"Are you serious," you grumble, rubbing one of your hornbeds in exasperation. These crazy little wizards are going to strip you hollow, they're so difficult. Apparently potions and magical windows and cold boxes full of bird meat are no problem for magical highbloods, while basic prosocial behavior is a lost art. No wonder you keep having to bully them through every last little gesture of interpersonal affection, though they clearly enjoy one another's regard. You get hold of the Lawfee and haul the small bundle of elbows and knees into your lap. "I am going to die," you say conversationally. "I am going to die here because my liver will swell up and explode from stress toxins, and it will be all your fault, you aggravating pair of swamp goblins. Yes. Yes I will." You get a thumb against the Warden's high, strangely-angled cheekbone and rub in firm circles. "This is what we civilized folk call 'relaxing'!" You tell them, slowly and just a trifle condescendingly, not that anyone, at this point, could judge you. The blueblood makes some sort of awkward, squirmy motion, and you shoot her a stern look, the kind that makes unruly novitiates stop horsing around with the slip bags. "If you give me any more trouble so help me I will eat your sword," you tell her, still working on the Warden, who has mostly stopped flailing at you. You probably won't. You will probably run away and cry. But it never hurts to bluff.
You start back as Ur-Gar grabs Lophii. At some point you are going to find some way to introduce the concept of 'personal boundaries,' you swear to the Mother Grub. "Hey!" You say in your best stern Talking-to-Lusii voice. "Let them go." They seem to be pretty smart, so this... may or may not work. And you don't really have any better ideas if they decide to be stubborn.
You kind of. Melt. There’s no more apt description for the way all the fight and tension bleeds out of you like your tendons have been sliced. The big troll is warm, solid, and they’re strong, but so so gentle. Something helpless and pitiful ratchets out of your throat when they apply just the right amount of pressure to the spot just below your temple, it feels that good. Then Iridie barks something commanding, and you sit bolt upright because what the fresh hell are you thinking! The force of your shame lets you propel yourself out of Ur-Gar’s lap and straight across Iridie’s until you hit the other side of the couch. “Sorry!” you squawk, “I’m so.. oh my god I’m sorry!” Aaw fuck, you spilled the grubcorn.
You are unprepared for sudden Lophii launching, and so end up sort of squished against the couch. "Oh, hey, I'm not mad at you, or anything, it -" you kind of awkwardly pat their shoulder. Oh god they're going to cry what do you do. "You're OK, come on," you say, patting a bit more calmly and slowly.
You groan with deep, bone-rattling exasperation and drag your palmpads down your face. "Are wizards a solitary species?" you demand. "Is that it? Do you guys just have no protocols for sociability? Do you do nothing but spells in towers and occasional in-person meetings strictly to humiliate yourselves?" You get off the little furniture object, retrieve one of the impossibly fine blankets, and drape it around the two of them. Tuck it in properly. The Warden is definitely crying. They look like a pair creche-fresh noviates, overwhelmed with confusion by the existence of people and things. Maybe they just can't deal with more than one friend at a time? You go crouch on the floor and start picking up the small white foods and putting them back in the bowl to throw away. Maybe there's a sanitation spell that could do this faster, but for now you might as well handle it.
Iridie isn’t mad at you? Iridie isn’t mad at you. You don’t know why, she should be, you are the worst moirail ever. You haven’t even been moirails that long, and you went and purred at another troll papping you. Right. In. Front of her. Your brain hurts, and your heart hurts, so you very tentatively lean in until your forehead is touching her shoulder, trying to sniff back the feeling of pressure gathering in your sinuses. Ur-Gar gets up and drapes a blanket over you. You hiccup, once, loudly, and loose the fight.
You curl around Lophii as they lean into you. You can't wrap your arms around them entirely, as you are missing half of one of them, but you make a good effort at it anyways. You relax slightly as Ur-Gar grabs one of the blankets and pulls it over the two of you. "Thanks," you say to them, and lean into Lophii as they start crying. You'll figure out why exactly they're crying later. For now, though, you hug them, running your fingers along their spine. You also notice Ur-Gar picking up the spilled grubcorns - well, you figure you can do that faster. You reach out threads of your psionics, as light a touch as you can manage, picking up the corns that they haven't already gotten to and depositing them in the bowl.
You startle when the little foods start to move on their own— but, of course, they haven't suddenly come alive, it's just a spell. You look up to see which of them cast it. The blueblood, probably, the Warden is still sniffling away. "Well, at least you can do other things besides insane violence," you remark. It's actually kind of a relief to see. You catch one of the moving bits in your hand to see what happens. (iridie)
Oh, you guess you should've figured they'd go poking at mysterious flying food kernels. You unwind the bit of psi you have wrapped around the corn, and direct the rest of what you have to the bowl. So you guess there's psionics wherever they're from, which you really do need to figure out. If it's someone's escaped genetic-engineering project, then depending on how paranoid they are they might've already posted some kind of experiment-missing notes online, though you don't have especially high hopes for that. "...You can come back up on the couch, if you want. If you're looking for a test tube or whatever to sleep in though you're going to be out of luck."
You watch her for a moment, making sure she's actually inviting you, but the gestures and expression does seem to indicate you won't send the Warden into another antisocial freakout. You ease back on to the little bench and put an arm around them. Very slowly and gently you go to pet the blueblood's hair. This should be a regular, normal, friendly thing to do, but who even knows anymore? She's got so much hair too, more hair than seems possible for a troll to grow. Maybe she uses spells to keep it in order. Maybe she used spells to get it this long in the first place.
You try your best to not drip snot on Iridie. You're gross, and stupid, and dumb, and somehow she still puts up with you. Ur-Gar hasn't ran away screaming either, but it's not like they have anyplace to go as far as you know, so that's kind of a moot point. Still it's nice when you feel them at your back, boxing you in and pressing you into a tighter huddle. It feels so good and safe, almost as great as fresh sopor. You're still sniffling and your everything hurts. "I think I need a nap." You didn't mean for that to come out sounding so whiny or pathetic. Fuck, why are you so bad at this? ((Iridie))
"I think we all could, at this point," you say, moving your hand up to pet at their horn bases. Ur-Gar is a warm pressure on your other side, a contrast to Lophii's seadweller-coolness. At least with someone the size of a cholerbear on your bad side you'll be able to sleep soundly. Almost without realizing it, your head tips sideways into their palm, but by now you're too tired to even care much. Inside of two minutes you're back asleep.
The blueblood falls asleep fast and hard— well, she's down a limb, that makes sense, and the Lawfee's sodden with unhappiness. You arrange yourself as best as you can on the little seat and pull the wizards back into your lap, so you get the maximum amount of seat space, and they can lie on your chest. You could really use the skin contact, and this time the Lawfee doesn't bolt: good. You doze for awhile, wake, doze again, wake up more completely with a crick in your back. The small wizards are completely, heavily asleep on you, so it's not hard to shuffle out from under them and tuck them into a sort of very expensive nest. They really are cute, even with their weird faces and mangled horns. You spend the day working the small remainder of your clay— all you have left of your hive, you think grimly, so you'd better be careful with it— until it's perfectly moist, then clearing and recoating your tablet, polishing your stylus, and taking yourself meticulously through every single calligraphic form and exercise. There's no excuse for a sloppy hand just because you've been taken away from everything you've ever known and don't know if you'll ever be back. Perhaps the wizards will suddenly know how to read, and want you to label things for them. Hmm. Maybe you can teach them to read? They're terrible at interpreting even the most basic, explicit signage you lay out for them, so however they communicate, it's not through any sort of inscribed language. But perhaps if you showed them how to connect concepts and objects to signs, they'll learn to understand you better, and you can work out spoken language after that. There's a problem, though: you barely have enough clay left to keep your tablet in good order, let alone to put up marker slabs to actually inscribe anything around here, and you doubt gouging your marks right into the wall material will go over well. Plus it will absolutely wreck your stylus. Maybe there's clay outside. Clay comes out of the ground by water, this hive is by the water, there will be clay there. You never ranked— you have not yet ranked— highly enough for any clay digging trips yourself. They're very rare, as most clay in the hive is of course efficiently recycled. But... Success! The ground outside of the blueblood's hive is excellent. You scoop up big handfuls of dense, rusty-red clay into a fine metal pot, then bring it inside to the work and food area, with the sink. The collection of tools and containers in the area is strange but workable, and you get a decent batch of clay seived, conditioned, wedged, and dumped back in the pot. Then you very carefully clean everything, and set out to give this hive some proper illumination. Big clear graphic signs, you figure, very explicitly rendered, illustrations even, on top of the usual first-level pictographs, then only second-level symbols beneath. If you can get them to second level symbols you'll finally be able to get some answers, but even if they just get better at parsing illiterate pictographs will make it easier to give orders. Today is going to be good.
