ORIGIN - ᵗᵃʰᶦᵗᶦ

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direct continuation of I HAVE A PLAN !!!

Tunnel N was a fairly straight-forward tunnel, or so Aurelle had thought.

Just a short, straight walk from Orion to Polaris. For years, she hadn't even considered the question that something else might have been there. It was only when she'd gone for her daily foraging quest that she'd stumbled across Scorpio at all.

She took a moment to pause and find her way. She was definitely increasingly tired, now, but on she kept going. "This way," she guided, walking with the tunnel with Lichen attached at the hand.

"But food goes bad," Aurelle answered Lichen gently. "So you can't really collect it and keep it forever." She paused, and then added-- "But there's no pressure, you know? You don't have to find something you really like today."

After a moment, she considered the coins, too. She couldn't really visualize what coins might have looked like, but she supposed it was fair. Though... "Won't you get sad if we have to give the coins away for food?" She asked softly. "Even if we have a lot, would you be okay with giving some up for good food?"

@Lichen

Lichen's tongue flicked towards the fresh, sweet smelling smells of Tunnel N. It was one of her favourites, the smells of sweet, damp vegetation. Though perhaps the lingering warmth from the cycles change in weather had wicked away some of the damp smell, it was still sweet. There was some about the sweetness in the air pairing so wonderfully with the smells of moss that excited her, not that she could endure long stints in Tunnel N without feeling a little nauseous. Her diet didn't usually include a lot of sweetness.

Tunnel N always felt nice underfoot too. Large lizard feet had decent grip on the stones, making smaller stone a non-issue, but sometimes you could step on some moss too, which had once felt luxuriously soft to Lichen; but after experiencing the softness of Aurelle's clothes, moss felt almost pathetic in comparison.

There was a lingering pause before Lichen became aware Aurelle had spoken, pulling herself away from thoughts of sweet air, she tried to focus on what her friend had said. "That's why I would collect it. So we would always have enough for food, we don't need to eat all the time. And it wouldn't be sad if the things we give them away for made us happy too. I think that's wonderful enough, don't you?" Lichen turns her head just a fraction towards Aurelle.

"A collection that could be exchanged for little pieces of happiness sounds like a magical thing to me". Provided that the whole thing isn't a trap, of course. If it was, then she had no clue what she'd like to hoard.

@Aurelle

"I think that's a good idea," Aurelle agreed, smiling. There was still a little dim part of her that wanted to object and say Lichen needed something to hold close and treasure and not give away, but really, she couldn't really argue with the logic. Maybe the memories they had together getting coins and eating would be enough of a precious thing to keep forever. "We'll have so many nice and happy things."

Her feet padded along the tunnel for a moment longer, making a turn where the tunnel yawned off towards Scorpio instead of Polaris. "You're smart, you know," she said, her tone thoughtful. "I don't think I would have thought of that if you hadn't said it."

Still walking, Aurelle turned her head to smile in Lichen's direction-- again, despite the fact Lichen couldn't see it, and she couldn't see Lichen. She just wanted to smile at her friend. "So, what kind of food would you want first?" She asked. "I think I would like... a deer." They were so much more filling than mushrooms and berries, even if they had to eat them fairly quickly as not to cause waste. "Maybe hot!" She added, remembering. "Their food is really hot and smelly."

Smelly as in 'smells strong,' and not 'stinks like dogshit,' incidentally.

@Lichen

The compliment caught Lichen unawares, her steps stuttered for a moment because continuing. She knew better than to suddenly stop without warning and have her feeler accidentally yanked. She hadn't given the idea of being smart much thought. Aurelle had always came across as smart in her ability to enjoy life. Such as right now, venturing to get a hot meal. The words made her eyes prick, and made her chest feel light.

"Haw?" Lichen blurted as her brain scrambled to put the pieces of the conversation back together. "Hot deer? Won't that burn the good bits?" She added critically, though she had no idea how this hot food thing worked. She hadn't considered that it would be foods she already knew but.. hot.

"Maybe they heat up the bones, so the good bits between them are soft enough to get out." Without cracking the bones, at least. The marrow, it was her favourite part, rich, smooth, full of flavours and made you feel good after eating it. Maybe that would be good hot.

@Aurelle

Aurelle shrugged. Though Lichen couldn't see it, she could feel the little up-and-down jerk of her shoulder as her hand moved on the feeler. "Maybe burned tastes good," Aurelle reasoned. "I've never eaten anything burned. And it smelled really good. Like... mouth-watering, tummy-rumbling good smell."

She was salivating just thinking about it, actually, and she had to swallow it down before she drooled all over herself like an animal.

Though... she did trail to a little halt, lifting a hand to her chin again in thought. "You know, it's not far, but it might take us a little while to actually get coins," she said. "And I'm... really hungry now."

Turning her head up and down the tunnel, Aurelle had a sniff. The cool, sweet smell of tunnel N wasn't as tempting as the smells in Scorpio, but that didn't much matter to someone with a rumbly tummy. "You wanna find a snack?" She asked Lichen.

@Lichen

Oh, yes. They'd need the coins first. Something that Lichen had assumed would just come quickly. Though she was in much the same boat as Aurelle, thinking about all those delicious delicacies just waiting at the end of the tunnel was working up her appetite. Not that she knew Aurelle was also almost drooling over herself, and neither would she admit her own vivid food fantasies aloud.

"A snack before coin-getting is a good choice. We'll need the energy for it." Lichen nods once, firmly. Purely for energy, and not at all because she was thinking about delicious and rich foods and that alone was enough to make her stomach rumble. No, no, this was purely for pragmatic reasons, of course.

The feelers unfurls itself from Aurelle's hand once they were halted, the feeler brushing across the back of her hand, as if the thing didn't want to leave. Lichen lowers her head to the ground, a snack.. a snack should be easy to find.

After so long without, reaching out to the networks around wasn't easy. Like trying to maintain a one-sided conversation, it was exhausting and disheartening. Yet there was a prickle of something nearby, a cluster of mycelial roots that had left space for some sort of shape.

Lichen groaned, her head throbbing as she lifted it. "I think there's something, but it could be a big rock. At our left shoulders, a few big paces away." Unable to see little more than the gap in the network, it was hard to gauge what exactly it was over there.

Perhaps a berry bush, maybe a regular bush. A small tree. A big rock. A bit of aggressive moss. Lichen truly had no idea.

@Aurelle

Aurelle nodded, too-- firmly, vehemently. Just for energy, not because this is the kind of greed they talked about in the Bible, whatever that was. She stayed close to Lichen as her feeler unravelled from her hand, in silent reassurance that she hadn't gone anywhere and was still there.

When Lichen announced she'd found something, Aurelle felt her tummy twist with uncomfortable hunger. "I'll have a look," she said, taking a few paces left and fumbling her hands around until she found something soft and leafy. The elf held it up and put it to her nose, sniffing.

It was... damp. Sweet, but damp and musty. Her stomach twisted in a completely different way: she'd quickly lost that appetite she'd worked up.

Still, both of them had eaten worse.

"It's, uhh... moss, I think," Aurelle said, getting to her feet. She held it in her hands, taking a deep breath. Her magic seeped out of her fingers and into the moss, eradicating it of all microbial life. She'd found early on that if she hate things just knocking around the caves, she'd get sick-- either with her mouth or her butt. Both were equally unpleasant. But, if she gave it a good clean with magic, she wouldn't get sick anymore.

Or, well, not as often.

So, sterilizing food became a ritual. She stepped back to Lichen reluctantly, tearing the moss apart into equal halves. "Open up," she told Lichen, before dropping her half of the moss-clump into the dragon's maw, provided it was open.

@Lichen

Lichen's mouth opened, in her brightened mood that maybe the food-place wasn't going to lure them into a scheme, she felt rather jovial. She'd been able to ask if Aurelle had perhaps been faking her blindness since she was going to have a 'look'. But thankfully Aurelle had spotted the snack before the poor joke could leave her big, stupid, lizard mouth.

Moss. It wasn't her favourite snack. While the smell was delightful, the taste was much too bitter. Though, she distantly hoped there was a small amount of the sweet soil still attached to the moss as she opened her jaws up; naturally for Aurelle to insert the moss like one may post a letter into the box. Having friends with opposable thumbs was a wonderful perk to have; she idly wondered how she'd gone so long without one.

"You know," Lichen began, words slightly obscured as she chews on the moss; why was it so chewy? "This doesn't taste nearly as nice knowing there could be deer at the end of the tunnel." She groused, it wasn't really like her to complain about food. It did its job, it satisfied her tummy, it hadn't needed to do anything else until now, now that she knew that there could be something better.

Cursed Aurelle and her vivid food fantasies. Next Lichen will be wanting other frivolous things, that she didn't need to survive, but just had to feel nice. She thought, with the shawl still sitting over her shoulders, being hand-fed by a lovely friend. What a truly wretched existence, to be spoiled so thoroughly.

@Aurelle

With food shovelled into Lichen's maw, Aurelle started on her own piece. The smell wasn't so good for her-- certainly not after smelling whatever had been cooking at the tavern, and the taste was... well, even before Aurelle had her eyes metaphorically opened by the possibilities, moss wasn't exactly something she was often hounding for.

It seemed like Lichen thought the same. "No, it's really not," Aurelle muttered. She rubbed her clump into the wall a little, hoping the sweet dew would help it go down easier-- but it just made the moss a little more wet and stick to her teeth more. "It's kind of making my tummy hurt."

Not in a feeling sick kind of way, but in a 'I don't want to eat this anymore' kind of way. It was bitter and filling her mouth with a strange sort of film that she certainly didn't like. "Do you want the rest of this?" She asked reluctantly, not wanting to waste sterilized food.

She was already lifting her head away from the moss, trying to get a whiff of Scorpio from the distance-- but her senses were just all clogged with moss. "Hhmmphh," she grunted, unceremoniously raking her tongue through her molars. "There's some water dripping over there. Come on," she said.

It was easy enough to find-- a little trickling stream coming down from the ceiling. Aurelle cupped her hands, letting the cool water fill her palms before she took a sip, then shimmied out the way to let Lichen drink, too.

@Lichen

Lichen, immediately upon hearing that Aurelle didn't want the rest of it, opened her jaws up with a long "aaaaaaah." Even padding towards Aurelle when she heard the elf move away. Like a very hungry baby bird, if that baby bird were several feet tall, fully grown lizard. Food would rarely be wasted, perhaps something that she'd taken a little too literally since finding a companion, Lichen had since put on a healthy layer of fat since meeting Aurelle.

The food Aurelle had was better anyway, it didn't make her stomach hurt, usually.

The water was less interesting, that didn't fill up her tummy. Maybe it would clear her mouth, but that was unneeded, even if she would spend the rest of the day picking out pieces of moss from her molars.

"Maybe they'll give us a coin to get us started." Lichen spoke through her mouthful. "If I wanted someone to really want something I was offering, I'd give them a free try first. If it's good, surely that person would come back for more." It was perhaps a false hope, but it never felt good to see your friend unhappy.

@Aurelle

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