(Char): Quick question here.
(Dew): Yeah?
(Char): Why have we been letting him get away with these horrible plot twists and cliffhangers and what-have-you?
(Dew): I have... a buck-fifty, actua-
(Char): Figure of speech! I don't care what you have!
(Dew): Oh. In that case, no idea.
I have no idea either, but for the record, I'm not gonna complain.
(Char): First time for everything.
Speaking of which... the reviews!
(Dew): We've done that before.
...shut... up...
Midnight C: Yeah, I... kinda designed that one to be an "ARGH" chapter... sorry about that! Don't worry, explanations beckon!
Taiga: Isn't it supposed to go from bad to worse, to worse-er?
Caster of Chaos: Yes. Yes, I do. Hehehe...
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"Define 'hot'," Garet asked meekly, trying to help but at the same time trying to stay well out of range of Jenna's wrath in case all went sour very quickly. "Like, are we talking... lukewarm hot or... 'me' hot?"
"Yeah," Felix said, rolling his eyes, "lukewarm or polar cold?" Garet scowled at him good-naturedly, but didn't reply. Jenna just turned the stone over in her hands, looking at it over and over from every possible angle as though to determine exactly what was wrong with it.
"Maybe because we're so close to the Shrine..." Jenna trailed off, shooting out any ideas that wandered into her head. Mia shook her head vigorously, sending streams of cerulean hair off dancing behind her.
"Can't be," she replied. "That shrine looks like it's made of Yellow and Red stones, both of which are rare elements in this realm. That's a random stone we picked up, it would be Jupiter-Aligned, if anything."
"But how did it get cracked?" Picard asked her, puzzled. Mia didn't answer right away, but instead shot a shifty glance at Garet.
"I didn't do it!"
Jenna suddenly gasped. "It's... moving! I'm gonna drop it!" she cried out.
"Don't you dare!" Mia bristled. "There's something special about it, we just don't know what. We can't afford to break it!" Jenna juggled it between her hands as the stone somehow squirmed between her hands. Jenna pulled it into her chest to hold it steady and glanced down at it. The crack was growing steady larger somehow. In fact, Jenna found that she could look clear inside the stone, like it was hollow. No... not hollow, it looked like something was in it...
"Oh!" Jenna squealed with utter delight, holding the stone in her outstretched palms for them all to see. "I can't believe it!" Mia moved closer.
"What is it?" she asked, peering into the crack. "Oh, my..." she cupped her hands over her mouth and smiled widely. "I can't believe it!"
"What isn't there to believe?!" Garet burst. "I'm totally confused." Jenna balanced the stone in one hand and lifted a finger on the other hand to her lips to silence him.
"Look... it's cracking more, you can see!" When she had finished speaking, the crack in the stone had grown larger and larger until it effectively cracked into two halves and fell from Jenna's hands. Felix and Picard had already each guessed and were one step ahead of Garet, but even he knew what the stone was now.
It was an egg.
Laying down on its side, fit neatly in Jenna's palms, was an adorable, tiny pegasus. Even from birth, it had a pure white coat that neatly and perfectly covered its body from its neck to its hooves. It had a very minute, frail set of wings that were neatly tucked against its body, too weak to move (or, more likely, it just didn't know how to use them yet). It moved its tiny eyes around, searching the area (which was basically Jenna's hands, cupped into a nice cradle for it) and getting used to its sense of sight. It finally craned its lilliputian head way up to look at her face, then yawned and let out a little mew like a little kitten. It rested its head down on her hands and closed its eyes again, stretching slowly and adjusting to its body.
All of this, of course, while Jenna and Mia were pouring over it and ohh-ing and aww-ing in a style that only baby-watching ladies could.
"It's... so... cute!" Jenna said, smiling like a madwoman. Garet, Picard and Felix, having seen the hatchling, wisely took a few steps back to give it room to breathe a little. And of course, to not crowd the ladies as they enjoyed seeing their little newborn.
"I can't believe we have a pegasus hatchling... we're so lucky!" Mia commented breathlessly. "It's amazing!"
"I wonder what to call it," Jenna wondered. "Maybe I'll name it-"
"Umm..." Picard interjected loudly from the male section a good three metres away. "Maybe... Mia or Felix or someone else should name it..."
"Why?" Jenna asked indignantly. "Why can't I name the pegasus?" Garet rocked on his heels, silent. Felix took the lead.
"It's just that... well," he stuttered bravely. "I... uhh..."
"Shalex," Garet blurted, which came accompanied with an involuntary shudder from the other two males. Jenna blushed.
"Shalex was a great name for an evil megalomaniac!" she cried out. "What's wrong with Shalex?!" The others shuddered.
"Mia, you're naming the bloody thing," Felix ordered. "Let Jenna help you if you want."
"It is her pegasus, you know," Mia pointed out. "She did bring it all this way and hatch it. She has the right to name it."
"Not by the laws of decency of any human audio canal," Felix countered. Jenna looked pleadingly at Garet.
"You're on my side... aren't you?" she asked with huge, dinner plate sized eyes. Garet squirmed.
"Augh.. I'm caught between my girlfriend and my sense of decency..."
"Your sense of decency is telling you to go against your girlfriend?"
"My head hurts..."
"More importantly," Picard interrupted loudly, jarring Garet and Jenna out of yet another verbal spar (in which Garet was so easily and continually outmatched), "what are we going to do about the pegasus?" Jenna blinked.
"What do you mean, 'what are we going to do about the pegasus'?" she asked, as though the question didn't even deserve an answer. "We're going to raise it."
"We're on a dangerous journey here," Picard reminded her. "The pegasus is a baby. How do you expect to keep it safe on a journey like this? What happens when we get in a battle?" he asked, eyeing the pegasus with a mix of pity and joy at new life. "How do you intend on saving it when half of the time we can barely save ourselves?" Jenna pursed her lips indignantly.
"When was the last time I needed rescu-"
"Battle against the leveler in Chefru," Picard answered quickly, not backing down in the slightest. "It's better for it if we don't bring it along." Felix fixed a knot in his scarf so it lay evenly against his back, then tapped Picard on the shoulder.
"Actually, as much as I hate to say it, it would be better off with us," he said levelly and softly. "It's too young to fend for itself, and it's too weak to do much of anything. Since Jenna did hatch it, we are responsible for it until it's strong enough to take care of itself." Picard's eyes widened at him, but he didn't say much in response.
"Darn Venus Adepts and your bloody sense of responsibility," he muttered. Mia stood up and cocked her head at Garet.
"Why is everything so 'bloody' these days?" she asked with a smile on her face. Garet shrugged.
"There's a joke in there somewhere, but I don't feel like pissing off Picard, Felix and Jenna."
"Point taken."
"Fine," Jenna said, exasperated and defeated, "I'll work with Mia to name it. Happy?"
"Very," Felix nodded, but Mia frowned and pursed her lips.
"Can't be an 'it', can it? I mean... are we talking about a male or female pegasus, here?" she wondered aloud, head cocked and eyebrows arched slightly. Jenna glanced at the pegasus and turned back to her.
"Male," she said definitively. Mia nodded.
"I wonder what you call a Male pegasus..." she wondered aloud, lost in thought again. Garet, meanwhile, crossed his arms and walked to the edge of the island with Picard, gazing longingly at the Shrine's island.
"At any rate," he muttered, "we're still stuck," he commented dryly. Picard turned away and moved to set up a camp.
"Looks like we're stuck, for now," he muttered. "We'll just have to wait here for now, and then either figure out a way across or leave it for later." He started unpacking the cooking materials for supper, and took another longing look at the Shrine before getting down to work. Felix left the girls to their work and came over to help him.
"Still, I'd rather not have to leave it behind," Felix muttered. "There has to be a way to get there, we just have to figure out what it is that the 'Grand Seula Island Bridge' sign means, and then work from there."
"Maybe Seula is the name of this region? These plains?" Garet offered, helping Picard set up the firewood. "And if there's a Grand Seula Island Bridge, then there must be a bridge that can be build to get us from here to the other island."
"Yes," Felix said slowly, tending to his long ponytail which was becoming uncharacteristically dirty, "or... maybe there was a bridge here once and it has since crumbled and fallen to the planet."
"But then there's no way across," Garet said nervously. Felix nodded.
"Now you're getting the idea," he replied.
"A shrine we can't reach, and a bridge that doesn't seem to exists," Picard summarized, sighing heavily.
"It's-"
"If you say 'bloody useless' one more time, Felix, I'll pin that as a catch phrase for you and forever label you as a pessimist," Garet cut him off in mid-sentence.
"...wonderful."
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"It's... c-c-c-cold!" Ivan chattered, shivering inside his cape, trying to keep it positioned so that it covered as much of his body as possible. Sheba sneezed quietly, and Feizhi was progressing as quietly and with as much dignity as she could muster.
The group was a fair march from Chefru now (they had gained some extra distance as Ivan occasionally unleashed Zephyr to pick up their speed). They had long since entered the Doango mountain range, and found a path leading up the side of the first mountain. The higher they went, however, the slower they were able to progress and the lower the temperature dipped. Furthermore, with Sol lowering and the day ending, their travelling quickly became a race against time and the weather.
"It's... really cold," Sheba managed to say coherently, shivering to the bone. She was shaking quite badly. Being raised in the desert, Sheba was by no means used to extreme cold weather. She had managed to deal with their adventure to Prox just barely, especially because Mia and Picard were more than willing to share Plies to keep her strength up. This, however, was an entirely different scenario, the three of them being alone on a mountain face, none of them being experienced healers (or, indeed, having any healing Psynergy). While Ivan and Feizhi were cold, but able to withstand the temperature shifts, Sheba was stumbling with every step.
"Just... try focussing on other things!" Ivan called back to her. "Think about how you're not here at all, but you're actually... back in Lalivero!" he cried over the wind, trying to coax her into warmer thinking.
"I'm a... Jupiter Adept...! It's hard to trick... my own... mind...!" she cried back, stumbling over the words now as much as she was stumbling over her own feet.
"Focus on your own strength of character," Feizhi advised. "When the body is in peril, the mind can overcome and protect it. That's what I was taught, anywa-choo!" she sneezed. Sheba tried pulling into her own cloak more, but it simply wasn't thick enough to keep the winds from biting at her.
Ivan? she cried out with her mind.
Yeah?
...promise me something?
Okay...
I don't know if I can take this cold... much longer, she admitted fearfully. Please... don't let me die out here... please?
Ivan turned back to look at her, and saw a glimpse of fear he wasn't used to seeing in her eyes, but didn't answer her immediately. Instead, he waited a second for her to catch up to him, and took off his cape and draped it over her to shield her from the wind. Then he started walking again, shaking more visibly, but resolute.
I promise.
They moved on for a few more minutes, but now Ivan was stumbling. Without the protection of his cape, the winds bit into him even more severely than they were hitting either of the other two, and it was easily taking its toll on him. He started rocking back and forth with each step, and his lips were turning to a deep blue. His skin was becoming deathly white, and Sheba and Feizhi noted his deteriorating condition with every step he took. Suddenly, Feizhi pointed upwards and howled over the furious winds, "Above! A shelter!" On a peak that looked reachable within the next few minutes was a tower. Unable to determine what the tower was or what purpose it served, the group simply decided to walk onward and upward, hoping to make it there soon before disaster befell them.
"Any port... in... a..." Ivan managed to say, but he collapsed against the snow, tripping over his own feet before he could say any more. He lay unmoving and face-down in the snow, his cheeks pale white, and lips blue. Sheba surmised he was frostbitten and had hypothermia, but she wasn't a healer, so she couldn't tell.
"Help me," she cried, grabbing part of Ivan's body and letting Feizhi take the other half. The two started dragging him up the mountain and closer to the tower, hoping to get him out of the cold, but they had barely gone twenty paces when they suddenly had to stop.
A pack of six canines were standing directly in their path, looking mangy and flea-bitten, but certainly more suited to this atmosphere than the two conscious women and the unconscious Jupiter Adept.
"This can't be... I've heard of these even on Weyard," Feizhi chattered through her teeth. Sheba looked curiously at her.
"What are they?"
"Tundra wolves."
"This isn't a tundra."
"If you want to move them to a tundra, be my guest. I don't think they have any plans over going anywhe-choo!"
The wolves, apparently, did have plans on moving, as they advanced menacingly on the group, eventually circling them, baring their gleaming sharp teeth and growling. They barked at each other, and it didn't take a genius to understand their message:
Oh, look. Supper.
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(Dew): Ooh. Wolves. That's new.
(Char): Not just any wolves. Tundra wolves.
(Dew): ...on a mountain.
Shush.
(Dew): Wolves of a tundra... on a mountain.
... stop that.
(Dew): Wolves of a-
throws the brick
(Dew): x.x
(Char): When did we get that brick, anyway?
A few chapters back.
(Char): ...where did we get it from?
The wall, I think.
(Char): ... doesn't the wall kinda... need that?
...uhh... depends on where it's from...
(Char): Middle of the wall, sort of thing?
... ... ...interesting.
But not quite as interesting as reviewing! So try that out!
And there's even an interactive portions of today's review! I'm accepting submissions for a name for the cute little baby pegasus. I've got ideas, but unless I get some better ones I might have Jenna name it. And you know that that means!