The lean elf arches back at the sudden noise from the half-drowned woman, her eyes wide and her teeth bared in surprise.  "Gods' blood," Xen spits, then  lunges closer.  "Hey... easy, now."  Her coppery-skinned hands, a faint grit of loose sand on them, rest upon the woman's shoulders, firmly but gently restraining her-- it is not difficult to feel the strength in those hands, though perhaps a symptom of her own exhaustion.  Her narrow, angular brows furrow at the sight of the strange bruises on the woman's body, and her mind races to combine these details with what she hears.  "A hundred..." she swallows.  That's as many as her entire tribe... all lost?<br/><br/>She struggles to find a phrase in her mind to explain that how unlikely that would be, but without terrifying the young woman more than she already is.  A knot in Xen's stomach tightens at the notion, and her already racing pulse thuds in her ears... fear for themselves, for a wreck this size will draw the<i>wrong</i>kind of attention.  In fact... this could be a ruse.  Or she could be with an invading army... or she might be, quite simply, lying.  Or otherwise corrupted... she's beautiful, even half-drowned that much is clear.  What better way to--<br/><br/>The woman's sudden coughing fit and her expulsion of seawater snaps her back to the dire nature of the woman's condition.  Xen is no stranger to this kind of pain, and while she's borne witness to it her whole life-- much by her own hands-- she is not immune to empathy.  "If we see anyone, we will aid them."  Her accent, like the rest of her, would seem utterly alien to the castaway.  Her markings and chain-riddled leathers seem to mark the elf as a warrior of some kind, but she barely looks beyond her teenage years.  Her long hair hangs about her face in dozens of small reddish-brown braids, and every inch of her skin is a rich, coppery brown.<br/><br/>"Forgive me," she says in a soft hiss of breath, "but we must move from this place."<strong>Unless she resists</strong>, then, the castaway will feel a sudden sense of weightlessness as she's hoisted up, the patter of wet sand falling from her body barely audible over the lulling surf.  She finds her face resting against the small of the elf's bare back, her skin smelling of moss, fresh-split wood, and aloe plant.  There's a soft, metallic hiss as she lifts her weapon from the ground, from the awkward angle she can see that the elf hoists an axe with two blades the size of spade-heads in her other hand.  She will carry her to the shade, dragging any gear or salvageable goods by a rope behind her until they whisper through the palmetto and into the shade of the palms, banyans, and vine-drenched canopy beyond.