"That sounds like a worthy endeavor. I'm sorry." She sighs. "Unfortunately, those in power will go to great lengths to keep it."
Kastor was following the conversation between @Cosmina Kastellan and @Nacre with curiosity, but he wasn't about to try to join in from over by the door. When he gets up to get himself another pot of tea, though, he stops by Mina's table and leans in to offer an observation: "She's pinging me as something like an elemental, if that helps." He taps his forehead to indicate his vague and untrained sorcerous sense. "Like a djinn or something. She's alive but she's not made of meat or machinery." Then, realizing he's being a bit rude, he looks up at Nacre and adds, "Sorry, I shouldn't talk about you like you're not here. It's just confusing when you talk about 'gems' as if they're -- I don't know, ranks? Or spheres of influence for guardian spirits, or something? When I think everyone else is just visualizing like..." He tucks his hair behind his ear and flicks his diamond earring to make it glint. "Shiny rocks."
Although Berit is curious about Nacre - is she a spirit? A demon? - she's momentarily distracted by Kastor's earring, and leans in to look at it. "That's quite pretty. Is it a diamond?"
"Yep. Souvenir from when I was working as a road guard -- your savings have to be portable, you know? I had a pair, but my -- my ex-boyfriend I guess? at the time? -- stole one just to be a dick. Never did get it back."
"Nice," Riaa said. "Where I'm working now we get some wages, but the real pay is meant to be room, board, and whatever you can loot that you like. Mostly people trade, I don't think I've paid cash for four fifths of what I own now."
"They seem alright. By the way, did either of you get any food - I have my stipend, though Olivie only knows whether it'll work here."
Kastor nods. "That's about what it was like for me in the army. Road guard paid better. For me, at least; I never did get the hang of looting." He cracks a wry grin.
"Exactly," says Nacre, more relieved to find someone who seems able to translate these concepts than irritated by his initally not addressing her. "My body is made of light, projected from my gem." And she taps her own forehead. Even though she should be in the frame of mind to recognize that these people's gems are very different from Gems, it's very difficult to apply that idea to Diamonds. They're Diamonds. The idea of a merely inert, decorative diamond is... it feels almost blasphemous. Nacre's eyes go saucer-wide. Her ability to can even is pretty well shot for now. "You... wear. Diamonds. And steal diamonds?"
"Oh, like a summon!" Riaa said. "Though even the best out of those need solid stone or something to make up the body - were you, hm, born? Inside that Gem, or did that happen later?" "And yeah, people wear diamonds, they're pretty rare and so they're valuable. For my money, though, can't go wrong with good foci," she added. "Decorative, shiny, and let you manipulate some part of matter to boot."
"They're just... minerals." Shrugging, Kastor unhooks his earring and holds it out for her to see. "I'm thinking your type of gem is maybe named after this kind? Or like -- the spirit of the thing? You said your body is projected from your 'gem' -- like a sort of --" He gestures vaguely, frustrated by the limits of language even in this place where everyone seems to be speaking the same one. "All I can think of is the phylactery of a golem, not that I'm saying you're a golem, but it's like, a golem's body can be broken and remade and it's still the same being as long as its phylactery is intact? If your gem is like that, and maybe you're named after the resemblance to the mineral?" He throws up his non-tea-holding hand in surrender. "I'm not a scholar, I just steal a lot of books, sorry."
"But... Diamonds." Inwardly, Nacre winces at how stupid that sounded. Best to go back to talking about the nature of Gems. At least she can articulate that properly. Just a mineral or not, she makes no attempt to touch the diamond. Or look too hard at the diamond. Certainly not in anything that might be interpreted as a funny way. "That's not too far off- if my body were badly damaged, I could retreat into my gem and generate a new one. I might look different afterward, but I would certainly be me. Perhaps think of the gem as my true self- I certainly didn't exist before it." She purses her lips in thought. "I can't speak to why anyone's named anything, I'm an artist, not a historian. But I suppose it would explain why the same words are used."
Caught up in the conversation, Kastor starts to sit down at their table -- remembers he's on duty -- looks vaguely ceilingward in the way he does when he's addressing 'the bar' and says, "I would like this table to be closer to the door please!" Then he points away from the door and says loudly, "Is that a camel with underpants on its head?" In the moment that everyone reflexively follows his pointing finger with their eyes, the dimensions of the room warp, and now this table has always been close enough to the door that he can sit on his bouncer stool and still chat with Nacre and Mina. He grins proudly. "I'm getting better at that, I think." He perches in his accustomed place, hooks his boot heels on the rungs of the stool, and leans forward with eager curiosity, his huge pale hands cupped around a mug of strong tea. "Obviously there are multiple realities, and just as obviously they influence and resemble each other. Maybe yours is the one where the -- the pearl-ness of pearls, so to speak -- originated, and the inert calcium whatsis ball we call a pearl is just an echo. And the same with other gems, and -- are non-gemstone stones people where you come from? Are there Basalts and Granites and, and Fossil Ivories?" ((achievement unlocked: NERD PRINCE. i gotta go to sleep now but pls to assume kas is full of scientific wonder at all the details you impart.))
Berit looks when Kastor points, then turns back to see that her conversational partners have mysteriously traveled doorwards. "Hey," she says mildly. She makes her way back to Mina et al., pulls a chair over, and sits. Then she knits her hands under her chin and listens interestedly to Kastor's questions.
Riaa rolled her eyes, which was rather impressive with eight of them. "Why not induce spaciotemporal shifts to avoid moving a chair over?" she snorted, before moving her stool over.
Katters’ eyes cross and her ears go askew. “Shit,” she says, shaking her head to re-gain her bearings. “If I could do that, I’d never move again.”
"Well, I have to watch the door, it's my job," Kastor says reasonably. ((ok now i really am going to bed. :P))
...Nacre would ask what just happened, but honestly it's not any weirder than anything else that's happened today. Besides, she's busy basking in everyone's fascination with what she has to say. "I know the stuff that goes to make a Gem is inert even for us," she muses. She certainly should know; after all, it's the raw material of her art. "Most of it's extracted and latticed by Kindergartens. Basalt and the rest are just spoil, really. -You might want to ask a Peridot for more details, though. They're our technicians."
"Ve used to be paid een lootink es vell, bot der Heterodyne Boyz vosn´t much mit der conquerink zo now ve get wages." Mina shrugs. "Hy suppose iz more reliable. Bot less fon." She followed the discussion of what makes various kinds of gem with some interest. "A body made ov light huh? Soundz verry hard to break Hy bet hyu mediks gotz nottink to do all dey eef hyu even haff dem." She frowns. "Bot @Nacre hy sey hyu gemz haff purposes hyu iz made for. Zo vot iz a diamond in hyu vorld?"
Nacre would explain about healers and cracked Gems, and maybe also harvesting for those deemed not worth the healer's time, but then it came back to Diamonds, and Diamonds are always- always- more important. "Their purpose is to direct and guide us all," she says, in the slightly toneless voice of one repeating a well-worn affirmation. More lively: "The Great Diamond Authority is our, ah, government. Every Gem ultimately answers to them."
"What's a Kindergarten?" Kastor puts in. "The translation spell or whatever the bar does with languages isn't giving me a meaning on that one." ((kas's world is pike-and-musket renaissance level and his own son is apprenticed to a shaman so he doesn't know the human meaning of kindergarten, let alone the gem one))
