Random Intermission story

Even though she caught the meaning of his gesture, Eda smiled by contagion.

Whereas he caught the smile -- and smiled back, ignoring Nico as he offered a gloved hand. "Then let us be prepared." <em>For the future.</em>

Sylvie chuckled, finding the sentiment pretty but maybe a bit bit over the top sweet, and took his hand.

Nico fell behind them again due to traffic, and stayed there for a while, smiling. She loved seeing friends of hers happy, and filed further potentially awkward conversation for later.

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They found the poor sod who had been "hallucinating", and got what information he could give, which was not much. Both because he did not know where exactly he had been, and due to fear of being lost, he did not accompany them far on the path leading inland into a small wooded valley. They had been told it had grown from fetching wood and petered out eventually, rather than leading anywhere else.

Sylvie took a deep breath a short while after getting out of sight of any local, a minor bit of tension unwinding. Plans could wait for a minute.

Nico caught it, and remembered it from the time the two of them had travelled together before parting ways near Canyet. "Sooo... names?"

Sylvie twitched and looked at... Sammeh? She would prefer going back to her actual name, but wasn't sure it was safe yet. There were people coming here occasionally.

After a moment of silence and scanning, listening, seeing, the half-elf pulled his hood down and glanced at them with a raised eyebrow. And smiled. "It's fine, Sylvie," he said, shaking his hair and scratching at his itching scalp. On the way this far, he'd considered the man's story and then considered it some more -- along with the change in Sylvie's body language.

Then he turned to stare at the path and the woods, then at the sky and the sun, estimating how long they had left of the day. "Well. For my part, I vote we find a nice spot where we can rest our feet for a while," he continued, trying to see if there was a glint of water somewhere in the valley.

"And, are you keeping Sammeh?" Sylvie asked. Nico tilted her head curiously.

There was indeed a rivulet at the bottom of the valley, though getting to it between thickets and mud was not all that straightforward.

That was something to think about. "I'm... well. I don't know. A queer part of me would like it if 'Sebastian' was only used in private from now on." He thought about it, rubbed the side of his nose and thought about possible routes to the rivulet. "This is private, isn't it?"

Sylvie rubbed the back of her neck. "Certainly makes me slipping up in not-private more likely." Different names for the same person depending on who was addressing said person she was used to; addressing the same person with different names depending on who else was present, not so. She wrinkled her nose, staring in the middle distance. "Which probably means I need the practise."

"Well, call me Sebastian for now, then," he replied, pinching the bridge of his nose and wondering whether to try and skirt deeper into the valley and the woods, hoping the water pooled somewhere where it was less muddy. "Just punch me in the shoulder if I start getting delusions of grandeur, or something to that effect. Now, either of you think that the water might flow through the woods?"

"Will do," Nico answered. "And it sure looks like it, but how far should we move without using something like a search-pattern? Would be awkward walking past a gate cause we're not looking yet. Either of you have any experience or tricks finding worldgates?"

"Yes, I had to look for one once. I can use magic to feel one that's invisible." She held out her left hand to the side and let a line of magic spin out as long as she could. Her eyebrows twitched up a little when she realised that since then her range had about doubled. She looked over her shoulder, spotting no-one, and gave a quick wave with two fingers, knocking a sliver of bark from a tree about a dozen paces away. "Limited range, though." She tilted her head, eyes unfocused. "Maybe I can come up with something to help. It probably wouldn't be at tree<em>top</em> level here..."

"I would hope not," Sebastian said, but didn't quite feel comfortable sharing his his usual, unfortunate method of finding them. Practically, though, if he didn't stumble into one by accident -- which he hadn't for some time, having seen some of the signs. "I look for flora and fauna that does not belong. Salt water in a stream far from a sea. Smells that do not quite make sense." He didn't say anything about weird weather patterns.

Distracted from her thoughts, Sylvie nodded. "The one back then we only found because Daaren noticed the air smelled different. I wouldn't have thought to check that high up otherwise."

"I hope you didn't <em>exit</em> at treetop level," he said wryly. That would have been just his luck.

"I'm not sure how high, but throwing one end of a rope to hold on to first was a good idea."

"Caution, a person's best instinct."

"No, I don't think so. It can be counter-productive." Sylvie smiled wryly at Sebastian. If she'd been cautious, she'd have avoided him.

Nico tried to keep her sniggering quiet.

Having shot Nico a mildly amused look, he looked back at Sylvie and then returned to appraise their surroundings. Sometimes, just sometimes, even the change in birdsong could be a clue in it self. "All right, you win. What's the best instinct for you two then?"

"Um. Not sure what you'd consider instincts," Nico said. "Looking for connections with other people?" She took a few steps down the slope for a different perspective on the rivulet.

"Trust. You need trust for that." Sylvie closed her eyes and shook her head once. "You need a proper balance between trust and caution, that's it."

"Oh, good one, Poppy. One needs to trust oneself to get anything done, too." Nico wasn't even looking in their direction, taking in the landscape and hardly thinking before speaking.

Sebastian raised an eyebrow at Nico and shot a sideways glance at Sylvie. "Well, there is that. Ought we settled for 'balance', then?"

"Is that an instinct? And do we need to agree?" Sylvie was thoroughly puzzled now.

"Well, it's a sense, isn't it? But if I try to tip you over, won't instinct tell you where to put your weight so you don't fall over?"

"Ah, that's what you meant." She smiled at him briefly before looking up the slope. It wasn't steep, or craggy as far as she could see, and relatively free of undergrowth, giving her the impression people used it. "Could I put one of you on a long leash?"

Sniggering again, Nico left answering first to Sebastian, wondering if they were trying to confuse each other.

"Short, long, you've got me on a leash already?" Sebastian suggested, blinking and smiling innocently -- and ignoring Nico. Smugly.

More preoccupied with the problem at hand than with banter, Sylvie explained, "You know I had a line on Kirrya that got long enough to hold through the town. I should be able to spin one that I can sense through, so if someone held the other end and walked along the top of the slope, we could sweep the whole area between."

"Sounds like a plan," Nico said. "And I think up ahead is a bridge, so presumably water could be reached. Take a break and refine that plan?"

"I'll vote for that," Sebastian said, feeling somehow chastised. "But I could... if I understood you correctly, I'd be willing to be the test subject."

At Sylvie's nod, Nico went ahead to check if she had seen right.

Sylvie came to Sebastian's side - the side he wasn't carrying his satchel on - put an arm around his back and kept walking, slowly. "Thank you. We'll see how it works at a test."

He gave her one of those private smiles of his, blinking. "How does it work, actually? My senses added to yours, or something more arcane?" It sometimes annoyed Sebastian that he knew next to nothing about magic, theoretical or practical. But then -- just the thought of that craft scared him. Truth be told, Sylvie was one of the few mages he'd discussed the matter with -- and the only one he trusted implicitly.

"Something way more simple: there's a thread that can pass through things, and I can tell if it passed through a tree or a rock - or something magical like a worldgate. I need an anchor for the other end to reach farther." She wondered how sharing senses would even work.

He considered her words for a moment. "Sounds effective. Should I move slowly?"

"Depends if and how it works."

The bridge over the rivulet consisted simply of a few long logs, trunks of young trees, laid across it. Some were rotting, others fresh - the thing was obviously a work in perpetual progress.

To both sides of the bridge the ground was churned, tracks of humans and, moreso, animals recognisable here and there. Nico had crossed to the other side, where the roots of a tree had anchored the bank and made for the least muddy access to the water.

Sebastian shrugged, blinked and squinted at the sunlight. "Well, let's try it?" he asked as matched her step for step, frown on his face. He was concentrating on so many things at the same time again. Eventually, he looked at Sylvie and waited for her decision, trying to ignore the smell of some familiar flower.