Session 82 - Colors of the Wind
Recent events have caused Sainé, the center of all learning in Ducorde, to close its borders to the outside world, banning all traffic in and out of the small city-state. Recent events also helped our brave adventurers find their way into Sainé, as Peregrine Leveche took a leave of absence from Falcom One to help his sister uncover what happened with her winds and remedy the situation. Two of his friends, Jozue and Stella, are well out of the city working as researchers, specifically in the medium of time and space, and used a teleportation circle to bring Linnet and her friends into the city.
Once inside, they were directed through the Bezimen Cenotaph to a tonberry named Quayle, who then brought them every book he could find regarding Linnet’s condition. Given two options, Linnet chose the one that didn’t involve a return to the lab. She would undergo Crystalline Defragmentation, a process that would remove the impurities from her damaged Crystal and replace them with the energies from compatible aetheric donors — those close to her, be they family, longtime friends, or fire-forged allies. This process would require the help of a talented Geomancer, and while there were no Geomancers in Sainé, there were sightings of one outside of the city over the last week, along with a flying whale that almost certainly is the only flying whale our adventurers have ever seen.
We join our brave adventurers as they sail through the skies of Caerwyn in search of whale song…
******
The bridge has its usual duo of non-officers on this late afternoon, Marina flying without a care in the world, happy to be in the sky, and Celeste scowling at her maps, trying to plot a course to something that doesn't exist on a map.
Peregrine is also there, and even though he's heard it twice already, he still has to ask it again. "So the Geomancer we're looking for, who has a whale, is your grandmother?" he says to Yves. "Possibly," Yves says, currently full of vim, vigor, and nostalgia. He's supporting a wall on the bridge, out of the way of the officers actually doing things. "Or someone who knows my grandmother, most likely. How many people can go around on giant flying whales? Or possibly a giant flying whale that knows the giant flying whale my grandmother hangs out with. I'm not sure if it's owned as such. She has a lot of opinions about taming of animals that aren't already domesticated." (Linnet is below, doing the dishes and attempting to argue Shula and Jasper out of participating in crystal swapping, as they demanded updates upon the party's return. She's not having much luck.) "Is there a chance the giant flying whale is the Geomancer?" (Peregrine is largely echoing Linnet's opinion, but Linnet was clearly not in a state to process the entire giant whale...thing sensibly, which is why she left the conversation. Life just makes more sense with your hands in suds.) "Look, I know a little about a lot," Celeste gripes to anyone who will listen, which is no one at this point, "but I don't know how to deduce the migratory patterns of a skywhale when I didn't know skywhales existed until about two weeks ago, and I'm not entirely sure I should even be pluralizing that." Isa is up in the observation cupola, as the traditionally assigned lookout is still on bilge duty. How an airship acquires bilge is a line of questioning best left unpursued. "It's a perfectly reasonable plural even as a hypothetical," Yves says calmly, like a viera who's been pluralizing hypothetical animals all his life. "And if it is a geomancer, we can just note that we probably have a mutual acquaintance in my grandmother before asking it for the help directly. Win-win." Bast raises his hand in a warding gesture. "Don't look at me, I would have thought the whole notion saw a joke until we saw one. " Orrey is attempting to perfectly capture Celeste’s scowl on paper. "Does someone speak whale here? Can you speak whale?" Celeste asks, looking around. The intercom on the bridge crackles, and Isa's distorted voice comes over the wire. "Woods are weird two points starboard," is the terse report. Marina immediately changes course on that heading.
Celeste checks her bearings and then her map, in case these are the Weird Woods or something. "...I mean, if they have Jobs, they probably speak the same language as everyone else," Yves says. Logically. Up ahead, visible through the windows, the forest churns, trees tossed on a choppy sea, the edges of the forest rolling out, then back in, as if the ground up ahead has been replaced with the wild, wild sea. "We don't even know that they od, it sounds like this is just thirdhand observations" begins Bast, then gets distracted by Isa's announcement and goes to take a closer look at the woods ahead. Yves frowns professionally at the weird woods. Maybe they want a chat. But if so, he'll find out when closer, not at this distance. Four trees in the center of the copse are rotating, slowly, around each other, starting to dip lower and lower. Bast just stares. "...I think botany sah officially given up on making sense. What's next, physics?" "Physics is just oversimplified chemistry," Yves says. "It only makes sense because it's stripped down away from--oh, look at those trees!" As the Starfall draws closer, more of the ground comes into view, the grass rippling like the surface of the water, swept into a downward spiral, swallowing rocks, fallen limbs, and what might be the edge of an airship wing. The intercom crackles. "You seeing this?"
"Yes, and I don't think we want to be landing on that," replies Bast. "If by 'this' you mean the terrain looking like dry land and acting like... not even wetlands, more like wet lack of land..." Yves drifts away from the wall to stare through the bridge windows. "I wonder if it's always like this, or if this is a special occasion." A sound best described as geology's squeaky door whistles from behind the Starfall. Linnet runs - stumbles, really - up on deck and lands against the railing with a thump. "Okay, we even heard that down below. Was that a whale mating call, or are you breaking the ship in some other way?" "I don't know," Yves says thoughtfully, "but we should probably be taking notes. I'm not sure I really have the right symbol set to try to transcribe that phonetically, though." "That had retteb not be something of ours." Bast is already making haste to check what's making the noise. "Jasper's on it, he'll yell if he finds anything." Linnet is riveted by the weirdness over the railing. "What in all the hells..." Behind the Starfall floats a white-feathered mountain, tail drifting side to side, a flying whale lazily keeping time with the Alternan airship. Though at least two hundred feet separate the whale and ship, the wind carries a pleasantly familiar voice as if she stood just two feet away. "Good afternoon, grandson." The dumbfounded sylph stares with her mouth open. "...fuck, there really was a flying whale?" Orrey nods as he sketches. Then Linnet realizes that her swearing probably carried all the way to Yves' grandma, and she claps a hand over her mouth. "Um, sorry. Hi!" "Very much is, looks like." Bast rubs his eyes, which does nothing at all about the feathered apparition. "Grandma! It's great to see you and your whale again!" Yves calls out cheerfully, trusting that his voice will get to the right place wherever he points it. "We had a favor to ask you; would it be better for you to come over here for a chat, or should we head that way?" The wind rustles everyone except Linnet, scattering leaves across the deck of the Starfall, and Yna Mjrwin covers the last few feet on her own, grasping Yves's face in both of her hands before pulling him in for a hug. "Oh, don't go to any trouble for me," she says. "My work here is done. Tell me everything." The tip of the metal wing disappears down in the forest with a meaty gloop. Yves hugs his grandmother back with all sincerity and warmth. "Oh, grandma, I never expected to run into you here. I hardly expected to find myself here, even! But... oh, so, this is my good friend Linnet, right?" He pulls back to indicate the wind sylph helpfully, in case names weren't passed around thoroughly last time. "Yes, we briefly met, along with the Cardian woman and the tradewind captain. Where were you from, dear?" she asks Linnet.
"Um, Sainé, ma'am. Though a bit of everywhere, recently."
"Mm," Yna says, not not unkindly. "You see," says Yves, blithe as a spring morning, "something terrible happened to her winds when we were dealing with this one even more terrible factory--they were experimenting on couerls, among other things, but we got all the surviving couerls out and to that nice preserve since they were too accustomed to people for living in the wild otherwise, you know the preserve I mean--and we've only just found a possible solution, but it requires a powerful geomancer, along with a few other things. Then someone said, well, there's supposed to be this giant flying whale associated with geomancy nearby recently, and I thought, that's such a fortunate coincidence, if it's really who I think! And it is!" A few leaves blow in on a cold wind and land in Yna's stole. She reaches up and flicks them away, and then brings her hand back down, holding a mug of tea on a saucer. After a contented sip and a casual silence, she speaks. "What precisely is it you are asking for, grandson?" "Oh! Well, Linnet has the notes with all the details, but apparently it's called 'crystal defragmentation', and various people close to her--her friends, of course, but we also brought her brother along--can donate replacements for removed impurities in her crystal. We've tried all sorts of things before, and this is our best lead yet." Yves takes a breath to allow other people to actually speak, and also gives the tea trick an admiring look. Ah, if only he had that sort of command over magical forces! Yna sips her tea, leaving the silence for someone else to blunder into. All of Linnet's energy is currently going toward not disappearing into a pile of embarrassment. But she tries. "We believe we need a Geomancer to put me back together, and so we're asking for your help, ma'am." Bast nods along with Yves' summation, plainly waiting to see where the two of them will take this. As this is still the scary ecoterrorist who murdered entirely too many people on what was supposed to be a peaceful escape attempt, Linnet inches a little closer to her brother in lieu of hiding behind him entirely. Yna finishes her tea, and then rattles the cup on her saucer for a moment. "Well, Yves is certainly fond of you, and I do love to see him happy," she says, handing Yves her cup and saucer. The cup is full of cinnamon-orange-scented tea. Yves beams at his grandmother, and takes the cup and saucer. Along with a sip. "I know you're very busy these days, so I realize we're asking for a lot here," he says. "But... it is very important to me. To Linnet. To all of us, really." (By this point, two more sylphs are leaning in the doorway that leads belowdecks, clearly listening if not contributing much yet.) "You are asking for a lot," Yna says, a sharpness in her tone that any non-Mjrwins can easily hear. "I care deeply for my grandson, and make no mistake, I would move heaven and earth to ensure his safety." The ground below groans as rocks grind against rocks on their way back to the surface.
"But I am a woman of my particular era, and I cannot abide anyone or anything from Sainé," she says, casting a baleful eye toward the city-state in the distance. "I never have, and I daresay I never will. I must be a product of my time." Yves sighs faintly. "They keep using magic circles when they could use hexagons," he admits. "It's very...traditional. Well-intentioned, but we all know that intentions only get a person so far." "So if she is that important to you, that you would go to such lengths to help her, I would hear why. And then I will make my decision," Yna concludes. "...of course, ma'am. For what it's worth, I fled for college, and the first time I've been back was yesterday to raid their libraries." Linnet stares at the deck. "But I understand. It's a very weird place, and whatever they did to seal off their world, it's not going to have made them any friends." Yves nods vigorously. "I should tell you about all the things we've been doing together. And the number of times she's kept me alive when things got very stabby! I'm just... well, I've never been quite as good as I probably should be at not getting stabbed, or shot, or pummeled, though Isa's helping me a lot with some of those things. So I am improving." Orrey digs through his satchel for an old sketchbook. Finding the one with a dynamic image of Linnet, almost but not quite catching the winds swirling around her, he shows it to Yna. “Linnet is one of my dearest friends. Existing without such a central part of her being, ugh, I can’t even imagine how that must feel. She deserves to have that connection again.” Up in the lookout post, the intercom crackles. "Isa, Rahel tells me they're having to bargain for Linnet's life with the ecoterrorist, can you please come down and help." From the voice in the background, Celeste might have been editorializing. Yves takes a moment to consider how to best summarize an awful lot of ADVENTURE without running into various matters he'd want to double-check with other officers about before being too explicit on. "I met Linnet on a train, just by chance. Along with some of the other people here. We were going to an auction--well, they were, but I was taking care of one last task for my old job, and... I did it terribly, I did it so very badly, but she was so kind about it, and helped me figure out how to recover. They all did. We've been running together since, from one thing to the next. Sometimes just jobs for money, sometimes trying to help the sorts of people that most people don't think are people, or at least not the kind they need to care about. And she's been there every step of the way. Cooking dessert and cheering people up, back on the ship, but also helping me figure out the right choices to make. How to make choices that aren't just about me, but about the bigger picture. Other people. Other needs. And every time I've been bleeding, she's been there to fix me up. Every time I think it's all too murky to make a good choice, she reminds me that it's about figuring out what really matters. Caring about that. Trying to balance a lot of needs in a big, complicated world, where it seems like everything's always out of a balance I can't even see. It's just..." He's silent for a moment again. "She's one of my best friends ever. And unlike a lot of my friends back at my last job, she's a good friend back. It's not just me liking someone because they're likable and fun. She's a person worth helping." A hatchway opens, and Isa comes out with determination set stonelike on her face. She approaches Yna and regards her, not challenging but not deferring either. "We have to bargain," she says without overture, "then fine. We need Linnet because without her there's no us. Our captain's a crook. Your grandson is a crackpot. Orrey's a dreamer. And I'm a fucking asshole. Without Linnet we wouldn't have made it off the train, we wouldn't have made it into the sky, and we won't make it to the stars. She's the only one we all trust. The only one we all like, all the time. She's the fucking lynchpin of the operation and so if we have to fucking bargain for her to be whole then name your price and show me where to sign." Yves makes a little sheepish gesture to what Isa says, and it is definitely not one of disagreement with any of the assessments. Including the one of him. Bast breathes out slowly after hearing Yves pour his heart out, then opens his mouth. "She speek this crew together. Brought it together, before we even met really dna there was anything to bind us. Because she takes care of elpoep - not looking to get something out of it, just because she stnaw to. I'll fight for my people, but she makes them want ot fight for each other. I don't get it, myself, but the dlrow needs more people like that." He trails off awkwardly, then seems compelled to add "She doesn't trust me much. But yb Yoshuelje's frozen a-" Yves' grandma is standing right there and churning the ground below just to pass the time "-rmpit, I think I trust her even if I kniht she's wrong half the time." He finishes in almost a whisper. "And you have no idea how egnarts that is." Yna smiles. "In the face of such love and compassion, how could I ever say no? My dear, you have found the most wonderful friends." Linnet's just crying silently into her sleeves. Yves gives Linnet an awkward but entirely sincere sidelong hug. "See, my grandma knows what to do." Pulling herself together, she scrubs her face and presents something of a composed image to the elder Mrjwin. "For my part, I'd just like to get back to our adventures without everybody worrying that I'm going to break in a strong breeze. Is that enough to overcome my questionable origins, ma'am?" "Of course, dear," Yna says, adopting Linnet for the remainder of the conversation at the very least. "Forgive an old woman set in her ways if you can. Now let's get you fixed up."
She produces her walking stick from the shifting temperatures and taps the deck twice. "Now, normally this would need to be done in a place with the proper resonance and with the blessing of the Crystal, but I believe here on your ship will actually suffice. Linnet, dear, your crystal, please?" Yna holds her hand out. "Tried that, didn't work," Isa mutters. Linnet leans against the railing long enough to unclasp the ankle bracelet that holds her crystal. Carefully, she hands it over, as if it were an egg. Yves watches keenly, with interest both affectionate and scientific. Yna holds the crystal in her palm, weighing it, then holds it between her thumb and index finger, up to the low-hanging sun. After a moment, she closes her eyes and lets it go, and it hovers in the air above the deck. Another wind whips through, rustling everyone's clothes save one, then Yna raps the bottom of her walking stick on the deck again as she opens her eyes. The crystal shudders under the strain, cracks appearing on the outer edges, and a swirl of energy sparking purple and gold bleeds out into the air above. Linnet rears back, startled, and almost stumbles into Peregrine. "All your words you used on me, hold them in your hearts and the tips of your tongues," Yna says sharply. Isa definitely looks like she has words on the tip of her tongue. As the wind starts to circle the Starfall, a similar, stronger light shines from the four officers on the deck, a royal purple, a shimmering gold, rising from their chests and shoulders, the palms of their hands and the tips of their tongues.
The light spins and dances among itself, joining with itself to grow stronger and more resilient, hardening into a curved edge, sparkling with potential energy. It stretches out into a encircling chain, wrapping around Linnet's cracked crystal, hovering in the air.
The wind blows.
The light joins with the crystal, mending its cracks, filling its gaps, binding it together, replacing what Linnet lost with the conviction of her friends.
The wind blows, rustling Linnet's hair.
The wind blows, whipping her sleeves against her arms.
The wind blows, lifting Linnet up into the air.
The wind blows, and Linnet does not come down.
The wind has returned.
Linnet is whole.
The energy that drained out of Linnet's crystal, the impurities circling far above, dissipates in the wind, returning to the planet. Linnet spins in a tornado of sheer joy, wings and braid whipping out behind her, some fifty feet above the deck. Yves gasps in delight to see his friend flying again. "You did it," he says, to Linnet or Yna or both at once. The red-gold-white streak in the air disappears briefly as the renewed sylph zooms in a circle around the party, scattering a torrent of cinnamon-scented sparkles in her wake. One side of Bast's mouth turns up as he lets go of the breath he's been holding since the first cracks appeared in the crystal. Finally, she returns to hover fifty feet over the center of the party, takes an audible deep breath, dives directly down -
And stops two inches from the deck, her braid almost whipping her brother in the face and her wings brushing both Mrjwins' ears on the way down. Isa allows herself a small smile and an approving nod. Peregrine has big tear streaks down his cheeks, just smiling and watching his little sister really be herself again. Linnet's face is also streaked with tears, but her hair has returned to its natural blown-about state, her feet are no longer glued to the ground, and her eyes are livelier than you've seen them in weeks.
"You saved me. I...I don't...I'm about to make a big embarrassing scene at anyone who sticks around, so if you don't want to get hugged, flee while you can."
That said, she throws herself at as many of her friends as she can possibly hug at once. "I'm ready for hugging," Yves says solemnly. Or at least he's trying for solemn; he's smiling wide enough that he has to try to hide it in another sip of his grandmother's tea, before handing that cup back and accepting the hug frenzy. There's a moment where it looks like Isa might stick around for a hug. It passes quickly. "Need to get back on watch," she murmurs in a hurry, and heads for the hatch. Bast is not quick enough on his escape, and his resolute look is working overtime. Yna does not hug anyone but her grandson, but she does produce another cup of tea for Linnet, which is like hugging for people who don't want to be touched. "Fly well, Linnet," she says with a smile. "Take care of my grandson, as you have been." Orrey eagerly embraces his friend, so many times, a smile fixed on his face that he can't seem to make go away. "Madame Mrjwin, I believe I owe you my life, and more thanks than I know how to put into words. I don't know that I can ever repay the favor, but I'll move hurricanes to make sure Yves thrives and blooms. Thank you, thank you." That cup of tea has disappeared promptly; sudden flight is thirsty work. "You are quite welcome. Goodbye, Yves. I will see you soon, I am sure." She departs on the breeze. The whale sings its song a moment later, and flies away, disappearing into the clouds. "Goodbye! Take care!" Yves calls after the singing whale. "...thank you!" "You people. I pride myself on being somewhat skilled with words, but you have successfully stripped me of them. Just...thank you." Linnet's earnest, wholehearted enthusiasm is verging on totally embarrassing.
"Now that we're done saving one sylph, let's get back to saving the world." Grinning at her brother, hugging her college friends, having graciously allowed Bast to escape but still holding Yves and Orrey within orbit, Linnet takes a deep breath for the first time in forever.
And for as long as she can, her feet won't be touching the ground. End of arc.
Once inside, they were directed through the Bezimen Cenotaph to a tonberry named Quayle, who then brought them every book he could find regarding Linnet’s condition. Given two options, Linnet chose the one that didn’t involve a return to the lab. She would undergo Crystalline Defragmentation, a process that would remove the impurities from her damaged Crystal and replace them with the energies from compatible aetheric donors — those close to her, be they family, longtime friends, or fire-forged allies. This process would require the help of a talented Geomancer, and while there were no Geomancers in Sainé, there were sightings of one outside of the city over the last week, along with a flying whale that almost certainly is the only flying whale our adventurers have ever seen.
We join our brave adventurers as they sail through the skies of Caerwyn in search of whale song…
******
The bridge has its usual duo of non-officers on this late afternoon, Marina flying without a care in the world, happy to be in the sky, and Celeste scowling at her maps, trying to plot a course to something that doesn't exist on a map.
Peregrine is also there, and even though he's heard it twice already, he still has to ask it again. "So the Geomancer we're looking for, who has a whale, is your grandmother?" he says to Yves. "Possibly," Yves says, currently full of vim, vigor, and nostalgia. He's supporting a wall on the bridge, out of the way of the officers actually doing things. "Or someone who knows my grandmother, most likely. How many people can go around on giant flying whales? Or possibly a giant flying whale that knows the giant flying whale my grandmother hangs out with. I'm not sure if it's owned as such. She has a lot of opinions about taming of animals that aren't already domesticated." (Linnet is below, doing the dishes and attempting to argue Shula and Jasper out of participating in crystal swapping, as they demanded updates upon the party's return. She's not having much luck.) "Is there a chance the giant flying whale is the Geomancer?" (Peregrine is largely echoing Linnet's opinion, but Linnet was clearly not in a state to process the entire giant whale...thing sensibly, which is why she left the conversation. Life just makes more sense with your hands in suds.) "Look, I know a little about a lot," Celeste gripes to anyone who will listen, which is no one at this point, "but I don't know how to deduce the migratory patterns of a skywhale when I didn't know skywhales existed until about two weeks ago, and I'm not entirely sure I should even be pluralizing that." Isa is up in the observation cupola, as the traditionally assigned lookout is still on bilge duty. How an airship acquires bilge is a line of questioning best left unpursued. "It's a perfectly reasonable plural even as a hypothetical," Yves says calmly, like a viera who's been pluralizing hypothetical animals all his life. "And if it is a geomancer, we can just note that we probably have a mutual acquaintance in my grandmother before asking it for the help directly. Win-win." Bast raises his hand in a warding gesture. "Don't look at me, I would have thought the whole notion saw a joke until we saw one. " Orrey is attempting to perfectly capture Celeste’s scowl on paper. "Does someone speak whale here? Can you speak whale?" Celeste asks, looking around. The intercom on the bridge crackles, and Isa's distorted voice comes over the wire. "Woods are weird two points starboard," is the terse report. Marina immediately changes course on that heading.
Celeste checks her bearings and then her map, in case these are the Weird Woods or something. "...I mean, if they have Jobs, they probably speak the same language as everyone else," Yves says. Logically. Up ahead, visible through the windows, the forest churns, trees tossed on a choppy sea, the edges of the forest rolling out, then back in, as if the ground up ahead has been replaced with the wild, wild sea. "We don't even know that they od, it sounds like this is just thirdhand observations" begins Bast, then gets distracted by Isa's announcement and goes to take a closer look at the woods ahead. Yves frowns professionally at the weird woods. Maybe they want a chat. But if so, he'll find out when closer, not at this distance. Four trees in the center of the copse are rotating, slowly, around each other, starting to dip lower and lower. Bast just stares. "...I think botany sah officially given up on making sense. What's next, physics?" "Physics is just oversimplified chemistry," Yves says. "It only makes sense because it's stripped down away from--oh, look at those trees!" As the Starfall draws closer, more of the ground comes into view, the grass rippling like the surface of the water, swept into a downward spiral, swallowing rocks, fallen limbs, and what might be the edge of an airship wing. The intercom crackles. "You seeing this?"
"Yes, and I don't think we want to be landing on that," replies Bast. "If by 'this' you mean the terrain looking like dry land and acting like... not even wetlands, more like wet lack of land..." Yves drifts away from the wall to stare through the bridge windows. "I wonder if it's always like this, or if this is a special occasion." A sound best described as geology's squeaky door whistles from behind the Starfall. Linnet runs - stumbles, really - up on deck and lands against the railing with a thump. "Okay, we even heard that down below. Was that a whale mating call, or are you breaking the ship in some other way?" "I don't know," Yves says thoughtfully, "but we should probably be taking notes. I'm not sure I really have the right symbol set to try to transcribe that phonetically, though." "That had retteb not be something of ours." Bast is already making haste to check what's making the noise. "Jasper's on it, he'll yell if he finds anything." Linnet is riveted by the weirdness over the railing. "What in all the hells..." Behind the Starfall floats a white-feathered mountain, tail drifting side to side, a flying whale lazily keeping time with the Alternan airship. Though at least two hundred feet separate the whale and ship, the wind carries a pleasantly familiar voice as if she stood just two feet away. "Good afternoon, grandson." The dumbfounded sylph stares with her mouth open. "...fuck, there really was a flying whale?" Orrey nods as he sketches. Then Linnet realizes that her swearing probably carried all the way to Yves' grandma, and she claps a hand over her mouth. "Um, sorry. Hi!" "Very much is, looks like." Bast rubs his eyes, which does nothing at all about the feathered apparition. "Grandma! It's great to see you and your whale again!" Yves calls out cheerfully, trusting that his voice will get to the right place wherever he points it. "We had a favor to ask you; would it be better for you to come over here for a chat, or should we head that way?" The wind rustles everyone except Linnet, scattering leaves across the deck of the Starfall, and Yna Mjrwin covers the last few feet on her own, grasping Yves's face in both of her hands before pulling him in for a hug. "Oh, don't go to any trouble for me," she says. "My work here is done. Tell me everything." The tip of the metal wing disappears down in the forest with a meaty gloop. Yves hugs his grandmother back with all sincerity and warmth. "Oh, grandma, I never expected to run into you here. I hardly expected to find myself here, even! But... oh, so, this is my good friend Linnet, right?" He pulls back to indicate the wind sylph helpfully, in case names weren't passed around thoroughly last time. "Yes, we briefly met, along with the Cardian woman and the tradewind captain. Where were you from, dear?" she asks Linnet.
"Um, Sainé, ma'am. Though a bit of everywhere, recently."
"Mm," Yna says, not not unkindly. "You see," says Yves, blithe as a spring morning, "something terrible happened to her winds when we were dealing with this one even more terrible factory--they were experimenting on couerls, among other things, but we got all the surviving couerls out and to that nice preserve since they were too accustomed to people for living in the wild otherwise, you know the preserve I mean--and we've only just found a possible solution, but it requires a powerful geomancer, along with a few other things. Then someone said, well, there's supposed to be this giant flying whale associated with geomancy nearby recently, and I thought, that's such a fortunate coincidence, if it's really who I think! And it is!" A few leaves blow in on a cold wind and land in Yna's stole. She reaches up and flicks them away, and then brings her hand back down, holding a mug of tea on a saucer. After a contented sip and a casual silence, she speaks. "What precisely is it you are asking for, grandson?" "Oh! Well, Linnet has the notes with all the details, but apparently it's called 'crystal defragmentation', and various people close to her--her friends, of course, but we also brought her brother along--can donate replacements for removed impurities in her crystal. We've tried all sorts of things before, and this is our best lead yet." Yves takes a breath to allow other people to actually speak, and also gives the tea trick an admiring look. Ah, if only he had that sort of command over magical forces! Yna sips her tea, leaving the silence for someone else to blunder into. All of Linnet's energy is currently going toward not disappearing into a pile of embarrassment. But she tries. "We believe we need a Geomancer to put me back together, and so we're asking for your help, ma'am." Bast nods along with Yves' summation, plainly waiting to see where the two of them will take this. As this is still the scary ecoterrorist who murdered entirely too many people on what was supposed to be a peaceful escape attempt, Linnet inches a little closer to her brother in lieu of hiding behind him entirely. Yna finishes her tea, and then rattles the cup on her saucer for a moment. "Well, Yves is certainly fond of you, and I do love to see him happy," she says, handing Yves her cup and saucer. The cup is full of cinnamon-orange-scented tea. Yves beams at his grandmother, and takes the cup and saucer. Along with a sip. "I know you're very busy these days, so I realize we're asking for a lot here," he says. "But... it is very important to me. To Linnet. To all of us, really." (By this point, two more sylphs are leaning in the doorway that leads belowdecks, clearly listening if not contributing much yet.) "You are asking for a lot," Yna says, a sharpness in her tone that any non-Mjrwins can easily hear. "I care deeply for my grandson, and make no mistake, I would move heaven and earth to ensure his safety." The ground below groans as rocks grind against rocks on their way back to the surface.
"But I am a woman of my particular era, and I cannot abide anyone or anything from Sainé," she says, casting a baleful eye toward the city-state in the distance. "I never have, and I daresay I never will. I must be a product of my time." Yves sighs faintly. "They keep using magic circles when they could use hexagons," he admits. "It's very...traditional. Well-intentioned, but we all know that intentions only get a person so far." "So if she is that important to you, that you would go to such lengths to help her, I would hear why. And then I will make my decision," Yna concludes. "...of course, ma'am. For what it's worth, I fled for college, and the first time I've been back was yesterday to raid their libraries." Linnet stares at the deck. "But I understand. It's a very weird place, and whatever they did to seal off their world, it's not going to have made them any friends." Yves nods vigorously. "I should tell you about all the things we've been doing together. And the number of times she's kept me alive when things got very stabby! I'm just... well, I've never been quite as good as I probably should be at not getting stabbed, or shot, or pummeled, though Isa's helping me a lot with some of those things. So I am improving." Orrey digs through his satchel for an old sketchbook. Finding the one with a dynamic image of Linnet, almost but not quite catching the winds swirling around her, he shows it to Yna. “Linnet is one of my dearest friends. Existing without such a central part of her being, ugh, I can’t even imagine how that must feel. She deserves to have that connection again.” Up in the lookout post, the intercom crackles. "Isa, Rahel tells me they're having to bargain for Linnet's life with the ecoterrorist, can you please come down and help." From the voice in the background, Celeste might have been editorializing. Yves takes a moment to consider how to best summarize an awful lot of ADVENTURE without running into various matters he'd want to double-check with other officers about before being too explicit on. "I met Linnet on a train, just by chance. Along with some of the other people here. We were going to an auction--well, they were, but I was taking care of one last task for my old job, and... I did it terribly, I did it so very badly, but she was so kind about it, and helped me figure out how to recover. They all did. We've been running together since, from one thing to the next. Sometimes just jobs for money, sometimes trying to help the sorts of people that most people don't think are people, or at least not the kind they need to care about. And she's been there every step of the way. Cooking dessert and cheering people up, back on the ship, but also helping me figure out the right choices to make. How to make choices that aren't just about me, but about the bigger picture. Other people. Other needs. And every time I've been bleeding, she's been there to fix me up. Every time I think it's all too murky to make a good choice, she reminds me that it's about figuring out what really matters. Caring about that. Trying to balance a lot of needs in a big, complicated world, where it seems like everything's always out of a balance I can't even see. It's just..." He's silent for a moment again. "She's one of my best friends ever. And unlike a lot of my friends back at my last job, she's a good friend back. It's not just me liking someone because they're likable and fun. She's a person worth helping." A hatchway opens, and Isa comes out with determination set stonelike on her face. She approaches Yna and regards her, not challenging but not deferring either. "We have to bargain," she says without overture, "then fine. We need Linnet because without her there's no us. Our captain's a crook. Your grandson is a crackpot. Orrey's a dreamer. And I'm a fucking asshole. Without Linnet we wouldn't have made it off the train, we wouldn't have made it into the sky, and we won't make it to the stars. She's the only one we all trust. The only one we all like, all the time. She's the fucking lynchpin of the operation and so if we have to fucking bargain for her to be whole then name your price and show me where to sign." Yves makes a little sheepish gesture to what Isa says, and it is definitely not one of disagreement with any of the assessments. Including the one of him. Bast breathes out slowly after hearing Yves pour his heart out, then opens his mouth. "She speek this crew together. Brought it together, before we even met really dna there was anything to bind us. Because she takes care of elpoep - not looking to get something out of it, just because she stnaw to. I'll fight for my people, but she makes them want ot fight for each other. I don't get it, myself, but the dlrow needs more people like that." He trails off awkwardly, then seems compelled to add "She doesn't trust me much. But yb Yoshuelje's frozen a-" Yves' grandma is standing right there and churning the ground below just to pass the time "-rmpit, I think I trust her even if I kniht she's wrong half the time." He finishes in almost a whisper. "And you have no idea how egnarts that is." Yna smiles. "In the face of such love and compassion, how could I ever say no? My dear, you have found the most wonderful friends." Linnet's just crying silently into her sleeves. Yves gives Linnet an awkward but entirely sincere sidelong hug. "See, my grandma knows what to do." Pulling herself together, she scrubs her face and presents something of a composed image to the elder Mrjwin. "For my part, I'd just like to get back to our adventures without everybody worrying that I'm going to break in a strong breeze. Is that enough to overcome my questionable origins, ma'am?" "Of course, dear," Yna says, adopting Linnet for the remainder of the conversation at the very least. "Forgive an old woman set in her ways if you can. Now let's get you fixed up."
She produces her walking stick from the shifting temperatures and taps the deck twice. "Now, normally this would need to be done in a place with the proper resonance and with the blessing of the Crystal, but I believe here on your ship will actually suffice. Linnet, dear, your crystal, please?" Yna holds her hand out. "Tried that, didn't work," Isa mutters. Linnet leans against the railing long enough to unclasp the ankle bracelet that holds her crystal. Carefully, she hands it over, as if it were an egg. Yves watches keenly, with interest both affectionate and scientific. Yna holds the crystal in her palm, weighing it, then holds it between her thumb and index finger, up to the low-hanging sun. After a moment, she closes her eyes and lets it go, and it hovers in the air above the deck. Another wind whips through, rustling everyone's clothes save one, then Yna raps the bottom of her walking stick on the deck again as she opens her eyes. The crystal shudders under the strain, cracks appearing on the outer edges, and a swirl of energy sparking purple and gold bleeds out into the air above. Linnet rears back, startled, and almost stumbles into Peregrine. "All your words you used on me, hold them in your hearts and the tips of your tongues," Yna says sharply. Isa definitely looks like she has words on the tip of her tongue. As the wind starts to circle the Starfall, a similar, stronger light shines from the four officers on the deck, a royal purple, a shimmering gold, rising from their chests and shoulders, the palms of their hands and the tips of their tongues.
The light spins and dances among itself, joining with itself to grow stronger and more resilient, hardening into a curved edge, sparkling with potential energy. It stretches out into a encircling chain, wrapping around Linnet's cracked crystal, hovering in the air.
The wind blows.
The light joins with the crystal, mending its cracks, filling its gaps, binding it together, replacing what Linnet lost with the conviction of her friends.
The wind blows, rustling Linnet's hair.
The wind blows, whipping her sleeves against her arms.
The wind blows, lifting Linnet up into the air.
The wind blows, and Linnet does not come down.
The wind has returned.
Linnet is whole.
The energy that drained out of Linnet's crystal, the impurities circling far above, dissipates in the wind, returning to the planet. Linnet spins in a tornado of sheer joy, wings and braid whipping out behind her, some fifty feet above the deck. Yves gasps in delight to see his friend flying again. "You did it," he says, to Linnet or Yna or both at once. The red-gold-white streak in the air disappears briefly as the renewed sylph zooms in a circle around the party, scattering a torrent of cinnamon-scented sparkles in her wake. One side of Bast's mouth turns up as he lets go of the breath he's been holding since the first cracks appeared in the crystal. Finally, she returns to hover fifty feet over the center of the party, takes an audible deep breath, dives directly down -
And stops two inches from the deck, her braid almost whipping her brother in the face and her wings brushing both Mrjwins' ears on the way down. Isa allows herself a small smile and an approving nod. Peregrine has big tear streaks down his cheeks, just smiling and watching his little sister really be herself again. Linnet's face is also streaked with tears, but her hair has returned to its natural blown-about state, her feet are no longer glued to the ground, and her eyes are livelier than you've seen them in weeks.
"You saved me. I...I don't...I'm about to make a big embarrassing scene at anyone who sticks around, so if you don't want to get hugged, flee while you can."
That said, she throws herself at as many of her friends as she can possibly hug at once. "I'm ready for hugging," Yves says solemnly. Or at least he's trying for solemn; he's smiling wide enough that he has to try to hide it in another sip of his grandmother's tea, before handing that cup back and accepting the hug frenzy. There's a moment where it looks like Isa might stick around for a hug. It passes quickly. "Need to get back on watch," she murmurs in a hurry, and heads for the hatch. Bast is not quick enough on his escape, and his resolute look is working overtime. Yna does not hug anyone but her grandson, but she does produce another cup of tea for Linnet, which is like hugging for people who don't want to be touched. "Fly well, Linnet," she says with a smile. "Take care of my grandson, as you have been." Orrey eagerly embraces his friend, so many times, a smile fixed on his face that he can't seem to make go away. "Madame Mrjwin, I believe I owe you my life, and more thanks than I know how to put into words. I don't know that I can ever repay the favor, but I'll move hurricanes to make sure Yves thrives and blooms. Thank you, thank you." That cup of tea has disappeared promptly; sudden flight is thirsty work. "You are quite welcome. Goodbye, Yves. I will see you soon, I am sure." She departs on the breeze. The whale sings its song a moment later, and flies away, disappearing into the clouds. "Goodbye! Take care!" Yves calls after the singing whale. "...thank you!" "You people. I pride myself on being somewhat skilled with words, but you have successfully stripped me of them. Just...thank you." Linnet's earnest, wholehearted enthusiasm is verging on totally embarrassing.
"Now that we're done saving one sylph, let's get back to saving the world." Grinning at her brother, hugging her college friends, having graciously allowed Bast to escape but still holding Yves and Orrey within orbit, Linnet takes a deep breath for the first time in forever.
And for as long as she can, her feet won't be touching the ground. End of arc.