thehometree | 03 Amber | Downstream of the Boat

[For once this lanky young woman does not look like she's trying to win a staring contest with a cockatrice when she activates her amber slice. She does look sweaty and tired, but maybe that's actually helping. Behind her the mist is close, a towering wall, but the chuckle of the stream gives away her location before she can even open her mouth.]

Hey, any of you happen to be strong and willing to lend a hand? Me and Evan, [And indeed, the gawky redhead struggling to roll and heft rocks behind her happens to be in the frame as she talks,] are putting together a fish trap. I don't know about any of you but the thought of real meat that we don't have to bargain for with stone doubloons is so tempting we've been building this thing for the last couple of weeks straight.

It could use refining.

[She swings the slice around to reveal a very crude weir along one side of the stream composed entirely of raised pebbles and smooth rocks; it doesn't block the stream because Jo has noted the boat at dock just upstream of her location, but she's making a fair play at funnelling any minnows into it.]

Once we're done we just need some bait and some lucky catches. I never learned spear fishing but I'll bet some of you super freaks has a leg up on that. Come on down, huh?

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"Indeed," he says, and gets to it. The mechanism isn't perfect, but he can feel the stone ease over the rollers as he pushes.

Jo's comments, meanwhile, have given him a lot to think of. Everyone else in the tree looks human (or his idea of human, which currently encompasses "anyone who doesn't walk on four legs"). It's more than a little confusing, and he's starting to feel a bit... conspicuous?

"What about everyone else in the tree?" he says, looking back at the great trunk rising over the roots. "They all look like you, but they're not from where you are?"

Edited 2015-08-25 17:54 (UTC)

"Oh, fuck no!" Jo laughs, thought it has a breathy quality. She's been picking up log-sized twigs and running them to the front of the stone for a good distance now and she's been working hard for days. This is enough to leave her with some burn and enough sweat to fill a thimble. "You... you met Ivaera, for example? Whole other can of worms. She's not human, she's got pointy ears... sort of like you," she chuckles, feeling faintly embarrassed that she can't not notice them. "She and her big dog come from somewhere where magic's this big thing. Spells and shit, monsters boiling up... up..." she falters, then decides to skip that topic entirely. "The kids, too, I don't know if you noticed, but some of the ones that are half my size, higher voices, little shits? They have all sorts of magic."

She pauses to catch her breath. "That's not normal where I come from, or where Evan comes from. He and me... we're... we're almost from the same place. He's from... I don't know, he's from about fifteen or twenty years in the future and a few hundred clicks north of where I lived, but his place... I guess everything stayed sort of normal where he lived."

Another topic she doesn't want to compare between. Jo grimaces and runs back to catch another twig, wondering how everything in her life has managed to become a minefield. "So I guess you're just from the far end of thee bell curve. There's a few people from Earth, but most of them are sort of like humans but not, and most of them are from far out. Other planets, I guess."

It makes sense, in a strange way. If there are places beyond Ryll, why stop at one? Why not many? But his ears lower, just a tiny amount. Why should her strange pattern be the common one? He starts thinking of the chairs, the beds, the tables, all inside the Tree. And all made for someone who walks on two legs...

"So what you're telling me," he says, between deep breaths as he pushes the rock along, "is that there are many Ry- many worlds, and I'm from the strange one?"

He isn't going to ask what Jo means by normal. It's obvious that it's all part of the thing she won't talk about, and Arj is used to Things We Do Not Discuss In Company.

"But no magic, hmm," he says, a little quieter now. The words "then how do you get anything done?" line up in waiting, but he knows the answer. The same way they're getting things done now. The same way he gets anything done. He settles for: "That sounds most... interesting."

Neither of them are going to get around to discussing what's each bothering them the most. Suits him.

It looks like it's going to be a while before that particular hatchet gets buried; Jo is too caught up in the trauma of having her life flipped over not to use every rare opportunity to abnormalize her experiences and try to berate them, without going into any context about the details, and 'normal' is not a word she realizes means very different things to everyone here, not on more than a surface level.

She gives him a look as she pauses and stretches her back, heel of her hands digging into the lower part of her back. "Interesting or fucking annoying?" she asks. A month and a bit ago and she would have laughed at the idea of magic being an improvement to life. Now that she's seen how much easier a time the various people around her are having, she's finding herself very bitter about her own lacks.

If only Arj would open up about his failings, then they could commiserate together. As it is, the conversation is straying dangerously close to those limits.

"It would be useful, wouldn't it?" He looks up at the "boulder" and down again at the rollers it's perched on. As much as it's easier than dragging the thing across the ground, he's seen first hand how much easier it could be. He takes Jo's cue and allows himself a long feline stretch, fanning his wings as he does.

"Hmmm. We seem to be close." Another blatant attempt at changing the subject, but Jo didn't seem to mind last time...

"Yep," she allowed, scratching the back of her head as her thoughts turned back to the task at hand. "I can' already taste fried fish... we should put this one out near the gap there, it ought to come up out of the water there."

03 Amber | Downstream of the Boat

(a whole other world of lost...)

Hey Arj, want to go to Narnia? At least there be talkin' beasts thar!

What he really wants is a magic charismatic beast RP or two...

Pray for an 'everyone turns into animals' event and you'll get a four-footed Jo, Arj. 8)

bonus points if she's a bobcat?

Well she's not gonna be a cougar, that's for sure!