thehometree | Glimmer, glitter, shine...

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Glimmer, glitter, shine...

One by one, new adventurers now arrive in the Tree. As one gain wings and rises to the second floor, another light brings in the next person. Soon, a steady stream of people from all kinds of worlds, times and realities come to join the others. Whether confused, angry, excited or scared, your arrival is welcomed with nothing but joy as the fireflies and glow worms descend to greet their new friends.

The Tree offers no explanation and no reason, but the truth is undeniable.

As you will soon realize, it isn't easy to be tiny.

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Kit shook her head negatively. "Uh-uh," she said. "I just got here a little while ago, like everybody else. I was just looking for something to eat and seeing if I could find anybody I know."

"You wouldn't happen to have seen any other cats wearing one of these, have you?", she asked, indicating the prominent red circular cabochon on her belt.

"I haven't seen any cats at all. There's a big bird with moth wings, though..." Not that he'd talked to the guy yet.

He motioned back where he'd come from with one hand. "If you want food, you should come back this way. I didn't see any meat or fish, though." Assuming... Kit liked either. Terran cats were obligate carnivores, so.

"A big bird, huh?", Kit said thoughtfully. "Was he kind of stuck-up and all 'Oh, I'm so much better than you are cause I have wings and stuff'?" Her attempt to imitate Voltaire's didn't go very well, but it should still get his general attitude across.

She nodded about the food though. "Yeah, I thought I smelled food that way was headed there myself," she said. "And it's OK if there's no meat. There's lots of times we've had to go without it before." And sometimes without food entirely, but he didn't need to know that.

"...No." At least, he didn't think so? "He had weird wings for a bird. There were clawed hands coming out of the front."

Technically, of course, a bird's wings contained their digits anyway, but. Trust him, it was super weird? Kaoru turned and started walking, pausing after a moment when he remembered that he should actually make sure Kit was following before he walked off because otherwise it would be super rude. "There are nuts and berries. Things you'd find in a forest. I didn't try any mushrooms; it's hard to tell if those are poisonous."

Kit tried to picture what he was talking about and failed. "Well, I'll keep an eye out for him," she said. After all, he might be from Third Earth, even if he was no one Kit knew.

Kaoru need not have worried; Kit was following right behind him. She nodded to his comment about the mushrooms. "Yeah," she said. "It can be hard to tell sometimes, so it's probably best to avoid them til you can figure out which ones are good and which aren't."

The soon emerged onto the branch outside, where a large stone table or alter was set up, laden with all sorts of food. A few other people were already there, eating or looking for something to eat. "Wow," Kit said, impressed by the spread, "there really is a lot of stuff here. Wonder what I should pick?" Nothing on the table looked entirely familiar to her so she really had no idea where to start.

What do you know? Most kids Kaoru's age didn't have much of an idea of what in the forest might be edible and what was probably bad news... but maybe it was different for Kit's people.

"Those berries over there are sweet," he said, pointing to a nearby platter. Cats liked sweet things, right...? Or was that just cat robots?

"Where are you from? Is there anyone else you know here?"

On her home turf, Kit knew a number of different wild plants and their effects. Their mother had taught them which ones were to be avoided early on to prevent problems with curious kittens getting into things, and had begun to teach them which ones were edible and which had medicinal properties. But none of the fruits, nuts, and fungi set out before her looked familiar, so she was somewhat flying blind.

The mention of the sweet berries, though, had her eyeing them speculatively. "I wonder if they taste like candy fruit?", Kit wondered aloud. They were about the right size for candy fruit, though that was pretty much where the resemblance ended.

"I'm from Thundara, on Third Earth," Kit said. "But I haven't seen anyone so far who looks like they might be from there. The bird you saw sounds like he could be, but I'd have to get a look at him to be sure."

"Third Earth? What happened to Second Earth?" He'd ask about the first Earth, but honestly, in his timeline, it was pretty trashed. And what the heck was candy fruit?

In any case, he set his firefly down on the table, where it buzzed once or twice before settling into a slow pattern of blinks.

Kit paused at the question about Second Earth. "You know, I don't really know," she said thoughtfully. "No one's ever said anything about a Second Earth before that I know of. I don't even know if there is one. Though it does sound like there should be..."

Darnit, this is gonna bug her now. Thanks Kaoru. She picks up one of the berries he'd mentioned earlier and absently takes a bit while thinking... only to be distracted by how tasty it is. "Wow, you're right! It is sweet!" Not that she really figured it would be otherwise, but...

She took a bigger bite, this time focusing more on the flavor. "Hmmm...", she said after she'd swallowed. "Doesn't really taste like candy fruit, though. But still tasty!"

He lived to serve. In any case, it looked like Kit did enjoy sweets, after all. Well, that made sense, right? What kid didn't, unless they were paranoid loners that ate lizards...?

"I wonder who put them here. They haven't shown their faces at all." No note, either; how rude.

"...I'm from Earth, too. Humans are. But I've never seen anyone like you before."

"I dunno," Kit said, glancing back out at the impressive spread. "We'll probly find out if we stick around long enough though. I mean, all we'd have to do would be hide someplace and watch."

The comment about him being from Earth too had her making a thoughtful sound. "Hmm...", she said. "Well, the cats and the other Animal Tribes don't really come from Third Earth, even though we've been there a long, long time. So it might not be the same place your from."

She paused, thinking. "Tell me a little about what your Earth is like," Kit said. "Then I'll tell you a bit about Third Earth, and we can see if things match up."

"Earth is a wasteland," he said. "Industrial development and poor resource management rendered it impossible for human habitation years ago. No one lives there any more. They all keep to space colonies. They're working on ways to reclaim it, but it won't be any time soon."

What a cheerful thought...

"...It used to be nice, though."

Kit's gaze was sympathetic. "I'm sorry," she said. "It must be awful, seeing your home ruined like that. Thundara was wrecked by the lizards, but not to the point that it was a wasteland."

"Though if the whole place is a wasteland, then it's not Third Earth," she said. "Parts of it are, like the desert around the Sand Sea, but most of it that I've seen is pretty nice."

"It happened before I was born," said Kaoru, shaking his head. He hadn't known any life except the one on the colony. It was sad, but in the way that the extinction of the dodo was sad. Distant.

"Do you live near the desert?" The Sand Sea sounded like it should be a desert itself, but apparently not.

"Oh," Kit said. Well, that wasn't quite as bad, then, but still... "I hope they can get it fixed up eventually. And that they're able to keep it fixed up when they do. Cause it'd be really dumb just to do the same stuff all over again and wind up back where they started."

She shook her head a bit when asked if she lived near the desert. "Uh-uh," she said. "It took us almost a week and a half to get to the desert from Thundara. And another day or two to get through the rocky part to the Sand Sea. That's where we met the fish men."

"I don't think they'll be that foolish," said Kaoru. Then again, people certainly did seem to repeat their mistakes sometime...

"Why does it take so long to get from place to place? Do you not have aircraft?"

"We didn't at the time," Kit said. "It took us so long cause we were walking. We could've ridden, but all the equavises in Thundara were killed, stolen, or ran away after Mumm-Ra and the lizards destroyed it. The fish men let us borrow a sand skimmer to get across the Sand Sea, and we met Panthro not to long after that. He had the Thundertank with him, and that's how we got around til just recently."

"Lion-O found a wrecked flying machine in the Soul-Sever's lair, though, and we got it fixed up," she said. "Kat and I got to name it. We called it the Feliner." She grinned a bit, obviously proud of the name. "That's what let us get to Evista City, which was floating up above the clouds, thanks to the Tech Stone."

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Glimmer, glitter, shine...

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