Sure, seashell. I hope I get a chance to pick the bullet some other time.
You can pick the bullet here if you pick the bullet back out there, so to speak.
Hasala reaches out and takes the seashell, raising it to head-level and looking at it closely if possible.
You both pick up the shell and hold it up to look at it. But as your eyes focus on it, it fades away, vanishing and replacing the world of swirling blues and grays with a much more solid one.
You're in a room, a metal shack by the look of it, one shot through with rust holes like sheet metal swiss cheese. Light of late afternoon or early evening pours down through the holes in the ceiling and back wall, and brings with it a cool breeze and the smell of saltwater, dead fish and rotting kelp. You're both in different bodies then you're used to: tan skin, half genetic, half the fault of the sun, and naked from the waist up. Rough cloth pants, rolled up to just below the knee are your only article of clothing, beyond a red head tied around Hasala's head to keep knotted black hair out of his face. Jason find himself sitting in a cot, staring up at the ceiling with his mouth open as though he was in the middle of saying something, and Hasala is sitting at a table, tucked under one of the sunbeams, a small screwdriver in one hand, and some sort of little machine sitting half disassembled in front of him.
The two of you sort of look around, confused, for a few seconds before a loud banging comes from the door to the shack.
"Jel, Shan, Open up!"
It's a woman's voice, and she sounds insistent.