"Mushrooms...?" Madhukar wondered where those were. She associated mushrooms with Tahi, for obvious reasons. Mushrooms... it would be nice to see mushrooms. They looked funny with their big, squishy hats. Apparently Binh showed Sunny 'Fornax'.
"Fornax?" Madhukar's head tilted. Sunny already seemed to know more about the caves than Madhukar. That was fine, but Madhukar needed that information too. What was Fornax? Could plants grow there?
Growing. Plants. Mushrooms. Madhukar began to wonder, just idly, on the side, about Tahi's thoughts on learning spells of other types. Could Tahi learn electricity? Could Madhukar learn
mushrooms?
Binh was a good creature, no legs. Oof. She could see why Sunny would feel a kinship towards this creature. It was hard for either of them to travel. Madhukar was happy to help Sunny, but she'd never met Binh, so she wasn't sure about helping hmi out too. Magic... if only they had a magic to help with this, Sunny was right. Magic helped with these kind of things. Madhukar knew from personal experience.
"There a magic fo' everythin'. Where mushrooms?" Madhukar was really curious about this theory now.
@Sunny
"Not mushrooms, the mushroom!!" She gestured broadly towards the Monarch, towering up above all of them from the center of the room.
"Binh-stone was at the bottom. I magic-felt him as I crawled up. I have not gotten to its top yet... but I would liking to, one day." But Madhukar expressed her confusion about Fornax, and Sunny was happy to explain.
She thought back on how to explain Fornax to someone who didn't experience the world quite like she did.
"Biiiiiiig room! Bigger than any of them." That she'd seen, anyway.
"Mostly water. Islands interspersed. Sunny-snail and Tema-kin hatched there. The ceiling so high, it might not ever end! Little drops of bulb-light at the tops, very far away; where I found my name. The sunny-shining bulb-light!"
@madhukar
So Sunny meant the BIG mushroom.
"Oooooooooh." How intriguing. Sunny's desire to climb it and ability to... to
magic-feel, as the snail put it, were both interesting things Madhukar's mind would note down and save for later.
Fornax was a huge room? As Sunny described it, Madhukar found her head begin to spin the cloth of fiction, imagining the setting with every detail that had been described. Interesting, very interesting! Madhukar wondered if she should visit it someday. Not yet, it didn't feel quite right yet. Maybe she could find Binh before going over there so that she could be in Eridanus but also see the room.
So that was the hatching place of Sunny and Tema, eh? Seemed much better than where Madhukar had hatched.
"Sound cool. Big. Madhu-- I mean, uh, I hatch'd ina dark place. No like Fornax. Mayb' Binh can show." She didn't want to go to The Mushroom, or find Binh, or see her hatching place. Wondering about Sniffles wouldn't help her recover, and neither would interacting with strangers. And if she left the pools of water in the room, she would have to go looking for another puddle to drink from, and another place to-- ACK, the queasiness was kicking in, oh boy.
"Sunny ge' off, gotta ge' th' plants ou'." She stayed huddled on the ground. She didn't want Sunny to have to watch this.
@Sunny
Sunny visibly frowned at Madhukar's semi-demand. She was a slow animal with a cone-shaped shell -- she didn't know enough math to plan where she'd land if she tucked in and dropped. Not to mention her senses for moisture would mean she was aware of what happened anyway, but to humor Madhukar's wishes, she pulled her head into her shell. Not that it did much more than paint the world in a slightly warped blueish film, but oh well. It was the best Sunny could do.
She was curious about Madhukar's hatching-place, though. Dark places were nice. Sunny liked them, certainly. They were usually cooler and wetter, which meant she was very comfortable there. Cetus was kind of dark and wet -- had Madhukar meant Cetus? Or maybe one of the lesser tunnels; she certainly hadn't been to all of them, and was still curious about the tunnels out of Orion.
@madhukar
gross Electroball stuff
For whatever reason, Madhukar had decided to try to charge some bile and send it up with the rest of the stuff she was hurking back up. She wondered if the electricity or the bile would help, somehow. I mean, she could control this part of her system, make it function to her will. It was like a magically-assisted gag reflex-- if she could make it work.
The kitten hunched over and began to jut and shake in an offbeat pattern. Soon enough, some disgusting wad would be released from her system. Electrically charged and the definition of ugly if ugly were a smell. She would back away from it slowly, still mindful of Sunny on her back. The snail hadn't gotten off, curiously. Madhukar hadn't understood that doing such a thing was a bit of a challenge. Oh well.
Madhukar would pad over to the water source they had moved to. She would then begin reverently washing off her mouth, getting the gross stuff left behind off. And once that was clear, she'd move to another spot and begin to drink actual clear water that wasn't from a plant.
Geez, she hoped Sunny wasn't being absolutely revolted by all this. At least it felt better, now that it was all out.
@Sunny
There was no real
protocol for this, but Sunny had seen her casting Electroball before. It just... didn't usually have so many plants in it.
"Feeling better?" she asked gently, poking up out of her shell and patting Madhukar gently with her tentacles. It was unlikely the cat could actually feel the pressure, but the gesture had still happened.
"Still needing water?" Maybe they could find Fornax if she really did. It wasn't too far if you had legs like Madhukar's, which could move very quickly despite being rather small. Sunny admired them -- the only flaw with her body, in her opinion, was the lack of legs. They just made everything harder.
Then again, there needed to be
something to balance out the grace and power of a snail, lest they take over the entirety of the caves. (Size was also a consideration, but Oka was so large that Sunny still had hope she'd grow to be eight feet tall, no matter how unlikely that was).
@madhukar
"Yes... better." Madhukar felt relieved now. Light-headed too. She couldn't feel the snail's gesture on her back, but if she could've, she would've been grateful.
"Wa...ter." Madhukar padded over to the water they'd walked here for and began to drink from it. She made sure to keep her movements gentle for the snail hitching a ride.
When she was done, the kitty licked her lips. She had recalled... wanting to go somewhere. Something about mushrooms? Maybe she'd cleared that out of her system along with the plants. Baby out with the bath water and all that.
"So..." She didn't know what to do now. What to ask Sunny-snail.
"How yo'? 'Sides Binh an' mushroom climb." They hadn't seen each other in a while. Madhukar had no idea what a snail did outside of wanting to climb a mushroom and meeting a legless seer.
@Voidmother
"I've been good!" she chirped, stretching out between Madhukar's shoulders again.
"Trying to learning a new magic, I am thinking. To help me move fast. I have been working on this -- Binh-friend also does not move fast, so I am wanting it to be able to help him, too. I want to take him to Fornax, I am thinking." Sunny's eyestalks waved around.
"Oh, you should be meeting Binh-friend! Or at least coming back to my little home in the bone-pit -- have not seen you in very long, Madhukar."
@madhukar
(i know u want to close off threads and this one is super old, so)
So Sunny was alright, trying to learn new magic. Madhukar was too, in a sense. Whatever new magic she'd grasped (or that had grasped her) before the um... conclusion of it all. The snail wanted to move faster, to help Binh most faster too. Madhukar wished there were a simpler way for them. Simpler than having to wait around for a taxi or a ferry to pick them up. She had no knowledge of what kind of magic could help with that, but there was bound to be something.
Then, an invitation to Sunny's home. Oh? Madhukar didn't think she'd ever seen where Sunny had lived. Madhukar didn't live anywhere in particular in Eridanus. She just... came and went, slept where there was shelter. That was her way of living. She'd never thought of any other way. Maybe seeing a home would be interesting.
"Probably is magic fo' yo' an' Binh. Wouldn' know what ih is. Let go t' yo' home. Tell me where t' go."
- exit via Snail's Orders i guess? -
@Voidmother
"I can doing that!" she said brightly, beginning to guide Madhukar towards a particular part of the Fern Trench. Sunny was glad to have her friend back -- and in all likelihood, they'd keep talking for a while, even after she'd introduced Sunny to Binh! He tended to get tired quickly, she recalled, and Madhukar didn't like big crowds, so Sunny would probably be the one mediating between them -- but that was fine. She wanted
all of her friends to get along.
@madhukar (visibility)
/exit sunny