feywildatheart

[feywildatheart]

🦀 time for crab 🦀

today i summoned 353 crabs! i became friends with 19 🌼 of them. 100 fell in love with me 💙

group picture!!!

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[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

You are probably going to try to drag me right back onto vacation when you get this, because apparently you can't leave me alone for five minutes without us finding work worth being nervous about.

Technically, Elyn found it, and technically, it found her. We were going to stay on Kaliz Beta for a few more days after you left, and then maybe wander our way towards Mir and Nosirion-1, so that we can see the kids and stop in and talk to Athan about this job that he wants our help with soon, but a few days ago, Elyn got an letter from a cleric of Savras on a planet called Rotharl, who has a friend who lost a loved one and needs their guidance on some sort of decision that they need to make, and so they asked their friend, and their friend asked their god, and their god gave her Elyn's name, apparently? She seems pretty discomfitted by the fact that a god knew of her, which is good, because I'm discomfitted, and I can't imagine how much more so I'd have been if it had been my name given rather than hers.

It's because Elyn can cast Speak With Spirits now, of course, and she was eager to help. So we've come to Rotharl and met with the cleric, Altas, and Elyn--

Well, here's where I get nervous, because Elyn's not asking near enough questions about this job, as far as I can see. She agreed to come all the way out here without much more information than the very vague bits in Altas's initial letter, when I'd have asked for at least a little bit more information about the nature of the job before agreeing to come, but I figured we could ask for that when we got here. But we've just met with Altas, and Elyn was doing more reassuring than she was asking, promising even that if Altas's friend preferred, they could ask the questions in a language that Elyn doesn't know, so as to preserve as much of their privacy as possible.

She doesn't even want me in the room with her! She did say she wanted me close, but what good is close going to do her if something goes terribly wrong? I voiced that concern and she brushed me off by saying that she could cast Sending, but that's assuming that she can, and I can think of half a dozen ways this might go poorly where she wouldn't be able to, and I don't like it one bit.

I know I'm probably fretting about nothing and it's probably going to be completely fine and anticlimactic. But I'd be less inclined to be so paranoid about all of this, if Elyn seemed even the littlest bit inclined to be a bit more. I think she'd be more sensible about it if she wasn't so fresh off of casting the spell for her own reasons, and wrestling with her own grief. She's thinking only of how it must feel for this person to be on their end of it, and not really about anything else, I don't think. But everything about this has been cagey and unspecific, and obviously people are going to be reluctant to reopen the wounds of their grief, but I still don't like it. I think we need more information before we even agree to do this, much less before Elyn walks in to cast the spell. I think I need to be there, just in case.

Elyn's going to hate it, I think. She's going to want to protect this person, this stranger who we don't even know, and I understand why. But, well, it's my job to protect her, it has been since we started traveling together. And if we suggest it and the person says no, then we can figure out how we want to proceed from there, but at the very least I think it needs to be part of our negotiations for accepting this job. If this person wants this badly enough for their friend to pray to their god about it, to write a letter to a stranger about it, then I think we've got more leeway to ask for concessions than Elyn thinks we do. And I think we need to be smart about this. We've gotten into so much trouble before because we weren't smart, and-- well, maybe that's just because we aren't that clever, but in lieu of smart, we need to be cautious and prepared. We need to stand our ground, and I just don't know if Elyn's willing to do that, when this request hits so close to home. I am, but... I guess it remains to be seen how much she's willing to let me, when I've rather gotten the sense she's seen this from the start as her job, and not ours.

I'll let you know how things work out, either way. But keep your fingers crossed for me that I'm able to talk some measure of sense into Elyn about all this.

I love you both. I miss you already. Be safe, and don't forget to tell me when you think you'll be able to get some more time away.

All my love,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Dear Maliah,

I am glad that you have your amulet in hand, and that the process of testing went well! Somehow it does not surprise me that skydiving is to your tastes, even after such a nerve-wracking experience in the air.

I know I have said that you and Elyn are lucky to have such friends in one another, but it is very true, and she is lucky to have your support around such a difficult thing to reckon with. It seems this break is something you’ve all needed quite a bit! Our less few letters have seen you in better spirits, and I have been pleased to see it, even from afar.

Likewise, how kind a friend to check in with you! You are certainly a wanderer, and I do not think you would be happy staying in one place, from what we’ve spoken about before. But it is a good plan to stop more frequently, I think. I have met promising and talented captains before who have burnt themselves out, or worse, because they believed they could push past the signs of needing rest. Different stresses, most certainly, but still a dangerous profession – a shipwreck or a devastating injury can end a career or a life. It is wise of you to plan against that, and to anticipate its need.

Ah, not to delay the answer to your question, of course – but I did not want to leave all of that unacknowledged.

I would be delighted to make the acquaintance of your assuredly lovely mothers! Practically speaking, and because they are important to you. A travesty that I was so busy when we parted ways that I could not meet them in person, and so it would be a pleasure to do so now.

So, I suppose it is my turn to ask a question of you. Are you introducing me as a friend who should be in the loop on your next extra-planar adventure, or as something more? There are, shall we say, connotations to such an introduction, and I am not sure how much you might mean there to be. I respect it, of course, either way, and if it is something to think on, then it is something to think on. But, as you have said, you are new to these things, and I certainly do not wish to make assumptions of you.

Well, then. To answer the rest of your questions, all is well with me, and with the ship. We have not stopped anywhere new, but are finishing up this route, and perhaps I will have to try a new bar while we are in dock, simply to have something to tell you about! While perusing some goods at our last stopover, I saw a bracelet made of Salamander teeth – they are almost opalescent, and seem to flicker like flame in the light, though are much sturdier than opals. Personally, I believe I will keep to seeing deadly creatures close up once they are dead! Lovely, though.

Anyway, this run terminates on a Tiefling planet, and we’ll likely spend a week or three there while sorting out details of a new shipment as we head back to our more usual beat. Not that the crew and I have minded a longer run!

I hope – as always – to hear from you soon,

Marsa

[feywildatheart]

Dear Marsa,

Elyn and I went skydiving today, and it was -- well, it was terrifying, for obvious reasons. But my package from Nellaser's Landing arrived this morning, with my brooch from the Commemoration of Grace that I had enchanted into an amulet of feather fall, and while they sent paperwork that more or less covers the specifics of the enchantment, there's a difference between knowing something you've been told, and knowing something because you've experienced it. And I wasn't going to stop being so afraid until I knew that I was protected. So I went and found Elyn where she was lying on the beach and asked her if she wanted to help me do something stupid, which she agreed to somewhat more readily and with far fewer questions than I'd honestly anticipated. Perhaps she just figured that if I was planning on doing something stupid, she definitely wanted to be there to help clean up the aftermath.

In any case, I explained to her about the amulet, and wanting to test it, and maybe I'd oversold the stupidity of what I wanted to do, because she sounded as though she thought I was thinking about jumping off a cliff or something, when I was really just thinking about climbing a tree and jumping from there, at least until I was sure of the enchantment. So we found a tree with enough branches that I could climb it, but not so many that I couldn't find a clear path down, and with Elyn at the bottom in case this all went very wrong and I needed some healing, I gathered up my courage and ignored the butterflies in my stomach and jumped, from perhaps twenty feet or so up.

I still felt like I was falling normally, and I landed a bit harder than I expected, but I landed on my feet and wasn't hurt at all. So I scrambled back up again to see if it would still work, or if it was a once-a-aday sort of thing. (The documentation didn't say anything about limits on the number of uses, but if that was an oversight I wanted to find out now, and not at some point in the future when I was depending on it to work only to discover its limitations the hard way.)

It worked just as well the second time as it had the first, and that's when Elyn suggested going skydiving to give it a try from a greater height, in a way that would still have a parachute for backup if it turned out not to work after all, and I agreed, perhaps a bit too readily, and then found my moms to invite them along, and then found Cloudleaper to leave Squirt in her care.

We found a place that was happy to take us skydiving, at least until I explained my intent not to deploy the parachute, at which point they had some severe and understandable reservations. It took some doing, but after a thorough review of the amulet's documentation, a demonstration in which I jumped from the building's roof to show them how it worked, and a whole stack of waivers that I signed acknowledging that this was an incredibly stupid thing I was asking them to let me do, they reluctantly agreed, on the condition that if I seemed to be falling at a pace with everyone else, I was to deploy my parachute, and if I didn't, they were going to do so remotely.

I agreed, and so up we went, and that's about the point where I realized that I'd been a bit overeager in agreeing to Elyn's suggestion, because it turns out that jumping out of a tree or even off of a building is not very like being carried off by a roc, but being in a plane up high in the sky is very like that, especially once they opened the doors and I had to stand there at the edge and choose to jump out. Of course it was going to remind me of being in the roc's claws and choosing to twist free of them, choosing to fall and probably die over staying and probably dying.

But that was the whole reason I was doing that, and I needed to know that I was protected, so I screwed up my courage and pushed down my bile and jumped out of the plane. I suspect I may have screamed the entire way down.

It was a little reassuring, once I realized that I was falling slower than the others were. A little less so, once the pulled their chutes and I went rocketing past them. But I was going fast enough that time that I did feel the effects of the amulet kick in to slow me, so that when I landed I did feel almost featherish, whereas when I'd jumped from the tree I'd felt rather more like a boulder.

Afterwards, Elyn convinced me to go a second time, so I could experience the parachute part, and I convinced the instructors, and so we all went again, and it really was lovely to gently drift down and look out over the land stretched out below us. And I didn't feel half so nauseous when I jumped out the second time, so I suppose there's that.

We've gone paragliding since, to, because it occurred to Elyn that we could almost immediately after it occurred to her that we might go skydiving, and then I spent some time helping her come up with questions to ask her parents' spirits, because she's been doing a lot of that while we've been here, too. I helped her with it the first time, letting her channel through me, but she decided it was weird to do so with someone she knows, or just said so because she's worried it was weird or upsetting for me, even though I've told her it wasn't. But since that first time, I've been helping mostly just by being there with and for her. It's hard for her, of course, even though she's only been asking about things like why the ship crashed and if there was a chance for any other survivors and if they'd want to be resurrected, if such a thing was possible and if they all could be together. But I worry that she's been making it harder on herself by doing so, when I know how desperately she wants to know more about them as people, and so the last time she cast it, I asked her afterwards why she wasn't letting herself ask the questions she really wanted to. I don't know how much of the reasons she gave me are truth and how much are excuses, but I think it comes down to that she's afraid that it'll hurt, to get a piece of them but nothing like what she truly wants, and I guess it hurts less for her to choose to have nothing than to try for it and let herself hope and be disappointed.

I'm not sure I feel that's a good reason for her to deprive herself of something she's wanted so much for so long, but I left it at that, and almost at the same time she promised that in two weeks' time, when she could cast the spell again and speak with Ezenki, she would ask more of the personal questions that she wanted to know. And those two weeks were up today, so I spent some time with her earlier working out what she wanted to ask, and how, to try to get her some o the answers she wanted but in ways that wouldn't hurt so much to hear when delivered in the spirits' somewhat flat delivery. And then we went to the cleric who's been letting her channel the spirits through them, every time since the first, and we brought Squirt and PA along both, to comfort and support her.

It was hard, of course it was. But I think it was good, too. I hope it was. I feel a little like I pushed her into it, when that wasn't my intent when I'd asked, not if she really didn't want to. Sometimes it can be okay to hurt, in the service of something good and wanted, and I just hope that this was that for her, and that I didn't push her to do something that only hurt her.

Afterwards we hugged a lot, and then I took her to a place I've found here that makes truly extravagant milkshakes, because she definitely deserved the most extravagant sort after all that. And then I guess she decided that it was my turn to cry, because she asked me if I wanted to keep adventuring or not. She'd asked me that when we got here, and my moms did, and all I could tell them then was that I needed a proper vacation before I could answer it. Because if I'd been forced to give an answer then, I think I would've said no, that I couldn't bear the thought of going out and facing more danger all over again. But I also knew that that might've been the hurt and upset and missing my moms, more than actually wanting to be done. And so I said to ask me later, and I guess Elyn decided it was later enough, because she asked, and she said all sorts of lovely things about how she knew this hadn't exactly been like what I'd left home looking for, and if I wanted to stop I could, and if I wanted to go back to the Feywild she'd take on the Queen of Air and Darkness herself with me to make that possible. And I cried a little and hugged her a lot, and reminded her that I hadn't only left the Feywild because of Squirt, that I'd been feeling restless and wanting to see more of the universe even before that, but he'd been -- not an excuse, not really, but a good reason to leave, a counterbalance to all the reasons I'd had to stay. And that really, I'd enjoyed a lot of what we'd done together, balhannoths and rocs aside, and that I thought I'd be bored, if I stopped. But I also said that we needed to take vacations -- proper vacations -- more, and not go so long between seeing our families. We've been doing this for a year and it's been a whirlwind, and I think we thought we were giving ourselves breaks, but we hadn't been, not really. We'd given ourselves a few weeks here and there and called them vacations, but they'd just been pauses while we caught our breath, before we jumped right on into our next thing. There hadn't been beaches and sunbathing and skydiving and hugging our parents. We need to do more of that, if we're going to keep doing this, or we'll all be burnt-out wrecks in another year.

That must've been answer enough for Elyn, because then she decided to switch to teasing me a little about you, which she likes to do. And then Cloudleaper showed up like she'd just been waiting for her cue, because sometimes I think the only thing Cloudleaper loves more than milkshakes is teasing me about you. And then-- well--

Look, okay, this is going to be weird and awkward, but I've been writing my way toward this for like an hour and I still haven't figured out how to make it not. But I made a promise, and I've never made any secret with you of the fact that I don't know what I'm doing, so maybe you'll be forgiving of the fact that it's weird and awkward, because that's the only way I've been about any of this all along. So-- would you like to meet my moms over a video call, sometime before we decide we've had our fill of vacationing? Elyn brought up the point that it'll be easier to orchestrate such a call now, while my moms and I are in the same place, than it will be once they've gone back to the Feywild and we have to coordinate between three different places and two different planes. And after Kirim, Elyn thinks it's important for the people we care about and who care about us to know each other, at least a little, so you guys can keep each other apprised of what's happening with us if we're not able to do so ourselves. And, those are all very good reasons, but I'm not asking just because of that. I'm asking because I'd like it, if you want to. I'd have introduced you to them if they'd come up to the station to meet us, or if you'd gone down with us to the planet. I'd have invited you down, if I hadn't already put you off course so much just by asking for a ride, and if you hadn't had so many things that needed your attention once we'd reached the station.

You don't have to if you don't want to, if it's weird or too much or you'd just rather not. I don't want to push, I just want to... offer, I suppose. And, well, I promised Cloudleaper I would ask, but I'm not doing it because I promised, either. I'd already mostly decided to ask before that, and the promising was really just to extract a counter-promise from her, that she'd go to dinner with my moms by herself, because she's been weird as shit with them ever since we got here. She acted like she was mortally offended that I had dinner with them with Elyn first, without her, but then when we did all go to dinner together, Cloudleaper hardly said two words to them all evening. So I asked her what was up with that and-- well, her answer started with 'you see, when two halflings love each other very much', which is so not a lecture I need, from her of all people. But Cloudleaper likes to deflect from emotions, and she seems to especially like to deflect by trying to rile me up by being patronizing. It usually works, too, but... I think, leaving aside all the deflection, the point she was trying to make was that she knew that my moms were going to be upset about me nearly dying on her behalf, and she was trying to be polite and show them respect. Because more or less ignoring them is respectful? I don't know, she said it was an elvish thing, but Elyn seemed dubious, so I think it's probably more a her-family-is-the-actual-worst thing. And she was all bluster and protest when I tried to remind her that her cultural norms aren't everyone's cultural norms and they'd like her better if she actually gave them a chance to know her, so I pulled the only trump card I had, and told her if she'd promise to have dinner with my moms and actually talk to them like a normal person (well, for her version of a normal person, I am not expecting miracles here), then I'd promise to write to you and ask about the video call with my moms. But like I said, I was probably already going to do that anyway, so really, I just manipulated her terribly. But she stopped protesting after that, and went off to find them, so I can't argue with the results, and now I'm here with a half-melted milkshake fulfilling my half of the bargain, so that if she bails halfway to dinner she won't have any leg to stand on, because I've done my part.

I hope everything's still well with you! Have you stopped anywhere new? What's the most interesting thing you've seen since you wrote me last?

Please don't say yes to the video unless you really, truly want to. It's okay if you don't, I promise it is.

All my best,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Dear Marsa,

Well, the millinery, and also I doubt any other captains would be able to beat me at darts, and it'd be a shame to pass up the opportunity for a good challenge, of course.

We're going to be on Nellaser's Landing for a few more days, I think, but we can definitely meet you on Veled-Kerverion. Though perhaps we'll try to leave a few days early, since when I mentioned it to her, Elyn said something about the possibility of there being a 'mishap' with the spell, and I don't know precisely what that means, but I'd hate to miss you because of magic gone awry.

Things have been fairly quiet here since I wrote you last, fancy parties notwithstanding. I've been learning the spell Message for the last couple weeks, with Elyn's help when she's had the time for it, and with the help of some wizards from the university, when she doesn't. It's a simple magic, as things go, but... well, when I left home, sometimes it was nice to know that I could talk to Squirt, or to myself, in Sylvan and be reasonably sure that no one around was likely to understand me. And then Cloudleaper joined us, who understands Sylvan, but I've been able to fall back on Ignan for the same purpose. But now apparently Cloudleaper can just magically understand any language anyone speaks, and I kind of hate it. I know I shouldn't resent her for it, that it's a boon for her as well as for the group, but... I'm feeling a little like I did in the ruins beneath Hangi Syr, like everything that I've always thought of as mine is being taken from me, is being done faster or better by someone else. I've been working and training, since we left Hangi Syr, to try to be stronger and more useful in other ways, but now there's this, and it feels intrusive, it feels like my last haven has been taken from me. When I lamented it a few weeks ago, Cloudleaper said I could always just go somewhere private to have conversations I didn't want to be overheard, which I was dubious about then, and I was right to be, because in the last week she's listened in and barged in on conversations that should have been private no less than three different times. Sometimes it seems like she doesn't have any sense of boundaries at all, either physical or social, and I feel like I'm suffocating under the weight of it.

...Sorry, this wasn't meant to be a weighty letter. And I do have a therapist now, after all. I suppose this is the sort of thing she'd want to hear about, though I still feel like the whole almost-dying thing is the more pressing for us to address. My point was, though, that now I've studied and trained in this, too, so that at least I can have guaranteed-private conversations, should I need them.

That's been taking up most of my time, these past few weeks, though we did take Gaizka Zabari out for dinner to thank them for everything. Elyn asked them about themself, since all we really know is the legends and other people's perspectives of what they've done, and it sounds like they mostly just stumbled into their position and power, and when you get them speaking frankly about it, they sound a little overwhelmed by it all, or maybe just bewildered about how things escalated so quickly, and to such a degree.

I can sympathize with that, so much. It was only about a year ago that I left home, just hoping for work exploring with the Silver Tree on Nosirion-1, and now here we are, stopping coups and getting letters from kings and being interviewed by the press at fancy parties about our role in helping to establish contact with a formerly-unknown demiplane... And we never really set out with intent to do any of it. We've only even taken proper adventuring jobs a few times -- most of what we've done has just been to try to help people. We fought a demi-lich on Honione because we noticed the first mate on our ship seemed distressed, and we offered to help. And the whole thing with Rugira Prime and King Roohi was just because we were trying to help Pika get her son back. We've tripped into nearly everything we've done, and maybe that's why it all feels so much larger than us. It hardly feels right to accept accolades for stopping a coup, when all we meant to do was reunite our friend with her son, or for fighting a balhannoth when we were only trying to help make sure archaeologists could do their jobs safely. But I suppose Gaizka never really set out to be an archmage, either. They just thought magic was interesting, and wanted to learn more about it, and then suddenly the station was in trouble and what could they do besides try to help?

I wonder if they pulled off their success by the narrowest of margins, too, like we so often seem to, and cam out of it blinking and shocked just to be alive, much less hailed as a hero.

We're certainly nothing like as powerful as Gaizka is, who asked us for a week so they could invent an entirely new spell, when it took me two and a lot of assistance just to learn a simple cantrip. But we've also only been at this for a year, which is strange and incredible and baffling to consider.

And then there was the party, which was strange in a similar way. Luckily, most of the attention was on Gaizka, for the most part, and they seemed to understand our reluctance to step into the limelight, and did what they could to keep it. Elyn seemed worried about my willingness to attend, and brought up my nerves over the parties on Rugira Prime, but it wasn't the fact that they were parties that had me nervous, then. It was that we were lying about who we were, and we were trying to learn things and make connections, without making anyone suspicious of us, and I'm not very good at either of those things. But this party, we didn't have to do anything, and it was fine. Mostly fine. What attention wasn't on Gaizka mostly fell on Elyn, and really the only hairy spot was when a gnomish reporter asked us -- all of us, not just Elyn -- what our impression was of Kirim, and-- honestly, it's not Kirim's fault, but I'm going to need so much more therapy before I'm able to answer a question like that with anything more coherent or judicious than half-hysterical laughter and a strained, "There was a roc."

The reporter took it in stride, at least.

They also asked us about us, as a group, about Electromagnetic Chaos, which was a whole different kind of bewildering and overwhelming. Elyn did most of the talking about that, at least, and bless her for it. She didn't exactly what I would have wanted to do in her place, but about fifteen times better than I would have managed it. Cloudleaper stepped up to talk about us too, though, and rivaled even Elyn for her poise and composure. I can't figure out if that means that she just doesn't care enough to try not to be a loose cannon with us, or if it's a hard-won act like with me and all the parties on Rugira Prime.

Anyway, that's all that's been happening here, lately, and hopefully it stays that way. I'll let you know when we've made it to Veled-Kerverion -- and if, gods forbid, we run into any mishaps that might delay us.

See you soon!

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Dear Marsa,

Well. We found another plane. A demi-plane, really, and Elyn's family along with it. I think Elyn would have happily stayed there for months, if given the chance, but we're back now, and it should at least soon be a little easier for us to get back there.

Well. For Elyn to get back there, when she wants to. It's not her fault, or the place's fault, really, but I had kind of a terrible time, and I'm not exactly keen to return anytime soon.

Elyn says I shouldn't write to you about this -- that the fact that I was unsure if I should, back when it happened, means I'm not comfortable with it, and I shouldn't if I'm uncomfortable, but I think Elyn underestimates my ability to fret about things. There's a difference between not being comfortable doing something, and worrying about what the effect of doing it might be. I mean, I ended up writing to Bizza about it right afterwards -- he's our friend who owns a crepe shop on Sumula Station -- and he'd already offered to lend an ear if any of us needed to talk after everything that happened with the balhannoth, and I still worried about unloading all of that onto him. I think if I went by Elyn's rules, I'd never have written to anyone at all about it, and that... that, I think, would have been very bad indeed.

So, the quick version, then: we were traveling through the mountains when I saw a very large bird hunting in the distance, and when I warned the others about it, Cloudleaper apparently heard "bird" and nothing else and ran off up a tree before we could do anything to stop her, to holler at it and get its attention -- in the hopes, it seems, of being able to ride it.

Not the best idea, it turns out, when the hungry bird you're hollering at is a fucking roc.

It started diving toward her, and I, in my infinite wisdom, decided to try to save her from herself by distracting it, which just meant that it snatched me up and flew away with me, instead of her. (You don't need to tell me how stupid that was, by the way. Ive already told myself about a hundred thousand times in the week since it happened.) And-- well, the quick version of what followed is that I very, very nearly died, and even just thinking about it still makes me tremble all over, and I'm very shaken and very angry, and if you want to know more than that, I'll leave it to you to ask.

I called my moms, just as soon as we got back to the Prime Material Plane, and had a good cry at them, and I've got an appointment with a therapist soon, so... I'm all right. I'm going to be all right. You don't have to worry about that. I'm just not really capable of talking around it, right now, or pretending it didn't happen, so it was either tell you about it or just not talk to you at all, and I-- I don't want that.

We're back on Nellaser's Landing now, though, and it sounds like we're going to be here for at least a few more weeks, between therapists' appointments and doctors' appointments and apparently there's going to be some sort of fancy party at the university about making contact with this demi-plane that they'd like our attendance at -- or, well, Elyn's attendance, mostly, but I'm not about to make her go to that alone. But after that... After that, I'm going to try to get to Kaliz-Beta, so I can spend some time with my moms. I think, after I woke them up in the middle of the night to tell them about how I nearly became a roc's breakfast, they could probably stand to hug me for like a month. And if they don't, well, I'm going to hug them for a month at least, the minute I see them.

I don't know what work looks like for you for the next few weeks, but if it's going to be taking you towards Kaliz-Beta at all, and you don't mind having a little company for part of the trip, we're going to need transport of some sort for at least part of the journey, and I'd love the chance to see you again. Elyn knows how to cast Teleport now, apparently, so she can get us to anywhere she's already been, but she's never been to Kaliz-Beta. But that does mean that, if you're up for giving us a ride, we could meet you along your way. We could get back to Gletta-86, or, goodness, any number of places. Sumula Station, Honione,  Rugira  Prime... Or anywhere accessible by Teleportation Circle from somewhere we've been, at that.

Obviously, I wouldn't want to inconvenience you, if you're busy with work or if it's taking you somewhere else entirely. I'm sure we can find our way there by Teleportation Circle and by chartering ships, even if the millinery of their captains is sure to be wholly underwhelming. But if it helps sway you at all, I did pick up something for you in that demi-plane -- and here on Nellaser's Landing as well, but really, I think the more exciting gift is the one from the place that only four people on the whole Prime Material Plane have ever seen.

Also, you do still owe me a rematch, after all. Don't think I'm going to forget about that.

Anyway, let me know, if you're up for it. And in the meantime, either way, you should tell me all about how you are, and what you've been up to since we last wrote. Hopefully you've been a lot safer and suffering a lot less excitement than I have, and I would genuinely love to hear all about it. The more banal and routine, the better.

All my best,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

Well, a wolf called me an oath-liar yesterday, so things aren't exactly looking up.

Cloudleaper's been quiet still, and I'm not really sure what to make of that, but I'm still worried, and I think Elyn is, too. I mentioned Sending to Gaizka to ask for advice, but she says she thinks it's too complicated to try to convey in twenty-five words, and it would be better to wait until she can talk with them about it in person. I don't know, I'd think any help Gaizka could possibly give us would be better than what we have now, which is nothing, but it's not my spell to cast, or my conversation to have, so I left it at that.

We've finally made it out of the snow, which Squirt is terribly heartbroken about, but I know I'm relieved, and Elyn seems so as well. It's hard going, especially with legs as short as ours. We were practically sinking up to our waists with each step we took.

Eventually, it occurred to us to try to make snowshoes, so we could walk on top of the snow instead of wading through it. Elyn's first idea was to use some of the behir scales that I'd harvested from it, and it was a clever one, but the ones I'd managed to pry off without damaging turned out to be a bit too curved to be really useful, so we spent a while sitting together and talking about gods (commiserating about how weird they are, mostly) as we tried to weave some out of sticks and twigs. That worked much better, and we made faster time with them after that.

I've still been hearing wolves howling at night, and not long after we made it out of the worst of the snow, when it was mostly just left in patches on the ground, I was scouting ahead as usual when Squirt suddenly seemed distressed -- enough that I cast Speak With Animals, to try to find out what exactly was wrong, and he still wouldn't talk to me. When I tried to look to see what had caught his attention, I noticed a flash of fur through the trees, and while I took a moment to look for tracks that might confirm whether it was the wolves I'd been worried about, and how many of them there might be, it gave them the opportunity to surround us -- though I wouldn't know that for a few moments yet. All I saw was the one wolf, standing at the edge of the trees and watching us, not quite like it was afraid, not quite (I thought) like it was hungry. At least, until it started growling at me.

I told it that we didn't mean it any harm, and we wouldn't attack unless it did, but that we weren't going to be the easy prey it thought we were. If I thought it would've understood people's names for things, I would have told it that we'd killed a roc the other day, and it had been bigger than its whole pack combined, but there wasn't time for explanations, and it didn't work anyway, because the wolf breathed out a cloud of ice at me and Squirt that chilled me to the bone, and that's when I realized that it was a winter wolf, not an ordinary one, and that my Speak With Animals spell had been useless for talking with it, because it only worked with ordinary beasts.

There were two other wolves in the woods around us, and they all attacked Elyn and Cloudleaper, and I wasn't going to stand there and keep trying to make friends while they ate us, so I did the only thing I could do. I shot the wolf who'd breathed on me, and activated my cloak so it would maybe get the idea that it wasn't dealing with ordinary travelers, and told it that if they stopped, we would too, and then readied myself to fight. Behind me, I could hear Cloudleaper set her sword on fire, and Elyn cast a Shatter, and they must've badly hurt the one they'd been fighting together, because it howled and ran off, and left us with two.

They'd both attacked us, and hadn't yet given any indication that they also intended to back down, like the other had. And like I said, I wasn't going to stand there and let me and Squirt and my friends get eaten in the hopes that maybe they'd stop. I told them -- if they stopped, then we would, and the other two hadn't yet. So we kept fighting, and we kept hoping that maybe they'd realize, like the other had, that we were going to be more trouble than we were worth. And almost immediately, the other wolf broke away, and I had half an instant to be elated and relieved that it had worked, and we hadn't had to kill them, and then the leader growled and snarled at me in a way that sounded like Common, that sounded like oath-liar, and all my elation came crashing back down into bewilderment and unhappiness.

I'd tried, nenîth. I'd tried so hard to make peace, and to keep it from happening, and to make sure everyone -- wolves and elyn and Cloudleaper, all -- knew that there was a way out of this without killing, and that we were not just willing but eager to take it, and I still messed it up, somehow. Elyn says that maybe they were just dicks, and I know she's trying to make me feel less bad about it, but I don't think that's fair. Just because something has decided it doesn't like you, doesn't mean that they're a dick. Maybe it means you genuinely fucked up.

I just don't know how I could've not, and I hate it. I hate everything about that stupid fight. Maybe if it hadn't been for the roc, I would've been more inclined to wait and see if the wolf still felt like eating me, and it would've turned out better, but I came close enough to getting eaten once already, and that seems like more than enough for one trip.

Maybe they are just dicks. Maybe they just don't understand people, and we don't understand them. Maybe I should just stop trying to make nice with things, it never works out. The last time it worked out was back on Nosirion-1, and I don't think that elk started off wanting to hurt us, besides.

Maybe I should, but I don't like that any better. Everything about this sucks, and I hate it. Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to accept Elyn's suggestion that we walk here, when I know she'd have rather taken transportation. Then the roc wouldn't have happened, and this wouldn't have happened, and I'd have been sad because I missed being in the trees, but it would've been better than this.

I wish I could come home. I wanted it after the roc, so badly, and now I want it again. I just want to be able to hug you both, and to be able to see you, in more than just my IICD's screen. I miss you brushing my hair, and the way our house smells, and how Cylla always squeezes me a little tighter, when she's hugging me, right before she lets me go. I miss Darna's humming. I miss you both so much, and I want to see you and talk to you and hug you so much, and I don't even know if I can, or if I should, because of Squirt and because of the Queen, and I hate it. I wish I could talk to you. There had been fancier IICDs, when I bought these for us, ones with even better range in other planes. Maybe I should have bought those for us. Maybe they still wouldn't work, here in this demiplane, but... Maybe. I can't know, not any of these things, and I hate it all so much.

We stopped for lunch, not much later, and Elyn went off to Send to Tyko, since she hadn't in a few days, and I'd already been thinking that I should thank Cernunnos, after the roc, after we'd all survived what we really shouldn't have, but after my conversation with Elyn about gods, and after the wolves, I knew I had to. So I went off into the woods and made a little altar to him, burned some incense and left an offering of weapons and other supplies for whoever might find them, and prayed, very poorly.

Elyn tried to tell me, earlier, when we were making snowshoes, that Cernunnos must favor me, because he gave me flowers in the ruins of Hangi Syr when I was sad, but I don't think that's right. I'm sad now, and there weren't any flowers, I don't even know if he heard me, or if he's listening, or anything. Elyn didn't believe me when I told her I'm terrible at this, but I really am.

I walked back to our camp, when I didn't have anything left to say, and Squirt was waiting for me just beyond it, looking like he wanted something, or was waiting for something, something more than just for me to come back. I gave him some scritches, wondering if that's what he wanted, and of course he enjoyed them, but he didn't seem satisfied, so I finally cast Speak With Animals again, so I could ask him plainly -- and it turns out that that's what he wanted after all, to talk to me.

To talk to me about what happened with Cloudleaper, and the roc.

I worried him, I think, because he can tell I've been unhappy -- of course he can -- and I hate that. I tried to explain to him what had upset me about the situation and why, but I'm not sure how good a job I did, I didn't feel like he really understood why it's been weighing on me so heavily, and we got a little sidetracked when he said that it makes him sad when I get hurt trying to protect him, because of course I had to reassure him. I tried to clarify that it wasn't the nearly dying that had upset me so much as it was nearly doing for something so stupid, and Squirt said that Cloudleaper's a puppy, and-- well. I laughed long and hard at that, to start. I'd be half tempted to tell her he said so, and see what she thinks of being thought of as a puppy by a dog, when she's so quick to call anyone who isn't elven a baby, but I fear it might damage her affection for him. Obviously, I don't want to do or say something that might cause anyone to love Squirt less than he deserves, but also-- also, I know that it's because she loves him so much that she cushioned the impact of his fall with her own body, even though she might have gotten out of it without being hurt at all, if she hadn't. Her love for Squirt almost certainly saved his life, and I'm selfish enough (and scared enough, if I'm being honest) that I don't think I want to risk jeopardizing that.

Is that very awful of me to say? Maybe. But if she's going to risk our lives with her recklessness, then I can't bring myself to feel too bad for wanting to make sure she remains willing to do what she must to protect Squirt, at least, from some of that danger.

In any case, I dug out one of the behir legs that we'd kept and gave it to Squirt, for being the very best boy ever, and then spent the rest of the hour that the spell lasts watching him play with it and telling him how wonderful he is and how much I love him.

Elyn had come back from Sending to Tyko by then, and before we packed up from our lunch and resumed traveling, she mentioned not wanting to take the mountain pass again, when it's time for us to return to Sunwest, which I wholeheartedly agreed with. And then she mentioned maybe flying back, and I-- well, I agreed with her, I said yes, we could do that, but she must've been able to hear in my voice how just the suggestion of it had my heart beating up into my throat, because she turned and fixed me with such a look, like she saw right through me. I told her it was fine, and she didn't believe me, and then said that I was going to have to fly eventually, at least on spaceships. I pointed out that, for the most part, ships operate beyond the dictates of gravity, and gravity was rather the problem. But also I'm not sure what the point is, if she knew that I was scared but trying not to be ruled by it, of answering that with further reasons why I shouldn't be ruled by it. I know I'm going to have to fly again, sooner or later. I didn't say no, I said it was fine, I said we could go home that way. I'm not sure what she was hoping to accomplish. If it was agreeing to fly home, I'd already done that. If it was not being anxious about doing so... Well, I don't know how telling me I was going to have to was supposed to help with that. But I also don't know that there's anything she can say, that'll help with that. What can you say, to make someone forget how it felt to fall hundreds of feet from the sky, how it felt to land, to feel their body break when they did so? None of them stayed conscious after they fell. They don't understand. I'm glad for it, for their sakes. I wouldn't wish that on them, not even Cloudleaper. But they don't understand.

I'll fly back to Sunwest, if Elyn doesn't insist on trying to spare me it. But she can't blame me for being anxious about it, can she?

Elyn changed the topic, then, to the elementals that maybe we'll meet, and reminded me that I've been wondering how I should introduce myself, when we do. Is it pretentious, or presumptuous, to introduce myself as Maliah Firetongue, even though (or maybe because) an elemental bestowed the name on me? Will I seem like I'm trying to brag about knowing Ignan, when it's really just that I'm still really moved and honored to have been given it in the first place? I don't know, and Elyn didn't seem to be sure either.

If this were the Feywild, it would be easy. One doesn't refuse gifts from the fey. But, a lot of things would be easier right now, if we were in the Feywild. Seeing you, for one.

Maybe I should just have Elyn make the introductions, like she always does, and then I won't have to worry about it, and any faux pas will be hers instead of mine.

We reached the village that night, after deciding it was worth pushing on a few more hours for the prospect of beds and baths and hot meals. They had to push a few beds together to make one big enough to fit Cloudleaper, but that was done easily enough, and in the morning Yavhiz'reen, the coworker of one of Elyn's parents, stopped by to meet with her. Thy talked about Elyn's parent mostly, of course, and a little about the work they'd been doing, and that Yavhiz'reen is doing still. The elemental who gave the tear that Elyn's earring is made from is a water elemental of a deep sea volcano, apparently. I haven't any idea if they're likely to be among the ones we're maybe going to meet, but I hope so, that sounds fascinating. We're going to meet up with Yavhiz'reen for lunch later, it sounds like, and then head over to the coast where the elementals are, and I'm sure I'll tell you all about it, once we have. Hopefully, it'll be much, much less eventful than the trip here has been. I've had enough excitement for a month, these past few days, I think. For several months.

I love you both, nenîth. I really hope that my next letter will be a happier one.

All my love,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

Something happened, but I can't write to you about it. I want to tell you about it, and I promise I will, but I can't write you about it, and I can't call yet, because these stupid IICDs that I paid all that money for don't, of course, work in formerly-undiscovered demiplanes.

Be patient with me, please. I'm not trying to hide anything from you, I promise. I just... can't.

So, we're traveling a few days from Sunwest to go see a former coworker of one of Elyn's parents, and maybe some elementals, and we camped last night just before we reached a high enough elevation that we'd be camping in snow. We were, I think, hoping to aviod having to camp in snow at all, but things didn't quite work out that way. I'm not quite sure how I feel about snow yet. Squirt seems to unequivocally love it, but his fur is also much better at keeping him warm and dry than my skin is. We hadn't been in the snow for more than an hour when out of nowhere, a burst of it suddenly exploded against a tree I was walking past, and I spun about, expecting... I'm not sure what. An attack of some sort, and I suppose I wasn't really that wrong, except that it had come from Elyn, who'd packed a handful of snow up until it held its shape, and then lobbed it at me. She explained the concept of a snowball fight to me, and that they were for fun, and so I made a snowball of my own and threw it at her. I missed her by a mile, but she laughed and ran off to find cover, only to poke her head out from behind it and hit me with another one, and then we were off.

Squirt had a good time chasing snowballs around, though he seemed rather bewildered by the concept of a thing that disappeared even if he caught it. And I-- well, I've got terrible aim with snowballs, it turns out, but I remembered a bit of magic I learned fairly recently. I've used it in fights before, to turn a single fired arrow into a whole hailstorm of them, battering across a wide stretch of ground, and-- well, it turns out the magic works just as well on snowballs as it does on arrows. I managed to land a few hits on both Elyn and Cloudleaper, that way, and Squirt was near beside himself with delight at the number of snowballs he had to chase, but those were the only hits I landed on either of them at all. Elyn tried to tell me that snowballs are a lot like darts, but I think that's spoken like someone who's never fired a bow. Darts are much more like arrows, and snowballs are much harder to aim than either of them are.

Elyn taught me to make snow angels, too, which I think is just an excuse kids make up to flail about in the snow. They certainly seem better appreciated from someone with Cloudleaper's height, though once I climbed up onto Squirt's back to look at them, I understood them a little better.

Eventually we stopped playing and continued travelling, and eventually Elyn, who was walking behind me with Cloudleaper as I led the way, commented that my bow was glowing, which seemed alarming at first, as it's never done that before and I hadn't any idea what it might mean. Elyn looked it over, and cast Identify on it like she had when we first found it, and said she thought it was just part of the enchantment, and part of the bow's affinity for dealing cold damage. That was reassuring enough that I was able to appreciate the glowing for how lovely it was, all the patterns of the inlays shining blue and purple. I'm going to have to remember to write to HASAI about it, and ask if it was intended to do that or if it's just a lovely side-effect.

We continued on, with me mostly scouting ahead, until I found a spot on the mountain that opened up into a steep crevasse, forcing us either to climb up one side of it or to take the path through it and hope that there weren't any other creatures who had also decided that that way looked like easy going and a handy shelter. When I got a little closer, I saw tracks in the snow winding from side to side, like a snake, but more massive than any snake I've ever seen. I went back to tell the others, and to present the choices, and we dithered over it for a few minutes, but Elyn has been having a hard time with the altitude and the thin air that I don't think any of us liked the odds of her trying to climb, when just walking is already leaving her breathless.

I scouted ahead a little bit further, to see if I could get any better of a sense of what sort of creature it might have been, and how long ago it had passed through, but Elyn was understandably nervous about me getting too far ahead of them, after-- well, after that thing I'm not writing to you about.

In any case, it hampered my ability to get much of a sense of what had made the tracks, without also leading them right into the middle of the danger. It meant that they were all right there with me when I saw the claw marks leading up to a ledge on the side of the crevasse walls overhead, and realized that claw marks and a snake-like trail probably meant a behir, and it was just as I had that revelation that I noticed it up there on the ledge, watching us.

Elyn used the flute she got from Aluarashi to cast Dissonant Whispers at the thing and it fled from her out of sight, which gave me just enough of a chance to warn everyone not to use lightning against it, and to be wary of its breath, and to try not to get swallowed, and to scramble over to the other side of the crevasse floor, where I'd have a slightly better vantage of that ledge, and to try to cover everyone in case it came back. Which, of course, it did.

We were all, I think, extremely on-edge and wary after the last creature we encountered in these mountains, and so we threw everything we had at it the instant it reappeared and climbed down toward us. Elyn cast Shatter, and Squirt ran in to bite it, and Cloudleaper hit it with her sword so hard that it stunned the thing for a moment, and before it managed to really recover itself, Cloudleaper had set her sword alight and plunged it in next to one of my arrows, and I aimed another there that buried itself up to its fletching and cracked the behir's ribs open, and it fell over dead before it had even managed to scratch any one of us. Which, honestly, was a relief after the other day.

I harvested some scales and teeth and claws from it while Elyn caught her breath, and then I mentioned that it looked like it had scars from spells on its hide, and that given that it had still been alive to attack us, that probably didn't bode well for the fate of whoever had given them to it, so Cloudleaper and I climbed up to the ledge to look around in the cave it had been living in -- or, well, Cloudleaper carried me up, because I very quickly realized that my gloves are not up to the task of climbing freezing-cold, snow-covered rock, and my fingers almost immediately went numb and I lost my grip -- and we ventured into the cave together, where we found a small collection of belongings, which we looked through with Elyn's help with the Gnomish, and found a name, so we can at least maybe pass news of their fate, as well as the creature's demise, on to any relations who might be missing them and wondering about them.

Elyn spent much of the rest of the evening Identifying the person's belongings -- there were a number of interesting and potentially very useful things, but obviously we're not going to pilfer the belongings of a dead person, not without trying to return them to their family first -- and then Cloudleaper, who'd been unusually quiet all day, I thought just because I'd yelled at her the other day (that's part of the thing I can't write to you about. Sorry), suddenly spoke up and asked if-- If I'd really said a thing I'd said, that day.

I don't know how much sense any of this is going to make, until I can call you and tell you everything that I can't here. But it turns out there's a whole minutes-long stretch of that day that she has no recollection of, and I haven't any idea what that means. She said she hasn't felt quite like herself, either, and Elyn tried both Lesser Restoration and Countercharm, which it sounds like maybe helped a small amount, but didn't really fix anything. Elyn suggested she try asking Bahamut, since they seem close, and I felt helpless enough that I lit some of my incense and left it near her, just in case it might help somehow, and now I've just been writing to you, and worrying. Elyn suggested the memory loss might have been from getting hit in the head one too many times, but I don't know. If it were just that, healing should have helped, shouldn't it? Or Elyn's magic. I don't know what it means, for her or for us, if she's forgetting making momentous decisions, and whole conversations. I don't know what sort of thing might do that to a person, or why.

I'm hoping that we'll reach Elyn's contact and the maybe-elementals tomorrow, but we'll see. Everything here seems to keep taking much longer than it should.

I love you both. I'm sorry if this letter has been frustrating, or confusing, or worrying. Hopefully  I'll already have called you by the time you've made it through all the others to this one, and all my apologizing will be for naught.

I'll write you again when I can, hopefully with happier and less-cryptic news.

All my love,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Dear Bizza,

I can't write to my moms.

Oh, this is a terrible thing to throw at you, especially without warning. But I can't write to my moms, not about this, and I can't-- I can't not write to someone. I think I'll burst, if I don't. Or start crying again, and maybe never stop.

I nearly died today.

I say that like I haven't faced death before, but... I haven't, really. Not like this. We've had fights, Elyn and Cloudleaper and I, or Elyn and Pika and I, where I've gone unconscious before, and with the balhannoth, when it had both of them and I didn't think I was going to be able to save them, I knew with a dreadful certainty that if they died, I wouldn't be far behind them. But today... Today was different.

We're on a different plane, and there's so much to tell you there, but it's going to have to wait for later. We're on a different plane, on a gnomish planet, and we've been cooped up in a hotel for days and days, so when the prospect of meeting someone a few days' walk away came up, we all jumped at the opportunity. Well, Cloudleaper and I did, I think Elyn would have been very glad to take some form of transport, but offered the prospect of a walk as a gift to Cloudleaper and me, because she knew were were both going stir crazy.

It was fine, for the first couple days. We got to stretch our legs beneath the forest canopy, and I threw sticks for Squirt, and it was really lovely. And then, as we headed up into the mountains, I was scouting ahead and I saw an enormous bird wheeling overhead, hunting, and-- well, it's so hard to tell size and distance against a clear, featureless sky, but I was sure it was massive. Big enough to think Elyn and I looked like tasty snacks, certainly. Big enough to eat Cloudleaper down too, probably. So I crept back to the others as quietly as I could and dragged them under the cover of the nearest tree and warned them about what I'd seen, and that we should be cautious. And Cloudleaper...

Cloudleaper decided she wanted to ride it.

I don't... I don't know what she was thinking. I can't comprehend it. Even if I'd been wrong about the size of it, even if it hadn't been hungry... What could she possible have thought would come of it? That a wild creature would see a woman halfway up a tree, shouting out to it, and it would think... What? 'I bet that strange creature is friendly, I should let it climb on my back'?

It's so disrespectful. If I'd had the chance, before everything went wrong, I was going to tell her so, but I never had the opportunity. After -- I think it was after, but everything's turned into a jumbled haze of pain and fear and crushing grief -- Cloudleaper scolded me, said that not everything was out to kill me, like I was some child jumping at shadows. If I'd had the presence of mind, I would have answered her -- no. Of course not. But that doesn't mean that those who aren't don't deserve to be treated with respect, and allowed to live their lives without me inserting myself into them. Sometimes it's necessary, of course it is. And when it is, they're to be approached with deference, and the request made as politely as possible, and a refusal honored and respected.

I don't know what she thought a wild cry and flung-wide arms was going to get her, I really don't. I don't know how she could have thought it might be taken as anything but a threat display. At best, she would've just frightened it off. More likely, she would've provoked it into defending itself.

Or it could've turned out to be a roc, three times the size of that balhannoth, more than twice the size of the dragon we fought under the ruins on Hangi Syr, and it could've decided that the adorable little creature hollering at it with open arms looked like an inviting snack to help tide it over while it hunted for a proper breakfast.

I'm sure you can guess how this actually turned out.

Elyn and I had scrambled up the tree after Cloudleaper, hoping... I don't even know what. To save her from herself, I suppose. The roc immediately wheeled about toward us, and in an instant it had covered the distance between us and it, and was sweeping down into a dive. And I did maybe the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life -- I stepped out where it could see me and I shot at it, hoping I might distract it from Cloudleaper, might give her a moment's opportunity to realize her mistake and get out of its way. And, well, it worked. I certainly distracted it, because it snatched me up in its talons instead of her, and flew off with me.

Even that first blow hurt terribly, laid me open and had me bleeding in its claws. Of course it did, it's a thirty foot bird, and I'm just a little three-foot-nothing halfling. But with every beat of its wings, its talons drove deeper into me, and it carried me up higher into the sky, farther away from any help my friends might be able to give me, and I knew. I knew I was going to die. I could barely breathe, I was hurt so badly, and I was hurt worse but bleeding less, and we were so far above the trees. If I stayed and kept trying to fight it, it was going to pierce me clean through. If I escaped from its grasp -- if I could even manage that in the first place -- the fall would kill me just as surely.

I managed to get one hand into the bag of holding, and I pulled out the strongest healing potion I had, and gulped it down, and prayed as I twisted in the roc's grip, and managed to slip free, and started to fall.

I heard Elyn, at some point in all this, heard her music, heard her shout, and I felt the spark of her magic in me, closing my wounds, just a fraction.

She saved my life. When I hit -- oh gods, I heard my bones break, I heard so many of them break. I felt it. I'd have screamed, if there had been any breath in my lungs at all. Darkness closed in on me, but I fought it back, barely. By the very narrowest of margins. I closed my hand around the second my strongest potions -- I don't know how, I don't know how I was able to move, at that point -- and managed to drink it, and--

I'll spare you all of the detailed ways that the sudden healing of a dozen broken bones is even worse than the breaking of them. Just trust me when I say that it is. But at least I was able to drag myself to my feet and stagger after the roc, who, when it found that I had slipped its grasp, had apparently decided to go for the nearest alternative instead, which happened to be Squirt.

I knew what he was suffering in that roc's claws, all too well. And it just kept flying, higher and higher, and then suddenly Elyn and Cloudleaper were on its back, and I was still on the forest floor, racing after it and firing arrows, screaming threats if it ate my dog, but it was so fast, and my legs are so short.

I'm told Elyn was the one who killed it, in the end. All I knew was that I saw it convulse, and then I saw it start to plummet.

I screamed, and dragged the wand of healing out of my bag as I ran, because I knew, I knew, it was such a massive bird, and they'd been so high, hundreds of feet in the air at least.

I got there and it was terrible. The bird was dead, and Elyn had landed not too far from it, not moving, bloody, and Cloudleaper and Squirt were pinned underneath it, not moving either. I poured every charge that I dared out of the wand and into them, and Elyn came awake, gasping and coughing, and I fell to my knees next to the roc and shoved at it, calling for Squirt and crying and so, so afraid.

I got him out, eventually, and he was okay. Well, he was the farthest thing from okay, he was covered in blood, just absolutely drenched in it, and I could tell by how he was moving that he was hurting so badly. But Elyn staggered over to all of us and poured healing into us, huge amounts of it, twice, which says a lot about how terrible we were all looking at that point.

It got me feeling better enough to look over at Cloudleaper, from where I was still on my knees with my arms thrown around Squirt's neck, sobbing into his fur, and demand to know what she'd been thinking, why she would do something like that.

Cloudleaper answered me in some language I don't know, that I'm not sure I've ever heard her speak before, and it was enough to make Elyn look concerned. Elyn said something about thinking that Cloudleaper had been afraid that Squirt was badly injured enough that the fall would have killed him, not just knocked him unconscious but killed him outright, and-- Gods. Obviously. A thirty foot bird landed on top of him, and he's not even fully grown yet. Of course it could've killed him.

Would have killed him, it sounds like, if Cloudleaper hadn't crawled around the roc as it fell and put herself beneath him to cushion the blow. I don't think she would have lost consciousness if she hadn't, I've seen her fall from some terrible heights and not miss a stride, and of course I'm grateful for it, of course I'm grateful that Squirt is alive, I can't breathe and I start crying all over again when I think about how close a thing it was, but I'm-- I'm mad, I'm so mad that it came to that at all. It never should have. My dog almost died, I almost died, on a demiplane so far from home with no way even to let my moms know, because Cloudleaper... Because Cloudleaper has no sense at all, because she was bored and reckless and she ignored every warning I tried to give her. Because she thought it would be fun to ride a bird, and gave no thought to a single other thing besides that. And I was stupid enough to try to save her from her own foolishness.

Well, she got to ride it after all. I hope it was as fun as she imagined. I hope it was worth the cost Squirt and I nearly paid, for her few moments of entertainment.

Next time I think maybe I should just let her get herself killed. If she's so desperate to throw her life away on a whim, who am I to gainsay her? Pika would have serious words with me, I'm sure, and we'd have to break poor Stormflight's heart with the news, but at least my moms wouldn't have to hear that their daughter was made a roc's breakfast because someone in her party was bored one day.

This feels like too much to put on you. I'm sorry if this is upsetting to you. But I can't say this to my moms, I can't. Not in a letter. And I thought-- Well. I thought, you know a little of what it's like to nearly die because of someone else's thoughtlessness. I thought maybe I could tell you that I want to cry, and I want to scream, and you'd understand why.

But maybe this is going to open wounds that ought to be healing, instead. Maybe I've only hurt you. I hope I haven't. I'm sorry. You said we could talk to you if we needed to, the last time we were there, and I don't think you quite meant about something like this, but. I don't know who else I could say all this to.

Maybe I'll delete this in a couple days, before we ever get back to the prime material plane. I don't know.

I hope everything is well with you! Tell me everything that's been happening on Sumula Station. As long as nobody's died, or nearly died, I don't think I could bear that right now. But I'd love to hear all the gossip, and about any weird customers you've had, and if you've come up with any new flavors for your crepes. The next time we're on the station, I'll tell you about some of the food we've had here, it's been like nothing I've ever tasted before. Maybe you could make a crepe inspired by it!

Thank you for listening to me.

All my best,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Dear Athan,

Well. I did promise you, all those months ago now, that I'd tell you about any interesting gossip or information we encountered in our travels, and I've got a doozy for you. You're going to be the first person on the plane to know about this, once we get back to a place where our IICDs have signal again. Well, I guess the second, since I suppose the letters to my moms will probably go out a few fractions of a nanosecond before this one will.

Maybe third, depending on how quickly Elyn's letters go out. But still! Third person in the whole plane, that's nothing to sneeze at.

The thing is, we've found a demi-plane, with a whole planet full of gnomes who've been out of contact with the Prime Material Plane for maybe as much as a thousand years or more. I'm not sure when exactly they went through the godsfall that led them here, but the ship took flight ten or twelve or maybe even as many as fifteen centuries ago. They found their way here and settled, because they'd been looking for a new home anyway, and didn't realize until later that the lack of communication with everyone else wasn't because of the vast distances that messages were having to travel, but because they'd ended up in another plane entirely.

It's so nice to be in a place again that's designed for people my and Elyn's height, instead of for humans and the like, though Cloudleaper's struggling to adjust a bit. (Elyn and I are maybe a little bit exasperated about that, when she especially has spent her whole life on a planet built to elven scale.) All the tables are the right height! We can sit in chairs while our feet still touch the floor! Of course, the predominant language everyone speaks here is Gnomish, so I'm a little at sea on that front, but most people know at least some Common, and when things do risk getting lost in translation, Elyn's been really great about casting Tongues on me so that I can understand people and they can understand me. We watched some Kirimi romcoms with Archmage Zebari that way, and my goodness, they were something else. I kept expecting the plots to zig, only for them to zag!

I imagine scholars back home will have all sorts of interesting and clever things to say about the differences in their storytelling traditions, with all of these hundreds and thousands of years they've had in which to diverge. Maybe Gaizka can forward some on to us once they start being published. I think that's how academia works, anyway. I'm a little afraid to ask anyone out loud, lest Cloudleaper overhear. She's got very fervid opinions about academia and not a lot of leeway within them for cultural differences. She practically terrorized a poor shopkeeper back on Sumula Station over the dangers of cloak-wearing, even though they had demonstrably managed to not burn their university down all the same.

Anyway, the point is -- a whole planet of people who've been entirely out of contact with the Prime Material Plane until now! It seemed the sort of thing you'd like to know about. It sounds like Gaizka is working with the mayor of the city we've ended up in, to come up with some way of putting them back in contact with the Prime Material Plane, if not to actually enable them to travel back and forth, so I don't expect it's going to be long before just about everyone knows about it. But I figured the least I could do after everything you've done for me and for us is to give you a head start. There's more to say, but a lot of it is Elyn's to decide whether or not it's said in the first place, so I shall probably check with her before I go and tell you about any of that. Then again, who knows how long it'll be before we've got IICD signal again, I'll probably have an answer from her long before this letter is sent, and I can come back and edit it, if she's all right with it, and you'll never read this part at all.

Speaking of all the help you've been to me, though! I've been practicing on opening locks with all the tricks you taught me the last time we were on Mir, and I've gotten a lot better at it. I've still ended up covered in glitter a time or to, two Cloudleaper's delight, but I'm getting them open more often than I'm not, these days, even if I do have to spend a long time puzzling over them. I'm going to have to see if I can find some even harder practice locks, once we're back on the Prime Material Plane, so I can keep improving.

Before we left for this demi-plane, we were on Nellaser's Landing and competed in the Commemoration of Grace. I've been keeping in mind what you taught me, and in one of the fights it was like it all clicked and I was able to see just what you'd been telling me about, about how I could take advantage of an opponent's lapsed attention to make my arrows strike a little harder, and a little more strategically aimed. It worked beautifully, and we ended up winning the whole competition! Not solely because of the lessons you gave me, but I daresay they helped. So thank you for that, again. I wish you could've seen it, I think I'd have done you proud. I hope I did.

...On second thought, I've just remembered that Pika sent Elyn and I a clip of Cloudleaper at the end of the last fight, with some choice words for us about it, so you probably can see it after all. I imagine you know how to get your hands on that footage better than I do.

I hope everything is going well for you and Kian and everyone else there on Mir! Tell everyone we said hi, if you don't mind. Hopefully it won't be so long before we're able to come back and say hi ourselves, especially now that Elyn's stocked up on supplies for casting Teleportation Circle. 

All my best,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

Well, here I am again, in a situation where I haven't the faintest idea how long it'll be before you're able to read this letter. Fancy IICD that'll keep signal even in the outer planes are great, but it turns out they don't work so well in demi-planes that no one even knew existed, much less were inhabited.

I hope you'll get this soon. I hope you don't worry too much about me, until you do.

I really hope that there aren't any time dilation effects when we come out of this plane. I don't think there will be -- it doesn't sound like there was, like Elyn is particularly older or younger than the people here expect her to be -- but, well. You know.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. The new version of Archmage Zebari's spell worked, as I imagine you'll have guessed by now, considering all the talk about demi-planes and such -- though the first time, it only sort of worked, and took us to the wreckage of the Wrath of Procyon, in the ocean on Sestrilles, and we all ended up having an unexpected dinner with Elyn's family before we returned to Nellaser's Landing and Elyn and Zebari tried again.

This time it worked, and we found ourselves standing in the middle of a street full of gnomes, being gaped at by those who'd noticed our arrival -- I'm not sure whether it was because of our sudden appearance, or because of Zebari and Cloudleaper being so much taller than anyone else around, though given the reactions that they've gotten since, I suspect it was in large part the latter.

Elyn spoke with someone near us, who directed us to the city guard, who turned an alarming shade of white when Elyn introduced herself as Elyn of Procyon, and then-- Well. It's been a bit of a whirl, since then.

The Blaze of Shadai was a gnomish generation ship, setting out to find a new home, that passed through a godsfall into this demi-plane without realizing it, and settled on a planet there they've named Kirim, and only much later realized that they were on a different plane at all. They built the Wrath of Procyon as an exploratory ship, to try to find a way back to the Prime Material Plane, and have had no word of it since not long after Elyn was born, until now.

Poor Elyn seems very overwhelmed, and I only know of it what she's told us, since everyone here defaults to speaking Gnomish, for obvious reasons. But she met her grandmother yesterday, who she's named after, and today had lunch with her grandmother and an aunt, and-- well, I shoved my foot in my mouth last night, because I said something how we were having lunch with her family today, and she got this horrible, guilty look on her face and very gingerly said that she thought she'd want to go by herself, and I about swallowed my tongue.

I think she thought she'd insulted me, or hurt my feelings, by not wanting me there, but it wasn't that. I told her that of course that was fine, and that if she found herself needing a rescue or a friend or anything that she had only to let me know and I'd be there, and she said she'd Send to me if she did, and then I looked at the map of the city that I had, to make sure that I knew where to go if I needed to, and realized it was maybe as much as an hour's walk away, and the bottom about fell out of my stomach at how far away I'd be, if she needed me.

I said as much, and Elyn asked me exactly what sort of a rescue I thought she was going to need, like she thought maybe I was afraid she'd be attacked or something. Honestly, I'd worry less for her, if that's what I was worried about. I know she can hold her own in a fight.

Do you remember the first time you took me to Cadiz Beta? I was so excited to see somewhere new, and then we stepped through the jump ring and the noise of it about knocked me off my feet, and I think I might have turned around and stepped right back through if you hadn't each been holding my hand. And once we got to where we were staying it was better, it wasn't a whole city full of people bustling about and being noisy, but it was worse, too, because it was full of strangers who smiled at me and talked to me like they knew me. And you both smiled back at them, and spoke to them the same way, and I was surrounded by more people than ever before in my life, and I'd never felt so alone.

Did I ever tell you about that first day, when you both went into the city to give your documents to the council, and I was alone in the house? Aunt Vani came over, and brought Lidda with her, thinking I'd like someone my own age to play with, and almost the first thing Lidda said to me, after the introductions, was that she was so glad to finally meet me and she just knew we were going to be fast friends, and all at once I felt like I was suffocating.

I remember you climbing up after me, Cylla, into that big tree in the backyard, once you got back to the house. I don't remember if I ever managed to tell you why I'd hid there in the first place, in between clutching at you and weeping on your shoulder. I got the impression, afterwards, that you two thought it was because I was missing all the greenery of the Feywild, but it wasn't that. It wasn't only that.

It's not the same, of course. I know it isn't. Elyn’s wanted this her whole life, has been searching so hard for just this. But even so. I wanted to go to Cadiz Beta and meet my family, too, and was unprepared for how overwhelming the reality of it was going to be. I was up in that tree for hours before you and Darna got home and you came up after me, and the thought of Elyn finding herself similarly overwhelmed and needing a familiar face and me being an hour away from her was so horrifying to me. I didn't do a very good job of saying so, though, and so I don't think Elyn understood why, when she tried to reassure me by saying that if she needed to escape she could just Dimension Door away and hide somewhere, it was the opposite of comforting.

Eventually, she pointed out that the city hall was more or less halfway between where we were staying and her grandmother’s house, and so maybe I could ask Zebari if I could be any assistance to them there, and then I'd at least be closer, if Elyn needed me. It was better than nothing, so I went to ask Zebari, or to offer. Cloudleaper went with me to offer her services as well, and they seemed glad for the offer, and said that Cloudleaper’s scientific expertise could be helpful, as well as my expertise with interplanar travel.

I don't know how I ever gave them the impression that I have anything like expertise in interplanar travel. Just because I grew up in the Feywild, and got sent to a pocket dimension once. When I said as much today, they said I had more experience than anyone else in the plane in finding myself thrown into l unfamiliar and disorienting places, and in adapting to it, and I suppose that's fair enough, but—

The whole plane, nenîth. How did leaving home to keep you and Squirt safe turn into having more experience than anyone on the entire plane? At anything? Even if it is just a demi-plane.

I don't know what good being the plane’s expert at being disoriented but pushing through it is going to do, though. The best advice I had for Devon when he felt overwhelmed on Nosirion-1 was to pretend like he didn't speak the language. That's not very good advice to start with, I really only meant it to make him laugh. And it won't even work for these people, as Elyn seems perfectly capable of understanding their Gnomish, so anyone else on the Prime Material Plane who knows the language would, too. Surely there must be people somewhere who have handled being thrown into unfamiliar places with more grace than I have. But if I'm the best the people of this plane have available to them... I suppose I can at least try to help them avoid repeating my mistakes.

Advice #1: Don't hide up a tree until your moms come and find you, at least not if you don't want the person you're hiding from to decide you hate them for no good reason and be weird with you for the rest of your visit.

I wish I could ask your advice, but unless Cernunnos takes interest in our connection again, I don't expect I will until we're back on our plane again. I wish I knew when that would be. It didn't occur to me until we were here to ask Elyn if she planned on staying. She says she doesn't, but I'm not sure how long she'll want to be here before we head back. It's not as though she's going to spend her entire life searching for these people, and then have a nice lunch with them and turn around and go home.

I'll keep writing to you, in the meantime. Sorry in advance for the deluge you're going to get, once my IICD has signal again.

All my love,

maliah

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

...sorry about the abruptness of my last letter. I'm sure it must have alarmed you, but, well. Things looked like they were going to be moving quickly, and I knew I couldn't potentially leave for another plane without even letting you know.

Of course, then it ended up not working and we didn't go anywhere at all, but -- well, you've seen both those letters, but you deserve a proper apology for it all the same.

We've been on Nellaser's Landing for about a week now. The first couple days I mostly spent working on my more difficult practice locks -- and I spent a few of them covered in glitter after failing to disarm their traps, which caused Cloudleaper no small amount of delight -- while Elyn ran around to the library and the university, doing her own research and meeting with people who might be able to help her in her search for more information about her family and their ship and her own history.

And then we met with Archmage Zebari, of all people, who Elyn's series of librarians and researchers led us to, and who seems eager to help, or at least fascinated by the mystery Elyn's presented them, and who's the reason for my last-minute scramble to send that letter, because they offered to cast a spell on Elyn's earring that would take us to the plane it originated from, and I think if we hadn't all asked in a half-panic if we could have a few hours to gather our things and send our letters, they might have just whisked us off to another plane right then and there.

So we packed, and wrote our letters, and returned, and then it turned out that I worried you for no reason at all, because it didn't work. I can't say I entirely understand the reason why, but it sounds like it's because it likely originated from something more like a pocket dimension, like the Twilight of Cinders, than in an entirely separate plane of existence. So they said they thought they could work out a new version of the spell that would work in the way we need it to, and asked us to give them some time to do so, and of course we agreed. And in the meantime, it had been suggested to us that we consider participating in the Commemoration of Grace, which we were told was a tournament of some renown and might prove a bit of an entertaining diversion while we waited. We were given the name of the tournament's organizer, a woman named Myali Mosha who has six enormous cats, each nearly as big as Squirt and very friendly. She explained the tournament to us in a bit more detail, and walked us through the process of signing up, since we'd decided we were interested in participating. It was five rounds, with half the field eliminated in each round, and a nice combination of tests of both skill and combat, all of which take place in microgravity.

For the first round, teams were paired up and pitted against one another. We fought a team of three named Victorious Red, and-- well. We were told it was a competition of some renown, and I assumed we would be facing teams stronger than us, or at least on par with us. But when the first round started, I found an obstacle to take cover behind, and shot an arrow at their archer, and it wasn't even that good a hit, but it still knocked him unconscious and sent him drifting, and I may have given a little yelp of shock to see it. I was more than a little horrified at myself, but there was nothing for it, and in the end we defeated them easily enough that I felt badly over it -- though Elyn was hurt more than any of the rest of us, and hurt badly enough that if she'd taken those same blows before she had her new amulet, I may well have had to tip a healing potion down her throat to get her back on her feet.

Cloudleaper was, I think, even more horrified than I was, and left the arena sobbing about how the other team were babies, which doesn't seem fair. I'm pretty sure elves think that anyone younger than them is a baby, and when one lives as long as elves do, that's pretty much everyone. I hissed at her that she was going to insult them if they heard her saying so, but managed to resist the urge to point out that if Cloudleaper thought the other teams were babies, then what must she think of me. Even Elyn, it turns out, who I've always thought of as close in age to me, is more like twice as old as I am. When she was asking one of the librarians about godsfalls the other day that the Wrath of Procyon might have come through before it crashed on Sestrilles, she asked specifically about ones that might have happened about fifty years ago, and it's a good thing I was standing a little behind her where she couldn't see me, because my jaw about hit the floor, and I didn't manage to pick it back up for a solid minute.

Our second challenge was the same day as the first, with a few hours between for us to all rest and catch our breath, and it was an obstacle course, with an added complication of a glowing sphere that each team was given, and could steal from one another, and any team that passed the finish line with two spheres was guaranteed a spot in the next round, or if several teams passed with one sphere each, then the fastest team would continue on.

The course was a challenge, filled with magical as well as mundane obstacles. We gave our sphere to Squirt, figuring that if someone got too near to stealing it from him, he could blink away and have a better chance of keeping it than any of the rest of us. And partway through the course I managed to hide from the team just behind us, and snatch their sphere away while they weren't paying attention, and then Elyn in her brilliance cast Greater Invisibility on me.

It was frustrating, a little, having to try to keep to the edges of the rooms we found ourselves in, instead of forging straight ahead like I'd normally want to do, so as to keep any of the other teams from running into me and realizing what we were doing. But it was certainly nothing like my horror from the task before, and it was a fun and challenging challenge, and somehow we managed to win it, though the other teams did give us a run for our money.

The second challenge marked the end of the first day, and so we all returned to our rooms or homes, and Elyn and I did what we could to reassure Cloudleaper, though she seemed to have enjoyed the obstacle course better than the fighting, at least. The next day brought with it the third challenge, another test of our skills instead of our fighting prowess, this time in the form of a maze that took excellent advantage of the microgravity environment. We had five minutes to find our way through it, and Elyn and Cloudleaper both deferred to me as far as navigating the maze went, which I was glad for. I focused on leading us through the maze before us, and let them deal with any of the other teams who might want to sabotage us, or any obstacles we might encounter in the maze (I'm told that there were a few, though I was so focused on finding our way that I took little notice of any of them), and I managed to get us through with nearly a minute left of the five allotted to us.

The exit was up a long overhead tunnel, and Elyn was sure that the walls were electrified, so she quickly grabbed one end of one of our ropes and instructed Cloudleaper to throw her up to it, which she did with quite a lot of glee. Squirt blinked up beside her, and Cloudleaper and I scrambled up the rope with relative ease, and made it out of the maze mere moments before the team behind us burst through.

The second round of the day, and second-to-last, was another fight, this time between the four teams remaining, with the final two progressing to the last round the following day. There was us, and a group of five named Thorn Lamp, who had two bards, a magic user of some sort we weren't sure of, and two warriors; a group of two named Mercurial Decay; and a group of four half-elves named Iron Fox Artifice.

We had a little longer to strategize before the round, though it still felt like half an instant. We decided to focus on Thorn Lamp first, being that they were the largest group, and likely the other teams would be an aid in helping to wear them down. Better, we figured, to find the three of us facing alone a group of two than a group of five.

It was maybe not the best plan, because wars of attrition against greater numbers, it turns out, take much longer than they would against smaller. It was a rogue fight, and honestly, I rather hated it, though not for the same reasons that I did our fight against Victorious Red. I started off by casting one of my newer spells, Conjure Barrage, while everyone was mostly clumped together and hadn't yet had the chance to scramble for the obstacles and barriers that would help to provide cover, but it did rather put a target on my back, which normally I'd be fine with -- better that people direct their attacks at me than at Elyn -- except that there was an illusionist on another team who cast some sort of magic on me, though I didn't know it in the moment. All I knew was that suddenly I looked up and the Queen of Air and Darkness was standing there in the middle of the combat field, staring at me and pointing at me, and Squirt was all the way on the other side of the room from me where I couldn't protect him and -- well, honestly, my first reaction was terror, and I scrambled over a barricade and ducked behind it, out of sight, and I'd have been quaking in my boots if I'd been standing on solid ground instead of floating in microgravity. But a moment later my thoughts turned to Squirt, and as terrified as I was, I came up over the barricade and shot at her, sent an arrow flying straight at the Queen of Air and Darkness, and I hit her, and... it seemed to do nothing. It didn't leave a mark, it wasn't lodged there where it had struck, it just vanished, and that was enough of a jolt to knock some of my wits back into me, and I realized that it must just be an illusion, it had to be, why would the Queen of Air and Darkness suddenly be here on Nellaser's Landing. And if she were, why would she come into the middle of a tournament to come after me, when she could just as easily wait until there were far fewer eyes upon us, and I didn't have my weapon in my hand and my friends at my back.

By the time I'd regained control of myself, there was hardly anyone I could even see out in front of me, everyone wisely taking cover out of direct line of sight. I pushed off of the wall I'd hidden behind to try to get to the other side of the room and see if I could find anyone, but I'd scarcely managed to do so when all of the sudden my vision went black and I couldn't see anything at all. Another spell from the illusionist, I learned later, and a highly effective one if their aim was stopping me. I heard the sound of Elyn casting Shatter and was just about to fire in the direction it had come from, in the hopes that I might get lucky and hit whoever she'd caught in her spell, but before I could loose the arrow someone was shouting their surrender, and it turned out one of the other teams had also been eliminated, and so the round was done, and I felt as though I had been mostly useless -- though my frustration was somewhat eased by one of the members of Thorn Lamp, who turned out to be a weretiger and who had been tangled up with Squirt for most of the fight, and who, as soon as he'd called out their surrender and the fighting was done, immediately starting lavishing Squirt with all sorts of effusive praise about what a good boy he was and what a good job he'd done, which obviously cheered me up and made me like him very much.

And so we had until the next morning to rest again before our final fight, this time between just us and Mercurial Decay, who had been the other team left standing. We went out for drinks with some of the others -- Elyn keeps promising them to everyone we fight, and she seemed confident in her ability to use Lesser Restoration to get rid of any hangovers we might be suffering in the morning.

For the last round, we had a whole minute to strategize, and then a few seconds in the arena to position ourselves before the fighting began. We decided that Cloudleaper and I would try to focus our attentions on the mage, while Elyn tried to keep the drow occupied with Irresistible Dance.

It wasn't anywhere near as frustrating a fight as the battle royale had been, though they certainly gave us a run for their money. The mage is a conjuration specialist, and used it to great effect, and between that and the ample hiding places that the arena itself provided, the hard part wasn't the fighting so much as it was getting and keeping them in our sights.

I should have strategized for that better, I suppose. It took me about half the fight to realize how the barriers of the arena were getting in our way. There's so much more to think about and keep track of in microgravity than there is ordinarily, not just the possibility of hiding behind things, but of hiding above or below them as well. But I caught on eventually, and figured that if Elyn and Squirt kept their focus on the middle of the arena, Cloudleaper and I could each take the low and high ground, and between all our vantages Mercurial Decay would have far fewer places where they could hide. I shouted as much to Cloudleaper -- in Sylvan, figuring it'd be the least likely of the languages we have in common for someone else to know, but it turns out Rihaila speaks Sylvan and so understood what we were intending immediately -- telling her to go low, and I'll go high, and I pushed myself off of the nearest barrier, up to the top of the arena, where I could look down and see over most of the places that they might have been hiding behind or on top of.

Cloudleaper must've either misunderstood my suggestion, or liked punching too much to give it up in favor of her bow, because instead of going down to the bottom of the arena, she only just looked underneath the Darkness-shrouded platform in the arena's middle that she'd been trying to find and fight one of the others on. It might have turned out better if she'd heeded, or understood, my suggestion, because she ended up punching Rihaila unconscious twice, and she sobbed through it the entire time and seemed incredibly distressed, even once I'd taken down the drow with my arrow and we'd officially won the Commemoration of Grace, and Elyn had cast Mass Cure Wounds to heal all of us, including Mercurial Decay. Rihaila mostly seemed bewildered and confused to wake up with Cloudleaper clutching her and sobbing about having signed a waiver, and the drow, Ekaitz, seemed like he'd had a grand time even if they'd lost, but there was really no consoling Cloudleaper or reassuring her, from us or them, that they had known what they were getting into when they'd decided to join in, and that they'd enjoyed themselves and were incredibly proud of themselves for having gotten as far as they did. Cloudleaper just kept calling herself a bully with one breath, and then wailing about the waivers with the next, and ultimately we sent her off with one of Miyali Mosha's cats to cuddle with, and Elyn and Squirt and I accepted our award without her. Which, I suppose, solves the problem of the risk of Cloudleaper potentially being recognized by someone, somewhere, but not in a way I think any of us liked.

I don't really understand Cloudleaper's distress, I guess. Elyn seems to have loved it from start to finish, and to be glad to have had the opportunity for the adrenaline rush of a fight without the fear of anyone dying, and I enjoyed it well enough, and would have even more so if that battle royale hadn't been so frustrating and made me feel so useless. But I get the sense that Cloudleaper would've rather been back fighting the balhannoth, and-- no, I don't understand that at all. I felt useless then, too, but I also thought I was going to watch my friends die in front of me, horribly, and then follow suit myself soon after. It was terrible. I'd as soon never have to experience that again in my life. The Commemoration of Grace was fun, even when I was frustrated by the illusionist, or stunned and taken aback by having knocked Victorious Red's archer out with a single arrow. It was a nice change of pace, knowing that the worst we faced if we failed was the disappointment of having been eliminated.

Not for Cloudleaper, I guess. The more I get to know her, the less I understand her. I just wish I knew what I could do to reassure or comfort her. We made plans to have brunch with Mercurial Decay tomorrow, and perhaps they'll be able to do a better job of it than Elyn and I have.

And beyond that... I suppose are plans are rather out of our hands. There are a couple astronomers, one at the library and one at the university, who were recommended to Elyn but who she hasn't had the opportunity to speak with yet, and I think she may intend to see if she can arrange meetings with one or both of them. But beyond that, we're only keeping ourselves occupied until we hear from Archmage Zebari again about their spell. If last time was any indication, though, I suspect that once we do, things might move pretty quickly.

I'll keep you updated as best I can.

All my love,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Dear Marsa,

Balhannoths are honestly probably more awful than I made them sound, and I'm very glad that you haven't had cause to be familiar with them.

I think you're very generous on my behalf, probably more generous than I deserve, but I'll grant that we did have some good luck in addition to the bad, and that it helped us make it out of there alive.

In any case, I'm mostly writing to thank you for your help and advice. We ended up deciding on Sumula Station for our shopping, since we've a friend there we were eager to see again, and our attempts at researching the differences in shopping opportunities on the few you suggested turned up little to help us differentiate one from the other.

Perhaps we'd have been better off at one of the others, because the stores we found weren't quite exactly the sort we were hoping for, and when we inquired about gear to keep us safe while adventuring, tried to refer us to the Pack and Tack as though we might not be familiar with them in the first place. As though I wasn't already wearing their goggles on my head, and Squirt their barding on his back.

So we didn't have quite the luxury of choice I might have hoped for, but I think we all did quite well for ourselves all the same, and we've left in much better shape than we arrived. I've got new armor that, for all my exasperation, I did end up getting from the Pack and Tack -- it's studded leather, and enchanted for extra protection, and also glamoured so that I can make it appear like any sort of garment I might wish, which seems like a trick that could be handy in a number of situations. I got some magical ammunition, as well, in case we should once again find ourselves fighting something we desperately need to take down sooner rather than later, and Elyn got a ring that'll help protect her, and we more or less cleared out the entire potion stock of the temple to Mishakal, though we paid them handsomely to try to make up for that. And I commissioned an enchantment on Squirt's barding to better protect him, and left my contact information with one of the shop owner's and asked him to contact me if anything came through his shop that he thought might pique the interest of more experienced adventurers.

And then we spent half a day in a toy shop, because we wanted to buy some gifts for the kids on Mir, and because we learned down in the ruins on Hangi Syr that Squirt has a penchant for chewing on the legs of very large creatures. So I bought him a stick he could chase and chew on (it's a children's pretend wizard staff, and he's the cutest thing ever when he's trotting about with it in his mouth, you should see him), and an enormous stuffed owlbear that was intended to be a sacrifice, for him to rip up and destroy to his heart's content, but he's taken a shine to it and just drags it about with him wherever he goes. I'm going to have to figure out how to fashion some sort of riding harness for it on the back of his armor, or he's going to drag it through the dirt of every planet and station we pass through.

We spent a good month or so on Sumula Station, resting and enjoying the opportunity to spend time with our friend, and I've been trying to study lockpicking, because I had some moderate and surprising success with it in the ruins, but there's so incredibly much more for me to learn. Honestly, everything I know about lockpicking I learned from adventuring novels I read as a child, and it's a marvel I managed to successfully pick any lock at all, much less the handful of them. Even if they were two thousand years old.

We're on Nellaser's Landing now, to meet with some friends-of-friends who might be able to help Elyn with various aspects of her search for information about her family. I've never seen a station so big! It's a little intimidating, but I bought every map they had for sale, so at least I shouldn't get lost.

On that note, actually -- they had a bunch of navigation maps for sale, along with the station maps, and I bought those, too, because -- well, because it seems to me that it's always better to have information than to not have it, and who knows when it might come in handy. But it's not as though we're likely to find ourselves doing much navigating on our own, so if there are any of these that might be interesting to you or useful to have, just let me know! I'd be happy to pass any or all of them on to you.

I hope your job finished up well! I haven't the faintest idea how long to expect that we'll be on Nellaser's Landing, but at least there's plenty here to keep us busy, however long that may be.

All my best,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

We decided, in the end, to try our luck at Sumula Station with the rest of our shopping, figuring that if we struck out here, we would at least have the consolation of getting to visit with Bizza again. We have done a considerable amount of shopping in the few weeks that we've been here, and are much better provisioned, I'd say, than we were when we arrived.

Elyn has taken possession of the dragonhide armor, since the properties of the hide has worked up into an armor that gives its bearer some protection against poison, and I already have some measure of resistance to poisons by nature of the inherent hardiness of halflings. So I asked around here on the station for armor that might offer me some greater protection than what I brought with me from the Feywild, and it took a few stops but at the Pack and Tack I managed to find some armor made of studded leather, and enchanted so that I can speak a particular phrase and make it look like any sort of clothing I like, which I imagine could be helpful in a number of situations. I also, on a bit of a whim, bought an enchanted jug that can be used to make water or wine or bear or acid or poison or a great number of other things -- I don't have a particular use in mind for it, but it seems the sort of thing that would be useful to have on hand, and it's never a bad idea to have a reliable source of fresh, potable water on hand.

I bought some enchanted arrows, as well, not a huge amount but it'll be good to have them should we encounter something that might need a little more firepower. I also commissioned an arcanist whose store we visited to lay an enchantment on Squirt's barding that will protect him a little better, too, so all told we will hopefully be somewhat better protected the next time we encounter something that wishes to kill us. And in the weeks since, I've been meeting with an acquaintance who Athan put me in touch with, and practicing on my own, trying to gain the feel for picking locks while I have the time to devote to it.

Elyn has been spending some time flirting with some bards she met on the station, and speaking with a necromancer at the university about the spells and information that she found in Ektarika's tower, and Cloudleaper has been quite absorbed by her IICD and the internet. She gave Elyn and I both gifts, pairs of the balhannoth teeth that she had made into jewelry, and spelled so that we can speak a word to release them from their settings and use them as weapons, should we find ourselves in a bind. It's very lovely, and very sweet, and the moment I even thought of telling her so, she bolted away as fast as her legs could carry her (which, being a monk, is considerably fast indeed).

Other than that, things have been delightfully quiet here. We've had too many crepes to count at Bizza's (and he refuses to let me pay every time, but I've made up for it by sneaking gold pieces into his tip jar while his back is turned), and Elyn and I spent a delightful day at one of the toy stores on station, where I bought a very large toy wooden wizard's staff for Squirt, so I might have something I can throw for him, and he can chase and play with and get some of his energy out. I also bought him the largest stuffed owlbear I could find in the toy store, nearly as big as I am, intending it to be a sacrifice for him to rip apart with abandon, but he's been positively gentle with it, dragging it about and getting it terribly filthy, but he hasn't so much as popped a seam. Elyn keeps making noises about studying Prestidigitation well enough to memorize it, or Mending, and can't seem to decide which would be the more useful, though it's not as though I wouldn't go to the effort to scrub something that Squirt loves so much, or to ply a needle to mend it by hand, or to buy him a dozen more if it turned out that my mending or cleaning skills weren't up to the task. In any case, it sounds like those sorts of spells require a great amount of time and study to learn, for those who can cast them, so the poor animal won't be able to benefit from either for a while yet.

I'm not sure how much longer we'll be staying on the station, or where we might be headed next when we leave. I reached out to Hiuda -- to give her what information we had learned about the balhannoth, so that should anyone else in the Silver Tree happen to encounter one, they might be a little better prepared than we were, but also to ask if the Silver Tree might have any work that could use adventurers like us. If that doesn't turn anything up, we could always ask the guild, I suppose. But for the moment, I don't think any of us are feeling particularly restless and eager to move on, just yet. It's been a nice change of pace, to get to study and eat crepes with friends and not once have to fear for our lives. I suspect we could all use a bit more of it, before we throw ourselves into the next fray.

Whatever we decided to do, I'll let you know, and I'm sure there will be stories to tell you about it. With any luck, the sort that don't involve Shadowfell aberrations nearly killing us.

I love you both, and I hope you're doing well, and that things are much quieter for you in the Feywild than they've been for us lately.

All my love,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Dear Hiuda,

This is probably not your purview (or at least, I very much hope it's not anything you or your people find yourselves facing down on Nosirion-1), but you're really my only direct contact with the Silver Tree, so I hope you don't mind me relying on you to forward this on to whoever might be able to utilize it best.

We've recently spent a week or so on Hangi Syr, ensuring some ancient ruins were safe for the archaeologists wanting to explore and study them, and in the tunnels connecting to the lower levels of the ruins we encountered a horrible and incredibly dangerous creature from the Shadowfell called a balhannoth. We've talked to a few people about the creature since, and few seem to have anything more than, at best, a vague sense of having heard it mentioned once long ago -- the only exception being a drow friend whose home planet, being largely settled in the Underdark, has somewhat more experience with creatures from the Shadowfell than the average settlement.

In any case, it's a stunningly treacherous creature, and had killed a great many before us, and very nearly killed us as well, so if there's anything I can do to unsure that, if anyone in the Silver Tree does happen across one, they're a little better prepared for it than we were, then it's the least I can do.

I've included an attachment with everything we learned about the creature in fighting it, it's size and strength and abilities, as well as things to be wary of and a few key signs that might warn a person that they're walking into a balhannoth's lair, if they're clearheaded enough to heed them. I've also included what I know about the interplanar portals creatures like these use to find their way from the Shadowfell to the prime material plane, and how to disperse any that one might come across in one's travels or explorations.

Please let me know if there's anything you can think of that I failed to address, or if there are any further questions we can answer about our experiences with the creature, or anything else at all. And also, so long as I am writing you -- Elyn and I and our more recent traveling companion, Cloudleaper, have finished up our work with the ruins and the archaeologists, and we're currently on Sumula Station stocking up on supplies and other things, but so far as I know, we don't particularly have anything in mind for where we might go or what we might do next. If you know of any work that the Silver Tree might have, especially for someone with our skillset and level of experience, I'd be very interested in knowing about it. I can't make any promises to take a job without speaking to the others first, but I'm sure we'd all be glad to know of what options are available to us.

Regards,

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Oh Darna. I wish you were here, too. I wish I could have that hug. I don't know about legend, but-- Well. I won't argue with you about that. I may have your stubbornness, but you've had more years to hone it, and I can recognize arguments I won't win.

I don't feel like a legend. Shouldn't legends feel like they have the faintest idea of what they're doing? When does that start?

I am sorry to make you worry. I hated writing you about the balhannoth, because I knew how it would make you both fear for me. I'm trying to be better, and smarter, I am, I just don't know... how.

You will, I think, be glad to know that we've begun the process of increasing our supplies. We've left Haewood and come to the port city of Arstead, which is quite sizeable. We stopped in at a shop for spell components for Elyn, so she'll be able to cast Teleportation Circle, which she's recently learned, and while we were there I bought a potion of climbing, to have should the occasion arise that I find myself in need of climbing swiftly and well, since Elyn and Cloudleaper are both far better at it than I am, and we went to the Pack and Tack where Elyn perused their armor, but ultimately didn't find anything she liked enough to buy, and I bought a set of lockpicks. We spent a few days making our way into and then up through the sorceress's tower when we were down in the ruins, just before returning to Haewood, and within the tower we found a few doors barred to us by locks and with no means at all of circumventing them, so I-- Well, I'm sure you both recall those adventuring novels I took a fancy to after the first time you took me to Cadiz Beta, and wheedled with you until you bought me my LICD and the rest of the series so I wouldn't be left in suspense when we returned home. They were always picking locks in those books, and goodness knows I read and reread them enough to have them practically memorized. And I'm decently good with my hands, a bit steadier in a pinch than either Elyn or Cloudleaper at any rate, and so I thought, well, what was there to lose? And I borrowed a screwdriver from Elyn and, with her tools and her encouragement and those novels buoying me up, I made a go at seeing if I could work the lock open.

And, nenîth, you won't believe it but it worked! There were a few locked doors in the tower, all told, and I was able to get each of them open in turn. It must be because the locks were so very old, I'm sure, they must be simpler technology, less secure. In any case, though, I didn't suppose that using the wrong tool for the job was going to make me any better at it, so I bought the lockpicks while we were at the Pack and Tack, and got a recommendation from them about where I might find a bookstore likely to carry an instruction manual that I can learn from, and with a bit of luck and a great deal of practice, perhaps the next time we encounter a locked door -- ancient or otherwise -- I'll be able to make sure it doesn't stand in our way.

I'm going to try, anyway.

There was a compendium of monsters and beasts at the bookstore, too, that I set my eye on, and when I opened it up to see if it had anything about a balhannoth written there (no one we've spoken to, really, seems to have much more than a vague notion of what it actually is, and I envy them that, but it seemed like a decent litmus test to identify just how thorough and useful the compendium might be), Cloudleaper leaned over quicker than I could snatch the book away and wrote in it, just wrote right in it, something about balhannoths being a nightmare to fight, as though that's news to any of us at this point. I protested, and the store clerks were highly disapproving, and Cloudleaper declared she was going to buy it for me, to make it up to us both I think, so I let her.

After the bookstore, we headed across town to find a tanner whose name Elyn had been given, to see if they could make something of the dragon hide that we found in the balhannoth's lair, and Cloudleaper started wailing in the middle of the street, because -- honestly, I'm still not exactly sure what happened. Elyn and I managed to convince her to collapse onto Squirt's back, rather than there in the middle of the street, so we could get her to a park and try to figure out what was wrong, which seems to be that her friend Stormflight, from the monastery, wrote her and something about the letter made her realize that she's in love with him, which she seems to think is something utterly terrible.

I really don't understand her at all.

There didn't seem to be anything that we could do to try to console her, so Elyn distracted her by taking her off to find trousers and boots to replace the ones that have been a mess ever since we fought the balhannoth, and while they did that I excused myself to go find a decent tech shop.

It occurred to me at some point during the few days we spent in Haewood, after leaving the ruins, when we were all rejoicing in having LICD connection again, that we could almost certainly afford an upgrade there, too, and I thought-- well, Cloudleaper's always so upset when she doesn't have access to the internet and the stories she likes to read, and I thought I could buy her one, as a sort of a gesture, and an attempt to repair some of what's broken between us. And then she was so upset by Stormflight's letter, it seemed the right time to go and get it, and try to make her happy.

It wasn't terribly hard to find a decent tech shop, and the clerk there was very helpful, and in short order I left with three IICDs, one for each of us, and with special access on Cloudleaper's to science databases, and on Elyn's to ones for music and history, and on mine to a beastiary, to hopefully keep us better informed about the things we might be finding ourselves facing.

Elyn and Cloudleaper weren't at the shop where I'd left them when I came back, but I managed to find them, wandering about in search of a tech shop themselves, it turned out. I gave Cloudleaper her IICD, and-- oh, Darna, she's so effusive! I don't think I'm particularly reserved when it comes to affection, but Cloudleaper's is always so overwhelming! Maybe it's only because she's twice my size that I'm so easily overwhelmed.

In any case, she sobbed, which was very concerning and the opposite of what I'd hoped to accomplish, and then she snatched me up in her arms and squeezed all the breath out of me, and when she finally set me down I gave Elyn hers, who looked very startled by it -- as though I'd have bought such a thing for Cloudleaper but left her empty-handed!

Once Cloudleaper had recovered, they mentioned their search for a tech shop, and I was going to show them to mine until Cloudleaper got that look in her eye that she sometimes gets and started being all insistent about how I hadn't paid more than fifty gold for it, had I? And, well, I was perfectly capable of affording what they cost, and I don't in any way feel that the price was unfair, but it was definitely more than fifty gold, and I just had a vision of Cloudleaper storming into the shop and terrorizing that poor clerk who had been so helpful to me, so I changed my mind about that right quick, and then Elyn reminded us about our plans to find the tanner Balla, so we headed off in that direction.

Balla was very kind and helpful, though his eyes about popped out of his head when I pulled the dragon hide out of our bag. He seems to know what he's about, though, and said that he could make a set of armor from it, and that the properties of the hide would likely give its wearer some extra protections against dragons. Elyn and I have both been feeling a need for a little bit more protection than we have, especially after that balhannoth, so it was a little disappointing to learn that there was only enough material for him to fashion one set of armor, but Elyn and I are close enough in size, at least, so we commissioned him to tan the hide and make a set of studded armor from it, in dimension that would fit either of us, and I suppose once it's finished Elyn and I can argue over who it belongs to. I'm inclined to insist that she takes it, since I have my cloak to help protect me and also it's really imperative to all of us that she stays on her feet, since she's the one with the healing magic. I think she's as inclined to shove it at me, though, she's always saying that it's important that I stay on my feet, because I have the wand of healing and can get her back on hers if need be. So, we'll have to see how that goes once it's finished, and perhaps in the meantime as we continue our shopping, she or I will find some other set of armor that we fall in love with, and the debate will be moot.

We decided to find a bank after that, so we could unload some of the considerable amount of loose coins in the bag of holding and put them into our account, but as we were walking Elyn heard music playing somewhere nearby, and so of course we had to make a detour to find its source. We met a pair of dwarven cousins who were busking, one playing the harp while the other sang, and after we'd watched for a while and Elyn struck up a conversation, they invited her to join them, and seemed to appreciate both her own harp and her gloves very much. They played a song from their home planet about the creation of the Ollamh Harp, and it was incredibly lovely.

Eventually Elyn said that we should leave before the bank closed for the day, though it was obvious she'd have stayed longer if she could, and neither Cloudleaper or I were rushing her away. But off we went, and took up some poor teller's time as we dug all nine thousand coins out, one handful at a time.

Cloudleaper and I got into a little bit of an argument then -- well, it wasn't heated, so I suppose it was more of a debate. But she started talking about how we should be investing our money, so that it earns interest and we can have more money, and ... I just can't fathom the purpose of that. We have so much already! What's the point of acquiring it for its own sake? She was talking about investing it in the sorts of places that wouldn't let us have access to it for years, and what if we need it? And when I protested she started demanding, what if I get hurt and I need it for my medical bills, what if I die and it's needed for funeral costs. I pointed out that there are temples dedicated to healing those in need of it, and that our funds would be better used in service to keeping us alive than squirreled away in event of our death, but Cloudleaper didn't much seem to hear me about any of that, and she was just getting more agitated and the conversation was just going in circles, so I said that she could do whatever she liked with her portion of the money, and left it at that.

I don't know, I don't think your or Cylla will agree with me, considering what you said in your letter about managing our money. It's not that I'm opposed to the idea entirely, but I need a better reason for it. Elyn mentioned saving up for a college fund for the kids, and that's a reason I can get behind, but I don't care about acquiring money just for the sake of having it. And we're already doing that, aren't we? If the balance in our party funds is anything to judge by, we're already acquiring money faster than we can spend it.

Anyway. Elyn cut through the argument by suggesting that we all go get dinner and talk about Stormflight's letter, if Cloudleaper felt like talking about it, and to my considerable surprise she did. So off we went, and what followed was a very bewildering conversation, in which Cloudleaper said with one breath that she loves him, and with the next that she'll never say so because she doesn't deserve to be happy, which is such bullshit. Even I, who has spent much of our time together unhappy with her and thinking she disliked me, wouldn't have ever said that she didn't deserve to be happy. We tried to gently encourage her to see that, Elyn and I, and I asked if that was why she'd cried when I'd given her the IICD, because I'd gotten it for her specifically to try to make her happy, and I told her she could give it back if she didn't want it (I didn't really think she'd take me up on that, not considering how delighted she'd been by it when I gave it to her), and she snatched me up again and squeezed me again and started going on about how I was hers now and she would fight to the death for me (I pointed out, with what breath I could manage, that she's already done that, she's killed lots of things for me and Elyn both).

I still don't know what to make of her. I think I've given up on ever knowing what to make of her. She talked in such a matter-of-fact manner about not deserving to be happy, like it was a simple and undisputed fact, like the speed of light or the force of gravity. And then she started talking about leaving like the one thing followed from the other, and only Elyn pointing out that the two of us will definitely die without her stopped that particular line of conversation.

In any case, at least now we all have our IICDs, and magical necromancer towers notwithstanding, should find ourselves much less likely to be out of signal range and out of contact than we so far have, which I hope will be a relief to you both. And we've made a start to better equipping ourselves, at least, and once we decide on where to go next we will hopefully be able to make some further progress on that. I wrote to Marsa, asking if she knew of where might be a good place to go to find magical supplies, and she suggested a few options that we've yet to decide between. She mentioned Sumula Station as one, and I think Elyn and I would both be glad for an excuse to go catch up with Biza, but there are a few others she listed as well, and we're thinking we might reach out to the adventuring guild for guidance on where to start. We've certainly the funds to take teleportation circles from one to the next if we felt the need to shop widely, though.

I'll write you both once I know where we're heading, or if anything exciting happens in the meantime -- though I certainly hope it doesn't, I think we've all three had our fill of excitement for at least a little while. I'd like to at least get our shopping done and the lot of us a little better equipped, before the next excitement finds us.

I love you both, more than my letters can ever convey.

Maliah

[feywildatheart]

Dear Maliah,

A dragon is impressive and terrifying, but a balhannoth is just terrifying. Well, I’m not familiar with them, but you make them sound very awful.

I am very impressed and also very glad you survived! Traipsing into lairs seems like a dangerous occupation, however impressive the results. Though, I have been told that about captaining, so do not think I am passing judgment.

Really, that does sound very terrible and I am quite relieved that you made it out – all of you made it out – alive and as close to well as anyone can be, after such a thing. It sounds like you were clever and strong and smart enough to survive, at least, so I am glad of that. And lucky enough, and sometimes luck is the most important thing, when surprise and terror strike unexpectedly. So I am glad that your plenty of luck was with you this time.

And honestly, lovely one, we will have to have a much longer and convincing talk about how impressive you are. I know you are feeling rather unhappy about how this went (and perhaps a bit stung in the pride? I would be, but I am a proud woman and cannot deny that!), but really, that is quite a lot of very stunning surviving and victory. I have not even heard of a balhannoth, and I cannot imagine the number of people who have defeated it in ambush is very high, if what you say is so.

A good investment in your career is a very wise move indeed. Especially with those sorts of resources at your disposal, yes?

Pack and Tack is fine, though, as you say, rather limited in what they offer. You are right to be looking into more specialized shops. Without knowing where you are planning to go, I am limited in my recommendations, but will do my best. The bigger stations (Sumula, Kracti IV, even Bay or Z’Triga) would be good places to look for such a supplier, and likewise the bigger port cities on planets. I recall your Elyn worked on ships? She will know the types of places that see trade and travel.

Ask about for shops and enchanters (or more specialized traders) that deal with adventurers or ships or expeditions. Do try to get two or three recommendations to the same place, if you can, just to verify they’ve good names. And don’t underestimate the importance of good, more mundane equipment. You seem to have little problem befriending crews and captains, and any worth their weight will have a good sense of decent suppliers in their usual route. Your guild may also have suggestions, if you speak to them?

Anyhow, yes, my job is going quite well so far. We are not quite done yet, but have made it most of the way and are looking to be done soon. Hopefully your next job will be quieter, eh? And if not, at least it will hopefully be a good story.

Swearing, honestly, as though I am bothered. I have certainly sworn enough in my time, and Shadowfell aberrations deserve it.

I hope you have made it all out well and safely, and are enjoying some well deserved rest. Do take care, and try to meet less exciting things (you certainly have already impressed me, after all!)

All my best,

Marsa