“Of all places to be during the summer, in the middle of a heat wave,” a young, vividly active woman said as she and a sturdy young man walked through red-hot flames inside a giant underground maze. The walls seemed to throb with intense heat, and the floor burned through their hide boots. The fact that they both wore heavy robes as elemental protection did not help matters.
“Quiet, Leya,” the young man scolded over his shoulder, as he was leading the way. "We don't need any unwanted visitors. I'm not in the mood for fire motes today."
Leya wiped her brow with the sleeve of her tunic. "Hey, this was your idea, not mine, Matthew. I have you to thank for my drenched tunic."
Matthew turned on her quickly. “Leya, call me Reaper. How many times have I told you that? We’re almost to the shrine’s center. Just be a little patient, will you?” he added, wiping his brow with his robe. “Sweat is good for your pores, you know.”
Reaper heard a dry laugh from behind him. "Sweating is good for your pores, but dehydration isn't good for anything. Unless, of course, you're aiming to store my meat for later meals."
"I don't eat Monans. You know that." Reaper bared a fang in a grimace back at his traveling companion.
"I don't know anything about foreign vampires, Reaper. Don't give me that look," Leya replied in defiance.
Now, here is the current version. In this newer rendition, I tried to keep the concept of "Leya annoys Matthew" but this time, less blatantly than before. After all, they'd been traveling together for a while and by now Matthew would be pretty used to her. She's not really that whiny, but it was a pretty bad condition for them to be in:
“Leya, I don’t like it any more than you do,” the man she traveled with said with the slightest hint of annoyance in his voice, “but Mitchell was still days away. It was just faster for us to get it ourselves and bring it to him. If you didn’t want to help, you shouldn’t have volunteered.”
The woman named Leya gave a harumph and pushed her dark bangs out of her eyes - they were plastered to her head, but were just long enough to get annoying when drenched with sweat. “I missed the action last time, Matt, I’m not missing it this time.”
“I told you to call me Matthew. You still won’t tell me what you mean by that,” the man she’d called Matt replied. “Just what is your relation to the incident two years ago, anyway?”
“Another time, please,” Leya replied in a pained whisper, “it’s too hot to talk here. Can we stop for a quick sip?” Before Matthew could reply, Leya brought her pack down from her shoulder and pulled out a skein of water.
Another note on this: yes, Matthew is a vampire, but he's a Monan vampire - in the new version of the story, this is fleshed out far better, and is kept a secret early on. That's why the second quote here has no mention of it.
After comparing the two, I've realized that I've made it more important that Matthew was annoyed in the original rendition. It's present in the newer version, but it's not nearly as relevant to their discussion. I think I'm okay with that.
Also, I'm dreadfully sorry about the lack of paragraphing - blogspot's editor has terrible formatting options. I'm trying to figure out how to do this without doublespacing everything.
