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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"Don't worry, I'm sure! I'd have to fall way farther than that to get hurt. Haha, I'm practically in the business." Plus it can be easy to trip in sandals no matter what's going on. "Oh, are you okay, though? I'm mostly soft, but I've kind of got a gem thing going on. And I know there's a rock in my backpack somewhere."

"I'm fine," Korra said as reassuringly as she could. "Just a little embarrassed. I should probably stay on the ground for a little while."

One hand reached up to touch her metal arm cuff, where she had buried her gem as she practiced. "I found a backpack when I got here, too. Looks like whoever did this left everyonethe same thing."

"I think so, too. That must have a lot of trouble to go to for this many people. Even if it made it all with magic." He turned on the spot until the Life Stream was directly in his line of vision. "So I guess the gems downstairs really wants us around for some reason. I hope it's something cool! Like magical friendship stuff. Oooor keeping everything safe from... a lumberjack."

In the moment, Steven was honestly slightly more concerned with whether or not the tree needed stairs to have anything count as being downstairs.

Korra paused, taking all that in with raised brows.

"Wait...you think the gems are the ones who brought us here?" It was certainly an option, though not one Korra had even considered before he brought it up. Here, she had been thinking it was a person who had pulled this trick.

"Well... when I'm not at home and there's a weird magical thing happening, it's usually because of gems." Steven dug around in his pockets until he found his shard to pull out. "They don't usually break like this, though. I-I'm sure it's nothing we can't all handle! It's my whole thing. I just also don't know what's going on."

"So you've seen stones like the ones down there before," Korra said, immediately perking up.

Considering everyone else she talked to was only confused, any sort of lead was valuable to her.

"Yeah, all the time!" With his shard in one hand, he went ahead and used his free hand to briefly bring the bottom of his shirt up. Once in a while, having a magic gem for a belly button could be handy for illustrating a point without it doing anything magical.

"They're usually smaller compared to me. But I guess right now we're all smaller compared to ourselves, so the ones down there might actually be normal-sized. Only... they seem huge compared to smaller me. I'm just not sure what they want. Or if they're the same kind I've seen before. Or why they're so easy to break. There's a lot of mystery in the air right now."

There was a lot Korra could say to that, but she was too busy trying to soak this all in while containing her disbelief. Of the many things she's seen, a gem-belly button was definitely ranked among the oddest.

"What does this one do?" Korra asked, once she found her voice. If the new gems gave them all wings, then surely the one he'd brought from his world had some kind of power as well.

"It was my mom's first, so I don't know everything it can do yet. I can do some magic bubbles, use warp pads, or I sometimes make a shield... oh, there was this time I made living attack plants. That didn't really work out, though." He pocketed his gem shard again as he spoke, so he could tick things off on his fingers. "Sometimes I don't even know I can do something until I'm already doing it, since nobody's told me everything my mom used to be able to do. But that's usually a pretty cool surprise! It's like anything can happen!"

Though shrinking and wings weren't so much in that category. They were very firmly out of it.

"So you inherited it," Korra said thoughtfully, mostly to herself. The boy's gem looked nothing like the ones she'd seen earlier, and it seemed like this was a dead end. Disappointing, but not altogether surprising.

She offered him a small smile. "Sounds to me like you need someone to teach you how to use it. Isn't there anyone you could ask?"

"Oh, sure. I've got Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl around for gem stuff. They're all really great! Sometimes they tell me about dancing like a tree and connecting to the energy of the universe and I get more confused, but you get used to that after a while. I think it's just hard to explain to anyone who doesn't already know." It was hard for him to be frustrated about that anymore. Everyone did the best they could. That was basically the best that anyone else could ask.

"Anyway, my name's Steven! It's nice to meet you, even if we are a little magically kidnapped right now."

"I'm Korra," she returned after a pause. Thankfully, there was already a topic at hand that she could use to divert his attention in case he did recognize her name.

"You said something about connecting to the energy of the universe. How does that work?"

In his expert and informed opinion, Korra was a pretty cool name. She may have secured a firefly's future under the moniker of 'Korra Jr.'

"I'mmmmm still working on the energy of the universe stuff. Garnet's great at it! Oh, but she's probably still regular size and not in a tree. It might be better that way." Garnet was many things. Super strong, super safe, super amazing... he just couldn't be sure how likely it was that she'd try to punch everyone's way back home. "If you wanna try learning more about going with the energy flow, maybe we can both work on it together! At least we definitely know there's a lot happening in this tree. Otherwise there'd have to be a really big light bulb down at the bottom."

"I..." Korra hesitated for a moment. Unlike Steven, who was obviously new to everything, Korra suspected her problems ran far deeper than she wanted to believe. Still, a part of her hoped that things would be different in this new place.

"Sure," she finally said. "We can work on it together."

Even if she still wasn't able to connect to Raava again, the practice would give her a chance to clear her head.

"Great! I've never had a learning buddy before. Or should we do study buddy for the rhyme?" As long as there was effort happening, it probably didn't matter too much. Things didn't happen for no reason. Maybe trying to connect to the universe would help them figure out the reason they were here. "I guess we can work on a team name later, though. It would just be cool to get to know the tree and the gems."

Part of her balked at the mention of team names--the very same part that nagged at her when avoided contact with Team Avatar.

"Study buddy sounds great," Korra said hastily, in case he got too attached to the idea of teams and names. "We can practice flying together while we're at it."

"That's a really good idea. Learning to fly is like having to learn to use another arm!" Not that being able to do it wasn't pretty cool. It was a complicated level of joy. "It's great, but mostly only great after you figure out how to grab stuff with it."

"Uh..." came the intelligent reply. Momentarily knocked off balance by the odd comparison, Korra took a second to blink at him in surprise.

"I guess that's one way to put it."

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Glimmer, glitter, shine...

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