| Logs |
2004 July 18
| Idlewild |
| Realms |
Retired
| Reality Fault |
General Info
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| Realms: Idlewild Logs |
July 18
After berry-picking (and berry-eating), the little group goes to see Badger Mattress about the nuns reputed to be following Steven. Lauren and Kip vanish from that gathering after the fur-hatted Badger Mattress is located cooking at ground level-- Lotte and Steven both notice Lauren say something too quiet to hear to Kip before they walk away.
Steven glances to Lauren, inquiringly, though he doesn't want to interrupt what Badger... (No, he still can't even think her full name without grinning) is saying
Badger Mattress beams at the remaining two and offers first Steven, then Lotte a taste of her wooden spoon. She's cooking something in a cauldron that bubbles and smells oddly sweet.
Lotte watches Lauren and Kip go off together and assumes Lauren is going to try and cheer Kip up a bit. She shakes her head politely at the spoon and waits for Steven to speak first.
Steven accepts a taste, certainly... it smells good, and it covers up the fact that he noticed two of their number discretely shuffling off somewhere.
The bubbling substance tastes a lot like oatmeal with maple sugar or syrup added to the mix. Badger Mattress says cheerfully, "Do you think the horses will like it?"
Steven blinks, slowly, and licks his lips, also slowly. "I'm sure they'll love it." Not at all what I'd call 'horse food.' Nice and tasty...even if I bet it's oats. But, hey, what's oatmeal?
Swift and Crenshaw have wandered off a bit, much in the way of Kip and Lauren-- only not at all together.
Badger Mattress nods decisively and says "Good, good. So, Sven, you have a nun problem. You really ought to do something about that." She turns to Lotte and adds kindly, "Yours are coming for you today, you know. I do hope you're ready to choose."
Steven blinks. "I don't understand what you mean about nun problem, ma'am. I mean, coulld you be more descriptive?" He pauses and blinks at Lotte.
The fur-hatted elf woman says as an afterthought, "Are you sure you don't want any horse-mash, dear?"
Lotte's eyes go very wide and she sputters, "But I wasn't raised in a convent!"
Badger Mattress adjusts her fur hat with her non-spoon hand, answering Lotte first. "Of course not. You get boys."
Steven blinks again. "Uhm... could you be more.. detailed? I'm afraid we're a bit confused, we don't know anything about anyone chasing us.
Lotte frowns and gives the strange woman a quizical look. "What?" she asks simply.
To Steven, the hatbearer tilts her head and makes hmmr humm hnng hmff noises for a moment, then speaks. "Your nuns are following you, and it hasn't anything to do with Lotte. They have a dead goblin on a string, but really that's between you and your sunshine, pumpkin." Lotte gets a Badger Mattress finger pointed at her. "I said you're getting boys. You and your orange guitar. If you hear them out, I don't see as much jewelry in your future-- that key pendant around your neck goes missing."
Steven blinks and feels very very chilly, almost paling. He sits down heavily, sighing.
Steven looks up, blinking, and looking to Lotte curiously.
Lotte looks suprised and confused. "But, I'm not wearing the key..." She trails off and looks back at Steven. "Do you have any clue as to what she's talking about?"
Steven shakes his head, a litle distractedly. "I... I'm not sure, Lotte. Maybe some of it is metaphor? I mean... maybe it's figuratively around your neck..."
Lotte nods. "Yeah, it definitely is... What about the dead goblin?"
Steven winces, and sighs. "A goblin I killed in Winter. I... guess I haven't quite lived that down, and I imagine there's some sort of reckoning at hand for it."
Steven says, "What it has to do with nuns, though, I'm not sure."
Badger Mattress looks sympathetic. "It's not easy being in shadow, Sven. You're close to the edge now again, you'll see sunlight soon if you want to. It all depends if you're heading that way, or the other. Young Kip might be some help to you there."
Steven blinks to Badger. "What?" he asks. "I.. didn't think I was falling or drifting away....
Lotte says "Oh!" and looks as though she understands something.
Badger Mattress reaches out delicately and taps Lotte's collarbone. "I still see it. He wants you back, to wear a crown." She looks at Steven and says, "You haven't. You're just staying in the same spot, and that lets the nuns catch up more than they should. What you need is to go forward. They can't keep up. Old legs, you know."
Lotte nods at Badger Mattress and turns to Steven. "I think she's talking about whether or not we decide to go back to Haasha. We are at a definite crossroads here." She pauses and looks thoughtful. "I wonder how Kip could help..."
Steven blinks to Badger. "Oh," he says. "I think I see." He taps his chin. This makes a bit more sense, now. The path to enlightenment isn't travelled while sitting down. "Mmm? Sort of, yes, Lotte. A lot of it is about... what to do next...." He blinks abnd looks around. "Speaking of which, where is Kip?"
Tasting her horse mash, Badger Mattress says-- apparently to herself-- "Little glowing friend but really I'm not actually your friend but I am."
Lotte lets Badger's words echo in her head and she shivers. Wearing a crown on Haasha's throne is the last thing she wants.
The fur-hatted one hums words. It sounds sort of like "raspberry brigade... the kind you buy at the second-hands door."
Stomp stomp stomp rustle. Lauren plows into view, looking furiously angry and red in the face. Some of the color leaves after she does a hasty tally of the population: two friends, one freaky lady. "Where the hell is Kip?" she demands. "Did you see him come by here?"
Steven blinks, looking at Lauren. "We were just about to ask you that!"
Lauren shades her eyes with a hand and checks the distance. "Well, he's not with me. You didn't see him at all?"
Steven stands. "No, we didn't. He ran away from you:?
Lotte stares at the elf woman singing Grey world songs, about to speak. As Lauren storms into view, her train of though derails. "What happened?"
The sound of running footfalls is suddenly audible, faintly.
"He...eh. He disappeared. We were by the berry hedge and he disappeared." Lauren hears the running feet, and takes off running toward them. "GET BACK HERE!"
Lotte doesn't manage to get any words out before Lauren takes off running. "Lauren!" she calls and runs after her.
Steven blinks, watching Lauren dash off. He looks to Badger. "Er.. is there.. anything else you can tell us...?"
Badger Mattress looks up at Steven with faint smile-wrinkles around her eyes. "Oh, yes. You might want to go pick them up. I'll be here." She waves a hand airily, suggesting a longer timeline of "here" than the next few minutes.
Steven blinks. "Er... right." He scrambles up and goes after Lauren who presumably is going after Kip.
Steven gets around the stand of small and inoffensive saplings just in time to see Lauren narrowly avoid careening full-tilt into a running Zhi, Lotte slip on a patch of moss as she runs after Lauren, and the whole pile of three go down sprawling as Lotte bowls into their ankles and they fold at the knee.
Steven winces, and shakes his head, wding in to start helping people stand.
"Get OFF," Lauren wails. "I heard him ru-...oh. Thanks, Steven. Ow."
Lotte's muffled voice says, "owy," as she lifts her head from the pile.
Even before he's finished getting to his feet, Zhi is eyeing Lauren somewhat accusingly. "What did you DO?"
Lauren scrapes Lotte's moss off her shins and glares at Zhi. "I didn't do anything. I thought it was YOU."
Zhi snorts and says "I can't do that. I've been trying to do that for five months now. What did you do to him?"
Calming, Zhi shakes his blue mohawk and looks at Lotte and Steven. "Or was it one of you...?"
Zhi sounds now not so much accusatory as simply wanting to know.
Lauren hangs her head. "Didn't do anything."
Lotte briskly, "I have no idea what's going on, so it obviously wasn't me." She brushes herself off and stands up rather tenderly.
Steven shakes his head. "Do what? Kip's missing?"
Sighing, Zhi says "Kip's missing. I suppose we'll let him find his own way back this time, though. He's not more than a day's travel and he knows these parts well enough." He shakes his head again and chuckles a little to himself before looking back up and explaining, "Lauren did something to scare him off. He, ah... well, did I ever tell you how we met? Kip and me?"
Lauren stamps both her feet. "He wasn't scared. He WASN'T. And how the hell did he DO that?"
Steven blinks, and shakes his head at the question from Zhi
Zhi raises an eyebrow at Lauren, says "Lust and fear are not mutually exclusive, pretty," before turning to the entire group and gesturing distractedly as he talks. "Well. You know that Kip and I can communicate across distance; it's a kind of magic. Some Fall children develop it as they grow up; most don't. It comes in all flavors. I'm not particularly good at any of them, save one thing--" he taps one temple and points at Lotte. "Your magic is music, so you understand the importance of being able to listen. I am, to put it one way, an excellent listener... and not much else, but I know enough theory to teach the children I hear once I find them. Some families in Fall believe all magic is wrong. Kip had the misfortune to be born with his talents into one of those families. One of those talents... is disappearing. Teleporting."
Steven blinks, slowly.
Lotte nods as she gains a much fuller understanding of Kip and his bizarre behavior. "So, where did he go?"
Lauren takes a deep breath, relived. "Oh. I guess that's okay then, if he's not far." And if I didn't do it. Thank God.
Zhi says "The first time, he went far away from his home in fright, and I found him wandering lost... this time, he's not more than a day's walk away. I could find him if I went looking, but I can't just tell you where-- it's him I'd find, not his surroundings, if that makes any sense."
Raising an eyebrow at Lauren, Zhi gets a distinctly wicked tone. "This is the second time he's done it, you know. Whatever you did was something special."
Lauren is nodding to herself with a thoughtful look, digesting this new information, until Zhi speaks and then she's cringing. "It wasn't THAT," she mumbles, checking Steven's and Lotte's faces for signs of suspicion.
Steven maintains a courteously blank facade for Lauren. "So... you can find out where he is, just not what his surroundings are like, Zhi?
Zhi corrects, "I know what direction he's in, and roughly how far away he is. I can't see him in any visual way. I just know roughly where he is, if I look for him... much as I could find my way to the other talented that are within my range. It's like wetting your finger and holding it up to see which way the wind is blowing."
Lotte's expresion barely twitches at Lauren's cringe, and she too stays politely away from asking.
Lauren seems mollified by her friends' good-faith efforts not to snicker. "So um. Should we go get him, you think, or let him come back when he wants to, or...I could go look...? What do you guys think?"
Steven says, "Uhm, if he''s a day or so away, we should probably try to find him..."
Zhi grins wider. "If we just sent you, Lauren, he'd probably end up farther away."
Lauren scowls. "That's mean. We were really getting along. And he DIDN'T look scared. At ALL. And. Um. We can go now."
Steven coughs a little. "Maybe we should go and find him, then.... all the same.
Crenshaw's voice yells from back near Badger Mattress' cooking site, "LAUREN! Tell Lotte her BOYS are here!"
Lotte looks startled, then embarassed, then curious-- and hurries off with a mumbled something to find out what's going on.
Steven blinks, startledly.
Still grinning, Zhi says "Mm hmm. I see. ...I'm just curious, now. Will Kip be wearing all his clothes if we go find him, or should we bring pan--" he blinks, and says "Lotte's boys?"
Lauren cheerfully informs the empty spot in the air that was Lotte: "Your boys are here. Have fun."
Steven looks between Zhi and the fleeing Lotte. "Er... let's see what this is about before we go to find Kip." Then he goes after Lauren.
Lauren follows Steven with a haughty flip of her hair. "He'll still have his clothes on," she assures Zhi over her shoulder. "At least until I get there."
Steven sees a bright-patterned patchwork cloak before the rest of the scene sinks in, and then it looks on the whole like there might be a party tonight. The cloak is on one of three new elves-- two boys and one girl, at first glance-- and all of the new arrivals are carrying wooden boxes with bottlenecks arising like the corked glass spires of an alcoholic city.
Lauren blinks. "Wine?"
Both new boys are talking to Lotte; the girl doesn't appear to mind at all and is chattering with Badger Mattress.
Zhi says from right behind Lauren's shoulder, "Wine might help you with that, yes," and then blithely smirks on over to greet the new arrivals.
Badger Mattress and the girl look up when Steven approaches, and smile. The new girl has hair several shades paler than Lotte's, but still distinctly orange-- the boys talking to Lotte sport brick-red and mottled green hair, respectively. The green one is clearly not Ratheskeliad.
"Ooh," coos Lauren. "Look, Steven, they match. D'you, uh, suppose they're related?"
Steven looks curiously at the new arrivals, smiling and nodding pleasantly in greeting. He murmurs as an aside to Lauren, "It's possible... maybe even likely." He's curious as to why they're chatting so animatedly to Lotte.
Lauren contemplates what she just said for a few seconds. No, all this elf-world crap really hasn't had time to sink in yet. But she is NOT going to get in a funk again. "Look like they could start a band, too. See? All bright colors and lots of alcohol."
Steven stfles a chuckle. "They could, yes. Let's go see who they are..."
"Sven," says Badger Mattress, "Have some wine while the Foxcatcher bards talk your bard into playing with them." Pale orange hair flips as the new girl addresses Lauren with what appears to be great goodwill. "You should too, I made it myself especially for flavor and knock-you-on-your-ass."
Steven blinks. "Oh. Sure. Thank you... AH... sounds strong..."
Lauren weighs the idea of booze. She still takes the kid's dose of NyQuil, for crissake, but...well, nobody here's going to drag her into the trees and rape her or anything. Are they? Naaah. Almost certainly not. "Let's try it," she replies brightly. "How cool, Lotte. But I thought--" a glance at the girl Foxcatcher-- "you were getting boys."
The new elven boys are putting down their boxes of wine and producing instruments-- one has a set of drums, the other has a flute. Lotte is blushing, but animated as she tunes her guitar. She blinks up at Lauren, hearing her name. "Hm?" Lotte looks distracted.
The girl Foxcatcher raises an eyebrow at Lauren. "She is? Really. Both of them?"
"Nothing, nothing," Lauren demurrs. "You got boys anyway. Everything's fine. H'lo, people!" She shines a smile around, especially at the friendly girl Foxcatcher. She likes that one.
Steven blinks to Foxcatcher. "Er... we're not sure. I mean, Badger... here, was saying something about Lotte 'getting boys.'
Lauren swats Steven's arm. "Not like THAT," she scolds. "Of course she's not getting them like THAT."
Steven blinks. "I wasn't implying that's what she meant, honest!
Handing a bottle to Steven, that Foxcatcher girl says "Well, she wouldn't be the first. Cozy there is a slut. The red hair." She shrugs and offers Lauren the other bottle she just grabbed out of the box at her feet. "H'lo. I'm Grennit. The green one is Thaniel, and Cozy will tell you his real name if you ask him extra nice. Who're you?"
Lauren clutches her bottle and sniffs at it carefully. Smells pretty good, for something fermented. "He's Sven. I'm Lauren."
Steven opens his mouth, then nods as Lauren introduces them.
Lauren elbows Steven again, gently. "Hey. You can tell her you're not Sven, if you want. I was teasing."
"Nice ta meetcha, Sven and Lauren," says Grennit, and opens her own bottle. Zhi wanders back from the little group of minstrels about that point, and gets a bottle of his own as the music starts behind him. It sounds like the start of a long elven jam session; Lotte, at least, will not be going to find Kip immediately. Zhi looks entirely unworried as he pops the cork and takes a drink immediately followed by a small and delighted "ooo" noise.
Steven glances at all the bottle-opening, then lifts his shoulders a bit. "Nice to meet you, too," he says, smiling,and takes an experimental sip of the drink.
Lauren boogies in place, just a bit, as the Fall Four jam. They sound good. The wine tastes good too, when she drinks some. It's strangely easy to forget that poor Kip is out there alone in the wilderness.
It's remarkably sweet wine, and hardly tastes alcoholic at all-- til you stop drinking it to breathe, and then you can't.
"Wner," says Lauren. "This...is good."
A crack like a gunshot-- or a champagne-cork popping-- splits the night from somewhere nearby.
Steven blinks, gasping for breath. "WHeew... yah... it IS good!" He gives a start at the crack, looking around alertly. "What was that...?"
Lauren squeaks her alarm and drops into a protective huddle. Her bottle rolls free on the ground, sluicing wine in a sloppy circle.
Grennit jumps, then snorts. "Showoff." She drinks. No one else but Lotte looks particularly concerned, and she calms quickly as the other musicians say something. The song resumes.
Lauren blinks up. "What was that?"
Wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, Grennit answers Steven and Lauren. "That is the laziest elf in the world arriving."
Lauren salvages her bottle, now sadly half-empty. In order to protect it from further harm, she drinks a little more of it. "Stevennn," she urges, still crouched at knee-height. "Make her explain that."
Steven blinks at LAuren, wondering if she's THAT deep in her cups already and if so just how strong thius stuff is. "Uhm... well, yes, Grennit, how do you mean?
Zhi giggles and sits down next to Grennit, who slaps his hand away from her thigh without looking or changing expression. Grennit gives Steven a friendly look. "Never walks anywhere if he can help it. We walked here. He didn't. Hence the noise. Where there was air, there is an elf. Air has to go somewhere. S'funnier when they leave a place, more of a reverse pop--" She illustrates by making popping mouth noises with the aid of a crooked finger. It's strangely enthralling, perhaps due to the wine being stronger than it tastes. Sitting down suddenly seems like a really good idea to Steven.
Lauren stands up. She's steady on her feet still, not hammered. Just a little loose. Most of the wine not in her bottle is getting the grass drunk. "He teleports too? GOD, that is COOL. Who is he?"
The laziest elf in the world-- or someone else who happened to be nearby-- strolls into sight. He's definitely not wearing travelling clothes, or carrying a backpack. Boots go up to mid-thigh tight as a glove, buttoned up the outside of the leg, and the pants underneath are by default even tighter. A fetching fringed vest and ponytail complete the ensemble. He's lighter than Kip, with unabashedly yellow hair. Grennit says, "He's a dandelion."
Steven blinks. "Oh.... uh... right...." He finds a place to sit down, feeling ... the need to do so. He takes a few breaths, looking at the wine bottle again. Maybe I shouldn't hae more.
"He's David Lee Roth," Lauren corrects Grennit.
Lauren says, "For once, so do I. And I still have TWO comics to draw and this dumbass project to...eh...do something to. I have no idea what."
Grennit looks interested. "Is he really? You've met? He does get around."
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