07.05e: Waiting Room

[Veyska]

As Sadie wanders about the castle, she catches whiffs of a particularly odd (even allowing for her recent adventures) scent here and there, sometimes on the floor, sometimes on the furniture or windowsills... The strongest trail of this strange entity appears to have followed the same path as Sadie for the last turn or few, and then abruptly it cuts off. A cheerful voice pipes up from above, "One wonders how much of your perturbation is due to whatever events led you here and how much is to having just been Dworkin-ed..." Asai peers down from an overhead cross brace, where she is comfortably sprawled on her stomach with a small densely written book propped open in front of her.

[Sadie]

"Oh you're what that scent was. Hello I'm Sadie. As for being Dworkin-ed, it's both that and the adventures that have brought me here. But even more than that, the macabre realizations of power, the responsibility of it and fear of others that may also have this power. Is daunting to say the least. Also need to find out how to get to a place called Rebma."

[Veyska]

"Well I'm afraid I can't really help you with the former... I've been here several months and still have trouble remembering that I'm apparently considered to be among the High and Mighty," Asai comments, with the capital letters practically audible even through the gently self-mocking tone. "I still haven't gotten used to the fact that everything's so small here, and that's just a simple matter of physics and relative proportions." She snaps her book shut, setting it down on the cross brace, and rolls off the beam. With a deft twist in mid-air she lands on her feet and rises to an upright stance, as close as she ever gets to eye-to-eye. Her nose twitches slightly as she examines the newcomer from this new angle and then with a cock of her head Asai speaks again. "The latter, though, I can help you with at least the first part of the way. I'm Asai, by the way. I'd offer to shake hands in the human fashion, but I'm not sure whether that's a custom from wherever you come from..."

[Sadie]

Sadie smiles tail wagging slightly and looking amused. "Actually that's a human tradition I've experienced in part both before and after I gained the ability to turn human. Rather recently even. Roughly a week or half a day ago depending on your perspective. Though is nice to do it in greeting rather than as a "trick" (using finger quotes) to entertain the humans." She extends her hand. "What do you know of this... Rebma?"

[Veyska]

Asai's inhuman face makes reading her emotions difficult much of the time, but it is quite clear she's aiming for a deadpan expression as she says, "Well for starters it's rather wet." A beat, then, "It's not all washed up though, there're still a fair number of air breathers in Rebma's population." Her tail begins twitching partway through this sentence and then her muzzle curls up in a grin. "There's a path that leads down from the docks, both literally and figuratively, that heads to Rebma. Most of the settlement's still in a big underwater cave, though I think it's starting to spill out into the open waters beyond. It's not as populous as Amber yet, I think, though I could be wrong on that - I haven't visited Rebma as much as I have Ht'gon. There're plenty of air pockets and ways to compensate for not having gills but I'm much more comfortable climbing and jumping than I am swimming. I suspect you might have the opposite problem, which means you should find it much more suitable than I."

[Sadie]

"Care to accompany me on the way then. Was actually planning on taking a swim. I've never tried swimming in my new form before, and besides, might give me a chance to talk to someone else like me I guess. Where you are from, are you the dominant humanoid, or were you something else like me? I recently acquired this form and the ability to speak with words, a long time dream of mine. I've spent the past two hundred years or so in my shadow as a service dog with occasional breaks as a house pet. Did you have such animals where you are from?"

[Veyska]

"Where I came from my kind were somewhere between house cats and, yes, service dogs. We hunted mice, ran errands, and somehow managed to make nuisances of ourselves less than the students at the university where I was raised. And there were dogs, though there weren't that many on the campus itself and I didn't venture off of it very often. Most of the ones I ran into were of the small, yappy variety which I really only found interesting when I was bored and felt like baiting them from on high - even the smallest dogs there weighed about as much as I do and they were much more compactly built to boot." Asai drops back down to all fours and pads towards a nearby arched doorway. "The quickest route back out of the castle towards the docks is this way," she says, glancing back over her shoulder with a cheerful flip of her banded tail.

[Sadie]

"Yes, well my smaller brethren have always been... lacking is best I suppose. Many seem to not even truly understand the language common to most of our kind. My errands were often more of the rescue and policing variety. High danger but needed. What was most difficult was doing what was needed to save lives while similarly not giving away my true nature. Even more painful the inability to communicate information that would have saved lives." Her eyes... ere eye shows clear sadness as various memories flood her mind. I noticed you like to read. I've read quite a bit myself when no one was looking. Watched a lot of television too, mostly educational shows. Plus my police and rescue training was intense. I wouldn't say I'm a genius, but I've spent a lot of time with thought and observing a world my interactions with were highly limited. It sounds like you had easier access to research materials than I." Is following Asai as she walks occasionally taking in the scents, or when she thinks no one is looking, stumbling a bit with a wince.

[Veyska]

"My errands and duties tended to be much less stressful, but when you put that many young mages and scholars in one place who have more power than skill and more skill than sense things did occasionally get... interesting. I'm something of an aberration for my kind, but even normal individuals were relatively clever so I suspect I didn't have to mask myself as much as you did. I couldn't talk at them without giving the game away, but having hands to gesture helped. I remember at least one time I alerted a professor that one of his students was messing with magics he wasn't ready for by stealing one of the student's scrolls all covered in relevant research and dropping it on the professor's head... I suspect that professor was one of the few who figured out I could read some, though I doubt he ever knew how well nor that I could speak. I never did reveal that to very many, but it wasn't the hardship it might seem... Nobody ever sat down to try and teach me human languages so I picked it up piecemeal on my own and it took quite a while to even wrap my head around the concept of grammar and sentence structure. Trying to learn language off of collegiate texts is rather like learning to run before you can walk, but I had all the time I wanted to wander and read once the university went to sleep each night. I'd kidnap a text, usually a scroll as they weighed less, and curl up on top of a shelf to try and read it." Asai cocks her head thoughtfully. "Is 'television' a form of visual imagery? I remember heading the word mentioned before, some fragment of conversation I heard while out and about in the city, but it's not a term I'm familiar with." She makes no mention or obvious notice of Sadie's occasional stumble, but unconsciously holds her pace down to one her unexpected companion can easily make.

[Sadie]

"Clever solution to the problem, I'm impressed. Lacking hands a lot was limited to me. Like you I had to learn human language on my own. Thankfully I had a good grasp of human body language and tone so It wasn't so hard. I actually understand and can perhaps speak several human languages. Television is visual and auditory images sent to a box with a screen. It general includes things of entertainment value, plays of a sort. It also includes information of various events, kind of like an advanced form of newspaper or town crier. Personally I mostly watched shows that researched criminal activity, rescues, criminal psychology, crime fighting techniques, with the occasional who dun its for entertainment value. Was also interested in videos involving unsolved mysteries, as well as occasional documentaries on other things like the military, modern and proposed or prototype weapons. When none of that was available history, though I find much of it to be inaccurate from my perspective. What did you prefer to read?"