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Flame of the Forest

Scene details

Setting: In search of the Ankhialean village hidden near Oradia's eastern border, the Star Chasers have an unexpected encounter.

Log


 For once, the sweat upon Ivo's brow is not occasioned by humidity. He grunts as he steps high over a tangled teak root and continues his ascent up the gentle but continuous slope, pausing for a moment to catch his breath and glance over his shoulder at the jungles below. He can still see where the Romancing SaGa is anchored, their faithful magitech vessel having borne them this far but, at last, unable to continue as they leave the river deltas of Oradia behind. The Star Chasers' journey has taken them all the way to the furthest eastern reaches of the subtropical nation, far beyond where Rosia's dauntless merchants dare to venture, perhaps even beyond the reach of the vampiric Shadowguard.
 "I sympathize with the languishing spirits' distress," he idly remarks, "but I do wish the fallen of the ziggurat might have furnished us with more specific memories about their village's whereabouts."
 Upon defeating the Buried Vengeance and reclaiming a third, albeit damaged, piece of the Serpent Regalia, the necromantic talents of at least one of the party's resident vampires likely helped our heroes to discern the general location of what must be the Ankhialean redoubt, despite the passage of centuries. Elemental spirits and eidola may be very different in nature, but if Kernunnos is any guide, neither are easy to move once they have laid claim to sacred ground. Ankhiale hopefully resides where she always has, and with her, what remains of her people.
 "And you don't recognize any of this, oh Mother of Oceans?"
 Reize's pendant will flicker faintly.
 "No," Yacumama will simply say. "Nothing is familiar."
 "Well, doubtless you were cloistered as Kernunnos was," Ivo muses, taking a deep breath and continuing on. "He only knew so much about his druids' machinat-- activities. Oh."
 He murmurs in surprise as he ascends a crest and finds the party in a grove of palash trees, surrounded by beautiful bowers heavy with orange-pink blossoms and chirping birds. The slope is easing off and, on the far horizon, the party, caressed by a refreshing breeze, can glimpse the stunning view of the ocean to the south and the Twilight Canyon to the north, with the forests of Verdios beyond.
 "Well," he says, "there are worse places to wander."



  "... I think Ruidosa is still upset about our trip at the Ziggurat..."

  While Reize had been marveling at the fact that Yacumama has grown more sentient as if she's reconnecting with the world, his thoughts have lingered onto his very angry fiancee.

  How can he tell?

  Well, there is very likely a very angry blue bat attached above him giving him the biggest hug. ...With her teeth. Reize can be seen bleeding. His antenna hair is twitching, as if grasping out for 'heeeelp meee!'.

  "...Just a hunch." Ow. Ow. Ow.

 

Indeed, Ruidosa is gnawing at Reize's skull, wings hugged to his head and going C H O M P.

She is angry and upset at being a landing pad earlier for her fiance.

When they finally get to the top she looks up and with a flutter of wings backwards and away from Reize, releasing him from his torment, with a poof and a cloud of blue smoke she turns back into a humanoid form and brushes her clothes off and says.

"Mother can probably help repair the piece we found or she knows someone who can. Tranquila would probably offer. Don't take the offer. She'll make it explode." she says. Ruidosa La Crima warns.

Madona! Is still on the Romancing Saga, sipping from a coconut, being attended to by a giant undead monkey fanning her.

Ruidosa looks out to the view and blinks. She opens her tome and starts sketching rapidly what she sees into the last page she was already writing. Sketch sketch sketch sketch. It's important to document what she sees! It's so pretty!

"Agreed." she says to Ivo. She says to Reize. "Suck it up, you're fine." is he still bleeding?

  • Character: Atl
  • 1 week, 2 days ago

The thing about remaining quietly, shamefully cloistered for centuries, is that this only works if the cloistered party is able to construct a passable fortress for their solitude. It's not easy to contain fire - indeed, fair argument can be made that all of reality is a delicate balance in part for this very purpose - and Ankhiale is *fire*. A hearth must be strong, resilient, careful in construction, and, in order to escape the eye of idle passers-by, let alone those directly seeking its comforting light and churning, life-sustaining heat...

It must be ensconced within its environment. Completely camouflaged, from all but a single angle.

Just like the girl watching our hapless, but endlessly-happening, adventurers. She's not succumbed to jungle madness, but if she had they'd be none the wiser. Her outrageously skinny, featherweight frame is both perched and nestled in the bole of a great tree that rises alongside the crest they occupy. The upper branches spindle outwards, seeking persistent growth, forming a jagged crown at the base of which sits, her dark skin blending against shaded bark, a native Ankhialean.

Atl wears a small frown, less of concern than simple interest, shifting her bare - and profoundly calloused - feet gently against their hardwood foundation. Her lips, even if they could be seen, are unmoving, but she's communicating--

--and then panicking, the frown expanding along with her big, bloodshot carnelian eyes.

Slender, probosci-like digits pat down her simple linens. Something is *missing*.

Oh, oh no.

That something is weaving languidly through the palash trees, gleaming white-hot against a warm horizon.

They seem... distracted, she thinks. Perhaps she still has time!

The sketching Ruidosa is looking in the *exact direction* that the errant wisp is slowly approaching from.

Ivo Galvan rolls 1d20>=10.
Comment: Perception: notice and react appropriately to the fire wisp
Roll(s): 4. Total result is 4. This is a failure (by 6).

  • Character: Daiby
  • 1 week, 2 days ago


"It's actually interesting to consider why they did not, Ivo," says DAIBY, who is rocking around with several snakes on her body. That trusty red racer who is coiled in her long somehow-still-elegant hair, like a living hair-clip. The vantablack constrictor around her forearm. The refulgent flame-boa around her neck.

Daiby is also sweating. It's kind of hot, this situation right now.

"From a spirit's perspective, the geography of the world is very different," Daiby huffs. "Consider how a bird living in a particular forest would experience the world - trees, likely, and the sky. They'd probably have some sense of the currents of wind and thermal rising of air. These are very important to the bird's way of life!"

"Now consider a snake with a burrowing habit," Daiby huffs out. "They'd have almost no concern for wind currents, save perhaps if a particular area had hazardous winds, but they'd be FAR more concerned about the soil and the rocks."

Daiby then falls quiet as she keeps on clambering. Her eyes turn to Reize as he speaks. While Daiby is a big ol' sugar beet, there is a certain look in her face, something perhaps more collegiate, of 'well, yes, one would think...' But she doesn't voice it aloud.

"At... at a certain point we'll be at a central point, yes? And then we can spiral out from there," Daiby continues, "and, and this is the IMPORTANT part, sit DOWN for a few minutes..."

The ruby-red snake in Daiby's hair looks towards Ivo. The look on the snake's immobile face, quite clearly: 'well /I'm/ doing fine.'


 Ivo nods with a placid smile to Ruidosa, basking in the view with her, appearing totally indifferent to Reize's suffering. Eventually, he will look to their fearless leader with mild concern.
 "Honorable Yacumama," he remarks, "I don't suppose you've awakened to any convenient abilities like healing, have you?"
 "Not to my knowledge," the eidola, unperturbed by his prying, replies.
 "Well," Ivo says with a slight shrug, "at least Daiby's new Flame Boa could cauterize the wound." This sounds like a cure far worse than the disease. He takes the opportunity to look to their lovely companion and listen closely, his aural attentions not in any way diminished by the visual appeal of her sweaty state, for Ivo is quite practiced in appreciating all aspects of his admired senpai. "You're of course quite right," he gamely responds. "My wishful thinking was nothing more than that."
 But a true gallant would accommodate for the lady's needs. With Ruidosa already sketching and Reize doubtless needing to nurse his grievous wounds, Ivo scans the grove, glancing up to check the skies as well.
 "Shall we recuperate among the flames of the forest?" he quips, taking a moment to observe how the vivid blossoms frame the breathtaking horizon. "I can crack a water elesphere for refreshment if we-- mm?"
 There, he spots it, drifting closer to Ruidosa as she sketches, what appears to be a little fire elemental, if of unusual depth and hue for one so small, the size of a juvenile yet, to an experienced eye, with subtle features more characteristic of ancients.
 "Oh, how lovely," Ivo remarks. "Like an early setting sun."
 Yes, the wisp does look quite aesthetically pleasing framed against the horizon like that. Maybe Ruidosa can capture it in her sketch too.

Reize Seatlan rolls 1d20>=12.
Comment: Do I notice the wisp in the midst of agonizing pain?!
Roll(s): 12. Total result is 12. This is a success (by 0).

Ruidosa La Crima rolls 1d20>=10.
Comment: Resist Panicking at Approaching Fire.
Roll(s): 17. Total result is 17. This is a success (by 7).



 Unfortunately, Reize is still bleeding. However, he has gotten used to this by now. His antenna hair does, however, droop in relief now that Ruidosa has no longer attached herself onto him.

 Reize looks over towards Ivo and the others with a frown.

 Despite the pain residing, he does see something off the corner of his eye. "Huh?" There appears to be a movement of fire approaching. "Eh?" He raises an eyebrow, then he turns to the sight of the errant wisp.

 "Oi! Guys!" Reize calls out, approaching the wisp. "...At least, it doesn't seem hostile? Just curious?"

 

Ruidosa is sketching, indeed, when a FIRE wisp approaches, a tiny FIRE elemental!? And she takes a deep breath and tries not to panic but suddenly she's moving and placing Reize between herself and the tiny elemental. She is at least, not having obvious panic.

"Huh." she goes. "I wonder why it's approaching us." she says.

She pauses her sketching for now and wonders at the wisp in the moment.

"...we probably shouldn't bother it unless it bothers us first. It just looks like a baby sprite wisp." she says. "I'd feel bad trying to destroy it."

  • Character: Atl
  • 1 week, 2 days ago

The solitary wisp - and truly, such it is, a mere mote. An aloft ember, burning bright and unmistakably *hot*, but woefully small. It gutters as it's noticed, too, like a candle flame extinguishing itself for just the flutter of a heartbeat before the flame sustains itself through an endemic panic of its own. Is it... afraid?

Suddenly, it swoops, executing a playful loop-de-loop as if to embolden its own flagging spirits. The resulting dive carries it directly past the trunk of a pashal tree, where it leaves a noticeably charred mark, and then - whoosh! It whips in an arc well away from Miss La Crima, but carrying it quite close to Ivo. The scholar-knight will notice the heat, for sure, but there's something else - as it passes him by, it angrily *sparks*, making a savage little buzz. A warning pulse? Fury?

Or, perhaps, more fear. They are oft the same.

Up in her tree, Atl purses her lips, her frame so tense she begins to shake as she pulls her shirt against her torso. A similar buzzing sounds from within the taut sackcloth, and something - a couple of somethings - wriggle around in there.

Please, she thinks, please behave. Don't make me...

  • Character: Daiby
  • 1 week, 2 days ago


Daiby's eyelashes lower as she is mentioned along with the flame boa. The lambent snake slithers upwards, like a caftan, surrounding Daiby's neck - uh oh. And then, she huffs, "I would ADORE some wat... oh?"

Daiby turns her head and sees the wisp. The Flame Boa's head turns to look. So does the ruby racer, peeping out of Daiby's head-top. "Oh it's so cute," Daiby breathes. Back to Ivo: "Why /are/ there so many open flames out here? I know in some areas gases from deep within the earth rise and ignite..."

this particular information must have had nothing whatever to do with snakes

"Mm," Daiby agrees with Ruidosa, before... it blooms... swoops... And Daiby's eyes follow it. after it lands near Ivo, she says to him with a warm smile, "I think it likes you, Ivo darling! you may want to step --"

She looks upwards.

Daiby sees a nervous girl in modest but well decorated clothing, holding a bag of something wiggling and dangerous.

Her expression cracks into a big sisterly :D but she does not actually speak beyond raising a hand to waggle some fingers. Nervousness! Daiby knows nervousness.


 "Perhaps it senses our lovely Daiby's new attunement and wants to try on a serpentine form for a change," Ivo quips to Ruidosa, before grinning lopsidedly. "The salamander we rescued from the chaos in Rosia's marketplace caused by that suitor of yours was certainly fond of her."
 The Cosmopolitan reminisces about their heroics in the wake of Gallito's brash procession that toppled the merchant's cart containing fire elementals, including said laconic salamander. He had looked into the trade in fire elementals and learned that they are sought in the eastern reaches of the nation and, when captured, brought westward to the capital, wondering if the legendary Ankhiale might have once met such a fate but finding no evidence of this and concluding that sapient elementals are sufficiently rare that such an event would have been uncovered by his investigations.
 "Their population is surely greater here, further from the reach of Rosia's traders," he observes. "Or maybe we are closer to our goal than we... hmm?"
 The apparent aggression of the questionably-juvenile wisp at last gets Ivo's proper attention, the magitechnician ceasing to Just Vibe and begin to take the unusual scenario more seriously. Without alarm but with a slight furrowing of his brow, Ivo reaches into a pocket and withdraws what appears to be an empty elesphere, lacking any of his alchemical tools' usual hue. In his palm, it pulses red in the direction of the flitting wisp, seeming to follow it--
 "What...?"
 --and then glows redder still on top. He glances up.

> BGM (from Ivo's perspective, at least): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJqoXz1E5VQ

 "Wh...!"
 The thus far composed dilettante looks visibly taken aback, an unusual enough occurrence that this alone might get his party members' attention. Ivo gazes wide eyed up at Atl, his makeshift detector seemingly having identified a still greater concentration of fire aether in her close vicinity. Instinctively looking to Daiby again, Ivo sees that his senpai is already waving at the girl. Figures.
 "Would you like some water too?"
 And so he calls that up to Atl, putting away the empty elesphere and, taking what seems to be an empty canteen from his belt, cracking a blue elesphere inside and instantly filling it to the brim. Convenient!



  Reize is standing between Ruidosa and the fire wisp. He expected Ruidosa's reaction, so he tries to redeem himself by keeping the distance between the two. He watches it move towards Ivo, with draws a curious glance. However, the sudden turn of aggression confuses the boy.

 ...Until he hears something from the tree.

 "Ah...?"

 He looks over towards the nervous girl in such decorated clothing. "... Oh! I guess we found one of them!" He looks over towards Daiby handling the interaction, giving a warm smile. "Maybe this will go smoothly. Daiby's good with people!" He decides to let Daiby, who had already taken the initiative, handle the diplomacy with the local stranger.

 

Ruidosa La Crima rolls 1d20-3>=10.
Comment: Hey I'm Also Good With People! ('No She Isn't' Modifier.)
Roll(s): 11. Total result is 8. This is a failure (by 2).

Ruidosa La Crima is watching the wisp and as it nears Ivo. She's sure it's fine. It isn't trying to ATTACK them after all and then everyone is looking up and making suddden observations of something and she looks up and 'ohs!'.

"Hello! Yes, we're looking for a village do you know where it might be!?" she suddenly just blunders out while Daiby tries a more diplomatic approach.

Yes I'm sure this will go well and isn't ruining any sort of plan Diaby had to be tactful.



  "... Ah." intones Reize, his antenna hair drooping, after Ruidosa interjects with her usual bluntness.

 

  • Character: Atl
  • 1 week, 2 days ago

And just like that, the unseen becomes seen.

Panic just as quickly becomes resignation, which - on what the party will now clearly see is a child, or at most a late-blossoming teenager - rapidly spins into something instinctively more open to interaction courtesy of Daiby. Some people are just good with kids. Atl's big lips pull into a quirky grin that reaches her bloody carnelians for only a moment before she harnesses her will with a whiplash glance to the busy, buzzing wisp working loops around Ivo's flank.

Whatever else the wisp is to her, it's *important*.

The girl braces herself with a sharp intake of breath, through nose and mouth both, nostrils flaring and breath quivering as though she means to suck in the very strength of the jungle itself. Perhaps she does. Regardless, it spurs her to slip with practiced grace from the tree's bole, in mid-fall snatching at the strap of her little haversack - which to this point resembled nothing more than a nutty fruit hanging from a neighboring bough - and carrying its burden to the next protuberance down. The jungle is ever noisome, but the pitter-patter of Atl's bare feet is quite audible as she sprints along a massive branch, and clears her way to the party amidst the pashals with an animalistic, springing leap.

She comes up from a roll, her aspect wild; a mountain of tumbling curls threatening to drown her monkey-lithe frame were it not held back by feather and beadwork atop a tautly-packed, oversized linen cap, limbs rippling with small-but-highly-toned muscles. Were she not dressed in very simple but very human clothes, *had* she succumed to jungle fever...

She'd be all too easily mistaken for some beast of the jungle.

For a second she even bares her teeth, a little dirty like the rest of her - despite her attire, she clearly spends much time living wild and free - but as she straightens it would appear this venom is not aimed at the group of adventurers. One skinny arm thrusts out, toward the errant wisp, and with the motion two more tumble from the confines of her shirt, bizz-buzzing excitedly around her as with a snap of aether she lays a sorcerous demand upon what may well be her ward.

The power she wields, it's... curious. She has an aura but it manifests as a nearly-invisible, hollow pulse, and clearly she's manipulating power without as she calls the wisp to her. Whoooosh! It whips past Ivo again, weaves between Reize's legs, and this time passes all too uncomfortably close to Ruidosa before it pulls to an immediate and playful halt, dancing between Atl's outstretched, sinewy fingers. And there she stands, three white-hot wisps smoldering around her...

Her eyes, burning similarly bright and bold, settle on all of the party *except* Daiby.

She's trying to look cool and scary, she doesn't want to look at the nice lady.

So she comes to rest on Rui, frowning sternly and giving a single shake of her head. She's actually politely declining the offer of water, but it just so happens to look like she's denying the vampiress' request. Sometimes, fate blesses us.

  • Character: Daiby
  • 1 week, 2 days ago


Ivo is speaking about things Daiby wasn't focusing on. Uh oh, Daiby thinks, I should synch up so they don't know I was thinking about Hellsnake Yano. She smiles about the Salamander, letting out a theatrical sigh - she remembers it now!

"It does make sense that reptiles have such fondness for fire," Daiby asides, quietly, due to their near-present guest. "But I wonder if we'll find them in snowier areas if our journey should take us there." And then...

Ivo is offering water. Will that be taken right? Water to a fire has its implications. Her eyes flick to Reize for a moment and she winks at him because she cannot think of anything else to do. Oh no! Work! Daiby panicks briefly internally, though it does not reach her noble face, the dark skin elegant and flawless despite the travails of travel. Rui speaks up, and Daiby says, with a clasping of her hands, "We've had quite a long journey, so do forgive us if we seem impatient or fatigued. We are certainly a bit fatigued!"

Atl moves. Descends. Rustles and approaches. Daiby stays there, and if her smile gets a little brittle as Atl moves nearer in that wild, cautious way, she can perhaps be forgiven. You never quite know until you do. Though she does brighten at the other wisps before she says, "I see you have your own friends... so do I!" She rolls her right wrist, which makes the vantablack snake peep up. The one on top flicks their tongue in a serpentine 'heya'. The Flame Boa does nothing because it's still kinda tuckered out.

Atl shakes her head.

"Oh... you're welcome to sit with us," she continues, speaking a hair more slowly and adding some hand gestures. "We, will sit here, for a little while, and then we will find where we are going. We don't mean to make noise or upset you, or to upset your friends."

She does an open-handed gesture at the wisps. "What do you call them?"

Daiby adds, perhaps for clarity, "Speaking," touching a fingertip to her throat and then turning her hand around to encompass Ivo, Reize and Rui. She holds up her hand, and points at that snake and the one in our hair. "Snake. And, snakes!" Then a hand over her heart: "Daiby." Her hand gestures outwards as if to invite Atl to introduce herself!

or say something

please say something, Daiby prays

ppllleeeeeaaaaassseeee say something

  • Character: Daiby
  • 1 week, 2 days ago

Daiby rolls 1d20+3>=10.
Roll(s): 4. Total result is 7. This is a failure (by 3).


 Ivo, as if playing along with Atl's attempts at intimidation, looks somewhat shaken. In fact, his thoughts are elsewhere, as they too often are. He of course recognizes her beadwork, their first and often fruitless lead in finding the Ankhialeans' hidden home. What surprises him is that he feels that he recognizes her facial features. This girl strikingly resembles the young woman they had met in Rosia, first assisting the clockwork merchant whose wares they perused, and then almost surely being the one who assailed them with the devastating fire magic of Purgation in the waterways beneath the Hanging Gardens, the most likely suspect in the bombing of the capital's royal palace which delayed the Vampire Ball.
 Could such similarity be mere coincidence?
 Now it is Ivo who feels like he needs to catch up on what is happening. He tunes in right about the moment that Daiby is coaxing the girl as she shakes her head and, as if in support, he calmly and slowly takes a seat on a small pile of fallen leaves and petals, literally sitting here. He just smiles passively, staying quiet, highly accustomed to backing Daiby up and not getting in her way, for better or worse, whenever she sees fit to take the lead.
 But secretly, Ivo weeps under his amiable mask, for Reize has hurt his feelings. Ivo is good with people too. He has a super high Charisma score. Sure, he also impulsively talks about whatever interests him or piques his curiosity, which has a weird and mysterious tendency to annoy acquaintances, as if they don't like having their secrets pried into. Strange. Well, there's no accounting for taste.



  Reize had noticed the wisp's movements curiously going past the group, tilting his head over before watching the scene unfold.

 Oh no. This is not going well. First, it was Ruidosa's bluntness that started the conversation to go south.

 And it looks like that Daiby may need some help. So that is why Reize decides to step up to try to recover the diplomacy that Daiby had set forth.

 "Ah!" The young man reaches out a hand, which appears empty at first. However, with a flick of a wrist with the sleight of hand, he manages to produce a banana out. He drops to a knee over to at least level himself to make the girl appear bigger.

 "We just want to make friends. We're travelers, and... a bit lost. We mean no harm."

 

Reize Seatlan rolls 1d20.
Comment: Turning the Diplomacy Back Around
Roll(s): 7. Total result is 7.

Ruidosa La Crima rolls 1d20>=10.
Comment: Resiting the urge to be rudeosa?
Roll(s): 10. Total result is 10. This is a success (by 0).

Rudiosa's eyes kind of focus on the girl and when she shakes her head no, her own expression changes to one of just very faint annoyance. She manages to not utter commands or threats to the no, trying to channel her sister's temperance, and mostly...''mostly'' succeeding at it. It's all she channel of her sister's however.

"She can clearly understand us. To some degree at least." she says, as she considers.

"Can you take us to your parents? Maybe they'll know where we need to go, young lady?" she asks, trying to give a fangly smile.

  • Character: Atl
  • 1 week, 2 days ago

Atl's intimidation tactic might be worthy of a greater result were she not seventy-five pounds and clearly running on desperate instinct from whatever it is that's got her so riled up about wisps one, two, and three. Her stealth is honestly exemplary, her agility nothing to scoff at, but she's incapable of maintaining composure under scrutiny. Nervous glances shift amongst her flock, she wets her lips as her mind cogs turn; her poise otherwise, 'cool' as it is, does very little to sell the lie that she's formidable and these people should be scared of her.

It's also *really hard* to keep ignoring someone when they're talking so much, and Daiby *smiled* at her! And she has snakes! Nobody who lives in the jungle is afraid of those little guys. They're so dumb and cute and so clearly prey animals that need protecting from their own moronic instincts... and just like that, again, the show falls apart. The curtain falls.

Atl is frowning sternly one moment, and grinning shyly the next, not just due to Daiby either - her big, open features betray every bit of empathy the small girl has. Her aura has a potency to it, but it's her *humanity* that is most palpable. She's out here in the jungle because she cares for it, she's been watching these people and caretaking these buzzing, itinerant wisps because she *cares* so deeply about whatever it is that she cares *about*.

And because she cares so much, there's a part of her that can't but melt into concern for the woman.

Is... is she okay? She looks to the snakes, asking them because she gets the strange and compelling sense that they maybe have more insight into that than Daiby herself, at least in this precise moment. Snake, snakes? Is this woman okay?

It's Reize that answers in that moment. And makes the girl honestly, openly *laugh*. A sound! From her throat!

With a roll of expressive carnelians, she steps forward - the wisps crowding around her shoulders - and pulls both hands delicately up to receive the sacred gift of banana. Mischief gleams all over her, and the wisps seem abuzz with what may well be giggles as the Ankhialean bows her head, then turns-- to Daiby.

Into the openly gesturing hand is pressed the banana, and she patpats the nice lady's anxious digits. As if to say, it's okay.

Stepping back, she breathes a sigh, then draws in a big, chest-expanding breath as if preparing herself to deliver some kind of proclamation. You know, speaking. The wisps take up an almost defensive position, forming a triangle of diminutive, white-hot force around the tan girl's face. A moment passes, and she still hasn't spoken.

Ruidosa asks her question, and a fleeting emotion taints what was becoming a tight and focused expression. Lips tug downwards, frown returns, and then Atl wakes up. Determinedly, and just as focused, she lifts a single fingertip and waits before jabbing at the wisp to her right. Into the tiny white-hot blaze goes her finger, emerging unharmed along with a single, spoken word.

Perhaps less spoken, than summoned. It seems to come from all around the party, not loud - just equally audible to all.

"We," it says, as Atl's finger jabs again at another wisp, "See," and again at the third, "You."

The perceptive may note, this isn't a complete sentence, almost as if the Ankhialean were splicing single words from other sentences to form her own. Perhaps that's why it takes so long, as she pauses again, forestalling the party's interjection with a *look* that goes primarily to Rui - the two boys seem quite polite, and Daiby should be busy with her banana.

Jab.

"We."

Jab.

"Take."

Jab.

"You!"

That last word is alarming, furious in its interjection, rising with a ferocity that seems almost a thread.

But Atl is smiling, bobbing what might pass for a helpful curtsy, in jungle body lingo.

  • Character: Daiby
  • 1 week, 2 days ago


Daiby, tragically, cannot help Ivo in this moment. His feelings must ache. They will be salved with tender sempai huggles later. She may be wearing a bikini then. That seems to cheer Ivo up for some reason.

Her eyes move towards Reize, who speaks with the spiritual honesty that's really made him stand out, despite his unprepossessing height (if you don't count the ahoge). Daiby nods once. Slightly. Her eyes turn to Ruidosa. "It's dangerous to assume that it's full understanding," she says in tones of warning. "I'm certain she's perfectly clever, but languages can be tricky... in some languages, asking where the toilet is will insult someone's mother."

is that true daiby
(yes, but very marginally; don't ask)

But Daiby's eyes turn then back to Atl as she keeps examining her wisps. Frowning. Grinning. Watching her. She's not looking upset, Daiby thinks, so there's progress. She puts a hand on her hip for a moment, straightening up and smiling... smiling... KEEP SMILING...

The snakes don't seem to bother Daiby. If you didn't see them move (well, other than the Flame Boa, who is new) they'd probably pass for jewelry. Daiby has a lot of snakes on the boat. Why did she bring so many snakes? Reize may have asked that question. The answer is that nobody knows. At least there's no mouse problem on their ship.

Breathe in. BReathe out.

"Yes," Daiby echoes when Atl affirms WE SEE YOU.

And then she says they take you. As in, we take you. As in, wait, no, Daiby thinks, as in she (they?) take US!

A hand goes over her heart. Her eyes widen!

Then Atl curtsies.

Daiby does just the same. "We would be HONORED," Daiby affirms, speaking immediately for the entire party.


 Ivo can't help but grin at the fluctuations in Atl's features, her expression akin to a burbling brook overflowing with all too evident emotions. As one who habitually self-governs only to inevitably betray his true feelings one way or another and stew in self-doubt and regret, he can't help but feel a deep and immediate affection for one who seems to wear her heart on her sleeve, or whatever the Ankhialean fashion equivalent. Such impulsive exuberance, and what was once his envy of it and now simple fondness for it, may well be what most drew him to Reize in the first place, beyond shared circumstance.
 "Oh..."
 What hasn't changed is how Ivo forgets himself, for despite his intended commitment to support Daiby by conspicuously sitting down in a non-threatening way, he cannot help but instinctively start to rise to his feet at the way Atl begins to communicate: through the medium of wisps themselves. The Cosmopolitan's eyes widen yet wider than before, his jaw even dropping.
 "How...?"
 He breathes this out, marveling. He has witnessed many wonders on their travels but new ones amaze him no less. He is aware of elementals without sapience that cannot communicate and elementals with sapience that can. He is not aware of anything in between. The notion of a human that could communicate *via* elementals is utterly novel. Ivo attends all over again to the peculiar quality of these wisps, how they seem to have some features of juveniles and others of ancients, how they evince independent temperament yet seem so attuned or tethered to the girl.
 "...Indeed."
 At Daiby's curtsey, Ivo, remembering himself, smiles warmly and leans in a polite bow. He certainly does not attempt to ask any of these questions of Atl. One can only imagine how laborious such a response might be if it were even possible. No, instead, he will do what he does best: appreciate the anticipation of future learning.
 "Ivo," he then says, placing his hand to his chest. "Charmed."
 Both about this girl and, at last, the hidden hearth of Ankhiale.