Alaia Skyhawk: Time for some chuckles XD
Note; the Summon Spirits don't have temples yet, so they're just wandering their lands.
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I don't own Tales of Symphonia so please don't sue me. I do however own Krishka, Dallinius (Dalli), Aluran, the Alurannai and any OCs, except Sanaro and Annule, who belong to Mr Who 2123, Mika and Fiuras, who belong to WingedWithFireyMana, and Gaea Silverleaf, who belongs to Sparkling Moon Phoenix, so please don't steal them...
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Chapter 3: Hide and Seek
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He wasn't sure when the impulse struck him, or when the idea first occurred to him. He'd spent all of the past five years purely within the confines of the immense meadow-like plain where the Tree stood, never straying far from it and the security the Tree represented. He'd been sat, looking up at the sky as agile little birds swooped in dived catching insects, when he decided to go up there himself. A flick of his power sent him instantly from the ground up into the sky, and stood there upon the winds he saw for the first time the world stretching out in all directions around him. He was so high the horizon curved in his view, mountains, forests, and a glimmer of distant sea all there for him to gaze upon. He'd never been to those places; for all he 'knew' them by their mana, he'd never set foot there.
Staring for a moment longer, he fixed his gaze on the mountains to the west and called his power again. The blink of an eye later and he was stood on one of them, marvelling at the rugged and steep terrain that was so different from the meadow. He began to poke around, hopping over rocks and watching the animals that lived among them. There was so much to see! It was almost too much to take in!
He continued to explore, completely entranced and oblivious to the time that had passed until he realised it was getting dark. Suddenly anxious, he quickly teleported back to the Tree and huddled at its base. Maybe he would explore a bit more tomorrow.
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Enquiring red eyes watched as the tiny grains were stirred and shifted by the winds, the nose below them inches from the sand the owner was observing. Ratatosk had gained a lot of confidence in the past few weeks, roaming further and further from the Tree until now he didn't retreat to it when the area he was in fell into night. He'd not been back to the meadow in three days, and was now in fact on the opposite side of the world from it. When he'd found the desert he'd been entranced by the rolling dunes of shifting sand, which erased the deliberate footprints he made on them in minutes as he watched. This place looked as though it should have been devoid of life, and yet he could sense myriad tiny creatures everywhere. He followed his senses to each of them, finding snakes and lizards, and huge beetles that tried to hide from the swift little foxes that came out at night to hunt them using huge ears and sharp hearing. He found one of the fennecs, just nosing its way out of its burrow as night fell, and given the way it blinked at him it clearly didn't know what to think of the child watching it. It seemed the Tree had decided to let the creature see him.
Ratatosk grinned, finding one of the beetles the creature liked and holding out to it waving frantic legs. It could be supposed that it was cruel to just hand the beetle over instead of give it a chance to escape from the fennec, but then it had been so close to the burrow the fox would have found it anyway.
The fennec pricked its ears, dark little eyes fixed on the insect as it warily crept towards him. As it got closer through, it seemed to sense the kindness and calm he radiated, ceasing to creep and instead confidently plucking the beetle from his fingers. It sat right next to him as it ate it, before nosing his leg to see if he had any other food before it darted off into the growing darkness. Ratatosk just watched it go, following it with his mind until another far larger and powerful presence caught the edge of his attention.
He teleported, feeling the Tree's protective barrier obscure him from the world again as he approached the new focus of his interest. When he found it, his eyes went wide with awe as he stared at the Spirit he'd found.
The great red wraith glided silently through the air over the sands, a faint glow cast from him onto the dunes beneath him. Piercing blue eyes regarded the area around them as one would regard a familiar view, the being comfortable in this his domain.
Ratatosk let out a breath of wonder as he watched Efreet, knowing him to be the Summon Spirit who had sworn to serve the Tree as the Lord of Fire Mana. His body unmoving, his eyes followed that silent passage before sudden childish impulse pushed awe aside and tugged at the child Spirit with mischievous intent. He teleported so he was upwind of the Spirit of Fire, and used his power to lift a bucket's worth of sand up from the dune he was stood on and tossed it into the air. The wind carried it, and as Ratatosk had intended it scattered it over the unsuspecting Spirit.
Efreet stopped, looking around puzzled until he shrugged and kept going, presuming the sand to have been thrown by an errant gust of wind. Ratatosk however teleported away, appearing on a mountain top where he burst into peals of laughter at his new 'game'. Still giggling from the success of his prank, he reached out with his mind and located the rest of the Elemental Spirits before teleporting to them, one-by-one...
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She strode gracefully over the surface of the lake, red eyes like calm gems set into a face of soft blue. Undine smiled, her mind cast out to feel the falling of distant rain and the surging of the seas. All was well in her domain, all was as it should be.
The water gave way beneath her, plunging her unexpectedly into its depths. She rose back to the surface, unaffected by her dunking but certainly puzzled by it. What had pulled the water mana from under her?
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The three sisters darted about in the air, chasing one another with shouts of laughter at the aerial game of tag. The green haired one of the trio pulled aside, hovering on her three pairs of feathered wings as she watched her blue and pink haired sisters continue to chase one another. Settling herself onto the top of a nearby tree, she stood enjoying the breeze until a sudden miniature gale ripped past her drawing squawks of surprise from her sisters.
Sephie turned and looked, blinking at the sight of a cursing Yutis and Fairess entangled together in the branches of another of the trees.
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The blond woman sighed, laid comfortably into the curve of the crescent upon which she perched. Her bird-like partner was perched on a cliff ledge nearby, and the two of them rested content in the rays of the sun.
There was a clatter of stone on stone, followed by a squawk as one of Aska's two heads was hit by a falling rock. His feather's ruffling, he looked up with the other to find there was nothing above him, just cliff and open sky. His feathers settled, he and Luna resuming their basking before again he was hit by a rock. Indignant he took flight and fluttered to the top of the cliff, finding nothing there except grass and bushes, neither of which could throw them.
Grumbling to himself, he descended back to his ledge and perched there once more, Luna eyeing him puzzled until he shrugged and closed his red and blue eyes again. It was then, when his guard dropped once more, that a whole section of the cliff above him spontaneously crumbled and clattered down over him.
Covered in dust, as a last few rocks bounced off him during their descent, Aska could only sit in bemused silence while Luna began to chuckle.
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Icy blue eyes admired the dark haired reflection in their owner's mirror, Celsius regarding her reflection in the flawless sheet of ice she'd found cast upon the fractured edge of a glacier. That fracture was as flat as a becalmed lake, as smooth as unruffled silk; it showed her image with perfection, and she was pleased by what she saw.
Still admiring herself, she didn't notice right away the hair-fine cracks that were forming at the exact spot her face was reflected until the ice sheet shattered radiating outwards from that point...
They said some faces could shatter mirrors, but shatter her own ice?
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Ratatosk sat doubled up with laughter, rolling a little at the success of his drenching Volt with a rain shower and annoying Shadow with random noises in the confines of the cave he'd been in. Not one of the Summon Spirits had any idea that another Spirit had been having fun at their expense, nor would they ever know given he was hidden from them. Wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, he teleported; this time into the cave where Gnome resided.
Gnome lay on his side on a rock, snoring loud enough to make nearby rocks rattle, and eyeing him Ratatosk wondered what he would do to this Spirit. He began to float over, forming an idea that was dropped when he spotted the five little figures tottering around close to the Spirit of Earth. Curious, Ratatosk glided unseen towards them, hovering just above them with a wicked grin slowly spreading across his face as he reached out with a finger...
"Hey, who poked me?!"
The little red-hatted Gnomelette spun around, glaring at his fellows as the one with the blue hat looked at him confused.
"Huh? Big Brother, no one poked you."
Big Brother frowned.
"But I felt something poke me." He flinched, spinning to face the green-hatted Gnomelette who had been stood behind him to his left... the direction he'd just been poked. "I just got poked again! You did it!"
Again he got a stare.
"No I didn't."
"Did!"
"Didn't."
"DID!"
"DIDN'T!"
"DID!!!"
The two Gnomelettes began to squabble, the other three looking on in bemusement before one of them was poked as well.
"Who poked me?!"
"I didn't..."
"Yes you did!"
Gnome spluttered awake, knocked from his rock as the five Gnomelettes below it exploded into a full-on catfight among themselves while their creator lay perched on his head on the opposite side of it.
"What the heck just happened?"
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He returned to the Tree, bubbling with laughter which he felt the Tree echo as it sensed from his mind what he'd been up to even as he also sensed it tell him that he wasn't to play that 'game' again. Once was alright, but he wasn't to bother the other Spirits anymore as he was meant to be secret from them.
A little disappointed, but accepting of the new rule, Ratatosk sat at the Tree's base and ran through in his mind all the looks he'd seen on the other Spirits' faces.
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Alaia Skyhawk: (Is laughing) Heheheh, I couldn't resist this with Ratatosk being so innocent at this point. The idea of him being undetectable to them just begged for this to happen XD