odd little alucine

[affodell]

It's never previously occurred to Cayra to put a door across an alucine boundary, but now that she's encountered it in practice it makes sense. It makes it visually obvious and it lets you lock it if you want. This door wasn't locked, and it looked like it led to a public bathroom, not a bar, from the signage, so she's still confused. Still, it's a good idea. She twists open the glass vial pendant around her neck and bends her head to the little blue lily inside to make a note of it; as an afterthought she tries to send it off to her antheomancer-chatcircle, anything to have a decent conversation, but it doesn't go. Her flower doesn't look wilting, but she can put it back in the garden and get a fresher one for the vial later. At least her personal files look okay. She closes up the vial again, giving the flower a touch of antheomancy for its health, and finds a bathroom inside the bar that dominates this little alucine.

And then she emerges into the bar. It doesn't seem to be staffed. Or stocked. Why wasn't it locked?

Hello, anybody here?

with Flynn (ErinFlight)

with Harry (andaisq)

Due to some icon rearrangement errors, some of Flynn's tags appear with an incorrect icon. The correct face for this thread is Rosario Dawson's.

Comments

[erinflight]

A woman waves at her from an otherwise empty table, "Hey, you know where we are?"

[affodell]

"No, not really. We're just off a suburb-alucine of Araming, though, if you're lost?"

[erinflight]

"We're off the what?" She lets out a huff of air, "I must be really lost."

[affodell]

"I don't remember the name of the alucine I came in from, I've been traveling, but I know it's attached to Araming's west portal cluster. Where'd you come from?"

[erinflight]

"Town called Crake's hollow, near the ruins of Lustet. Never heard of Araming."

[affodell]

"I've never heard of your town or Lustet. Araming's big and you speak really good Radial for not having ever heard of the alucine. What's the nearest big alucine or empire to you?"

[erinflight]

"Never heard of an alucine either. We're in what used to be the Empire of the Reseers, but that was a long time ago."

[affodell]

"...What do you mean you've never heard of an alucine?"

[erinflight]

"It's a new word. I don't know what it means. Have you ever heard of a weaver?"

[affodell]

"People who... make... fabric? But no if you don't have alucines where do you put your towns?"

[erinflight]

"Valleys, forest clearings, anywhere that's a little protected and close to farmland. Weavers are crazy and have magic. What are alucines?"

[affodell]

"Alucines are where you normally would put all your valleys and forest clearings and towns! They're where all the stuff is! Where do you put your - oh, maybe you just have a really big alucine? A portal-impoverished one? And then you could probably have a decent sized country that didn't even know there were other ones and you might not bother to have a word."

[erinflight]

"I don't know. I still don't get what an alucine is. Are you saying that it's the same thing as a planet? The only place I know without stuff is space."

[affodell]

"What's a planet? And I don't think you're using the word 'space' like I'm used to. Like, there's room to put things, but..."

[erinflight]

"Space is the place above the air, where the stars and sun are. It's supposed to be mostly empty. What's outside your alucines?"

[affodell]

"...I don't understand the question. Alucines with air in them don't have anything above that. Just the lid. I don't know what you're talking about with stars or suns either."

[erinflight]

"Where do you get your light?"

[affodell]

"From daylight, or fires, or magic."

[erinflight]

"We have daylight, but it comes from the sun. There's nothing over us. The place I live, it's called a planet, and it's like a really big ball surrounded by empty space. Gravity sticks us and the air to it. The suns another ball of fire, but really far away and really big. Any of this sounding like where you live?"

[affodell]

"So... you live on a spherical sky-island that pulls you toward it instead of just being pulled downward, and you get your daylight from a spherical fire island. No, that doesn't sound like where I live, that makes no sense, I couldn't make that up."

[erinflight]

"Never heard it put like that, but that's pretty much it. Though down is towards the planet, there's not another down outside of it. Our planet's really big. If you were riding a horse, and didn't have to worry about oceans, it would take a couple years to get all the way around."

[affodell]

"That's... okay, that's huge, that's bigger than the biggest previously known alucine. I wonder how you got cut off for so long? I mean people lose portals sometimes if they're not careful, but what about your flowers?"

[erinflight]

"Flowers as in the plants that grow in the ground and smell sweet?"

[affodell]

"Yeah." Cayra indicates the pendant at her neck; it's a glass tube with a screwed-together section in the middle and a little pat of soil at the bottom, from which grows a small, blue-glowing lilylike blossom. "This kind in particular, I mean."

[erinflight]

She leans forward to inspect it, "We have flowers similar to that but I've never seen anything exactly like it, and none of ours glow."
She straightens back up, "Oh, and I'm Flynn. What's your name?"