bakerstreet | picture prompt

picture prompt

the integrated picture prompt meme

for all your GEN, AU, AND SHIPPY pic prompt needs

I — Comment with your character and include possible preferences.
II — Others will leave a picture (or two, or three...)
III — Reply to them with a setting based on the picture.
IV — Link to any pictures that are NSFW.
V — NO SMUT. Save the smut for the smutty picture prompt, please.
VI — Be aware that this meme will be image-heavy.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"The Grove," she repeats in a near-whisper, and folds her arms tighter around herself like she's in pain. The image he just presented to her isn't far off from her idea of Heaven, green and alive. Maybe there would be fireflies, still, and frogs, in a place like that. Joe's Valhalla never had any allure for her, even when she half believed in it. She swore she would get her war boys, her crew, there, but only because they wanted to believe in an eternity of strength and shine and adrenaline. She would just as soon have anticipated her body dissolving into the earth to feed the soil.

She shakes her head, brows knit. "Rainfall is rare. Once every hundred days or so, and it's usually sour. There are places it burns, actually, to the East of here. Fallout, maybe. When I was a child in the Green Place, it was safe enough to touch and drink, but not any longer."

He watches her in silence for a moment, her posture, her expression, the awe in her voice. And he knows that he could tell her about the Grove in some detail--tell her of fireflies as big as birds, of the way pollen falls so thick that the air seems always lit up with little motes of light which drift through it like snow, of clear water and lily pads broad enough to hold a grown person's weight. But he's not sure if saying these things would be a kindness or a cruelty. Longing, he knows, is not something to be toyed with or carelessly inflamed.

He'd best at least have a clear sense of just how impossible and fantastic a dream he'd be spinning for her before he wades in. And the more she has told him, the more he is beginning to suspect it is very impossible indeed, in a place like this.

Wherever he has wandered, if it is still a part of Tyria at all, it is no echo of the world's past. So it can only be an omen of its distant future--but a future where humans are the only race left alive and where they, too, seem likely to be utterly dead within a few short generations.

There's a furrow in Aurus's brow as he tries to parse it all. "Fallout," he echoes her after a moment. "Like from the core of the Thaumanova Reactor when it exploded?" It's not a concept he's intimately familiar with.

"Those were...experiments with dragon energy, as I understand it. Failed experiments. They say that when the reactor blew, the world's fabric turned inside out. It's a mess of chaos energy and displacement. I'd never heard of it poisoning the rain though."

His Grove sounds beautiful, but what hurts and what she can't help but long for is the memory of the Green Place. It was never that lush, but there was clean water and soft mud and plants to tend and eat from and sleep under. She's proud of the gardens and fields at the Green Towers, but it's not the same. Not quite.

'Reactor' is a familiar word, and she gives him a slow nod. "Something like that. They used to have nuclear reactors for energy. I don't think it had anything to do with dragons."

Really? Dragons? Another creature she knows out of myth and legend alone. She's not about to tell him there's no such thing, though, because as far as she ever knew there's no such thing as him, either. Maybe she really is hallucinating, dying in this gritty little cave from poisoned air or water, because the world he's talking about does not remotely match the one she knows.

She smiles suddenly, and gives a soft, humorless chuckle. "The nukes I know of were weapons. Terrible weapons. You drop one on the earth and it levels a city and poisons the ground and air for years to come. It was before I was born, but what I was told is the water and fuel began to run out, and there was fighting over what was left, and the wars escalated until the nuke-bombs were dropped all over the world."

Antiseeds, like Angharad said. Plant one, and something dies. "I think when the air is poisoned too heavy, just that makes the rain bad. That's fallout."
"You're painting me a prettier picture than I am for you. Tell me more about your people?"

Because if she is out of her mind or dying, and can't see any way out of it, she might as well enjoy the positive aspects thereof.

He can only give a sad sigh at the history she describes--it's both unimaginable and not nearly unimaginable enough.

"I think that if the picture I paint is prettier, it can only be because the world that I know is not so lost. It's a terrible wrong that you've been left this to inherit," he nods towards the cave mouth. "I will tell you about sylvari though, foreign to everything here as it will be."

He'll tell her and hope that somehow she can find some comfort in it. He's not sure that there's much else he can do. He has certain abilities, yes, and he will lend his aid, but given all that she's described to him, he suspects what he can do will be too small, too local, to make much lasting difference.

"The sylvari are a young race, barely two decades awoken. Our history goes back longer than that though.

"Some two and a half centuries ago, during the time of the Krytan Civil War, a human soldier named Ronan was separated from his unit. Alone, he made his way into a cave where he found a clutch of strange seeds, one of which he took--a seed the size of a man's fist.

"He intended to take it home to his village and show it to his daughter, but when he returned, he found the village burned to the ground, his family murdered.

"There, he forever lay down his weapons, and planted the seed on his family's grave, and there he stayed until the end of his days. He was joined by the centaur sage Ventari, and together they tended the Pale Tree which grew from the seed, building a sanctuary of peace and friendship all through their lives.

"This is the tree from which all sylvari now grow. It is bigger than the tallest human building, and the whole of the Grove is sheltered beneath its boughs. The Mother Tree, we call her. We mature on her branches, and when our time is right, we fall to the ground and awaken. But we are never children as you are.

"On the day of my awakening, I looked just as you see me now. I knew how to speak and read and write, and the teachings of Ventari. But I was naive though, as all saplings are. In the early years of our race we were quite naive indeed."

Who killed the world? A loaded question with no certain answer now. Furiosa thinks she might be touched by his compassion, but says nothing in response to it, merely nods soberly and keeps her eyes on his face. If he's any judge of human facial expressions and body language, she's affected by the story. The idea of a man laying down his weapons rather than avenging his murdered family seems to be particularly startling to her. After all, she's spent nearly twenty years consumed by a need for vengeance--justice, if you're being kind. Maybe she's been hardened by life in the Wasteland, but she finds that part harder to believe than the idea of a magical tree that grows people like him.

"We called our biggest tree Mother Demeter," she says slowly, thoughtful. "After the old-world goddess of the harvest. In the Green Place where I was born. No one was born from her, but we watched the bloom to know when to plant, and we buried our dead around her."

But all the trees, including Demeter, are gone from the Green Place now. Furiosa has a vague hope of someday going back and trying to heal or clean the land somehow, but lacks any concrete idea how to make that happen.

"I don't understand why you're here," she adds. "Assuming I'm not just hallucinating you. Why would you leave that place? Are you lost here?"

It's touching to see someone so moved by the story of the Pale Tree's origins, and for him it amplifies a feeling of tenderness towards her. It's ironic that now it is her life--the life of all humanity in this Wasteland world--that has come to seem quite delicate to him.

He nods gently at her description of the burial rites of her youth, as though to say that he approves and thinks them wise and fitting. "It is likewise said of Ventari that when he finally died of old age he lay himself down at the roots of the Pale Tree and that his body became one with the soil. We revere and esteem Ventari, and his philosophy guides us, but although the Grove is a peaceful place, we do not attempt to take pacifism to his and Ronan's extremes. I believe there are few who would.

"Once, faced with attack on their sanctuary and given the choice to fight or die, Ventari merely sat down, refusing to take up arms. In his youth he too had been a warrior--the Harathi centaurs have also been at war with humans for centuries; your race has managed to sustain several very old enemies. As an elder, however, he simply said 'Then we will die.' That is a choice that I, and I think all sylvari, would disagree with." Here Aurus pauses for a moment, and does something that probably looks rather odd: he turns as though towards someone speaking to him by his other side. Then he shakes his head a little with a slight roll of his eyes as he returns his attention to Furiosa once more, "He says that I am stubborn." (As though that explains it all.)

"Anyway, I'm surprised that you say Demeter--a name I don't know--and not Melandru. She is the human goddess of earth, growth, and nature, as far as I have ever heard. But then, given everything else, I suppose that ought to be the least surprising to me.

"As for why I am here," a slight shrug, "metaphysical landscapes do tend to be unpredictable. I'm not lost though. I left the Grove many years ago. Some sylvari would call it my 'wyld hunt,' though I don't have much use for the term. They're like personal missions or quests, a goal someone feels driven to achieve. They tend to come to us from the Dream, which is another trait of my race that I've not explained. I don't precisely have a quest, though. Maybe it's more a sense of wanderlust. And over the years it has brought me to this point: I am looking for somebody.

"I am looking for the dragon Glint."

Furiosa is perhaps not a gentle person at heart, shaped by her environment and the trials she's been through. She is, at least, a fundamentally fair person, and the kind of person who wants to see the rest of the world being as kind as possible to the deserving. She is less delicate than she looks, but anything living in the wastes is balanced on a knife's edge between death and survival.

"That's noble," she says slowly, regarding the pacifism. "To be dedicated to peace. Maybe it's the only way there can ever be a true peace, if everyone holds that kind of gentleness higher than his own life. But nobility is a luxury, too. I could make the decision to die for my own principles, but if I die, there are people depending on me who will suffer. So I keep fighting."

She looks quizzical at his addressing the empty air. "...you speak to his spirit?"

Well, it wouldn't be the first time she'd known someone surrounded by ghosts. Max, she has come to realize though he says little about it, is haunted almost constantly. Whether the visions he sees are true spirits or something that's snapped within his own head she can't say, and maybe it doesn't matter. His ghosts are real to him. She has to assume whoever Aurus is speaking to is just as real in his eyes, whether that realness is something she can believe in or not.

"There've been many human deities, gods and goddesses. Demeter is only one name for the same...mm, personification, maybe." Shrug. "But I don't know the name Melandru. I know Brigit. Pachamama. Hathor and Bastet."

The Vuvalini were all about goddesses, of course. They even gave their children Initiate Names of old world goddesses and powerful women still remembered after the fall of civilization. Furiosa bears the name of the Furies, for vengeance.

"...would it be rude to ask why you want to find this dragon?"

"There's an Order where I come from--a group fighting against the Elder Dragons and their corruption--who hold as their slogan 'Some must fight so that all may be free.' I believe they have a good way of putting it.

"From Ventari's teachings we learn that 'All things have a right to grow. The blossom is brother to the weed.' But what does that kinship mean? For Ventari, it meant that one must kill nothing, regardless of its way of life. Among my people we have come to understand it somewhat differently: a weed is not an ugly plant, after all. Weeds can be quite beautiful. What makes them weeds is that they are aggressive. Their growth chokes out that which grows around them, taking over and making other blooms impossible. What then is right to do?

"We believe that when weeds impede the growing of other things then it does become right to fight. I know now that this interpretation and its implications make Ventari slightly uncomfortable, but he also accepts it somewhat. I know this because I do speak to...something like his spirit--the echo of his legend, I would say.

"When I came into the Mists, I knew little what I would find, nor even what I searched for. What I found, after a great deal of time, is that there are many legendary heroes who persist here. If you learn to listen in the right ways, you can commune with them, learn from them. Some will willingly lend their aid and others can be compelled to. You might say that I became a sort of medium. And after a good many months, I found Ventari, and I studied with him, and I learned to channel a kind of magic that he lent to me. Here, watch."

From where he sits, Aurus extends on arm out in front of him towards the center of the cave, like he is throwing or shoving something into being there. In front of them, about a meter away, the empty air seems to ripple and suddenly there before them in a sudden rush of golden light is a great stone tablet. Long thick vines wrap around its surface, but it hovers in the air a few feet above the cave floor, pulsing with its soft light and a gentle bright sound like a melodious hum. And across the cave floor quite miraculously a breath of tiny white flowers and grass ghosts into life, sprouting and blooming and vanishing in a steady pulse, and then sprouting and blooming and vanishing all over again.

Ultimately, the flowers and the tablet itself are intangible apparitions, but they look perfectly solid and real nonetheless. In the light, Aurus no longer glows with his foxfire-like phosphorescence, but now his skin the leaves of his skin and the fronds of his hair are more clearly visible.

He anticipates how amazing this may be to Furiosa (though he hopes not frightening), so he keeps his following words minimal:

"This is also why I search for Glint. I could look for anyone--even the human gods I suppose, if I wished to (though as far as I know there are only six). But more than any of them it is the dragon prophetess from whom I want to learn."

Furiosa frowns, trying to see his perspective. She was mostly taught that weeds are weeds merely by virtue of not having been planned or planted in fields. A nettle that springs up amongst the spinach is an inconvenience. A nettle in the middle of a field is not. Of course, nettles can be eaten along with the spinach, provided you roll the stinging part up on the inside of the leaf...but that may be taking the metaphor too far.

"I think you have a greater sense of philosophy than me," she tells Aurus frankly. She considers these things, herself, but less so than him, evidently. Maybe she's had less peaceful time to ponder.

She's certainly never learned from spirits. There was a time in the worst part of her captivity where she spoke to her mother and initiate mother, but she's not convinced she didn't imagine it out of sheer desperate despair. She doesn't like to think of that now. Whatever it is he does with his Mists and his learning, it doesn't sound much like that.

Her expression changes very little when he casts the glowing illusion, although the light glimmers are reflected in her eyes. She looks less at the tablet than the grass and the flowers, flesh fingers twitching as if she wants to touch them. But she's had so many strange revelations the past hour, she may have run out of the emotional fortitude to react verbally. She blinks a moment, eyes misty with unshed tears, and gives a soft, lost little laugh.

"Never seen anything like it," she says, and shakes her head.

Perhaps being a plant makes a person less inclined to consider plants purely on the basis of their utility.

To be sure, there are humans who consider other humans purely on the basis of utility, asking merely how useful they are and what they can get out of them. But that's a rather brutal way to live with other living things. (Though perhaps also a common way to live out in this Wasteland.) At any rate, he nods at her remark about philosophy. "Sylvari have no gods. We're not raised on tales of divinity. But all saplings study the teachings of the old centaur sage. Maybe it makes us all philosophers of a sort."

Actually, this is probably the least true thing that he's told her though, because while all sylvari do indeed study Ventari's teachings, a great many--probably the majority of them--are much more like hippy flower children with their heads in the clouds than they are like philosophers. Aurus is unusual for a sylvari not because his curiosity led him to wander (his race is naturally curious), but because he has a much grittier and more measured outlook on the world, the sort of outlook that's more common among the firstborn and some other secondborn like himself.

But even amongst them, he'd be considered a little...eccentric now. He's been gone so long and he's spent so much time alone with only himself (and, more recently, the legendary heroes he's collected in the Mists) for company that his life of contemplation and years of hermitage have taken a turn towards the weird. He's almost like a shaman now, though without having ever having intended to become one: an accidental shaman.

He's not even wholly aware of it himself. Being alone for so long, a person can't always notice how they've changed or anticipate how the changes in them will be perceived by others. It's the encounters that start to make this clear.

Even in this encounter, though, Aurus isn't thinking in that register. What he's thinking is simply that he likes Furiosa very much, that he feels a sympathy for the life she's living which stretches between her and the world she's living in. He believes that he might offer her some respite, if only temporarily. Because he's fond of her, he wants to do this...and also because he's fond of her he's cautious about the pain he might cause when he, inevitably, leaves and takes the temporary balm away.

And it's also because of this, because he wants to comfort and reassure her, to offer her something grounding amidst the flood of seeming impossibilities, that he reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder. She may not be able to touch the flowers that cascade beneath the tablet, but she can touch him, and he'll allow her to do so if she wishes.

Well, he has well and truly changed her perspective It's always been easy for her to think of trees as personified, but she's going to be wondering about her garden spinach now, too. Not that it will stop her eating; she's too practical for that. Still, maybe it's a good idea always to acknowledge the living things that have given their energy so that you can keep going on.

"War boys worship the god V8, of engines and the road," she says mildly. "I've never really...believed in that. I think the last warlord made it up himself, or heard it from some other road warrior and adapted the story. But it gives the men hope and structure, and I wouldn't take that from them. We all need whatever we can hold onto, to survive."

She shakes her head. "When I was a child, we told goddess stories, but ultimately they were really stories about ourselves. To make us believe we could be stronger and better than we were."

Resting her chin on her knees, she smiles. "My Initiate Mother told me I would have to learn to walk on the grass without bending a blade or disturbing a drop of dew, to be considered a grown woman. Like Artemis, the hunt goddess. I believed her for the longest time, and damned if I didn't try."

It's not physically possible, of course, for a normal human to do such things. But trying taught her extreme care, and the ability to cover her tracks when walking. "Not sure any of that counts as philosophy, but that's all I've got."

She watches him reach out and touch her, a pensive expression, like she's trying to decide how she feels about it. She doesn't flinch or object, though, and once he's close she can catch the sweet, herbal-forest scent he carries, at last. Soothed, she sighs softly and he can probably feel the tension ease from the shoulder he's touching. Tentatively, she touches her fingertips to his.

"I don't think I have what you're looking for, or know where to find it. Find...her. But if you want a haven or waystation, you're more than welcome at the Green Towers."

Aurus listens thoughtfully as she describes all these things which are, yes, foreign to him, but not incomprehensible in sentiment. He particularly smiles at her story about being told how to walk upon the grass. And then he says, reflectively, as though he is merely musing through the subject, "Perhaps it is not the belief--in a god or goddess or a totem--that makes for philosophy, but the reflection on what belief itself means for those who hold it, the consideration of what it provides them.

"It would then be less philosophical to have faith in a god of engines or a goddess of the hunt, and more philosophical to observe that people get the hope, the structure, the care that they need by looking to their gods and their stories, whoever it was that made them." Of course this mild approach, as though he is merely making a suggestion, is pure rhetorical strategy.

When talking about metaphysics, Aurus rarely gives anyone a straight answer about anything. He would never say anything so direct as Oh yes, it counts! You see, you have been philosophical there--right there!--and by your own words it stretches back through the whole of your life. Oh no. With topics like this he feels that the only way to say anything is to approach it obliquely, by hints and circumlocutions. One must maintain a light touch and never try to lead anyone by the nose. Everyone grows in their own time. (For some people this all makes him an overwhelmingly frustrating person to talk to.)

At any rate, the tone of profundity is itself transient. He accepts the touch of her hand without moving away, and he does certainly notice the way her tension eases, like an exhale in the body, he thinks. So though he won't directly encourage it as such, he does purposefully let his body language show that she can be closer to him if she wishes it--she might even come and rest her head against his shoulder or even his chest; his extended arm makes it possible, and he has no qualms about physicality.

And if he had been at all uncertain before about what his next course of action might be, he no longer is now: "I may not be in need of a haven, but I'd like to go to your Green Towers with you. From what you say, I might be able to help with what you're trying to achieve there--sylvari do have some influence on the growth of other plants. At any rate, I believe I am now quite a bit 'colder' on my search, so perhaps it would be well to regroup before I start again."

She understands exactly what he means, and feels oddly complimented. Her gaze up at him is half-pleased, half quizzical. No one she's ever known talked like that, partly like a History Man, partly like...something she has no name for, because History Men and History Women tell stories and give facts, but he's dealing more in abstracts, and that's different. Furiosa is an intelligent woman; she understands when these things are presented to her, but she's not inclined to think in these terms herself. Not when survival is paramount, and there are tasks and dangers in front of her that require her attention.

She used to love poetry, though.

The texture of his skin is smooth, both cool and warm, comforting and exotic. She's taking deeper breaths now, too; of all things, it's the woodsy scent of him that really brings it home that this is real. She's not dreaming, or dying. Her gaze goes toward the raging storm at the cave entrance as lightning flashes, but then swivels back toward him. Tentatively, reading his body language, she turns toward him, moving so her shoulder is against him--her left shoulder, which is in itself a sign of trust growing.

"I'd love to see the peach trees give fruit again in my lifetime," she says quietly, with a lopsided smile. "Some of the people will wonder what you are, if you come, but I don't think anyone will be alarmed or aggressive."

Her people are more accepting these days, under the influence of the Sisters and Vuvalini, and of Furiosa herself. Come to think of it, the remaining Vuvalini will probably look at Aurus with the same awe she does. And the Dag...well, she'll be fascinated. "I'd like that. To have you visit."

That's not the kind of thing she says very often. "It's only about a two-day ride on bike-back, and mine will carry us both easily. Do you even have a vehicle? Have you ridden one?"

Edited (minor typo, I keep doing that, sorry) 2016-08-14 02:32 (UTC)

"I think we ought to be able to manage that," Aurus says of the peach trees with a little nod, accepting Furiosa's new closeness and letting his arm rest around her shoulders.

"I've never ridden on any sort of vehicle that wasn't drawn by an ox or a dolyak, so you'll have to teach me. I'll look forward to it," when this storm finally ends. He's interested to meet her people as well, though of course he can't yet guess the reality of what they're like.

When sylvari were still a new race in the world, a wandering secondborn like him often turned into a de facto emissary. There were many people who'd never even heard of sylvari back then, let alone seen one, and later there were many more who knew of them as no more than rumors. People said all kind of things (sometimes they still do). 'Look, a walking fern!' has always been one of his favorites. He imagines this may be a bit like that.

He trusts Furiosa that it won't be like the other experience his race had to endure when the secondborn were young: their encounter with the asura who captured and imprisoned a whole group of saplings, subjecting them to brutal, dehumanizing experiments that scarred the minds of many and claimed the life of at least one. That, in some ways, was what first led to Aurus leaving the Grove, though the history is complicated.

In any case, for the time being, it's clear that they're not going anywhere. The sandstorm has not yet begun to subside. So after a moment of quiet and stillness, Aurus ventures a new question:

"What happened that you lost your arm?"

She can't help but smile at his agreement to help the peach trees. They're alive, relatively healthy for the harsh climate they live in, and they even bloom on occasion, but the resources in the soil around them are such that they only very rarely manage to make fruit. But she remembers healthier, more fertile trees, and the taste of fresh peaches cooled under the spring in the Green Place.

"I've been riding motorcycles since I was ten years old," she says. "You won't find many better teachers."

That's a boast, but it's one she believes with perfect honesty. The only people more qualified to show him around a motorcycle would be the remaining two Vuvalini. Or maybe the Rock Riders, but their bikes tend to be lighter and smaller and--in her not so humble opinion--nowhere near as good.

She takes a while to notice he's put his arm around her; it doesn't feel like being pulled close by a man or cradled by a mother. But he's comfortable, and she quickly decides she has no objections to this pose, settling so her head is half against his shoulder. When he asks his question, she gestures vaguely with the foreshortened arm. "What, this?" As if she's lost any other limbs.

"My mother and I were taken in a raid, when I was a small girl. Slave traders. We were on chains in the caravan, when another road gang attacked it. One of the vehicles lost control and spun out, right into the slave lines. I think my mother died instantly. I got trapped between chains and bodies and wrecked vehicle, with my arm pinned. I managed to pull myself loose before the car burned up, but I made a bad break worse in the process. They amputated it when they brought me to the Citadel. My city, only...before it was the Green Towers. There've been a lot of changes since then."

Sometimes, when she's asked about her arm, she lies, refuses to answer, or even makes up a story too wild and silly to be believed by her audience. Occasionally, she even punches people for asking. Not today. For whatever reason, she would rather he know the real story.

He doesn't doubt her for a moment, and he will be an attentive student when it comes down to it. A person doesn't spend years wandering in search of sages and prophets and legends to study under unless they are willing to learn humbly from the teachers that they find.

No small part of learning is becoming quiet in oneself, still and steady enough to listen, open and relaxed enough to take things in. Aurus is a very good listener, the sort who listens even to things that aren't being said.

This is also how he listens to Furiosa's words about her past, about her loss--arm and mother together. He hears her talk about how she'd been a fighter even as a child, about the determination of her will to survive, to come to terms with brutality and thereby live in a brutal world.

He had been planning to tell her something about himself in return--to show her a scar on his own arm where his student had once severed his limb just above the elbow in a sparring match. Only for Aurus, the arm had grown back. It is an ability sylvari have, an aspect of their anatomy, just as vines can regrow after they've been trimmed.

Having heard her story, though, he does not feel that the moment is right. The loss of his limb was of so much less consequence than the loss of hers, and just not because of the arm itself. He doesn't need to read too far between the lines to understand that, whatever else happened in her life, in the aftermath of that wreck, she did not simply live the life of a slave. Whatever happened to her at the Citadel once that amputation was complete was clearly a watershed for her, just as the severing of Aurus's arm had perhaps been for his student.

But the loss of his arm had not been a watershed for Aurus himself. It was simply an injury from which he healed like so many other training injuries. In his life it was a far more trivial thing than in hers, so it's out of respect for her that he does not compare them, and instead says simply and frankly, "I'm sorry. That is a brutal way to have learned about the world."

"Well. It's a brutal world." She smiles wryly, appreciating the sympathy but unwilling to show that beyond a brief nudge of her shoulder against him. She would probably be more fascinated than offended by the comparison of their healing abilities, but now is not, perhaps the best time. She'll have other questions for him as their acquaintance progresses.

Now, though, seated comfortably in the warm rock as the wind howls and the storm spends its strength outside, seems like a good time for gentler stories, and her next words are: "My mothers used to tell me fairy tales. Do you want to hear one?"

Like he's some sort of overgrown pup she's tending. She knows better already, but she also knows on some level that the fairy tales she remembers and loves best will tell him more about her and what she values than if she tried to explain directly. So she'll tell him the one about the girl with the silver hands, or the Water of Life, or about the Nanabolele with shining skins. If he has his own tales to share, so much the better. They have the time.

((This can be a wrap-up if you want. Unless you want them to exchange fairy tales.))

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I've added some visuals of the tablet on his journal in case you want them btw! o/

thank you!

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