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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.
He drops about ten feet and hits solid rock. The sound of the impact echoes a bit; if he were a bat he might know anything about the shape and size of his present location but as it is there is no light at all.
Lucien lots out a short scream upon landing, which would also help if he were a bat.
He didn't hear anything crack, so that's good??? He sits u-nope not time for sitting up yet, it's time for curling up on the ground itself.
The cave does not object to this behavior.
The echoes die down. ...not all of the sounds are gone but that might be his imagination. Squelchy rustling? Distant footsteps?
It's pretty firm in this position. So to speak.
Then there are footsteps - muffled by the face-thing, so they must be pretty close - and a shout, and then Lucien's left ear is really really cold even with the thing on it, and it loosens for a moment, enough that he could gasp -
Not for long! It clamps down again. Then there's another flash of cold - and then it relaxes, and something yanks it away from his head.
"...gria." Sigh. "Uli." And then there's light, not much of it but enough to be blinding for a moment in the blackness.
When he's blinked the spots away, there's a purple woman with white hair wearing loose pale clothes cinched up around her arms and legs. The light is emanating from a cinch near her left elbow.
Wave wave.
"Dasar jiam." A complicated wave of the hand. She cups a hand over her ear and makes an encouraging gesture at him.
... well, the portal was in Bolivia.
"Hablo ingles?" he asks, putting his elementary school Spanish to use.
