Kitty had heard about a group of Gembound setting up a little festival as the temperatures in the Caves got cooler, to celebrate the change. She'd been intrigued, to say the least, but had been reluctant to go -- until one of her compatriots had suggested that she could tell fortunes (and pasts) in the festivities, to get some practice in Voidseeing. Which meant that she had to scavenge some materials and make herself a booth. Harder than it sounded, considering there wasn't really any wood here to work with.

So she set off, looking valiantly to try and find something good to make her booth out of!

She managed to find a lot of garbage, mostly, but she ended up with a selection of cool things -- a flat stone that could work as a counter, several average-sized rocks with moss and things on them to maybe build with, and some pieces of crystal and quartz that she could decorate with. She'd not bothered getting mushrooms, since she knew that some of those could be bad for you.

She set up some of the pretty things on the flat rock in a way that was intentional, and then began trying to balance the normal mossy rocks on top of each other nearby, to form small copies of the spire on either side of her -- minus the floating pieces, anyway. Unfortunately, gravity was working against her, and she was having a lot of trouble trying to balance them.

Kitty stood up properly, albeit with mediocre balance, and carefully started adjusting the second stone on top of the first one. Maybe the moss was what was messing her up? Or maybe there was another problem? Except -- oh! Well, it had taken her a while, but she'd finally managed to get one of them in place. Now for the most daunting task of the hour -- the second one. She glanced at it nervously.

Taking a deep breath, Kitty decided that putzing around with it would do more harm than good, and that it was much better to just go for it and try to complete the towers as quickly as she could and pray that they'd stay together. Surely, something would work in her favor, right?

Wrong, the universe decided, and she groaned as her sudden and haphazard stack tumbled to the ground immediately. She set up the second rock again, which was easier this time since she already knew how to do it, and held carefully in her paws the third rock. Each stack was only supposed to have four! This shouldn't have been so difficult! ... Maybe she should have gotten flatter ones.

Kitty groaned and took a deep breath. Okay -- she would try one more time, slowly, and then figure something else out if that didn't work. Mossy rocks were held in careful paws, one missing a claw, and gentle marks were even scored against each other to hopefully make the moss grippy. And by some miracle, it worked.

At the end of it, her towers were haphazard and wouldn't hold up to the wind or roughhousing, but they worked. She let out an excited little gasp and clapped her paws together before trotting around and coming to stare at the booth. It was serviceable, and nice, certainly, but... not quite her. Kitty thought for a moment about how she could fix it, and then her eyes lit up. She knew exactly how.

This would take some doing, though, and a lot of concentration -- so she took a deep breath, focused on the latent magic of Polaris buzzing in her teeth, and focused on spinning it like cotton candy or wool into a ball of blue, bobbing light in front of her. Predictably though, nothing was spawned, and Kitty let out an irritated little hiss. "I swear, if this takes me forever..." she muttered, already sick of setting up but not willing to give up after she'd done this much already.

strong language

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She made a vague gesture approaching a grand one at the rest of her creation. "All of this wi' my own paws, and now my magic don' work? Pah! Who needs magic anyway," she mumbled, trying to make a wisp again anyway, because she needed magic. It made her happy, and was distinctly hers. (Not that nobody else knew how to make wisps -- she was certain other Gembound did -- but this was her thing, too).

And then, perhaps just to spite her, nothing happened. Kitty dropped her head into her paws. She didn't really have the vocabulary to express FUCK!, but that was about how she was feeling in that moment. As it were, she muttered a few made-up curses under her breath and rolled onto her back on the ground instead. Maybe looking at the booth upside down would make things better.

It looked nice from upside down, too. Kind of silly, and still not entirely hers, but... nice. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to leave things as they were -- or even improvise wisps instead. She'd figured out how to make things glow, too, so maybe something like that...? Maybe she'd advertise that she was selling jewelry next year, once she could do more than just make rocks glow forever.

Hoping that her magic would work while it was... distracted? by her thinking of something else, she suddenly forced her will out and tried to cast her spell again. Predictably though, her magic continued to fail her. Kitty growled and flailed her paws angrily in the air. This was getting ridiculous now.

But maybe her magic wouldn't work properly if it knew she was angry--? No, that didn't make sense. She made the wisps to help her feel better. They showed up when she was scared or mad or-- well. Mostly just scared, actually, but mad was almost the same feeling! She could work with this! She tried to channel that anger into a wisp, bordering on desperate now -- people would probably start arriving soon! -- and prayed to the Void that it would work with her, for once.

Just to spite her, a bright light appeared in front of her eyes and struck her with a sudden, piercing headache from the intensity of it. She squeezed her eyes shut, recovering from the afterimage, and when she opened them again, the light was gone. Kitty waved her paws again, but this time it was more dramatic than anything else.

No wisps, then. She'd just have to make her own.

Kitty stood up and grabbed two rocks of roughly equal sizes, walking awkwardly on her hind legs (she wasn't willing to put one in her mouth) as she returned to the booth and set them on the ground in front of her on her side of the counter. She pressed her paw to one of them, and concentrated on that light, like wisp-light -- but different. Permanent, for one thing! At least, as far as she could tell.

And nothing happened.

Kitty was genuinely on the verge of tearing her hair out with frustration, angry tears beading up in the corners of her eyes. Why couldn't she do anything right?! This was the WORST! She wanted to BITE someone! Claw their EYES out! AGH!

"One of us is goin' to give up!" she declared loudly, looking up at the ceiling (and then to the Spire, after a beat). "An' it won't be me!!" With that, she thumped her paw against the stone again, and stared at it intensely. The magic would yield to her! She would not give up! She was a ferocious predator! Rah!!

And finally, finally, fate cowed to her. Kitty let out a cheerful whoop as blue light reminiscent of a wisp began to spread across the stone, and then she set it gently on one end of the counter. "There. See? Was tha' so hard? Now we just gotta do the other one!" she crowed, happy as the cat who ate the canary as she turned to her other rock, eager to be finished with setup.