ORIGIN - the well and the lighthouse

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Gradually, the air turned cold. Like all the sound had ceased as the temperature fell. Ghanyarah had not grown uncomfortable in the temperature drop; rather, this was his environment. But it worried him that the bat might grow cold. He could do little to warm her up besides what he had offered before, his warm neck to curl into. It was difficult to maintain that warmth when he was walking, so ultimately, Ghanyarah just found himself hoping that she could conserve body heat until the coldness passed.

The foliage would soon part as the water seeped into the soil, deeper and darker; soon, Ghanyarah was wading through muddy water that sloshed up his elbows. His weight would sink into the mud if he didn't move quickly enough, and he made an effort to clamber onto roots and fallen trees as he encountered them. He was lucky enough to have found a partially submerged log when the gaping trees widened around the vast trunk of the Divine. It's arms lifted high above them, and its twisting roots were frozen lashing in the water. It was uncomfortably still here, to the point of being suffocating.

Ghanyarah leaned forward on the log, flicking his tongue. "This is the Divine." He said quietly, looking up at the tree. It didn't move, didn't even acknowledge him. Perhaps it remembered when he strung innards across its branches. Or perhaps it had forgiven him. "I was without a name for a long time while I was still small. I didn't know what calling belonged to me. In my searching, I found this tree, and it called to me. It's voice was among my thoughts, hundreds of its voices. But they all spoke the same thing. Ghanyarah. It had given me my name, but... now I wonder if it had known who I was before I even did." The reptile said thoughtfully.

Could it be that it had been calling him by name, summoning him? Rather than bequeathing him his name? He rolled his shoulders and flattened against the log, but he was ready to proceed closer if she so wished.

@Lituus

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Gentle rocking motions bring them further into the depths of the forest she would come to know well in the cycles ahead. It grew colder then, bnexpectedly so, but the bat bears little complaint. She hugs her wings tighter to her body and curls her ears in closer to her skull to conserve heat. The way she was snuggling up to the rosy membrane of his spines helps her too. A small amount of heat radiates from him there, and that seems to be more than enough.

Wide eyes peer down at the muck Ghanyarah steadily sinks into. It sounded.. wet and slimy, but only for a while. Soon he stops and all sound ceased to be. In effort to catch wind of any noise at all, her delicate ears unfurl and her head twists about: alert. An odd-looking tree stood tall ahead with a mess of winding roots littering its base. It.. wasn't the most inviting looking tree in the cave, that's for sure. Her mouth opens to speak, but the voice catches in her throat while Ghanyarah explains. This was the tree.

"It has many voices?" Many voices; many songs. "Can we get closer?" The childish voice is also hushed, as his was, though perhaps in fear. Fear, and no small amount of wonder. That chill crawled up her back and made the fur around her nape stand on end. How exciting. She was going to meet a tree. A tree that might speak to her as it had Ghanyarah. It made her anxious, but her wings stuck closer to her body, not wanting to dislodge herself from his spines and get lost in the muck pooling around them.

Was it possible the tree knew who she was too? "Did it ever say anything else to you?" she speaks gently. "Besides your name." The bat twists her head to look at the back of Ghanyarah's, though her attention keeps flittering back and forth between the tree. Slight shoulders shift uncomfortably. Oh, how she wished she could fly.

spread your wings

earth element - lituus - vesper bat
tags @Ghanyarah

Ghanyarah nodded slightly. Many voices. He didn't know how exactly, or where they came from, only that there was an abundance of them that had permeated his thoughts that day. At her request, Ghanyarah obliged. "Yes, but be wary. The Divine can be quite mischievous." The reptile explained as he pushed himself off of the log and into the murky water. He held his head upright, but the rest of him was subject to the surface of the water rippling against his hide, so he hoped that she would migrate up to his crest. He snaked through the bog, pinning his sights on the tree with firm intent.

Silence followed her question as he thought. How many times had the Divine spoken to him? Only once that he could clearly remember, his name, like it was calling. "No." He answered, looking up at the massive tree that towered over them, its roots curling in the water. "It has spoken to us in other ways. Sometimes its roots move, or it sheds leaves to show us its dismay. I have come to realize that you must respect the Divine, as it can harm you as quickly as it decides to speak." Ghanyarah said. In the back of his mind, he hoped that they wouldn't do anything to incite the tree's rage. The last thing he wanted was for the bat to get harmed.

The roots lingered with ambiguous threat above him. He paddled to their edge and gingerly pulled himself up onto the root. It didn't budge.

@Lituus (its up to you, but if you want, you could roll to see if the tree reacts? id be happy to do GM posts for it!)

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Seeing the muck grow conspicuously close... and closer... the bat decides to migrate towards his head, which is understandably elevated higher than the rest of him. He might feel a small tickling sensation as she walks across him, but once she finds her new perch hiding behind the glittering red stone jutting from his brow, the weight of her presence seems to vanish as usual. "It plays tricks?" she murmurs, still hushed in a childish way. "Then we will play tricks right back at it!" Was she the angel perched upon his shoulder, or the impish trickster?

Long ears curl inwards again as they pass beneath the ominous roots hanging above them. Having things towering over them like that sure wasn't that comforting, but perhaps it just wanted a big hug? Sadly, she wasn't the best suited to offer such things. Tiny, fragile wings and all.

"Hello, little tree. We come to visit you!" she projects her low voice towards the tree root Ghanayrah climbs onto, as if speaking any louder would upset the balance of the forest around them. "Not that you are lonesome or anything, since you have all your friends growing around you."

What was she doing, exactly?

"You know Ghanyarah already. He says you spoke his name to him.." She squishes the fluff of her cheek to the side of the dragon's stone while a wing idly wraps around the ruby structure. "I would tell you mine, but I don't know what it is... These are pretty cool though, huh?" her wings spread open on cue, trying to show them off. "I don't know how to use'em yet." Could trees even see things? Amber eyes lift from the root and squint as their owner looks higher. The tree's trunk is terribly blurry to her, or was that just fog?

The bat settles her eyes on Ghanyarah's snout and remains silent, ears perking upright again. Waiting. She didn't mind waiting, but she was anxious. Would anything happen? Her nerves start making her see things. Were it's roots moving? That would be cool. The fear of potential harm is shoved aside for the time being, set on her attempts to invoke this beings better nature. It is her sincerest belief that she is being respectful, see.

Just treat it how she would treat anybody else, right? That felt right to do.

spread your wings

earth element - lituus - vesper bat
tags @Ghanyarah

His lips twitched slightly at the thought of tricking the tree. From his experience with the tree, he didn't want to risk anything that could potentially harm himself or her, and tricking the tree... might not be the wisest of ideas. Then again, he still didn't understand the true nature of the tree. Perhaps it truly was a trickster and would take such pranks in good nature. It hadn't lashed out too badly when the Children of Rot decorated it with organs and innards and other such disgusting holiday paraphernalia. Though what it had done was far more... foreboding.

Ghanyarah remained still as her voice poured out towards the tree. She was gentle with it, and considerate of its apparent solitude here in the midst of the swamp, then mentioned Ghanyarah. If the lizard could have blushed, he would have. He'd never shared his private experience with the tree with anyone before, at least not to the extent that he shared it with the bat. He wasn't even sure if he'd told anybody else. Maybe in passing, but never in detail. He wondered if the tree recognized him at all, or remembered why it had called out to him in that moment. She continued on about her own lack of a name and spread out her wings, showing them off to the tree.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but the tree remained still. "It must be listening." Ghanyarah whispered, lifting his eyes to the tree and examining it, hoping to catch the slightest movement, but found nothing. "Perhaps ask something of it?"

@Lituus

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No response yet. Maybe it was thinking about whether it even liked them or not. Huh. She waits and clings to his gem as if it were the safest of safety blankets. Which it totally was. To her anyway. Ghanyarah's suggestion seeps into her tiny brain. There are a million and one things she could ask it.. but which one would she deliver?

"Do you have a name? Or... does everyone just call you Divine?" It was a pretty name: Divine. A bit pretentious if it called itself that. But pretty nonetheless. "Can you sing?" a smile weaves its way onto her expression. "Ghanyarah mentioned many voices. So, one of them must know how to sing!" Ghanyarah hearing voices would have surely made him seem looney to anyone else who might have been listening, but such a ridiculous accusation couldn't cross her mind. How naive she was.

What would a tree song sound like? The sound of the earth? Of roots stretching through soil and splitting the rock and bone buried beneath? Joined by a cacophony of chirruping insects and the cries of fair-weather birds in Cetus' distant reaches? Floating logs and sticks and things churn in the muck below them and small, harmless things that lived there take small gulps of air from its surface. Large leaves rustle in branches from unfathomable heights by a nonexistent wind, sheltering them with their majesty; swaggering in their grandeur.

"Ghanyarah, I think it's sleeping. Maybe we should come back later." there was a small amount of disappointment in her voice, but nothing she wouldn't get over. Ghanyarah's tale had filled her with wonder enough that her hope will remain kindled.

She watches the blurry trunk of the nearby tree. Not that she was expecting it to uproot itself and walk around or anything.

OOC: LAZY NEW AVATAR COS I... WANT ONE.. LIKE YOURS.. BATS...

spread your wings

earth element - lituus - vesper bat
tags @Ghanyarah

In the lingering stagnancy of the swamp, it was silent. The distant movements of idle creatures spawned solitary ripples that stretched and stretched, each wave crawling further, its wake diminishing, until the surface was no more than a gentle swell from every direction. So diminutive that it was hardly movement at all. Even the cloud of insects that often buzzed around overhead seemed lacking in the very presence of the great tree, which was rendered attentive to the two transient organisms that begged its audience. The very stillness itself was the tree’s presence, and as they spoke, it listened.

Following the bat’s questioning, the tree seemed to ponder. There was no sense of receipt of her voice, no acknowledgement, even as she disheartenedly suggested that it was asleep and they should leave. It dwelled. Then it sought to act.

The leaves on the tips of its branches shuddered as though tickled by a breeze, but there was no wind. The sound steadily began to mount as all the leaves rustled and swayed at once, collective in a fragmented dance, each its own instrument in the grand symphony of action. The silence was struck down. All around them the leaves rustled, and the trees surrounding the divine rustled, and the roots creaked and the forest seemed to breathe. In among the sound were whispers; misconstrued and hazy echoes of something old, ancient spirits that still haunted this plane, coming to life in the orchestra of the trees. They spoke a language never before heard but familiar, as if the words, comprised of sounds from beyond the cave, have always existed within their minds. Words of the trees. Words of life.

Her voice was the only thing that lit up the air around them as Ghanyarah was beginning to notice how the swamp had fallen quiet. Every question he imagined the Divine forging some kind of response, which Ghanyarah found inwardly amusing. After all, he had encouraged her to ask and she did. Did it have a name beyond the Divine? How did they come to call it the Divine, anyways? The name felt like it had always been pressed into his mind like a fact of life. Could it sing? He agreed that one of its voices must have known how. But maybe it sang a different way than they were used to. He expected the tree to give them a response, but after a few seconds, it seemed both he and the bat had realized that nothing was happening. No roots moving, not even a leaf shed. He tilted his head slightly as she expressed her dismay.

Then all at once, the leaves above shifted. He listened as the sound mounted like a swirling, rising tide, enveloping them completely. Ghanyarah stiffened, ready to leap from the root if he needed to. Everything was drowning in the sound of the leaves, even his heartbeat, and he swore he could have heard something in them. Words in a primitive language that did not belong to him, or the bat, or the tree, or anyone, words he’d never heard before but somehow innately knew.

They left him with no feeling besides that of being moved. A sense that he’d been contacted, but the message, for now, remained unclear.

@Lituus

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The sensitive folds of her ears easily pick up the tiny movements above. Her small head tilts upwards, gazing longingly into the branches far out of reach. Would that she could visit them some day soon. Sounds of many shifting leaves and branches rise and fall around them, coming to life within the stage built atop a bed of age-old roots. The bat begins to sway left and right, moving with the sounds catching in the rungs of her audits.

"It's singing." she murmurs. Beady eyes close while she takes in every shift in branch; every whisper in the air. Whatever the words meant would go consciously unknown- but they were beautiful. An emotion rises in her core, crawls up her spine, and exits her snout in a gentle song. She tries to copy the tree's whispers to the best of her ability, and though she fumbles, her song persists. She would remember this. This song. Ghanyarah's hum. They were special to her now.

The foreign words leave her mouth with comfortable ease as she grows into it, following the orchestra's lead with the passion of her own existence. Was this the language of the trees? Of nature? The sounds themselves were invigorating, and she crawls over the ridge of Yara's eye just so he could see the triumphant grin plastered on her face. She sings at him for a while, then looks back to the tree, as if goading him to join them.

Lituus returns to her perch behind his crest and reaches a folded wing around to balance herself. The other flaps enthusiastically in the Divine's direction. "What do you hear?" she speaks to her companion in wonder. Some sounds felt like they had more meaning to her than others, and her mind was picking through them, trying to locate one that was louder - clearer- than all the rest. Alas, they were all a bit too hazy, even for her senses.

spread your wings

earth element - lituus - vesper bat
tags @Ghanyarah

Ghanyarah stared into the air surrounding the Divine, trying to wrap his mind around what he was hearing. But there was all too much of it at the same time. The message buzzed and flickered, uncertain of itself, and for a moment Ghanyarah was completely lost.

Until he heard the babe speak. Yes, she was right. This must have been the tree singing. But he couldn't make out any words, he couldn't even make out any rhythm; the bat hummed along to a cacophony of rattling leaves, a harmony-less din of nature sounds born of some magical will of the cave itself. When she hung over his head, he caught a glimpse of her, but he still couldn't know what he was hearing or what he was supposed to know, or say, or do. The tree swaddled them in noise and nothing else.

The rustling was beginning to ease as the bat spoke up again. "I don't know." Ghanyarah answered tentatively. "I hear leaves, the voices of the trees, I think. But that is all. They are reaching out, but I do not know what they are saying." He frowned at his own ineptitude. But perhaps the message was not intended for him. "What do you hear? What does it say to you?"

@Lituus

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