ORIGIN

The Collector could have been more helpful if he was going to send her to the Blacksmith by telling her where Fornax was, but she wasn't about to judge. She guessed.

Leaving tunnel K, she returned to the Star Room, where it was vaguely dark and the ceiling was littered with glimmering, white quartz. There wasn't a lot here, but she did quite like it. There were no long walls with carvings and there were no piles of metal and armour and leather, but it was fine.

The more she wandered, however, the more she found-- an array of buildings, some with shattered chrysalises by them, others crumpled with age, and some intact. She definitely liked those-- they were new, but she was unsure if she could actually do anything with them.

She entered one a little ways from the cluster of the rest of them, with a narrow doorway but a wide, open window with a long ledge. It smelled dusty, and there was moss crawling up the walls inside, but it was... cozy. Nice. She liked it in here.

Contentedly, she dropped her satchel. It clattered with the metals inside it, loudly, and she sat down by the doorway, crossing her legs over.

This was very nice, she decided.

The more sat there, the more she was enjoying herself. It was lovely! It smelled nice, and it was fairly comfortably cool, unlike Monoceros. And unlike Monoceros, she wasn't being pelted with sand and dust and small rocks being carried by the wind. Maybe she could haul the stuff from her den over here and live here instead.

Maybe she could make a forge, like Glory had, and work here too, or in one of the other buildings. There were certainly plenty to choose from.

She pulled her satchel to rifle through it, taking a half-rock out from the tattered bag. It was pure black, obsidian, and was the failed result of Azure's bauble. The cleaved half was fairly smooth, however, and it was easy to grip on the non-flat side. Considering, she lifted it to her mouth.

Tapping into magicka, her breath was hot when she breathed out onto the surface of the stone. Unbearably hot, that her fingers would have burned if they weren't naturally calloused. Hot enough that the surface began to half-melt, and when it acted enough of an adhesive, she stuck it into the uneven, dusty ground, and lifted it back up.

It was cooling down fairly quickly-- quickly enough that it retained the tiny stones and sand stuck to it, creating a hot-to-the-touch but fine surface. A grindstone, Glory had called it. She set it down, and then looked up at the sound of hooves clicking against the cave floor.

There was a someone-- probably a new friend, really --moving towards her, a white creature who was probably two or three times her height. Not that Serendipity was intimidated, far from it. "Hello!" She repeated, pushing up to her feet.

Azizos. What a weird name. "I'm Sirendippity," said Siren. "Or Siren. Or Dip. Some people can't say it." It should be noted that she couldn't quite say it correctly either, mind.

"What are you doing here? Do you live here? Is this your den? I'm real sorry if it is," the child immediately began babbling.

Serendipity felt vague alarm as Azizos' antlers scraped the doorway. It didn't seem like a good thing-- she wouldn't want her horns touching solid stone, at least. She ruffled her hair, briefly.

"Oh, okay," she said. She took a brief look around the small building before announcing, "I live here now."

There was a lot she could do here to make it more homely, though it was already quite nice. She could find more cloth in tunnel J, maybe, to make the floor sofer to sit and lie on. She could find some lights and string them up the walls, and set nice things on the window ledge.

Her ears flicked, excited. But Azizos was still trying to talk to her.

"Uh, yeah?" Siren replied quizzically. "I mean, I don't see why not. I like it in here. It's good and comfortable and I'm gonna make it more comfortable." She took another look around and then leaned into a strange, half-oval shaped alcove in the wall. It smelled.. vaguely ashy. She had no idea what it was.

"If you don't live here, then where do you live? In the windy room, or the bone room?" She asked, as nosy children do. A pause later and-- "Or Fornax?"

She really hoped he lived in Fornax. It'd make finding the Blacksmith easier.

Plants? She supposed so. She settled herself down in front of the smoky-smelling hearth and folded her legs up in front of her. "I've never really seen plants," she said. "Just dead ones. I was gonna put, uhh, this kinda stuff around?" She plucked at her tunic and the yellow sarong around her shoulders.

Her ears flicked upwards at the mention of Eridanus and its plants-- but the warning about the Eyes fell on mostly deaf ears. Danger wasn't exactly that much of a concern to Serendipity, or at least not yet. She was yet to learn any sort of fear reaction and a sense of.. generally being cautious.

"Well, uh," she replied. "No one's ever told me the names of the rooms. This gem called the Collector told me to go find the Blacksmith in a place called Fornax but he never told me where Fornax was?" Granted, she didn't exactly ask until he'd vanished in laughter.

Which might strike some people as 'ominous.'

"How many rooms are there?" The child asked. "I think I wanna go and see them all and make friends in all the rooms, and then make new things if I find anything in the rooms! There's a lot of stuff in, uh, Monakros and Kannis already, so there must be stuff everywhere."

"Yeah, I think so?" Serendipity said half-distractedly, blinking. She was only partially listening at this point-- fairly hypocritical, of course, given how often she tended to run her own mouth. "I mean, uhh, you can tear it and stuff but it's pretty warm and it seems. Uh. Tough?"

She did, however, at least start paying a bit more attention at the mention of Fornax. Serendipity lifted one ear, rotating it briefly, and then blinked. "Oh," she said. "We should go there because it seemed kinda important? What's the climb like?"

"He, uh, just told me I should go find him," She replied with an easy shrug, pushing up and wandering from the ash-hole. "He said that the Blacksmith could teach me how to make things. And I like making things! I'm very good at it now but I wanna learn more so I'm gonna go learn from the Blacksmith," she nodded several times.

The child crinkled her nose up a bit. There was absolutely no way she'd be able to register every single location name in her three-brain-cell-capacity mind. "How'd you know them all?" She asked. "I mean-- if there's so many, how do you not get them confused all the time?"