ꙮ The Awoken’s room, of the rooms that Chaya and the apostates gave you for your stay. Even away from the City, shade and shelter are paramount.
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has dressed down now that the caves provide ample cover from the sun, and the lighting about also lacks the radiating heat of a flame. He still wears his linen long pants and calf-length leather boots, but has shrugged the flapped tunic from his shoulders, leaving it to flap about his waist. He wears an airy, black undershirt- short in the sleeve and deep in the neck.
heads out from the collective house where the party is having their stay and looks down at his tomestone. He briefly rereads the conversation he had with Salme regarding the ‘Sunscope’ they’ll be making (he made the name up just now), and pockets it securely.
: “Drinks and directions, for sunbeating and sunwatching, that’s the plan!” he comments, to Someone In Particular.
ꙮ It’s a great name!
: “I wonder if they have a special drink of their own down here. A glowy concoction made from moss squeezings or something…?”
ꙮ Drinks and directions are easy to find. There’s an area that seems like the confluence of a bunch of different marked-out paths through the caverns, that seems like it’s got most of the ‘places people live and rest’ clustered around it, very close to the shelter Emberlight was given - one, larger, section of that cave has a bunch of long tables, and some performance stages, although they’re currently unused, and the other smaller section is the kitchen that Luĉja wound up helping make dinner at yesterday before their adventures. There’s usually people Hanging Out there!
makes light and quick steps towards the confluence- he’s amiable to crafted guided geography, so it doesn’t take much to draw him toward the kitchen and dining area. He takes noted enjoyment in how good it feels to be running in the cool cave air as opposed to the superheated outside.
ꙮ You notice, actually, that there are lots of caves in the cave system, but a lot of them are just unlighted, blocked off. Someone, somewhen and long ago, probably several someones over quite a long time, did a very good and clever job of making this space navigable and comfortable! And well-lit - in addition to the luminescent moss, and the almost-but-not-quite-neon-strips of lighting in the floor, there’re a bunch of gnosis-powered smoothly-contoured ceramic lamps that must have been pulled up from the depths of the cave, there’s rougher (but still lovely) lamps the apostates made by hand and emplaced into the cavern walls anywhere they needed to… they’re caves, but they’re anything but dark and dreary! In any event, there’s a station near the kitchen, and it seems well-stocked with drinks and leftover breakfast (a nutty brown porridge, not unlike the City’s oatmeal), and there’s someone behind it wearing a very well-loved Vehru workers’ apron who greets you with a pleasant wave.
ꙮ To be clear, a human apostate. You’ve not seen any Kin at all in the caves - there’s a recognisable uniform, as it were, for those humans who work with the Vehru, though, and it looks like this person must have taken theirs with them when they came to the caverns.
jogs up to them! “Morning! Or, uh… evening? (I left my pocketwatch in the room.)”
: “I’ll take what’s left!”
ꙮ They laugh, pleasantly. “Morning. Shade and comfort to you. It can be hard to tell in the caves, sometimes, can’t it?” And they put together a plate with a bowl of oatmeal and some chopped dates, and pour a glass of what looks like faintly-tinted water for him.
: “It sure can be. Mostly I just listen for when people are hungry, that’s a good enough indicator!” He gathers the bowl and the glass- peers at the glass curiously, and takes a sip.
ꙮ It’s… delicious?! It tastes like everything that’s good about an orange got extracted and used to flavor water, with a complex set of refreshing herbal notes overlaid atop that.
makes a incredibly pleasured groan while one of his eyes rolls back and the other half-lids rapidly to the rush of the taste!
: “Ohhh… delicious! What d’ya call it!”
ꙮ They grin widely at the reaction, and laugh. “It’s just… we just call it ‘orange water’, around here, honestly. It’s– every so often we get supplies from the City, right, and there’s usually some citrus packed in with everything else. Not quite enough for everyone to have some, so a long time ago we figured out a way to make a little bit go along way for everyone who wanted it.”
: “Ahh, it’s entirely the concept of orange in a drink! And then some!” He takes a seat pretty close to where this fellow is- doesn’t want to block anyone else who might show up, but wants to continue conversation anyhow.
: “Mind if I grub and gab?”
ꙮ They gesture encouragingly. “Go right ahead - we’re winding breakfast down soon enough anyways, most everyone who wanted some probably already got it.” And then, curiously: “What do you think of our sietch?”
: “I feel like there should be casual brass-and-bass music playing at each major gathering.” He eats a spoonful of the oatmeal before adding. “It’s cool and cavernous! I could count the stalactites as though they were stars.”
ꙮ They chuckle, a little. “There’re performances, sometimes. Mostly during dinner, though.” And they tilt their head, a little, curiously. “‘Stars’?”
: “Mmm, whoops–“ He washes down a chopped date with orange water, taking a second to savor the taste before replying. “So, imagine instead of the blazing bright sky, that it was as dark as a lightless cavern, with the exception of tiny dots of moss that twinkle across the ceiling. Those dots of moss would be ‘stars,’ each one of them a sun, a tremendous distance away.”
ꙮ They close their eyes, and they do their best to imagine it, a look of wonder on their face. “…that sounds incredible. Is it– like that? Where you come from?” Chaya’s mentioned they’re ‘not from the City’, and the buzz has vibrated its way through the caverns already by this point.
: “Sure is! I think. I mean- I’ve seen what I’m talking about, absolutely, but from where I’m from specifically? Not certain, as I lost all my memory!”
ꙮ Their eyebrows raise in mild, polite shock, but then: “Well, it sounds like you’ve got lots of stories to tell, regardless. It’s– always exciting whenever anyone joins us from the City, but nobody can remember us ever having visitors before.” And they sound like they’re on the brink of asking an Impertinent Question.
: “Oh yeah. Mu’s definitely unique in that none of us travellers are from here. Everywhere else, though? We’ve got that covered!” He taps his spoon on the bowl. “Except that I don’t remember anything. But I could ask a few others.”
ꙮ They lean forward, a little bit. “Before you go, wherever it is you’re traveling next, you and your friends. Could you– tell us some stories, from your travels? Not– not right now, of course, I don’t want to intrude on your time, but. You must have so many.”
grins. “Absolutely! We’re gonna create a few new ones too, before we get goin’. Example: have you ever looked at the sun? Like, could you actually say what it looks like?”
ꙮ They shudder, immediately. “Spend most of my day trying not to go anywhere near it, honestly.”
chuckles lightly. “Now I’m curious. What got you out here?”
ꙮ They scrunch up their face a little bit. “Couple of things, I guess. Loved my Work. Still do.” They pat the front of their apron. “Didn’t love the sun. Didn’t love the way I felt every time I stepped outside. Didn’t love the Sun-sickness, didn’t much like the thought of experiencing that before I went to my rest. And I figure, if the God wants to He can find me and wake me right back up if I’m under rocks in the sand just as well as if I’m a crystal in the Gallery, right? And if He doesn’t want to, well, that’s His business and I won’t be awake to be bothered by it.”
: “Heheheh! That’s the way!” He fistpumps with one hand while popping a cut date into his mouth with the other.
: “Well I’ll tell ya’ this,”
: “We’ve got plans to see the true face and nature of that sun.”
ꙮ They blink, astoundedly, and lean in again.
: “Soon enough you’ll have an image to put to that distate.”
: “Which leads me to my next two questions!”
: “Glassblowers! I’ve sort of seen ‘em about, and while I’d like to wander aimlessly, I am actually on a mission of sorts… any good directions to the best of ‘em?”
ꙮ They brighten immediately: “Oh! Yeah, yeah. Ari in the green moss district. I’m biased, but he’s also the best, and he’s got two good apprentices if you’ve got a lot of work that needs done.”
: “Excellent!”
: “And the second, this one’s just for me though…”
swirls the glass of orange water about.
: “Any history of apostate Kin?” He drinks.
ꙮ They shake their head, and they seem a little sad. “Nah, nobody’s ever been able to convince one to leave the City and come live with us instead. Qarina’s friend, Dyu is lovely, though, if she’s introduced you to him? I wish he could spend more time, here. And I know he’s not the only Kin who’s ever been out this way, not by a long shot. But none have ever stayed for very long.”
looks up, and it feels like a very deliberate looking up. “That’s an interesting way of putting it.”
is quiet for a few moments afterward. If they find it weird, they should say something.
or not, I’m not the boss of them.
ꙮ They do tilt their head to the side. “How so?”
: “Would you say most people are here because their heart led them here, or they were convinced?”
ꙮ They think for a second. “Oh, I see what you mean. Everyone here’s here because they want to be– even people who came because a companion of theirs wanted out of the City and they didn’t want to be apart. I just– well. Speaking only for myself, I do wish we had some Kin around. Feels weird and wrong without them. But I think you’d -have- to convince one to leave the City.”
darkly chuckles and brushes his hair back.
: “Maybe seeing the face of God would shake some to the darkness.”
ꙮ They blink, startled on several levels, most directly: “You think the Sun is the God?”
tilts his head this way and that. “Mmm… only like… five percent chance, maybe…”
: “But I suspect the Sun and God are very, very much related.”
: “We’ll see!” he says with a bright smile, returning his empty bowl and glass to the table.
ꙮ They still seem shocked, but not too shocked to crack a joke. “I think if you do manage to draw a picture of the Sun somehow it’ll be giving the whole world the fig.”
: “On that day, we will drink of fermented figs.”
: “See you at dinner!” He gives them a two fingered salute before jogging off (with more energy, thanks to the oatmeal!) towards the green moss district.
ꙮ It’s good to eat breakfast! The green moss district isn’t far - the green-moss thoroughfare tunnel is one of the ones that branch off from the central meeting-and-eating-space, although you do have to hike a little bit down the tunnel to get where you’re going; you pass a few people lugging wheeled carts full of finished goods along the other way. Finally, you get to a cavern that’s got to be fairly close to the surface - there are a couple of metal chimneys going up into the roof of the caves for exhaust from furnaces powering kilns and forges.
: “(There we go.)” He minds signs outside of the forges, looking for obvious signs of ‘Ari’s’ or somesuch. Or even a person who makes eye contact.
ꙮ There’s someone right on their way out that immediately Recognises The Expression, leaves their cart to amble over to the Awoken, and point him in a particular direction. One glassworker - an apprentice, by the looks of him - is theatrically making a blown-glass vessel for a small audience; leaning against a heavily gnosis-worked stone kiln is who must be Ari, with arms like tree trunks and a leather vest and iridescent stone nodules going all the way down one shoulder and arm. He sees the Awoken approach, and gives a wave. “Ho, there. Can I help you?”
: “Howdy! I’m looking for Ari.”
ꙮ ”I’ve got good news. Need something made?”
: “Oh ho ho, you betcha.” He wrings his hands together. “I’m the Awoken Prince, and I’ve got an order for some of the biggest lenses you’ll have ever made.”
ꙮ He raises both eyebrows, and leans in. “Oh? That sounds like a challenge”, and he says it with an amiable grin. “Got schematics for me? What’re you tryin’ to put together?”
: “Ever make a device so that you can see far away things?”
ꙮ ”Hmm. Far-away things, no. Worked on a project for the Yazhn of Yazhn once involving seeing nearby things in a different way, though, that can’t be too far off. People need lenses for all sorts of things. Makes sense that you’d need big ones for that, though. Can probably grind you out what you need.”
chuckles, then laughs, then guffaws.
: “Heh…hehehehe….ahahaha….gahahahaha!”
: “Ooh buddy.”
: “We’re gonna skip several steps.”
: “If you can get me a paper and writing instrument, I’ll calculate out the curvature.”
: “But also, we’re gonna need some heavy tint coatings. Also coatings that will synthesise with particular gnosis types.”
ꙮ He has a brief moment of rapid recalculation of several variables and assumptions he’d been making about how this conversation was going to go, grins like an idiot, and claps for the apprentice that’s not currently mid-theatrics, and a few moments after that there’s a wide tablet of graph paper and drafting pencils on a table a few steps away. “Yeah, I know how to do that.” You really have his attention, now.
slams both hands on a desk.
: “We’re gonna look right at the Sun, Ari.”
ꙮ ”You’re crazy, I like you.” And then, “Be careful,” and then, “Although I get the feeling you’ve already done the math on how careful you need to be. Lemme see what you’re working with here.”
: “Right, right.” He takes a drafting pencil in hand, and there’s a moment right as he puts the lead to paper, that he begins to write, and it’s more like a memory than a thought. He knows how the observatory is constructed. He knows how the telescope works. The angle of an incoming lens to focus into a prism, and then diffuse it from there, it would be something like…
[Empyrean Intuition]
’s hands move, making corrections here, sketched lines there, every now and then erasing out the outer sketch layer. About a third of the way through he speaks. “…and then… also a prism… to aim the energy out through the sides here–“ adding in specialized vents and heatsinks to the side. “But… I mean… if we really wanted to…”
: “If you’re feeling really confident…”
ꙮ Ari watches, with little rumbles of interested curiosity as the plans take shape under the Awoken’s hand. A grunt of agreement, at the prism, and a murmured “That’d work…”, before he falls silent and wildly curious towards whatever’s next.
overlays a thinner sheet on top of that, drawing an octahedron, and then thinner lines inside it, and smaller lines inside that- a fractically small amount of detail as his strokes become shorter and sharper… and then surrounding it with eight smaller lenses, replacing the vents with backboards.
: “Aiming the top part at the sun here. Plan A is to infuse lenses with gnosis and switch ‘em out, so it’ll filter down all the energy through here, and then onto a larger space behind it here–“ he finally draws in the output- the tube which will project the filtered images. “–where we’ll copy what’s been filtered.”
: “All these vents are to shed all the riotous energy that the Sun’s putting out… but if we… really tackled the cuttings of a prism just so, I bet we could capture multiple images at once.”
ꙮ He stares at the papers for a moment or two, going over numbers in his head, thinking about the optical properties of the glass he has available, and after a moment, snorts softly. “No, yeah, I think that might make heat management easier, not harder. ‘cause, look, you’re already shedding energy at this step, and then you’re splitting eight ways, and– you’ve got that weird copy paper they made for the Zvahr? That’s a good idea, means your naked eye won’t be involved at all, worst case scenario you set somethin’ on fire, worse things’ve happened–“ –and so on, as he asks a couple of clarifying questions and makes some sketches and notes of his own.
ꙮ ”Y’know…” He pauses.
ꙮ ”Somethin’ kinda funny about usin’ the desert to get a good look at the Sun.”
: “Hah! Yeah. We’ve got a hunch that there’s something odd about it.”
: “So we’ve got an even odder plan to look into it.”
ꙮ He smooths out some papers on the table. “This is all your work, not the Yazhn’s, I can tell. Where’d you learn to– nevermind, doesn’t matter. Yeah, no, we can make this work. Won’t even take that long, it’s been a slow week.” Another grin. “Might need to cook up a batch of glass specific for the project, though, th’ sand always takes some persuading to take just any old gnosis in. But nothing I can’t manage.”
: “If there’s anything I can fetch, let me know. I’ll also be sticking around to help out, of course!”
ꙮ ”Actually…” He tilts his head at the Awoken. “Do they have sand where you’ve been?”
lightly laughs. “That’s a weird question for me to answer because I assume the answer is ‘yes,’ but I don’t actually know, because I have no memories of myself!”
: “I know what sand is, but that question is the exact angle where I have to say,” and he makes the ‘i dunno’ grunt noise instead of using words.
: “Oh, but from other places I’ve been and not just where I’m from, yes.”
ꙮ He blinks. “You don’t remember -anything- since before you got– okay. Okay, yeah, that’ll work. Mind indulging my curiosity?” And he reaches down under the table, and pulls out a smooth white tray full of white sand. “Got other people getting sand from the desert for me, these days, on account of that I’ve got to avoid the Sun as much as possible, Dyu’s orders. How’s this compare to anything you’ve seen anywhere else? I’ve always wondered if sand is sand, anywhere you go.”
runs a hand across it. How’s it compare to Samudran sand?
ꙮ To touch, it’s remarkably fine, remarkably pure. Remarkably consistent in grain and texture and color - you saw sand on Samudra a couple of times, and it never looked precisely the same each time, always influenced by the billions of microscopic little sea-creatures that’ve lived and died, by the patterns of weathering and erosion over centuries. This sand is like the sand under your feet when you first arrived, it’s like the sand at the city gates, it’s– uniform.
: “Ari.” He looks at the man in complete seriousness. “This is the finest sand I’ve ever experienced.”
: “The other sand… it’s a sand of the living but also of the dying, decaying.”
: “Painted by the death and rebirth of those who swim in and around it.”
ꙮ ”Hunh.” And then he scratches at the back of his neck with the arm that’s still got full range of motion. “Wonder what it’d be like to work glass with that, then. Be fun to try, sometime.”
: “It’s quite fortunate the sand on Mu is so pure, in comparison. I could imagine the impurities of other sand make this experiment somewhat unreliable…”
ꙮ ”Well, you wind up tossin’ other stuff in– they did a lot of glassworking Before too, y’see, so we’ve had supplies to work with. Anyways, thank you for indulging an idle curiosity. You ready to get to work?”
: “Yes sir!” He pounds a fist into a palm!
ꙮ ”That’s the spirit. Extra set of hands will make it go a lot faster.” And so they do so - one apprentice coming over to help, immediately, too, because as confident as Ari and the Awoken both are, there’s quite a lot of Work to be done, here!