Yuki!
It feels like it takes entire days for Aadya to answer. She stares down into her teacup, slowly swishing the dregs at the bottom as if trying to divine the future, to see which route the stars have declared for Thellamie. I'm afraid it doesn't work like that, darling, not unless that terrible old bird brings down more dictates from those self-obsessed stick-in-the-muds. And yet she tries anyhow, or at the very least that's the vibe, as you kids say. Some people might say that there's not much going on in her head. (I'm looking at you, Miss Fullbright.) But her thoughts are grinding along like stone on stone, slotting into place.
"I wish they hadn't chosen him," she concludes. "Why couldn't it have been you?" Her hand reaches across the table: a bid for companionship, for solidarity, for acknowledgement. "Why not you? You trapped Azaza, you know our world, you could have chosen someone to be tamed by and we'd be done with the whole thing, and we could worry about the maids making some new bid to impress their sleeping dragons afterwards. And the Khagan! The Queen of Light would..."
Her voice dies. She can't make herself assert that a Queen of Light would see the Khagan as a problem to be solved. Not when there's other things to turn her hypothetical hand to, not when the Paladins might be able to handle things on their own, not when there are problems that Aadya hasn't taken it onto her own shoulders to try and fix.
Her finger brushes against the side of your hand.
Handmaidens, Howeverso Many You Be!
It's as you're walking through the humid Castle of Ginger, its psuedo-walls made of towering stalks, its rushes made of leaves, descending deeper into the sweet spice, that Morning makes herself known. One moment she isn't there, and then like an optical illusion it becomes clear that you were looking at her all along: that her scales look like ginger leaves on colorful tiles, that her beard looks like ginger-moss, that her clouded eyes are the color of sunlight filtered through the vine-windows, and that she is the entire world before you, her coils wrapped around stalk-pillars, her leaf-shaped tail closing off the way back.
[fight me] she says, as she demands of all heroes. Nothing more, nothing less. Her head sways, trying to see every part of you all at once. But Tsane would tell you all, she would, that Morning is a terrible foe to meet here in the Outside, because she wants to devour you- not in the way that you would devour a sandwich, but in the way that you (or her, at least) would devour a book.
It would be very, very perilous to remind her that Sayanastia is before her. Then she might remember not knowing anything at all, and she would drown you in the weight of how the nothingness beneath the world would fight the creation that accreted around the Nails.
I do not think Injimo has ever fought her before. Am I correct?
Hazel!
"You're here!" Juniper does a little dance-in-place, tail swishing furiously. "Oh, we have so much to show you! Right now we've made our way to the Fragmenthold, and once the storm clears, we'll have some time to show you around this place before the Khagan shows up! This is a place of making things, of piecing them together: the whole castle's broken and ruined but if you spend time gathering fragments and seeing how they fit, you can make all sorts of things, and there are these crabs which steam really well and then you put their shells together and usually they make a shield, wouldn't that be great for you? Because I don't really see you as being an attacker, an aggressive one, maybe if we made a crabshell--"
Olesya snaps her fingers and Juniper stiffens, blushes, glances over to her and then back to you. Pulls the breakfast bowl close to her chest and sways a little in place, fidgeting, happy.
"Make sure he's fed before serving him your sweets," Olesya says. Juniper scoots over to sit next to you, kneels right next to you, smiles with a twitch of her ear.
"Shall I feed you? Or would you prefer your own sluzhankas to do so?" She scoops a bit of egg on her fork (shining, a little chitinous, its handle curved organically). "We are happy to serve, noble guest." And she means it. She's ready to feed you the whole thing if it will make Olesya happy, and it will make her happy to do it. Welcome to the Khaganate.
Erika!
The shudder in Timtam is betrayed by her veil of beads, by the slight scrape of her fingernail on the cards, by the light that falls slant through the window, in the slight interruption in her breath. You have won a hit, Miss Fullbright: you have flirted with her when she is not herself, and someone else has done so not as herself, if you understand me. There are things truer to Timtam than this, but she can no more ignore what you have done than you could help yourself from enjoying a lovely gingersnap sheep with tufts of wool-frosting.
"You flatter me," she asserts. "Can you even see these lips to name them soft and precious?" She toys with one of the beaded strings, allows for the briefest glimpse. "Or are you, perhaps, seducing me for information to give your employer, Erika Fullbright? Or is this simply the sort of thing you say when you have nothing else to say? Do you like to say such things in order to make the people around you happier? If it does make someone happy, does it matter?"
The crack, the snap, of cards being sharply shuffled. "Do not answer," she demands, her demeanor changing again. "I have not earned any questions from you yet. It is a game of taking tricks. We play this in Aestival from the time that we are old enough to count. The distinction of this game is that we play our cards face down, Miss Fullbright. We tell each other what we have played. If a player likes, they may challenge the table entire, and anyone who has been caught lying is punished. And if no one was lying at all, well. Well~"
The way she rolls that well around in her mouth (oh, how it would roll around in yours, passed from one mouth to the other) brings to mind trick-taking games as played in the Mansion. Seven Prophecies. Nine Lives. Cravasmaid. Extreme Wizard. Plucky Princess. Bids run high and hot, don't they? And the punishments, well.
Isn't the best part of losing the part where you sit in the winner's lap?
It feels like it takes entire days for Aadya to answer. She stares down into her teacup, slowly swishing the dregs at the bottom as if trying to divine the future, to see which route the stars have declared for Thellamie. I'm afraid it doesn't work like that, darling, not unless that terrible old bird brings down more dictates from those self-obsessed stick-in-the-muds. And yet she tries anyhow, or at the very least that's the vibe, as you kids say. Some people might say that there's not much going on in her head. (I'm looking at you, Miss Fullbright.) But her thoughts are grinding along like stone on stone, slotting into place.
"I wish they hadn't chosen him," she concludes. "Why couldn't it have been you?" Her hand reaches across the table: a bid for companionship, for solidarity, for acknowledgement. "Why not you? You trapped Azaza, you know our world, you could have chosen someone to be tamed by and we'd be done with the whole thing, and we could worry about the maids making some new bid to impress their sleeping dragons afterwards. And the Khagan! The Queen of Light would..."
Her voice dies. She can't make herself assert that a Queen of Light would see the Khagan as a problem to be solved. Not when there's other things to turn her hypothetical hand to, not when the Paladins might be able to handle things on their own, not when there are problems that Aadya hasn't taken it onto her own shoulders to try and fix.
Her finger brushes against the side of your hand.
Handmaidens, Howeverso Many You Be!
It's as you're walking through the humid Castle of Ginger, its psuedo-walls made of towering stalks, its rushes made of leaves, descending deeper into the sweet spice, that Morning makes herself known. One moment she isn't there, and then like an optical illusion it becomes clear that you were looking at her all along: that her scales look like ginger leaves on colorful tiles, that her beard looks like ginger-moss, that her clouded eyes are the color of sunlight filtered through the vine-windows, and that she is the entire world before you, her coils wrapped around stalk-pillars, her leaf-shaped tail closing off the way back.
[fight me] she says, as she demands of all heroes. Nothing more, nothing less. Her head sways, trying to see every part of you all at once. But Tsane would tell you all, she would, that Morning is a terrible foe to meet here in the Outside, because she wants to devour you- not in the way that you would devour a sandwich, but in the way that you (or her, at least) would devour a book.
It would be very, very perilous to remind her that Sayanastia is before her. Then she might remember not knowing anything at all, and she would drown you in the weight of how the nothingness beneath the world would fight the creation that accreted around the Nails.
I do not think Injimo has ever fought her before. Am I correct?
Hazel!
"You're here!" Juniper does a little dance-in-place, tail swishing furiously. "Oh, we have so much to show you! Right now we've made our way to the Fragmenthold, and once the storm clears, we'll have some time to show you around this place before the Khagan shows up! This is a place of making things, of piecing them together: the whole castle's broken and ruined but if you spend time gathering fragments and seeing how they fit, you can make all sorts of things, and there are these crabs which steam really well and then you put their shells together and usually they make a shield, wouldn't that be great for you? Because I don't really see you as being an attacker, an aggressive one, maybe if we made a crabshell--"
Olesya snaps her fingers and Juniper stiffens, blushes, glances over to her and then back to you. Pulls the breakfast bowl close to her chest and sways a little in place, fidgeting, happy.
"Make sure he's fed before serving him your sweets," Olesya says. Juniper scoots over to sit next to you, kneels right next to you, smiles with a twitch of her ear.
"Shall I feed you? Or would you prefer your own sluzhankas to do so?" She scoops a bit of egg on her fork (shining, a little chitinous, its handle curved organically). "We are happy to serve, noble guest." And she means it. She's ready to feed you the whole thing if it will make Olesya happy, and it will make her happy to do it. Welcome to the Khaganate.
Erika!
The shudder in Timtam is betrayed by her veil of beads, by the slight scrape of her fingernail on the cards, by the light that falls slant through the window, in the slight interruption in her breath. You have won a hit, Miss Fullbright: you have flirted with her when she is not herself, and someone else has done so not as herself, if you understand me. There are things truer to Timtam than this, but she can no more ignore what you have done than you could help yourself from enjoying a lovely gingersnap sheep with tufts of wool-frosting.
"You flatter me," she asserts. "Can you even see these lips to name them soft and precious?" She toys with one of the beaded strings, allows for the briefest glimpse. "Or are you, perhaps, seducing me for information to give your employer, Erika Fullbright? Or is this simply the sort of thing you say when you have nothing else to say? Do you like to say such things in order to make the people around you happier? If it does make someone happy, does it matter?"
The crack, the snap, of cards being sharply shuffled. "Do not answer," she demands, her demeanor changing again. "I have not earned any questions from you yet. It is a game of taking tricks. We play this in Aestival from the time that we are old enough to count. The distinction of this game is that we play our cards face down, Miss Fullbright. We tell each other what we have played. If a player likes, they may challenge the table entire, and anyone who has been caught lying is punished. And if no one was lying at all, well. Well~"
The way she rolls that well around in her mouth (oh, how it would roll around in yours, passed from one mouth to the other) brings to mind trick-taking games as played in the Mansion. Seven Prophecies. Nine Lives. Cravasmaid. Extreme Wizard. Plucky Princess. Bids run high and hot, don't they? And the punishments, well.
Isn't the best part of losing the part where you sit in the winner's lap?
