends up some distance past his little camp, coughing and gasping. Her arm and hands are badly skinned, her ribs ache from both the slide and when she went through the portal, but she doesn't have any severe wounds. Adrenaline fuels her to push up on her palms, trying to recover from the shock of it all.