An interlude to introduce Tharash's Asura Elementalist, whom I don't know how to write, so Tharash wrote him for me.

Final reminder: Caoilfhionn is pronounced 'kee-lin'.

3: Elementalists and Embroidery

Caoilfhionn stared at the Asura. He'd never seen one before, and to see a being so small and yet so self-assured was fascinating, especially out in the jungles of the Brisbane Wildlands, bending over some device near-invisible in the undergrowth.

The Asura didn't look up. "Yes, can you help yourself? I'm busy."

"Ah, er, my apologies," Caoilfhionn stammered out. "I suppose that was rude of me, wasn't it?"

"Your chatter is also-" The Asura finally looked up, running a hand through his short, warm brown hair, and his pale blue-green eyes brightened. "A Sylvari! Of course, it makes sense now. You're a rather poncy one, aren't you? Are you sure you should be out here all alone?"

"You're so tiny," Caoilfhionn rejoined reasonably, a hand going self-consciously to his dark green cravat. The Asura wasn't too badly dressed himself, in well-cut white and light blue. He carried a small sceptre at his side. "Should you?"

The Asura snorted. "Shows what you know, silly plant. I'm an accomplished geo-kineticist." He looked up at the Sylvari's blank expression, sighed audibly, and said: "I manipulate earth, fire, water, and air."

"Oh! So do I!" Caoilfhionn twirled his dagger with delight, sending a spray of water arcing through the air above him like a rainbow. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"Huh, woulda pegged you for one of those hallucinogenic jesters with all the purple you got going on. Fascinating! You should come with me as I collect my readings so we can discuss it more." The Asura added sotto voce, "…And so I can study my first Sylvari. Stranger than I expected."

"I would be delighted! My name is Caoilfhionn, pleased to meet you."

"And I'm Wegaff. Right, so…" Wegaff began to poke at a… glowy pocket tablet thing, muttering as he did so. "Subject name… k…a…e…l…a…n."

"I beg your pardon, it's actually C-a-o-i-l-f-h-i-o-double n."

Wegaff lifted his gaze to stare at him in disapproval. "You may as well call yourself Cauliflower with all those extra letters. By the Alchemy."

"But-"

"Come along now. These readings won't take themselves, even though I tried to invent a golem to do just that…"

It was a little exhausting, keeping up with the Asura through the caves and the forests; Caoilfhionn might have had a natural advantage in his familiarity with nature, but Wegaff had a different natural advantage at being small enough to easily pass through many places Caoilfhionn struggled to go. Wegaff fussed that Caoilfhionn would get his boots and coat muddy, but truly that was a small matter; Blathnat's tailoring was good and strong, and resistant to the worst of stains. He suspected she used magic to aid her.

At length, they returned to a place Wegaff called Mrot Boru, where Wegaff strutted into a small lab, calling out for… a fork? "Forkk! Sporkk! Where in the heck are you?"

"Right here, right here," came a chorus of exasperated Asura voices, and two more Asura appeared, who looked so like each other that Caoilfhionn struggled to tell them apart. "Golly, that's an interesting specimen! Where'd you find it- him?"

"He looked lost, so I took him under my wing."

"I wasn't lost," Caoilfhionn protested weakly. "I am Caoilfhionn…"

"Well, you sure looked it. You look like you ought to be in Divinity's Reach, get-up like that." Forkk and Sporkk nodded solemnly in agreement; Caoilfhionn couldn't tell them apart.

But more importantly, his confusion was nearly overcoming his curiosity. "Erm… So… what do we do now…?"

"Why, I thought we'd continue our discussion. You really don't compute your maginamics?"

"Er… no. It's all in the feeling. The sun's power, the flow of water… you can feel it all, can't you?"

"Why yes, of course I can, but as I was just saying…" Wegaff's gaze turned to his lab assistants. "Tell the Cauliflower about the Seventh Law of Maginamics."

"Magic cannot be created-"

"-nor destroyed-"

"-and is infinite."

Wegaff raised an eyebrow ridge. "Half answers don't get you into college, boys. What can we derive from this?"

One of them waved his hand high. "Magic flows towards a state of equilibrium! Therefore-"

"-Any concentration will seek to dissolve itself and normalize the flow," finished the other.

"Exactly!" said Wegaff. "And that is why you always calculate your stability matrices, Forkk."

The younger Asura blushed. "It was just one time…"

Caoilfhionn had actually managed to mostly follow that, but he didn't understand how it related to the actual casting of spells. "I still believe it's the feeling that is important. To know where a stream flows, you need but put your hand in the water."

"Well, most people can't stick their hand into the flow of magic, but perhaps you Sylvari have a sixth sense for it, being magical in nature and all. In fact, you not all that unlike an elemental." Suddenly Wegaff let out a short whistle of startled intrigue. "Now there's a theory we ought to test! No, don't worry, I'm not going to dissect you."

"I wasn't worried until you said so," Caoilfhionn said, eyes wide. Did Asura really do that?

"Most test subjects are. And when the Inquest is involved, with good reason! But perhaps I should observe you in action some more. Take some readings. Would you like to come along for upcoming field tests?"

Caoilfhionn laughed. "Very well! I shall be delighted to join you, unless I am on an important quest."

"You have more business than frolicking endlessly in the woods? If that's the case, then I will join you."

"You would do that?" A new friend! Truly! And his first new friend who was not another Sylvari. "My siblings would be glad to hear it! They worry about me, you know."

"Siblings, hmm? I don't suppose they'd want to visit my lab as well?"

"Perhaps they would, though this is a little far from civilization for them."

Wegaff pouted and glared. "Excuse me!? This is civilization!"

"Ah… yes, of course. But there's a lot of wilderness in between the Grove and Mrot Boru, and my one brother is a Mender, and my one sister is a Tailor…"

"I suppose that's true. Although I prefer to think of it as a very large test field. Anyway, this isn't my real lab. This is just a temporary arrangement on loan for me to parse my results quickly."

"We're actually based out of Rata Sum," one of the others, possibly Forkk, said.

"You ever been there?" the other, maybe Sporkk, asked.

"No, not at all," Caoilfhionn said.

"Of course not," Wegaff told them. "He was staring at me like I was a specimen when I found him. But of course, you should come visit. You haven't lived until you've visited Rata Sum."

"I should be delighted! In fact, I am not on an urgent quest at the moment, so when you are finished here, I could return with you and you can show me everything."

"Everything, hey? There's a lot of off-limits areas, but I'll show you everything the tourists see – and some of my own personal favourite bits. And my real lab, of course. It's much more impressive than this one. Oh, and Sporkk, see if Professor Gorr is available for tea. I'd like to run this new theory by him, and I'm sure he'd love to meet our Cauliflower."

"Done!" Caoilfhionn bent down to take Wegaff's hand and shook it. "I'll be in the neighbourhood, at the village of Watchful Source. I'm looking forward to it!"

It seemed Blathnat had a new outfit for him every month, nearly every time he visited. "Do you do nothing but work on clothes for me?" he asked this time, laughing as she eagerly showed him her latest creation.

"No indeed! I put this one out in a week, and then I go back to working on clothes that everyone else commissions me for. Do you like it? I left off the cravat this time, I decided a roguish open collar to show off your collarbone might work for a change."

"I did like the cravat," he said, "but this embroidery is marvelous. And the colours, beautiful as always. You've done a wonderful job, as usual."

"Oh, well, it's not like you can't change clothes," she said with a wink. "And yes, this colour combination is what suits you best – the dark violet and royal blue bring out your leaves, the emerald green grounds it all, and the royal rose and stream blue highlight and accentuate. In short: You are the Orchid Prince, at least to us your siblings, and you must look like a flower or I haven't done my job correctly."

Sylvari knights could look like flowers. He'd seen a couple of Human knights at one of the Lionguard's fortresses and they didn't look like anything. "How long do you intend to create clothes for me? Surely you can't do this forever."

"Perhaps I can and I will," Blathnat said, giving him a haughty look. "I am the Tulip Countess. I can make whatever I want."

Caoilfhionn laughed. "Then I shall wear whatever you make."

Blathnat tapped his nose. "Pale Tree can only hope you don't regret saying that."

"By Ventari's Tablet…" What was his sister getting him into?