It was at this inopportune time that someone new entered the room. Or strode into the room. His gait announced arrival.

He was tall and young, just on the cusp of manhood. He was beautiful - for that was the word that came to mind - and his movements seemed to dissipate excess energy and purpose, a necessary pressure-release valve on an underlying explosion.

He entered the space between two long shelves, moving quickly and without pause at the threshold. The sound of a book yanked from a shelf was faintly audible. He reached the end of the row and entered another. And another.

The number of yanked books and the number of passing minutes left in the library day - together these two numbers announced impulsiveness and indulgence.

He sat at a table across from Clo, his body striking the chair and his books striking the table with two thumps on the edge of indecorous. Running his hand down the pile of books, he pulled one from the middle, and began to page through it.

*flipflipflip*

He looked studious and focused. In three minutes he dropped it open on the table and selected another. And he did the same quick reading of each, intense, yet cursory. He managed almost half of his books in this way before the library announced closing time.

He did not react to the announcement, flipping through his book another minute, and then quickly closing each of the books scattered across the table, stacking them in a neat pile. He stood.

He gave a self-satisfied sigh, and his gaze turned purposefully towards Clo.

At first, Clo didn't notice the rustling.

People moved around in libraries all the time.
These marvelous places contained every iteration of existence you could fathom. It was definitely worth shuffling between them all if you had any taste for life at all.

What did draw her attention was the speed at which the familiar pages fluttered. The average human speed of reading was 2 minutes per page. Or more specifically, 250 words per minute. 

An average book counted between 60 000 and 100 000 words. If we considered an average was 80 000 words, This flipping was equalling roughly 53 pages per minute.

This could not be a person reading books, this was defiling.

She looked up again, expecting to frown in anger the way only librarians can. Lighting crossing the room from her eyes, signaling she would not tolerate disrespect in her sanctuary. 

He was staring at her.

For a second, Clo straightens her spine and draws herself back. The gaze aimed at her is not casual in any sense of the term.

In one instant, she was unwillingly drawn into his story. This realisation fought its way to the surface, clawing in its wake the remnants of the fear of being found, or the dread of facing outside reality. She forgot for a minute the gnawing need for dust that would help her face the outside world. 

Life.

Is this what it feels like?

She's been so focused on hiding all this time that the emotion is foreign somehow.

However, she has forgotten to turn off the frown.

The boy does not flinch. He keeps staring at her.

Reality sets back in again, and Clo finds herself rather disquieted. The sun has now set, she's supposed to close the library. The boy makes no move to signal he is ready to leave.

Pushing aside any thought that he may somehow know who she is, or what she is, Clo steadies her heart rate, breaks his gaze and aligns her books and papers on the desk in neat little piles. 

In muted movements, due to the velvetty materials she favors, Clo self-consciously glides towards the boy.

Her movements are restricted; nothing of her soul is expressed. Only that she hides is revealed.

Oh, but she comes. There's something there, at least. Worth fishing a little. He'll give her an invitation to come out.

"Howdy, stranger," he says, like it's an old joke between them. His eyes are bright and seem happy to see her. But the rest of his face and frame are still. He waits and watches, for a flicker, a hint.

"Howdy, sir"

Clo had long mastered the art of blending in to foreign cultures. 

Always copy the vernacular. Meaning will fit function and you can usually trust the local to use it appropriately. Since the boy followed his greeting with "stranger", it is fair to assume this is the appropriate form to use.

"I'm afraid we are past closing time."

This should suffice as an underlying message.

The boy smiles. He does not otherwise move.

That is frustrating. Conflict isn't exactly welcome with a propensity to see different timelines. Conflict means volatile action, and too many possibilities of decisions. But this is the library, and she feels safer in here. A slight push shouldn't be too drastic.

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I will close the door behind you." 

This sounds a bit harsh still, Clo smiles to signal kindness and a desire for cooperation. The buzzing starts growing outside the window anyway. Her words have had an impact and the consequences are already starting to unfold.

"Howdy," she returned. That was hopeful. But nothing followed up. He gave a smile of joyous discovery, but she seemed to be on-script after all.

"Of course, Miss," he spoke politely, turning towards the door and waiting just long enough that she instinctively began walking him there. Give another chance, that was the rule. Something flashier.

"A really wonderful selection of books, you have here," he spoke warmly. "I had a lovely time and am looking forward to coming back to work more on my project."

"Ah, yes, we truly are blessed."
Clo noticed the boy was still clutching a book, inlaid with green and gold leather. 
"You can take that with you then." and she gestured at the book. 

"Let me just..." Clo reached for the book, and grabbed the stamped paper from inside the it, then handed the book back to him.

"There, now i'll just have to log this checkout. I will do it right before I leave." 

She walked him towards the exit, holding the card. 

As they open the door, an explosion of possibilities floods the frame.

Clo had not been ready. The buzzing had been there, but she had been focused on the boy, himself more compliant.

Without thinking, she reaches in the pocket of her skirt, but nothing.

She fumbles in her other pocket, and still empty.

She starts to shake slightly, and swears under her breath.

Qucikly, Clo begs the boy goodbye, shoves him towards the door and walks briskly towards the book shelves.

Instantly as she turns, Clover lifts her right hand towards her heart and opens her left hand forward, nearly gasping out the words. The dust appears, shakily and and in fragmented leaps into her hands. It had become harder and harder to make it. she'd been abusing it for the last century, and it was starting to take a toll. That and the fact that she really was the only portal left. She could feel its power decreasing with every passing day. The panic was not making it easier. 

As if controlled by the trace of dust, she lets her hand fly towards her face and inhales the glowing dust. She had no time for dignity. 

Her eyes were closed. The buzzing faded away. Her skin tingled as she felt the air rest on it more closely. 

When she opened her eyes, the boy was standing agape in front of her with the book card in his hand.   

Well.

He closed his mouth.

He stood facing slightly away from her, his eyes resting on her, his face blank, his body still.

...

Was there danger here? He resisted the urge to look directly at the door, but mentally prepared to launch himself in the appropriate direction. He moved his new book from the hand nearest the door to the hand farther from the door.

This was some kind of drugs? Apparently she needed it really bad; her actions were so careless. But why was the dust glowing?

Radioactivity? No, that doesn't make sense. How else do you get glowing dust, then?

Was it worth experimenting with? Addiction was not a good move in the game. But worth knowing about, that was another matter. Here was a mystery and she held the answer. Better to avoid judging if he wanted cooperation.

"Well, I don't know how good this book is," his voice was...normal. He let his frame relax and his body shift a little, turning towards her with his hands at his side, one holding the book, not held defensively in front of him, and then leaned back a little, not approaching her immediately.

"But I can't imagine it'll be as interesting as this." The words came out conversationally, like nothing much had happened, but with a slight edge of cheeriness, like he was pleased. Approbation.

"Is that some kind of drug?" The key tone here was politeness, like he was being friendly and inquiring after her favorite book, even though he wasn't really interested.

No...

Think...

Of anything...

No.

NO!

Clo rushed her left hand towards her lips, and blew the rest of the dust in the boy's face. 

She was fast. His heart leapt and his mind screamed for his body to react. His legs were just twitching when the dust took effect. His vision exploded in a hail of splotchy, colored stars, and his muscles exploded throughout his body.

He collapsed, head pointing towards the door. Final thought: 

"Well, not a complete failure, then."

Oh dear.

How did this happen?

She'd always been so careful.
The boy had collapsed as soon as the dust hit him. It had seemed like a good idea. The only idea to be fair. 
In a sense, this was good. She had time to think now.

Little jolts of pleasure were juxtaposing her thoughts. 

I can always take him home, and pretend like we flirted.
Male humans tend to drink, and I am of suitable figure to be attractive to him.

But he had seen her.

All the more reason to take him home. She needed to keep him close.

Who would he tell? Who would believe him?

Clo looked at the door, and decided to lock it. Better not attract anymore attention.

She then went back to the boy and sat next to him. The dust was making its way deeper into her soul. Everything was aglow and beautiful.
Now is not the time to be high.
But she couldn't help feel something was strangely pleasant. 
She sat there in silence for a little while longer, studying the boy's face, seemingly in the throes of some unknown unconscious pleasure.
The dust had always been designed for humans. 

In a time long lost, it had been meant as a gift. It allowed the humans to see gates between realms. A few chosen ones over the centuries were given the dust and passaged from the fairy realms and the human realms.
Fairies didn't really need it. Most fairies had the capacity to see all realms, all timelines at all times.
But Clo had discovered that you could settle your gaze on one realm if you took the dust. Like a focusing drug of sorts. 
It also meant that your body was more firmly entranched in the realm in question, and felt everything more fully. 
In that time, humans would take very trace amounts from contact with the faires. Usually, this meant a fairy had taken a liking to a human and touched them while wearing traces of the dust to allow  this gift.  In this case though, she had sent him enough dust to overload his consciousness. 
The velvet of her skirts was moving slightly with every motion she set forth. It felt like cream on her skin.

Focus.

Well, I can't carry him home.
This will definitely be suspicious.
I can't leave him here.

It then hit her.

She probably still had strength to open a large portal to get him somewhere else. Somewhere safe.
Long enough to reason with him, or find a way to convince him to...

To what?

Not say he's been kidnapped and drugged by an addicted fairy?

There, just help him realise how crazy it sounds.

Decided, Clo got up, and proceded to gather books.
She didn't have any of the usual required material on her to open a portal, but she did have material at hand.
Incantations required semiotic power. Realms were all different, timelines evermore so. But what linked everything together was some universal constants of symbolism. Patterns. Representing those patterns allowed to make your way to a realm in which it was particularily powerful. Like a field of sorts. A circle of salt would have normally been used to delineate where the portal was to begin and end, but books would have to do. The rest of the semiotics could be carried through language, although that required a lot of learning. Clo had had a millenia to herself for practice. 
Clo laid the books in a circle around the boy, and stepped inside herself. 
She then placed her right hand on her heart, and pointed her left hand towards a book. She began chanting softly.

The books vibrated until each one made way for a different ground. Gusts of air started to seep through the burgeoning portal, caressing Clo's legs. Already focused on the words, clo lost the last part of her mind to the pleasurable gusts dancing with her skirts. 

If only she'd been more careful.

As she finished chanting, the boy moved in his unconsious state, and knocked aside one book from the circle.

It was like waking up from a dream. They dropped out of the portal with no sense of how long they'd been traveling, with the presence of surreal memories just outside the edge of consciousness, faintly felt and already-fading.

And into the shallow river they dropped. The boy's shoes had gone somehow (back at the library?), but he looked otherwise the same before, or did, before his head dropped under the river's rippling surface, his body coming to rest on the pebbled floor.

Clo somehow managed to land sitting upright.
Her legs had been cut beneeth her by the drop (and the shock).
Her head was now just above the surface of the water, looking somewhat annoyed.

She thought about getting up, but she was too exhausted to move. This portal had already been ambitious, and opening it to travel to an unknown distance and time had drained her entirely. 
She looked around to see where they had landed, but she couldn't recognize this realm. 
Blue trees were surrounding the banks until the eye could see. The water wasn't cold, and it felt as though it was passing through her body.
Somehow her clothes were wet anyway.

Her mind was coming to slowly, and she remembered why she was here.
Where's the boy?

He was nowhere on the banks, or above the water.

She still couldn't get up.

So she did the next best thing.

She let herself sink underwater, resting on her back, green sky stretching above her.

Looking around, there wasn't much to take in. 
Pebbles, weeds, fish, water, foot.

Foot.

The boy was not moving. 

seeing him gave her a jolt and she reached towards his foot. Climbing him, she dragged herself all the way to his face, held his head with both hands and heroically sat him upright too.

Now both their heads were swaying above the water, but his didn't seem too enthusiastic about it.

After all this trip, you would think he might have the decency to wake up.

She looked over at the bank. Groan.
Moving her grasp to his shoulders, she started kneeling her way towards the shore, hurting her knees against the moody pebbles. Once at the shore, she just dropped his chest and hers where she could be sure both their heads would be dry, and tried to make sure he was breathing.

He was not.

For a fragment of a second, she thought to herself that this might even be better?

But he looked so fragile. Groan Groan.

Slowly she rolled over him and pinched his nose. Inhaling, she opened his mouth with her other hand and brought her lips against his. 

A golden sun dawned in the darkness. Its light spread like honey, slow and sweet. A tranquil smile ghosted his lips.

At once, the light recoiled. He felt lips leaving him, lips he never got to feel come to his own. A tiny pang of loss managed to rush to the forefront of his feelings before being bulldozed by panic. His sense roared to life as his eyes flew open and he rolled quickly away from her.

He stopped with a hand and a leg under him, ready to spring to his feet. He looked at her, kneeling on the loamy floor, watching him back, her chest faintly heaving. The things one notices.

She stood up, fluidly, like she was relaxing into a standing position. The boy's breath stopped for a fraction of a second as he looked up at her, before resuming at a slightly slower pace.

He let out all his breath and then relaxed into a sitting position, before getting up himself, clapping his knees with his hands and stretching his back. His hands dropped to his sides and he looked at her, body still.

His voice was a bit softer now, and straightforward.

"What are you doing to me?"

She nearly felt guilty for waking him.
The boy had seemed so peaceful, compared to the poorly hidden  mask of horror now imprinted on his face.

"I'm sorry, I had no choice. I'm not going to harm you. But for now I need you to trust me, because we have a problem."

The boy started squirming again.

"I need you to stay calm, please"

She could see his body tense, ready to move away.

"What's your name?"

His lips tightened. 

"We have a problem, right." He turned away and lifted a palm to his forehead for a few seconds. She's acting awfully friendly for a kidnapper or...whatever this is. He had no idea what kind of kidnapping or event led to kidnapping someone and then kissing them in a forest (and why were they wet?). Just a regular kidnapping? It's not like he really knew what it looked like. 

But now she's acting like they're on the same side: "We have a problem." Delusional, possibly. Did she think she was in love with him? Wasn't she...did pretty girls kidnap people?

Better...better...better play along, perhaps. This seemed strange, too, but by all appearances, he could just run away whenever he wanted.

"Okay," he turned back to her. "Tell me about our problem."

No name. 
Fine, she'd give in first.

His response indicated he was wary of her, and probably with good reason.
This was an outlandish situation, and anyone was justified in running away screaming.

Whatever happened, she was probably going to be fine.
He, on the other hand, would not have so much luck.

All things considered, they had been lucky. 
This environment had oxygen to breathe, and it seemed like most matter around here seemed relatively neutral, so they wouldn't dissolve in the next few minutes. 

She did wonder about the composition of the water, and the worrying possibility that they may not be able to drink it, since it did not seem to interact with bodies the way water in their realms did, but this was a concern for later. 

As far as living threats went, she hadn't heard any noise, other than the odd tweeting.
This seemed like a fairly normal parallel dimension, to the extent that it was capable of housing carbon-based life-forms. 

"Well, My name is Clover", she said, extending a hand.

He looked at her hand, and waited for the answer to his question.

Stubborn.
She dropped her hand.

"And our problem is that we are not where I set us out to be. And so, not knowing were we are, I am unable to take us anywhere else."

He blinked at her, batting his perfect lashes.

She felt waves of heat rising. 

"This is not our most pressing issue though. We must find somewhere safe to stay, and sustenance if we are to continue. 
Luckily for us, I threw a lot of dust at you, and if it is still in your system, which it should be, you will be able to see portals. It's most likely we will find portals towards cities or any type of populated areas.
I'm not certain this realm is inhabited though, or if it is, that the people of this realm know anything about portals. In which case, I will make us one somehow."

Instead of staring blankly at her, the boy seemed to be intensely focused. She could see the bloodflow increase towards his temples. 

"But before we go anywhere, I need us to set something straight."

His eyes were now drilling holes into her skull.

"You need to promise me right now that you will not repeat anything you saw, to anyone, under any circumstance."

He regarded her a moment. It's not like he'd seen anything especially interesting so far. There was her drug thing, sort of, but hardly something he needed to concern himself with. The kidnapping was a bigger deal, true, but since that was ongoing, he could get away with not mentioning what had happened so far.

He came to a decision.

"I can promise that. I won't say anything, and I won't take any pains to interact with you again in the future." He paused.

She didn't immediately jump in, so he continued, turning a little to the side and speaking while looking into the distance.

"Your offer to go foraging together is kind, but I can't imagine we're really that far from the city, so I think we should each just make our own way home. How long was I out, anyway?"

On that last question, he turned his head, and watched her.

The dust was wearing off.

His question had forced the last out of her system.

She was at a threshold of too many possibilities and it was now unavoidable.
The buzzing was tingling on her skin again.

She could feel her heartrate increase.

On the one hand, she could grant him his wish and let him try his luck in this realm. Her problem would probably solve itself. 
This was such a cold way to go about life, and she winced at the thought. She could see trails of his path lead him up the river and beyond the horizon. She was not able to see whether or not he managed to find a portal anyway, which was the tiniest chance of him continuing to be a problem and not see very kindly to her.
She looked at his face, held up at her. He was so slender and pale. The green of the sky was streaking nicely in his auburn hair. She mused that in another time, they might have ended up here anyway. She couldn't bring herself to just leave him here.

She could also tell him half of the truth, since he did not seem to know much. Convince him to come along, take him home safely, and let him be. But there was no guarantee he was actually telling the truth, or that he would truly come along. At some point, where did his choices decide his fate? She had put him in this position, but if he refused an exit and kept placing his fate outside of the bounds of her help, was she still responsible? She could see his paths spread out in many ways, both leaving and staying. The plethora of possibilities were mixing together and it was hard to make out which choice made him stay.

The only thing she could be certain of was that this path led to a potential loss in trust with no capacity to control his actions past that point.

She could try to scare him into submission. There was a way to make promises binding. She could produce a symbol that would radiate throughout all realms, which made the promise inherently impossible to break since all realms would insure its outcome. Breaking the promise was utterly impossible, lest you remove yourself from the equation. However, it required an amount of energy she knew she did not have, and a willing sacrifice from both the participants. He did not know that, but this was a risky path that once again forced her to lie. She saw one of his paths comply to the fake spell, but past that point, too many paths were mixing together for her to make out any real clear outcome.

She was starting to have a hard time breathing. This choice was too ripe with possibilities.

Finally, she could just tell him the whole truth and let him decide. This would probably let her live in peace with his own choices, since he was given all he needed to carve his path, and since she had extended a hand once again. But this was throwing away the gift of his innocence. Since he knew so little, keeping him as ignorant as possible seemed ideal. But who was she kidding. The sky was green... The trees were blue... And who knows what other differences this realm housed. She could always claim that the dust had just given him a psychotic episode, but this would probably stretch over days, and the excuse would be difficult to maintain. By this point she could see his body split into so many paths that it was simply impossible to make out anything. She was surrounded by his many phenomenologies. Some were pleasant, and seemed enticing, others were not so, and made her question herself all over again.

She closed her eyes.

The truth it would be. 

So, that was the story. At least some of it was true, by all appearances. At least, it was true in the actionable sense that he was in an unknown environment. He was unsure if it was true in the sense that he should give up on making his way back to the city, or try to make his own way somewhere else. The blue trees were not quite weird enough to convince him of something as far out as portals and other worlds, but the green sky peeking here and there through the trees had hit him hard enough. Enough that he was walking through the woods with this...fairy...anyway.

Clo had insisted they start moving. He was suspicious of the rush of it all, a classic pressuring technique for keeping people from bringing to bear the whole force of their wits. But the sky was green...That didn't mean she was trustworthy, but it meant he didn't know what was going on, and she could probably take advantage of him if she really wanted. On the other hand, if she was on his side, better to make it easier for her to lead them to safety.

He wasn't really confident that this line of reasoning was right, but he could think almost as well walking as lying still in the quiet. He kept opening up his mind to possible missed points or considerations of danger, but nothing was coming. Either he'd already understood everything he could, or he was failing to see the insights available to him. Given the situation, there was a concerning chance that his mind was simply not working at full capacity, or, if it was, that it was ill-trained for this kind of event.

She was all he knew here, really. She seemed to be human in her psychology, so far. He didn't know if old stories about this kind of thing had any truth to them at all, but they also suggested that fairies and the like were basically humans, give or take a few abilities, and sometimes special rules they had to follow. Perhaps this was the way to approach things.

They were walking through the woods, stepping over large roots and moving circuitously through the most open spaces between all the plant life. Clo was a pace ahead. As the crow flies, they were making slow progress. Maybe that's why she was tensing up the way she was.

Clo was giving away little tells, more and more. It wasn't until the third time her arms moved in a sort of jerky way that he realized she'd done it twice before already. She was breathing more heavily - that could just be the hike, though. Same with the flush on her cheeks and forehead. He couldn't see much from behind her and off to the side, but it might have looked nice on her.

He was starting to get a feel for their method of transport. Their path was written by the forest, the trees blocking off almost every direction, and leaving one direction forward as the most likely. He took a few longer steps forward along the way he was confident they would have gone, and, having passed her, looked back at Clo. Yes, the flush was hot on her. Her face was also more strained, less controlled, and this made her seem more approachable as well, like she needed help. It was also worrying.

She looked up at him, mouth tight, and, considering his options, he spoke.

"Is anything I've heard about fairies or in other stories going to be any good here?"

His honeyed tone had managed to crack a smile on her lips.

What he'd heard.
She didn't need to ask.

Humans were a self-centered species.
While they had conquered all the space in their one realm they had essentially ruined many they couldn't even perceive. 
Their violence was often unchecked.
For centuries, these fragile creatures had hunted down anything that strayed in any way from humanity.

This had led to the destruction of most of the fairies in the realm. Over time, their population had dwindled, until there really was only one left.

But their appeal never ceased.
Humans, for all their flaws, were beautiful.

Their passion and curiosity was fascinating.
Fairies had long intermingled with their fates until it was their downfall.
Some stories over the millenia had been distorted, but their had some specks of truth to them.

"Probably not" she whispered, her face gradually falling.

It didn't matter what he knew. 
She didn't know where they were.

Without a clear idea of where they were, no amount of information about the origin or past of fairies would help.

Or anyway, she couldn't think so.

She was starting to feel somewhat overwhelmed.

She didn't feel like thinking about this past. Remembering the ones she had lost was bringing tears to her eyes.
She could feel threads pulling at different directions in the forest. 
For some reason she kept being pulled backwards. 
In some sense, she could feel the weight of fate like gravity pulling her into orbit.

She began to slow down her pace, following the gravity.
He got closer to her as their pace synchronised. 

"But I am not sure of much at this point".

They kept walking in half silence. From time to time he would ask a question about random stories, as though he were trying to piece together a puzzle in his mind. 

She did her best to answer, and every question dragged her a little lower.
The wood spread thinner.

And slowly, signs of civilisation marked a clearer path.

The buzzing intensified.

She waved for the boy to stop.

"I need to take a break".

The boy looked at her quizzically. They hadn't been walking for half a day.

"You saw me in the library. I need to take some dust. But I also can't risk taking any in front of more people."

"I thought you said you were exhausted?" he said, in a calm tone.

"I was... But this realm seems to be populated after all. It's all over the forest. And I can't keep going like this".

She took the dust and brightened back up again. Thorin hadn't realized how much she had...dimmed...until he saw her back to normal. He didn't think it was supernatural, either. She just looked like a human who wasn't depressed anymore.

A sound drew his attention. It seemed to be coming from the direction they were headed. He breathed lightly and listened. He thought he heard it again, but Clo moved at the same time and the sound of her covered the distant sound.

"Shush," he said, extending his hand in half of a stop gesture. She looked sharply at him, but he kept looking forward and slightly down, straining to listen, not reacting to her.

It occurred to him that it was presumptuous to speak this way and that he could explain himself to resolve the tension. None of this showed on his face. He was still.

Clo relaxed her face and neck, abandoning her gaze. Something was happening. She made another small noise as she did so.

"Dammit, woman," he cursed her incompetence in his mind. That might have been an unfairly strong reaction, he thought.

"Well, then it's a good thing I didn't say -" his ears alerted him. The sound came again. He was now moderately certain he had heard it a second time already when Clo was moving. It sounded the same. Like a great burlap bag full of soup falling hard onto pavement.

He looked at Clo, and she looked back, very still. Something was happening. The sound came a fourth time, and Clo's lips tightened. She stood up straight and looked into the distance.

Thorin followed her gaze. They saw it together, not looking at each other when they did.

It was like a floating pair of lungs, was the first thought that came to mind. They were a little ways off and coming closer. The sound occurred as they floated away from each other, empty space hanging between them, and then slammed together again with an organic thump. Each thump was coming in time, like a very slow beat.

They had already been coming towards them, but Thorin thought he saw a subtle shift, as they began to move exactly in their direction.

He looked subtly at Clo and found her looking back at him. Their eyes met and Thorin felt his body tighten. Now what?

Silence reigned for slightly too long, and Thorin started as he realized it. He whipped his eyes back to the lungs and saw them farther apart than before, and moving farther away still. They were coming faster as well. They stopped separating and maintained a constant distance between them of about 20 feet, "running" towards Thorin and Clo, each half cutting off one side of retreat.

"It's a flanking maneuver," Thorin said quickly. He took one step back, facing Clo now, but keeping his eyes on the lungs.

"Clo?" he said, his voice rising nervously.

They clearly knew where Clo and the boy were. There was no point in hiding. The creatures seemed to be moving rapidly, and there was no way that they could be outrun in an unknown forest. 
Perhaps they could be fought off. But with what weapons? An what a way to start off in a realm. 

Why then, cooperation it would be. Clo remembered that emulation was the best defense, and she grasped the boy's hand.
She then drew him closer and started swaying slightly away from him and back again. 

She had no delusion of this fooling the creatures, but she thought it might at least make them seem not entirely unfamiliar, and promote a form of empathy, if they could feel such a thing. This presumed a theory of mind. Then again , the creatures seemed to be applying a sort of human maneuver, implying they probably had similar ways of thinking. 

Clo started walking towards what seemed like a path, but had no actual ground marks. 
This made sense. The creatures did not seem to rely on they flesh to push away from gravity. Maybe there were other known forces here?

The boy followed, seeming like he trusted her. He had even started swaying himself, although whether it was because he had picked up on her swaying or because he was about to faint again, she had no idea. 

Eventually the creatures got close enough to seem incredibly large. They came to a stop a few meters away from Clo and the boy, far enough apart that it didn't seem like there was anywhere to run. 
Clo kept holding the boy's hand and stopped as well.

For a moment, an electric pulse ran through her starting from her toes, lingering in her brain. 

When the electric pulse stopped, the creatures opened a very small hole towards their midsection, and both shot out a subtle light beam from it.

Where the light beams touched, a humanoid silhouette could be made out. 
In weird meaty clicky sounds, something like language came out of both of the creatures at the same time, but was synchronised with the humanoid's movement.

As Clo did not seem to understand, the sounds stopped.
Another electric pulse ran through her and focused on her throat, lips and ears.

When the pulse stopped, the humanoid changed shape a little and the sounds coming from the creatures resumed.

This time, a language she understood came out.