when's it my turn | Glowfic Constellation

k-shut-up-now

Since Cyllene's first (licit, chaperoned) visit to the surface, she's visited enough times to watch it get warmer, and colder, and warmer again, over the course of many (illicit, solo) trips. She's gone close (though never that close) to the shore and watched the humans from afar, seen their strange, straight caves, and the coverings on their bodies, and the way they move about on the surface floor upright.

She's seen ships, the things humans use to make there be a surface floor on the ocean, one that moves around. Humans swim, sometimes, but, as far as she can tell, never while as far away from land as ships go.

She's also seen ships below the surface, far below it. But she's pretty sure that's not because the humans wanted them that way; the whole seafloor around them were filled with strange, seastar-configured skeletons. She's pretty sure that swimming in the open ocean is for humans about as sure a death as wriggling her way far onto the surface land would be for her.

She's learned a lot about ships. They are usually in this range of sizes, and sometimes they lower nets and catch fish in them. (Cyllene has attempted to replicate nets, as if they were her idea, and got a pretty good start on it. One of her sisters dismissed the idea as being human-like when shown a swatch of knotted seaweed, and Cyllene has to be intensely careful that no one suspect her of having upward sympathies. She has a real net, human-made, in her secret grotto, and she can see that its purpose is the truly beautiful thing about it, but for now... it will remain solely decorative. It has to.) There tend to be kinds of ship, ones that do the fish-netting and ones that don't, really.

This ship, she thinks, is not one of the kind that does the fish-netting. She hopes she's right, because as much as she wants to know about humans, she does want more to not be netted.

She approaches from underneath, runs her hands along its belly, and then - heads for the surface.

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"I'm not sure what I would want, miss."

k-shut-up-now

Then I'll do another light. What should I attach it to this time?

"...I could go get some pebbles from the garden?"

k-shut-up-now

Nod.

Later I should think about what may be a better thing than whatever is around, but this will do.

"Yes miss." Off she goes.

k-shut-up-now

Cyllene warms up in the meantime! When Jane returns, she makes a couple of lights and - wow would really like to go to bed, actually.

Jane takes the yawn to be meaningful and puts her to bed.

k-shut-up-now

Jane is really great. And Cyllene is asleep near-immediately.

In the morning it is time to be up early and put on a new dress which is plain-looking but very finely woven - Jane is wearing a similar dress - and then off they go without any breakfast to church!

k-shut-up-now

....Cyllene is pretty groggy still but conveniently Jane is doing almost all of the work here. The dress is nice. And she doesn't get zapped.

Then she will get to listen to the priest give a call-and-response prayer in another language and to everybody dragging their way together through a couple of hymns and to a homily which is about how it is totally possible that someone could be possessed by an angel and do some good things and this should make everyone more willing to see the goodness in the actions of their fellow man or something.

k-shut-up-now

Cyllene is at this level of fluency in Loegrian able to notice that the prayer is in another language. (If only once she gets tripped up reading along, expecting the pronunciation to be one way and then hearing it another.) The hymns are... great for learning to read sheet music. She has kind of an idea about the basics by the end. Probably they would sound much nicer if performed by other humans?? Unclear.

She spends the homily having a bit more of her crisis about whether any of this is real, and what it means if it's not, and what it means if it is. It's fine for her face to look confused and serious and attentive for this but she should keep any despair out of her expression. She thinks she's succeeding.