Lucien can mostly make a living off of doing divining for certain niche medical studies, but he can't do specific enough conditionals to get his grander ideas off the ground yet. Still, when portals start showing up he's well positioned to suggest to a few people that diviners like him could be useful for quickly figuring out what conditions on the other worlds are actually like.
Still, they're taking a chance on Lucien by approving his application to join the expedition, so he definitely really shouldn't be late for his first day of work. He also probably shouldn't be running along a poorly maintained trail in Bolivia, but between that and the possibility of being late he knows which he prefers.
Well, which he prefers right up until he's tripped on a branch and sent tumbling towards the portal.
"Oh..." In retrospect it didn't make much sense for a purple portal person to know Spanish, even if the other end of the portal was in Bolivia.
"I um.... where is this?"
She points straight up to the ceiling. There is presumably a ceiling; there certainly isn't a sky. (The light doesn't really reach that far.) "Taldor?"
He also finds this concerning.
"I'm from New York - uh, Earth. I think this is probably a different planet."
Shrug. ...she reaches into her backpack, and pulls out a big cloak, and makes to put it around his shoulders.
She then collects the corpse of the thing that was on his face, rips a little hooky appendage from it, and uses that to clip the cloak more closed at about waist height on him.
She looks around. Waves her light-bearing arm a bit, then finds a pebble, says "uli" again while waving her hand, and winds up with the pebble glowing instead of the sleeve cinch; she offers him the rock.
"I-do you want me to throw the pebble at the portal?"
It has been a very long day. Except for how it's something like 9:10am and he woke up half an hour ago.
"Okay."
"Do you know if it would be possible for me to come back here later if I leave with you now."