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Post by Noa on Dec 2, 2019 20:32:42 GMT -6
The gargoyle did seem to 'see' in some sense of the word though, so for the moment Aster assumed that the eyes were a relevant place to look. Squaring his shoulders and putting his hands gingerly on the spiked shoulders of the gargoyle, he said, "You don't... It's not that I was, uh, disappointed with our haul last time."
That there was a stilted opening if he had ever managed one. Even Aster wanted to wince. He still didn't know how much of the Common language the gargoyle had managed to pick up, though he suspected it had some understanding by now, having spent some time in a shop even before coming to Aster, and having resided in his household for many months now besides. And that half breed of Rabbit's had picked up enough Common that she could hold entire conversations with him, even if they were mostly one sided.
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Post by Noa on Dec 2, 2019 20:33:00 GMT -6
At the very least, she never seemed to doubt whether the half breed understood anything she said to him, and relied on that extensively tor her work with him.
Aster ran a hand through his hair, at once trying to work out whatever restless energy was plaguing him and trying to calm himself. It didn't work as well as he mnight have hoped, but it did ground him a little. Taking a deep breath, he tried again. "If anything. I'm the one who has to apologize," he said, still awkwardly but not as incoherently as before. "We didn't come back for a long time... It's not anything you did, or anything that happened in here." Aster gestured at the caverns to make his point, though in retrospect he didn't know if that would only confuse the gargoyle further.
Even so, he ploughed on with his explanation. There was nothing else to do.
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Post by Noa on Dec 2, 2019 20:33:47 GMT -6
Still a little haltingly, Aster said, "I just got... busy, was all. Didn't have time to go to the caves for a while, and then after a few months it just started slipping my mind." Which was a poor excuse for the fact that it had happened, and Aster knew it, but it was also the truth. There was no sense in sugar coating it either, not that he'd know how even if he wanted to try.
Besides that, he had never been a particularly talented liar, and now was hardly the time to start. If the gargoyle was smart enough to understand an explanation, then it was also smart enough to know that he could lie, and to try and spot the tellsit he did make the attempt. And Aster, knowing that he wasn't very convincing to begin with, wasn't about to run that risk if he didn't have to.
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Post by Noa on Dec 2, 2019 20:34:06 GMT -6
Even if it did make him look bad when he admitted the truth, it had to be better than being caught out in a lie about it, right?
Rubbing the back of his neck, Aster sighed again. "If you think I've forgotten, or I go too long without coming down here and you're worried about it... Just come bug me," he said. Everyone else does it. The Hara. Summer. Sometimes even Grunty if he doesn't think he's being fed enough. Of course, the Hara had the benefit of speech, or at least of having Dami as their representative to speak on their behalf, and Grunty had a ribbon... But he was sure that the gargoyle could get its point across to Aster if it really wanted to. Even tugging on Aster's clothes and pointing at the case where Aster kept most of his gems would have done it. It wasn't a difficult idea to convey.
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Post by Noa on Dec 2, 2019 20:34:18 GMT -6
Having finished this short speech, he felt a little embarrassed for it, firstly for the necessity of it at all, and second, for... Well, maybe the gargoyle didn't understand him, and he'd wasted his breath for nothing. Or maybe it only understood bits and pieces, in which case he had no idea what its take away from this was going to be. Aster looked down, searching the gargoyle's face for any sign of comprehension, and was greeted with the sight of the gargoyle apparently deep in thought.
That was... promising, but not conclusive. Without a response, or a certainty that the gargoyle could comprehend Common, then it was possible that the gargoyle was just confused and trying to puzzle through what Aster could mean, rather than the implication of what he'd said. The only real option left to Aster was to wait and see how all this would play out.
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Post by Noa on Dec 2, 2019 20:34:32 GMT -6
It was probably for the best that he'd set aside most of the day for this trip. That would be the guilt working its magic on him again, though mining trips did tend to take a good deal of time. The household even knew not to expect him back in any kind of timely manner on the days he went out to the nmining caverns. These days, since they had Rabbit, this wasn't nearly the problem that it might otherwise have been.But even back from before Rabbit had been involved in the running of the estate, they had managed somehow. Aster mostly got around it by doing whatever he could before a trip, and stocking the various creatures in his care with food, or the means to get food if they so wished it. Of course, back then he’d had fewer creatures to worry about, so maybe it wouldn’t have been as feasible now.
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Post by Noa on Dec 2, 2019 20:34:49 GMT -6
The gargoyle seemed to come to some sort of conclusion at last, and turned its hollow gaze up to Aster to nod at him once. Aster blinked a couple of times, and wished, not for the first time, that the creature could simply speak its mind. A nod could mean a great deal of things, after all, and he was at a bit of a loss as to what interpretation might have best suited this occasion.
But then, it wasn’t a refusal. It wasn’t a disagreement or an attempt on its own part to explain something else, or to level further grievances against him. That may as well be good enough, he supposed. He wasn’t going to work himself into knots trying to resolve something if he didn’t know whether it needed further resolving.
At the very least, it seemed like a green light for them to go back to their working arrangement.
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Post by Noa on Dec 2, 2019 20:35:01 GMT -6
If he found out later that this wasn’t the case, he’d just deal with it then. “Alright, that’s settled then,” Aster said. “Let’s see if we can’t find you some crystals this time around.” With that, he walked on feeling, if not wholly absolved, then at least lighter for having spoken of it at all.
The otherwise staid and uninteresting tunnel then saw fit to show them something really interesting. Maybe too interesting, even. Unnecessarily interesting, certainly. For what the tunnel saw fit to do in the next few feet was to drop out abruptly from under them, with not even a visible ledge for them to scrape on by; and on the other side was a dead end, so they had nowhere else to go to either, even if they could bridge the gap somehow. Aster saw it, and for a moment he stood there in stunned disbelief.
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Post by Renathan on Dec 3, 2019 12:27:58 GMT -6
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Post by Noa on Dec 3, 2019 14:58:14 GMT -6
It took him that moment to even register that this was really happening. And then the reality did sink in--- it may as well happen, even though he had never seen such a cave before. It was just his bad luck to have chosen this one out of all the possible options he had today.
He briefly considered walking back out and looking for another cavern, but that would have wasted more time, and he really wasn't in the mood for stalling today. More to the point, he had other mearis to get around this kind of problem now, though he hadn't actually planned on using them today. If it was just him by himself, he might have sought around for a rope and see if he could anchor it to something so he could rappel down, but since the gargoyle was with him, it wasn't going to be quite that simple...
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Post by Noa on Dec 3, 2019 14:59:49 GMT -6
Wait. Hey. The gargoyle, the creature who had wings. "This isn't a problem for you, is it?" he said, indicating the hole. The gargoyle inclined its head at him. Aster frowned. Maybe it didn't understand Common after all, the way he had thought... Or maybe he just hadn't been specific enough.
Trying for more bluntness, Aster asked, "Can you fly?" Upon hearing this, the gargoyle gave a couple of flaps of its wings, but... nothing. Well, Aster wasn't terribly surprised, to be honest. It had been kind of a shock at first to him, how many creatures here had wings but just... didn't know how to use them, but after a while he had grown used to seeing it, and now it was more a surprise for him when they already knew of their own accord, since those cases actually tended to be more the exception than the rule in these parts.
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Post by Noa on Dec 3, 2019 15:03:37 GMT -6
Generally speaking, a lot of those individuals were just the result of being raised by people, and not ever having been taught until someone took the time out of their lives to actively do so. But the gargoyle must have grown up here, in the wild.... Or at least not so much in captivity until recently.
Or so Aster hoped, anyway. Come to think of it, he didn't know hov young the gargoyle had been when it had set out from the caverns, and then somehow wound up in Zoological Imports. That was something else he'd have to ask once he had the means to communicate properly with the gargoyle. It would have been helpful to know, even if he wasn't otherwise curious about it already, the possibility having finally occurred to him just now. But even if it had grown up in the caverns, this place didn't exactly afford ample opportunity to practice flying.
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Post by Noa on Dec 3, 2019 15:04:45 GMT -6
If you spent most of your life underground, even if you had wings, Aster couldn't imagine that they would have many occasions to use them Though it did make him wonder a few other things about gargoyle society. But no, all those points were moot for now. The crux of the matter was that the gargoyle didn't have any more means than he did to get down from where they were to where the bottom of the pit ended. That was the information he needed to make his decision, though he did make a mental note that maybe they ought to rectify that later, and teach the gargoyle how to fly properly.
A rope might have done as well for Aster, but he wasn't sure that he had brought one with him, and at any rate, the gargoyle might not have been able to rappel down with him either if he had done that.
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Post by Noa on Dec 3, 2019 15:05:27 GMT -6
It had the means to, since it had hands, but just being capable didn't mean it knew how. It was like flying that way, and indeed, like most skills; it had to be learned. For that matter, now that Aster was looking at the rock wall, he could see that it wasn't even, so he could have climbed down too, if he had wanted... But that presented the same problems that rappelling did, so he had to scrap that idea too. Not that it caused him much grief to do so, since climbing down would have been an endeavor of no small amount of effort, and he wasn't so desperate for exercise that he was going to go out of his way to look for it.
Which meant that his solution was going to have to be a little more beginner friendly. But that wasn't really an issue, considering he did have other options available to him.
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Post by Noa on Dec 3, 2019 15:06:23 GMT -6
A few years ago, he might not have, but now... Aster reached into his pocket and felt around for them, though he knew he didn't really have to touch them to use them. It was just a habit, to check if his valuables were still on him, though he could have checked just as easily by reaching for the power they granted him. Nodes two of them, one wind and one hollow. The latter was a newer acquisition, and not one that he had used much to date, but alas, it wasn't the relevant one here either.
Wind, though-he could do a lot with wind. "This is going to get a little weird," he said to the gargoyle, "but I need you to trust me. Alright?" The gargoyle looked up at him, somewhat bemused and a little concerned, which given what Aster had said to him, was not an unexpected response.
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