(She takes the time first to make a little leaf-cloak for Greystripe that he can untie when he takes flight. With endure elements up he won't get cold, but flying in the rain isn't fun even for waterbirds.)

They tell the clerk they're fine and more importantly they want to ask who else is or isn't fine and what happened and the poor man is clearly out of patience and someone's already waiting in line behind her and  - 

Oh never mind, there's Voshrelka, they'll ask her. Voshrelka should be easier to understand than some harried palace clerk with no idea that not everywhere and everyone in the world is Cheliax.

Voshrelka had a brief moment of getting to be dry, when she sat in the temple of Erastil being obviously a friendly and helpful druid, but that's since been lost. She's back to being soaked. Endure Elements makes it tolerable, but it's still not her favorite state of being. Yay, civilization. So civilized that instead of doing the sensible thing and nestling down in a rainstorm, one must go marching out onto the streets to collect the dead or feeding the starving or dancing a pretty jig or what have you. On the bright side, she got a cup of coffee, and if the convention's been suspended for a couple of days, she's not going to be trapped in the argument room today.

It doesn't really help, because she's a responsible adult and so is in fact reporting her state to the palace, and more importantly Liushna's state and the location of her body. She'll still have to keep talking to humans. Hello, humans. Yes, she's alive, yes, she's Voshrelka, yes a delegate, blah blah blah. She found the body of the delegate Liushna, are the archmages going to do anything about it? Soon? Because if not then she will need to make other arrangements and - okay, she's going to be properly raised. Good. That mollifies her a little.

She's extracted herself from interacting with the palace guards after getting a promise they will please come get her for Liushna's raising. Who knows if they'll keep to it, she should probably hang around in the appropriate (extremely crowded) temple to make sure, but she's also still got some Plant Growths to cough up, so. Probably that should be done first, since she expects the rusted and bloody gears of civilization to take their damned time to do anything productive at all. Hmm, then she should probably get some kind of direction about where would be best, is that girl she gave the circuit maps to around..? Maybe they haven't been destroyed in this ridiculous folly, and will save her the work of remaking everything...

"Voshrelka!" (Hoot hoot!) "I'm glad you're alright." Druids are too sensible to be caught in city-human madness, and more importantly they can always fly away, but druids from other forests have turned out to be more... foreign than Feather anticipated. "Do you understand what happened last night? They were fighting each other and I didn't know why and every time I healed someone I was afraid I was helping the wrong side, or someone on the opposite side from the ones I helped ten minutes before that, and - we left once the rain started..."

Ah, damn it.

"Hello. I'm glad you're well." And she is! Just not glad that she's the one that needs to explain things to the baby druid. "It's called a riot. It's - let's get out of the rain so I can try to explain, it's fairly complicated. Cities just sort of do this sometimes."

"Cities try to - burn themselves down sometimes? Is that why they need so much lumber? I don't think most cities have mages who can bring the rains on half an hour's notice. Unless the archmages are, like, on standby to teleport around the continent."

The palace is right there and it's dry inside! The floor is wet and muddy from all the people going in and out, half of them without proper raincoats, making it much more homely than usual.

Noooo too crowded, Voshrelka will gently lead her out into the rain and to a place that is both out of it and more private. This does involve continuing to talk in the rain as they get to a quiet place, but it's better than heading back into the crowded palace. She switches to Sylvan anyway, on general principle.

"They try to burn parts of it down, not all of it. But their cities are extremely flammable, and they don't really mind if the whole place goes up in ashes if the thing they wanted to burn down is still destroyed, or at least don't think about it very much before they break out the torches. It's not really why they need so much lumber, though it does lead into it. Archmages stepping in and telling everyone to grow up and putting out the fires with rain is nonstandard, actually. Usually it ends much worse than this."

"Who's 'they'? Yesterday it felt like everyone was fighting everyone else." There are still body parts in the street as they go. Look, there's somebody's foot, it hasn't even been long enough for it to be scavenged.

Feather knows that death isn't wrong or bad or Evil, it's a necessary part of the natural cycle, but that's not an explanation for why some people decide to kill some others and when they might do it again. How can she do anything if she doesn't understand these people on the fundamental level of what they're willing to personally fight and die for?

"'They' is a general term here, for people of civilization who are cut off." 'Cut off' being cut off from the greater whole, which is blessfully obvious in this language. See, this is why Sylvan is better for speaking, it has the appropriate words for this. "But yes, they were all essentially fighting themselves for made up reasons. I can try to explain, but it's... madness, really."

"It feels a lot more Chaotic-and-Evil than the Lawful-and-Evil they're supposed to be," Feather says dubiously. "You're saying it like - this kind of thing just happens, the convention will be delayed a few days while they clean up the pointless dead bodies, and then - everything will just go on as if nothing important happened?"

"...also do you know if - everyone else we know is alright?" She tries to gesture wordlessly at - everyone they know in the city whose well-being either of them might care about. "At least Liushna can fly..."

"Not precisely, but it's - sort of like a herd losing a member to a pack of wolves? They are changed, but they will go on regardless."

Then for the hard part. "... Liushna's dead," she says, flatly. "I retrieved her body, and they're allegedly going to raise her."

Oh no. No no no - she had wings she was supposed to be safe -

"Do you know why. How?!"

"She was protecting children that did not have the ability to fly. Trying to take them to the safety of above. Her body was wrapped around the last, who did live, thanks to her efforts." She shrugs. "I presume because she looked like a monster," and she uses the Taldane word for it, "stealing children."

"Children she... knew? Whose children? Children the crazy humans were attacking, despite not being - monsters." Feather doesn't bare her teeth but only because her favourite shape is a bird. 

"Are you sure. Are you, very very sure, that she wasn't attacked by anyone who - wanted to kill her personally - anyone who, who needs to be stopped from doing anything like that again." Feather can't deter every outsider from attacking 'monsters' on sight, but for a moment oh how she wishes she could.

Poor thing. Looking for someone to blame and get vengeance on. She understands the impulse, but: yeah, no. This is not how civilization works.

"... it wasn't... child. It wasn't the sensible death of a predator seeing an opening and pouncing on prey." She shakes her head. "I don't know for certain, I only found the aftermath, but. It was not one person that did it. It was many, all at once, all together. But she'll be able to tell us the specifics, if the archmages keep to their word. Or even if they don't." They reach a building on a high foundation, with an overhang they can get out of the rain from. It's not exactly spacious or comfortable, but they can be slightly less rained on. "I reached fourth circle. I'll be able to give her a second life regardless of if they renege or not."

"You can raise dead?" That's incredibly cool! Ravounel Forest's druids can't do that, as far as Feather knows. Unless it's a secret she'd be initiated into when on reaching fourth circle? Why would that be a secret, though - oooh, because it's a lower circle than for clerics! Alright, that is legitimately very cool and she'll even overlook Voshrelka calling her 'child' for it.

(The elves in Ravounel Forest don't live in a separate community, and the druid elves obviously all understand that shorter-lived races really are mature at a younger age. Old Oak calls her 'child' sometimes but he's earned the right, he knew her when she was a child.)

"...the archmages said they'd raise her? Because she's a delegate? Are they going to - keep raising any delegates who are killed?" If she could trust them about it she might take a nonzero risk of dying next time because reaching fourth circle is seriously tempting because Voshrelka apparently thought random human children worth saving at the risk of her own life, and maybe so should she.

Oh dear, she's doing the thing where she chatters very quickly and it makes it hard to reply to her. Why. Why this. Why is she in this situation. (It's for the Barrowood, and all of the forests of the world. Or at least Cheliax.)

"... No, it's not - well yes, they say they're going to, but I don't know the specifics of when they will or won't, I don't even know for sure if they will, but more importantly - wait, do the druids of Ravounel not know about Reincarnate? It's not raise dead. Druids get a different spell."

'Reincarnate'??

"I heard... the archmage Naima Cotonnet has a spell called that? Except it works on living people and it changes their race and makes them young again, so it must be something else. Um. I don't know all the spells druids get at higher circles, because some of them are secret obviously," and presumably Voshrelka isn't going to tell her something that's a druidic secret from anyone below fourth circle - no actually if Voshrelka just made fourth yesterday she can't know any secrets Feather isn't meant to know yet, so it's fine!

"So how's your Reincarnate different from a cleric's raise dead?" It makes sense it'd be different, a lot of druid spells are different from cleric spells. "Oh, and, um, congratulations! On making fourth, I mean." She kind of forgot to say that at first but hopefully Voshrelka is wise enough to understand and forgive that; new circles beyond second are almost always some kind of traumatic, if not necessarily for the person who gets them. 

"Thank you," she says, a little overwhelmed by Feather's chattering. And she's got to reply faster than normal, or the girl will just keep talking! She knows this from experience! So: "It's - I wasn't aware the archmage made a copy of it, actually, but that does sound like Reincarnate. Except ours works on a dead target. But it brings them back as a different race at the beginning of that race's adulthood. Does Ravounel not know..?" That sounds insane, actually, sort of like there being a druid that doesn't know, and isn't trying to learn, how to cast spells while wildshaped. There's a better explanation. There's a better explanation that also explains why they even sent this girl, with little experience of humans and even less understanding.

"Ravounel didn't tell you, because they sent you here and didn't want you to know," she surmises, out loud, but still half whispered. "Because you can't cast it, and couldn't give it away. Ah." Well. Oops. She'll have to apologize to some of the druids of Ravounel at some point, won't she, even if they probably are some kind of crazy druidic cult.

... alright, that is a bit more insulting than Feather's willing to bear right now.

"Give it away? Like you've been giving away 'logging zones'? I wouldn't offer anything I wasn't instructed to offer."

"If I was sent here in ignorance it's because we were afraid of the wizards stealing it. They're Evil - well, some of them are, hopefully not the new archmages - and this is the center of their power, and they can read your mind or dominate you. Why would you ever send someone here who knows the druids have something that you don't want the wizards to learn about, because if they knew they might burn down the forest to get it? There's a damned good reason people who know the highest druidic secrets don't leave the forests!"

"I didn't say there wasn't," says Voshrelka, mildly. Oh, look, a temper on the child, and now she's having a tantrum. Joy. "Just that I hadn't expected it."

She could go on to say 'I'm sure it's very comfortable for them, in their small out of the way forest that hasn't been worth civilization's time to slaughter, not having to ever leave and think about the world outside,' but she is not a child, so she's not going to turn this into a screaming match. Instead she just raises her eyebrows and looks at Bright Morning Feather like she's the dumb, silly child having a tantrum that she is. She's had a lot of years to get good at this expression.

"You didn't expect Ravounel Forest to have good reasons for doing things," Feather says acidly.

Sigh. Deep breath. (No coffee, good.) Make herself speak quietly again.

"I - shouldn't get upset with you. If your forest lets druids who know about it leave, and you didn't know ours doesn't. I'm... still not over Liushna dying, I guess. Sorry."
 
"If Naima already has the spell, then I hope the other wizards won't attack the forests for it even if they learn about it. Unless they can't buy it from her." Ugh, this could easily go badly but it's really out of her hands and she'll do best to forget it exists until she's back home.

"...being put into a different race's body sounds like - a very druid thing to do? Almost like - another rite of passage, when you really are equally at home with being every kind of creature." Wow, forgetting about novel secret druid spells is hard, maybe she can meditate about it later. "Er, what I mean is - I hope Liushna will be alright, if she has to come back that way? I expect it'd be really hard for someone who doesn't have the training. I'd offer her to come to Ravounel so we could help her with it, but I know how much she cares about her tribe." Sigh. "I hope they'll raise her the cleric way. And - please don't tell me any more druidic secrets I might not know without checking first."

"Apology accepted. It's not a secret, among Barrowood druids." There are other things she knows that are, but she wasn't going to tell those anyway. "Please also note I also didn't say anything of the sort of Ravounel, do not paint your own conclusions of what I think onto me and pretend they're mine."

Ugh. How about she doesn't get into another morass of arguing who said what and instead just - Not That.

"Alright. Let's - let's talk about something else. What are you going to do until the convention resumes? I'm not sure yet what I can do, usefully, and last night I only helped a couple of strangers because I couldn't figure out who was fighting who or why, and - I don't want to be that unprepared again." If she'd known Liushna might need her help she'd have stayed in the city, and at least Voshrelka came closer to being there to help her. At least she saved her body.

"I'll check with some of the other people I met to see if they need my help, and - maybe I could also help you, depending on what you'll be doing. But if you're going to do plant growths I - I really want to understand why you made the deal you made, for the logging zones. That sounds like - I don't want to say giving up, but, probably accelerating defeat? And - are all the other druids and everyone else in the Barrowood really going to help you help the humans log the forest, even if it's only designated zones? Or at least to agree not to help anyone stop them from doing it?"

Ravounel, listen, she understands wanting to keep your forest's secrets, but, like. C'mon. Could you have sent someone who knows literally anything about diplomacy. Or people. Or talking. That would have been great. Sincerely, this Barrowood druid.

"... I didn't make a deal for logging zones. We were workshopping ideas. I wouldn't, and haven't, made promises that cannot be kept. The way they think of it is important, though, and treating it as if it's a problem we all share, and feel sympathy towards, instead of 'those druids are crazy and love their trees for some reason' makes me seem like one of them. I put it in terms they can understand and presented the problem as one they took part in causing. If they think of it as - policing each other, instead of us against them, they splinter into factions and fight each other. As you'll notice they've done already here, though this isn't about the forests."