Lorelei turns back to the rest of them, now that her attention has been called to Spark. Whoops, how did she miss that. "Hello Spark! I didn't know Acheron had such a big family!"

Okay, maybe it wasn't that big as far as she was aware of, having only met Acheron's lifegiver and some other relation. But it was bigger than Lorelei's, so big it was.

"Well, if you're going to stay here Spark, I hope you have fun with Pride!" she decides, before turning back to Acheron. "Lead the way!" Lorelei tells her.

@Acheron

It took Acheron a few moments to get past the correction. Not the 'he' thing--that she quickly apologized for. "Oh, sorry! They!" but, rather, the 'cousin' correction thing.

She stood, silent, staring into the middle distance as she tried to mentally map out the family. Pride, and his child Ember, right? Adopted or not, didn't matter. Then... Spark, grandson? And she was... Pride's daughter, so...

Slowly, gears clicked into place, and she squinted at Spark. "Does that make me an aunt?!" she barked, surprised. And that, in turn, made her suddenly feel old. REALLY old. Barely an adult, but an old, graying woman of a dog-deer. Still she wasn't sure about how it worked, but she'd take Spark's word for it. Wait. I'm the aunt, but--I'm younger..? That-

Her head jerked toward Lorelei, and she blinked. "Oh! Sorry! Yeah, let's go! this way," she exclaimed, and took off at a slow trot, crunching through the snow. She quickly slowed, though, to allow Lorelei to keep up with her. "So, there's ruins, like I said, and... there's still stones that glow. I guess someone, maybe a few someones, used magic to make them glow. And some of them don't live there anymore. I didn't take any, in case they come back? But they're there. Other Gembounds do still live there!" She knew about the artisan, at least--the black bird-thing that went between here and Monoceros, and worked with things like dyes. "There's someone who lives in there that makes jewelry and dyes and things." She'd seen paint across one wall, dark violet and black and splattered with little glowing dots like stars. It'd been cool as hell, and Acheron wished she could make stuff like that, but hooves made it kinda hard.

"Also, the big dragon--uhhhhh." Another moment of brain flatlining left her struggling to remember the name. "Rahrah or something? He attacked here and burnt half the city. That's why everything's charred black," she added. Soot-streaked, and maybe it could just be cleaned off--she doubted it was all burnt to the core. But it looked shadowy, spooky, and dark.

Cool.

doberman photo credit: pato garza on flicker

@Lorelei

Lorelei laughs a little, as Acheron figures out how the family tree is tangled. "Auntie Acheron, isn't that funny?" she teases, laughing all the while.

Of course, the two of them do have ruins to explore. Lorelei promptly begins dragging herself across the snow. The layer of ice on the ground did make it easier to slide across, rather than rough rocks, so she is grateful for that. "Stones that glow? How fun! I like things that glow!" she decides, despite seeing not much of said glowing things before. "And jewelry sounds fun! Shiny!"

Of course, Lorelei's excitement is even more palpable as they enter the city proper. Shadow-streaked ash black mixed with the ghostly snow white combine to create a haunting scene. "Wow..."

@Acheron

She was so excited that she nearly forgot--several times--to wait for Lorelei. Part of her just wanted to bound ahead, to race into the ruins. And a few times, she did just that, suddenly rushing toward a certain smell or an interesting shape in the half-dark. She'd bound forward, snow spraying underhoof, and thrust her entire face into a pile of snow after some smell or other. Her tail would wriggle excitedly behind her--then she'd sprint back to Lorelei, wild-eyed and tongue lolling. "Did you smell that? It's like--old! It smells like old! ...Uh, like--bones?" and she raced back toward the scent, excited to show her friend.

It was, in essence, like going on a walk with an overexcited dog.

At the very least, Acheron calmed down after a few moments' sprinting this way and that, falling into some semblance of a dignified creature, her broad antlers tipping back as she peered upward at the crumbling facades.

"I wonder who lived in that one?" she mused, her tone one of awe. She nodded toward a tall, hollow building, its empty windows gaping black against the white of its snow-streaked walls.

Some distance off, there was the promised glow--a faint light from baubled gems clustered in other buildings here and there. Acheron wasn't sure which were 'owned' and which were not, but she was too busy at the moment sticking her nose into a window--perched up on her hind hooves--and sniffing at the cold dust.

doberman photo credit: pato garza on flicker

@Lorelei

Lorelei wasn't mad at Acheron for running off - she knew she probably would too, if she was capable of moving as fast. However, she does find it incredibly easy to loose Acheron in the numerous streets and alleys. "Hey, wait up!" she calls after her more than once.

She does try the old scent, once she finally flops her way up to Acheron. "Weird... So dusty," she decides, pulling her noses back out of the snow.

She follows Acheron up towards the building, looking up at the yawning doors and windows. "Well, probably not anything like me. Unless they're just as crazy as me to wander all the way here."

@Acheron

"Sorry!" she found herself calling back, far too many times--and hastily rushing back to Lorelei.

She waited as the leopard seal jammed both noses into the snow, her own eyes wide with excitement. "It is weird!" she agreed. "-And dusty!" Then she was gazing around again, practically prancing with her enthusiasm.

Acheron glanced back at Lorelei's remarks, then around, thinking over what her friend had said. "...Probably someone with long legs, or wings? Uh, if you don't mind my asking, do you find it... restrictive, being made for water? Or is it--kinda freeing, being able to go deep down? Hey, what's down there?" she asked, blinking. She hadn't really thought to ask, as a child--past inquiring about food, and tunnels. But she wondered if there were some sort of hidden world beneath the waves. She knew of shrimp and fish, but--lights? Plants? Other Gembound? Were there glowing Polaris crystals in rooms beneath the waves, in places only creatures like Lorelei could go?

She looked around again, imagination sparked--were there, maybe, whole forgotten cities beneath the sea, like this one--places she'd never see, but where Lorelei could go? The water creatures must've had somewhere to live, she reasoned, back in whatever era this place was made. But that thought was an uncertain one. Who was to say if there were even water creatures, back then?

Acheron prodded a bit of rubble, leaping back when a small fall of crumbling stone wall dropped into the snow before her. She sneezed, then looked to Lorelei.

"Is there anything in particular you'd like to see? And do you need a rest?" she asked.

doberman photo credit: pato garza on flicker

@Lorelei

Acheron hasn't changed a bit, she laughs mentally to herself. Lorelei finds it comforting, even as Acheron runs off in search of some other cool thing for the umpteenth time.

"What's it like, with legs anyway?" she asks, tilting her heads in unison. It only just occurred to her she never asked. But the answer is probably something silly like "you just walk."

Lorelei thinks a little. "In the water? Well, there's fish, and shrimp, and plants that have one end stuck to the bottom and the other floating up towards the top. You can swim under and over things. There was a cool arch rock you could swim through," she babbles, rattling off things with one head then the other.

She pulls herself another couple of feet, into the plaza surrounded by walls like the one Acheron just knocked over. "Yeah, I'm exhausted... let's wait here a little."

@Acheron

She listened to the description of the undersea world (or 'underwater,' at least) with rapt fascination. She couldn't have quite said why, but the mention of the 'cool rock arch' caught her interest most of all. She tried to picture it: light cascading down, shadows swimming underneath, fish and shrimp around its base, and-

"Does it snow underwater?" she asked abruptly, pausing the mental image with scrunched-up brow. Was she meant to picture it with rain and snow? -Surely snow didn't fall down through water, too? Did it just... sit on top? Or melt?

She shook her head, clicking and crunching back over to Lorelei. "Take however long you need. As for having legs?" She gave her best attempt at a grin, flopping down into the snow beside her friend, folding up those legs beneath her. "I go faster but... you tend to forget you have 'em. You run around and wear yourself out and next thing you know..." She laughed, because the end of the sentence was obvious enough. "Next thing you know, you're having to rest in the middle of a forbidden city." Not that it was forbidden--but the way Acheron lifted her brows with humorous mock-mystery made it clear she was being dramatic just for fun.

And admittedly, maybe not everyone tended to overexert themselves and collapse on the spot, but Acheron was still a little young to realize that not everyone was quite as impulsive as she.

"You know, it's a shame we don't have water, here. I mean--like they have in Fornax. A tunnel, or something. Then you could visit all the time," she lamented. "Do you still mostly live there? I've gotta know where I can find you, to visit you!"

@Lorelei

Lorelei thinks to herself. "Snow? ...No, not really. I know how to make the water cold, just like the snow. When I do it sits on the top of the water in sheets. It's actually pretty cool!" she shares. She shifts in the snow, kicking some of it up into the air with her tail to watch it coast back down.

She might be a little jealous of Acheron's leg-ness. Sure, swimming was fun, and Lorelei would never give it up, but the cave seemed so much bigger above the water. "I think there's more people with legs. It was a bit lonely underwater."

The idea of a water tunnel right to Acheron's home was so tantalizing, but so very very improbable. "Yeah, that'd be cool. But I do stay in Fornax usually, until something cool draws me away. I came here because I felt something drawing me... or maybe I'm just crazy, you never know."

@Acheron

"It sits on top?!" Acheron cried, the amazement raising her voice so that it echoed through the snow-muffled city. She tried to imagine it--to picture blankets of snow just floating on the water. It sounded amazing!

But she quickly sobered at Lorelei's confession--so to speak--that underwater was kind of lonely. She could picture it, really, and she grimaced. "What about something like, um... those sliding-things" (sleds) "that some of the others at the gift-giving got? Maybe you can get one of those and just kinda... magic it around?" she suggested, unsure. "Or maybe there's just more water-Gembounds, and we just have to find them!" Acheron brightened, at this; it sounded like a whole other adventure.

As for Fornax-? "Something drew you here?"

The dog-deer's eyes widened a fraction, and she studied her friend with interest. "What, like magic?" It was clear that she didn't doubt Lorelei, not one bit. Certainly she'd seen stranger than a vague 'draw' to another cave. She'd felt as much herself, hadn't she, with--"Do you mean to the gift-giving? I think I mighta felt that, too!" Unless it was something else--and the curiosity in her eyes said enough. If it was, she wanted all the details.

@Lorelei