Oka liked the quiet of Eridanus. It was a rare opportunity. The few times when Oka didn't have lessers messing with it. And now was not one of those times. A trio of rainbow callers flitted around Oka, settling on their shell's spines. Though Oka could not see it, they felt the patter of tiny mice feet on their shell. The latter was more irritating, and less helpable. Instead, Oka focused on what they could do. Find plants. Which was not their strong suit today. They saw nothing in their search. Nothing interesting, at-least. Just the normal plant life. But the search did have its merits.

Oka heard others in their search. Actual speaking people, not grating lessers! Oka may have enjoyed the silence, but hell, any opportunity for conversation was good. Especially in Eridanus. Oka didn't see many gembound. Was Oka just out of the way? Oka drifted towards them, after their search proved fruitless. Perhaps they should make their home more obvious. They thought on this as they slid to the group. Which Oka quickly realized that, wow, there were a lot of them. They only encountered others in batches it seemed.

"Hello," Oka began. Unsure and confused. They seemed excited about something. A 'house'? Whatever that was. "Whats a...house? Did that, uh, snail bring you guys here too?"

The Lessers did not seem enthused about Oka meeting others. A rainbow caller fled with a flutter of wings, and Oka felt something scurry along their tail, before a pinprick sliced through it. "Hey!" They called, attempting to turn back. Their neck refused to turn all the way. That weird glassy bit kept them from it. Trying to save face, Oka turned back. "Uh, anyways. The house, right? Whats that again?"

He smiled brightly as he watched everyone show up, "hello everyone! welcome, thank ya, thank ya once again!" he honked happily

he turned around to face angela, smiling in a way he hoped was comforting, "aye, these are nice ones, lass, nothin ta be afraid of, honest!" he barked happily, his tail swishing in excitement.

@Angela

Oh no, oh dear, more strangers were showing up. She'd caught glimpses of some of them here and there, but not that...was that a giant snail?! She gulped and cowered back into the ferns, thinking that she might just turn around and run, before she had to talk in front of them, before she had to talk to any of them really, but then Sheng was smiling at her, gesturing forward, and she swallowed heavily again before slowly, tentatively, she stepped out. She could trust Sheng. Right, focus on him. It was okay.

Wings were pressed tight against her back, tense, ready to snap open and carry her away at any second should she need to go, tail curled tightly around one of her legs. Oh, man, was she nervous. She'd never been around more then a few people at once before - and even then, it was just Dad and her sisters. But she could do this. Just breath - in through the nose, out through the mouth. Pretend that she was just talking to Sheng or something. That's right - focus on the thing, not the others around her.

She cleared her throat. "S-so...I have some ideas about the house um..." she reached into the handmade bag she held cluthced tightly against her chest and pulled out a thin strip of bark, showing them the flat side that had a bunch of lines all over it. It looked like the rough shape of a little hut, but it was a little hard to read. "My dad...uh, Attikias? He lives...around here and he made this little...uh, house. And I think I can maybe do what he did? Kind of? It's like..." She handed the bark off to whoever would take it (or just set it on the ground if nobody took the offered drawing) and picked up a stick. She began to draw a rough square.

"So...we wanna make something with walls. To protect against things, you know? And tall. So that we can sit in it." She focused on her little drawing, turning the square into a cube. "But if we just start building up, its gonna fall apart easily. So we gotta make some kind of foundation first. I think branches would work best. Thick ones, or maybe just thin trees. There's a lot of them here in Eridanus, and we'll probably have to clear out some of it anyways to make our house." She jabbed at each of the edges, making the edge marks deeper. "So we build a foundation on each of the corners. And then along the walls," she began making horizontal markings across the cube walls. "And for the roof, we can either curve it or make a roof out of thatch - that's what Dad did." She put two small squares over the top of the hut, making a small pyramid on the top.

"We'll just have to bind all this together. Maybe with magic or some kind of string or plant fibers. And then we fill it in with something. Mud, maybe, or clay? I was thinking we could try and build up with stones in between all the foundations to make it even sturdier and use mud and clay to build around it and seal it in. Or we can maybe mix something into the mud to make it less likely to crumble, since just throwing mud against a hut wouldn't work, I tried making things out of mud when I was younger and they were too weak. Maybe some kind of plant or mineral would do the trick. Sand? Maybe, I don't know, we'd have to try it out. There's a lot of experimenting that's gonna go into this but we can make it work, even if its not the greatest house in the world we can always make more. I mean there's a good number of us and I'm sure some of us can use magic to make things go by faster or make things sturdier. But I've been thinking about this a lot since Sheng invited me to join I mean I was always curious about how Dad made his hut and was always thinking about making my own, I mean that would be so cool, you know, to have a little cave that you made with your own hands? We just gotta work together and we can do this!" She'd completely gone off, almost mumbling, thoughts streaming out of her mouth as she focused wholly on this task and her eyes slowly began to light up with excitement. She looked up at the end, face bright, but then she froze, realizing that she'd just. Completely started rambling. She quickly slapped a hand against her mouth, eyes wide, feeling her cheeks heat up with embarrassment. "Oh I'm...I'm so sorry..."

More and more gembounds were appearing and Aran took to ignoring most of them. Conversation seemed to be stuck on topic of a house. Aran didn't know what that was but he mused it may be good for the group to have if it was so high in topic of conversation.

And then another started talking about how to build said house. Well. It sounded like a good plan from where he was standing. Seemed like the group was going to be filled of relatively smart beings. The deer could get behind that.

"Sounds like a plan." he nodded, motioning to Angela.

Fairy briefly felt something land on her head and she immediately turned her attention up, antennae trying to feel what it was, but Pip had fallen off of her by that time, leaving her a little perplexed and lost for a second before she quite easily forgot about it in favor of turning her attention back to the rest of the group. "Oooooo, maybe out of sticks! Or big leaves!! Or maybe some flowers! I think that would be beautiful!" She wasn't exactly sure how that was going to work, but imagining a house made out of flowers brought her a great amount of joy.

Oka's arrival had Fairy squealing with excitement as she fluttered over to inspect the newcomer, antennae reaching forward curiously. "Oh hello new friend! I'm Fairy! We're all going to build a house! It's like a place where you live, like a den! We're gonna build one together, doesn't that sound like fun?" Overjoyed by how interesting this newcomer was, she fluttered up and around her, inspecting the shell. She'd never seen anything like this before!

The little angel stepping out, though, got Fairy to calm down a bit and listen. Her excitement began mounting a bit when Angela went off about how to build the house. Right when she finished, Fairy immediately chirped and hopped forward. "No no! That was excellent!! So excellent! I think we should do that, it sounds perfect! We should section off jobs like collecting things and building things so we're not all doing things at once!" Yes, great idea! She took a minute to think (wow, Fairy thinking?) and came up with some stuff. "Okay! We need someone to get branches! We need someone to get rocks! We need someone to get mud! We need something to get stuff to put in the mud! And then, we can start working on actually putting up the house!"

The large malayan tapir female just finished eating a lot of fruits and vegetation. She decided to take a break from eating, and boy could Skogul eat. After all, her species could eat a lot. She weighed 704 pounds and stood 3.5 feet tall. She was a big gembound and proud of it. Skogul was walking, until she ran into a group who seemed busy. She picked up some of the conversation. They were building a home? Skogul seemed intrigued, so she walked up to the group. She spoke with interest, deciding to be kind. "Are you guys building a home? Why? Who are you gembounds and why are you building a home?" Skogul looked at the group, and her eyes fell on the humanoid gembound with the bird legs (Angela), then looking at the entire group as a whole.