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Ari is... so, so lost. He didn't know this amount of lost was physically possible. One minute he's in a briar maze deep in Winter picking frostberries for a pie, then he takes four left turns and he exits the briar and he's in a temperate forest. Not even any snow on the ground. He turns around and there's no thicket to be seen.
He puts the frostberry pouch in his backpack and mutters the incantation to open a Way back to the mortal realm; he might land somewhere dangerous, but better endangered in the mortal realm than completely lost in the Nevernever. And... nothing. Literally nothing happens, no backlash or fizzling or anything that would indicate that he fucked up a spell, but the kind of nothing that happens when you don't have a spell to cast.
In something of a panic, he tests that he still has magic by punching a nearby tree, which splinters and crashes to the ground. "So that's still working, I guess," he mutters. "Punching systems: still online."
So, recap: magic works, he just got snatched out of deep Winter territory and put into something that kind of looks like the Wyld, and the Ways are on the fritz. Either something big is screwing with him or he's very much not in Kansas anymore. Either way, he'd better figure out what the hell is going on.
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bitterchill
bitterchill
"Nordic's a kind of, eh, color, that humans come in, means pink skin and slightly yellow hair. I look like I am that color, but really I'm only half that color, my dad was another color that's slightly browner skin and dark brown hair. What I just said is probably horribly offensive, please don't repeat it to any other humans, they'd want to hit me. And this is how humans talk to their tiny squishy children, but I'm talking like this to the plant because I'm weird, which is the most relevant answer. Did you expect a different one?"
imeanforever
"Some of your magic involves talking, I didn't know for sure that this wasn't more of it."
bitterchill
"Ah! No. Just being weird." He dribbles the last bit of blood into the plant, which is swiftly advancing across the face of the glacier, and performs an action that, if the nodule were a face, would probably translate to chucking it under the chin. It sinks a wickedly sharp thorn into his finger, and he giggles as he extracts it.
imeanforever
"You are very cavalier about being punctured. I suppose it makes sense that you'd have gotten used to it."
bitterchill
"Nah, I was like this before any of that. Sharp pain's fun. Headaches are awful, getting nutted is hell on earth, et cetera, but sharp and burny I like fine."
bitterchill
"Nnnnnnope! It's a me thing. I mean, there are other mortals like that, I've met folks who are way freakier than I am about it, but- me thing."
imeanforever
"I can heal you without you running out of whatever you're looking for in there. It seems best until you know what you can do with local plants."
bitterchill
"Oh, yeah. I'm used to doing it myself, sorry."
He holds out his finger, sticking out his lower lip comically as he does so.
He holds out his finger, sticking out his lower lip comically as he does so.
imeanforever
Promise patches his finger. "I'm probably less useful for larger healings until I'm more familiar with you, but this is easy. Healing was one of the first things I learned."
bitterchill
"And very useful it is, too." He returns the slightly bloodied clay to its loving pocket family.
Absent much else to do, he returns to his sketchpads. He's much closer than he thought he was going to be to finishing the cavern working, it's very exciting.
Absent much else to do, he returns to his sketchpads. He's much closer than he thought he was going to be to finishing the cavern working, it's very exciting.
imeanforever
"There's some edible tree bark left from my breakfast, do you want any? I don't actually know how often mortals prefer to eat, the last time I fed one was long ago."
bitterchill
"Oh, there's food? Man, I was expecting the starvation period to be way longer. But food, yes, good." He trots over and opens his mouth like an unusually muscular baby robin.
imeanforever
Promise feeds him. "Much of it will take a while longer, but I was actually keeping specific foods that I knew how to grow fast in my bowl specifically in case I could bolt suddenly and didn't want to risk stopping on the way to pick things."
bitterchill
Ari completes the cavern working and casts it, using a larger than usual bowl of fairy blood. The house now has a few levels of basement; the basement(s) are kind of absurdly large. He claims the lowest level for his own, converting it into various workspaces (thaumaturgy desk, an iron crafting anvil which he intends to raise to the ridiculous standard of his previous model, a practice arena for his combat forms, a nook full of snow in which he sleeps). The basement may be Ari's new best friend.
From the depths of his new best friend, Ari figures out how to expand the house proper and make it look proper fancy. He consults Promise on her house aesthetics, finds that they lean towards the "living in a tree" corner, and decides to leave a large atrium in the center. He consults her on, okay, but if you were living in a tree inside a house, what would you want the house to look like, and finds that her tastes in that respect lean towards "delicate-looking and naturalistic and blending into the landscape as much as possible," and decides that two out of three ain't bad. The expanded house is made of marble converted from a nearby limestone deposit, looks very delicate and very naturalistic, slopes around a sizable atrium at its center so the eventual tree can receive sunlight, and stands out like a beautiful, beautiful sore thumb.
The frostberries flourish, fed with a surfeit of blood from Ari's oddly expansive circulatory system. The harvest every two days is ripe and bountiful, and Ari finds himself enjoying pies and tarts and liqueurs and candies on a regular basis. He's absolutely delighted. They're on schedule to bloom for a week from about a month after they were first planted, and the blossoming glacier promises to be a magnificent sight.
From the depths of his new best friend, Ari figures out how to expand the house proper and make it look proper fancy. He consults Promise on her house aesthetics, finds that they lean towards the "living in a tree" corner, and decides to leave a large atrium in the center. He consults her on, okay, but if you were living in a tree inside a house, what would you want the house to look like, and finds that her tastes in that respect lean towards "delicate-looking and naturalistic and blending into the landscape as much as possible," and decides that two out of three ain't bad. The expanded house is made of marble converted from a nearby limestone deposit, looks very delicate and very naturalistic, slopes around a sizable atrium at its center so the eventual tree can receive sunlight, and stands out like a beautiful, beautiful sore thumb.
The frostberries flourish, fed with a surfeit of blood from Ari's oddly expansive circulatory system. The harvest every two days is ripe and bountiful, and Ari finds himself enjoying pies and tarts and liqueurs and candies on a regular basis. He's absolutely delighted. They're on schedule to bloom for a week from about a month after they were first planted, and the blossoming glacier promises to be a magnificent sight.
imeanforever
Promise, at first, divides her time more or less equally between sleep, agriculture, and flying to and from various places to get more seeds and meet the neighbors. (While describing Ari as "my vassal" and "my master" are both equally true, she opts for the latter description, because it makes her look less like a two-for-one deal and means that double the usual amount of brainpower may be presumed to have been expended on protecting her name.) She receives directions to a different library than the one she used to frequent; it's a hell of a haul away but it will suffice for occasional visits. They are within frostberry-trading distance of one large breeder court, a trio of aurorabrights, and a single burrowing snowdrop, none of whom seem overtly inclined to give them trouble for parking in their spot by the glacier.
When she has her little farm going how she wants it, there is a reasonable variety of food available for them both every meal - repetitive on a scale of weeks, but not days - and while it does require sorcerous upkeep to go on producing as desired, both in food and textile-equivalents and papermaking materials, it stops taking up so much of her time. She makes a trip to the library with some of the frostberries, comes home with as many books as she can carry. She reads and peers over Ari's shoulder while he does magic and she does her own magic to refine and expand the hotspot, ward the house, and transcribe her library books onto the paper she peels off one of her trees.
They have been living in the Forever Snows for about thirty sleeps (the sun has moved once, in that time, and then gone back to where it was before) when Promise shuffles up to Ari with awkward little wing-flutters and an uncharacteristically shy expression.
When she has her little farm going how she wants it, there is a reasonable variety of food available for them both every meal - repetitive on a scale of weeks, but not days - and while it does require sorcerous upkeep to go on producing as desired, both in food and textile-equivalents and papermaking materials, it stops taking up so much of her time. She makes a trip to the library with some of the frostberries, comes home with as many books as she can carry. She reads and peers over Ari's shoulder while he does magic and she does her own magic to refine and expand the hotspot, ward the house, and transcribe her library books onto the paper she peels off one of her trees.
They have been living in the Forever Snows for about thirty sleeps (the sun has moved once, in that time, and then gone back to where it was before) when Promise shuffles up to Ari with awkward little wing-flutters and an uncharacteristically shy expression.
bitterchill
"Promise! Hey! You're in time to watch the glacier bloom, it's going to be great! The flowers are- I'm not even gonna talk about the flowers, they're great and you can see them in a minute when they bloom."
Ari's ability to detect passive emotional cues has not greatly increased in the past thirty sleeps.
Ari's ability to detect passive emotional cues has not greatly increased in the past thirty sleeps.
bitterchill
Ari has a slate rocking chair with a small planty cushion, the product of a full day's work a couple of weeks ago, in which he is sitting. He has a smaller, wing-permitting model next to him, the product of a few hours' work because he knew the theory he just had to make the damn thing, in which Promise might sit. He gestures to it.
"Man, I'm glad you could make it. Couldn't find you for a bit, I got worried, the final signs don't start up until about an hour before." (The central nub looks larger and bluer than usual, and the outer vines seem to have curled in on themselves a bit. Ari has been taking careful notes on the process for the past few days.)
imeanforever
Promise sits. "I was writing," she says. This is something she is sometimes willing to do in full view and sometimes requires total privacy for, for reasons she has not yet disclosed to Ari.
bitterchill
"I still feel like there must be a better way to get copies of those books than writing them out by hand, but I guess we can't just go to the Kinko's down the street or whatever. Mortal technology was really useful sometimes... Anyway, I'm glad you got out in time."