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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 11:05:27 GMT -6
Maybe next time he would bring a pack, since there was nothing to do but to resign himself to his fate as a pack mule. There was nothing that could be done to rectify the situation today though, so he simply bore with it, and tried not to think about the fact that this would already be getting sand into his clothes.
Rhys was eager to look for more shells, so he zipped right off again. The little feathered creature made some chirping noises after him, but if Rhys heard whatever it was that the creature wanted to say, he made no reply. And Rhys would have a better idea of what the little feathered creature meant too, since telepathy transcended all the barriers so inconveniently set up for Noa, that forbade him from understanding the others around him with as much accuracy.
But frankly, for the most part, Noa didn't mind. He didn't think people had, to put it lightly, very worthwhile thoughts most of the time. Even he himself didn't always have interesting or worthwhile thoughts, and he thought that being privy to everyone's thoughts all the time would be exhausting after even a short span like that.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 11:05:38 GMT -6
He knew Rhys could turn it off to some degree, though he hadn't ever really asked how much. As a human, he couldn't exactly turn off his hearing except in a blanket sort of way by wearing earplugs, and he knew that Rhys didn't ever close off the communication channel between the two of them. Noa also knew that there was a familiar spell that allowed for a telepathic connection between only the familiar and their mage, but he didn't know if Rhys had ever made use of it. And given the fact that Rhys's telepathy was inborn, Noa rather thought that the Faeron wouldn't have used it at all.
Not to mention, if Noa thought the thoughts of other people would be inane, then the thoughts of creatures less intelligent than that must have been even worse. What indeed could a Vulticus spend all its time thinking of? He could get the answer, but he was also pretty sure he didn't want to know -- or more accurately, that he didn't actually care.
While Rhys cast around for shells, Noa began to look around himself for any other objects of interest. It would be good to bring more things home.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 11:05:50 GMT -6
He didn't have a personal stake in finding them, the way that Rhys seemed to enjoy the act of discovery itself -- or maybe the objects, come to that. But he recognized that they had some value, and since he was here, he may as well make some more use of his time by doing that. The trade had asked for things from the mansion this month in exchange for the crystals, after all, and lately it felt as if that was the case more often than not. So it was prudent to try and get as much as he could manage, just so he would have something on hand to trade for crystals when the time came.
A more consistent and reliable source was The Underground, which always asked for gemstones only, but their prices were higher. And mining was in and of itself a great deal of work, and Noa had gotten pretty thoroughly sick of the caves in the last few months. Being here was a change of pace, if nothing else, from looking at the dark and the rocks and dirt for hours on end. Even if he had had a windfall of a find there recently.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 11:09:03 GMT -6
It wasn't Noa who had managed to find something first, but the little feathered creature. It must also have been looking at something, though Noa didn't know that it had any specific goal in mind except for seeing what there was to see from its vantage point in his pocket. But all at once it began kicking up a little fuss, and he had no choice but to draw his own attention to whatever had seized the little feathered creature's. He followed its line of sight to a piece of... was that coral? He wasn't very familiar with sea life, having never made a study of them for his own purposes, so he really couldn't have said. But it looked like a coral, more or less, to someone whose idea of what a coral looked like was still pretty vague at best.
It was buried partially in the sand, so it looked as if he would have to do at least a little bit of digging to get it out. But if he could take it home with him, then he wanted to get his hands on it, so Noa made his way over and gave it an experimental tug.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 15:27:10 GMT -6
He had hoped it would come out easily, but no such luck for him. It was firmly wedged into the sand. That must have meant that it was bigger than it looked too, since a considerable portion of it would have had to be buried for it to be stuck fast like it was right now. Noa considered it, and weighed his options. Was it even worth the effort of trying to dig this thing out to take it with him? If he did manage to get it out, he would then have to keep carrying it around with him until they went home.
He wished he had some sort of spell to send an item away into a magical compartment for safekeeping. Then he would never have to carry anything again. He hadn't yet come across a spell like that in his studies, but that didn't mean one didn't exist. Maybe he had just yet to find it. Or maybe he could create it on his own, if it came to that.
But the development of such a spell couldn't be a priority for him, not now. It used to be he pursued projects according to his whims, but now...
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 15:27:27 GMT -6
Recently he had finally gotten the resources together to craft a light node of his own. It was even his soul in there, though that had been more a coincidence of timing than planning on his own part. Some mages were superstitious about the souls used in their nodes, but Noa didn't believe in that kind of foolishness. So long as the node existed and had the proper amount of energy, who was he to quibble over where it came from? And indeed, better if it was the soul of someone else. His own soul could be spared the weight of bearing another node... Or at least he would feel that way if it were cheaper to acquire the services of someone else's for use. But if he had recovered enough to make another one, it was generally easier to source from himself. He didn't have to pay himself some exorbitant amount or call in rare and expensive favors, and there was never any delay, just as soon as he was ready with the requisite ingredients.
Now that he had one though, his work had shifted focus. Light magic was the most potent of all healing magic he'd encountered.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 15:28:15 GMT -6
It stood to reason that if there was a magical cure for his condition, it would be through light magic. His parents must have researched it too, and must have had more than a single node to work from -- what a shame that so much of their research had been lost with the accident that had taken his mother's life. That she would have died soon even if it hadn't happened was true enough, but then he wouldn't have lost the body of work that had gone with it, and he wouldn't be wasting all this time establishing basic principles and trying to find avenues of investigation to explore. He could be doing the real work, the sort of thing that would lead to breakthroughs in a reasonable span of time...
The little feathered creature had jumped out of the pocket and was pecking at his hand. Noa winced; it had a sharp beak on it, despite its size. He checked his hands to see whether it had broken skin, but it hadn't; and belatedly he realized that he had been clenching them without noticing. The little feathered creature hadn't broken skin, but he himself had with his own nails.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 15:28:27 GMT -6
There were several red crescents blooming on his palms, and some of them were redder than others, welling with blood. It stung a little, but it was more inconvenient than anything else. Still... He hadn't realized just how unpleasant his thoughts had become -- or no, rather, he hadn't noticed how upset he was by his own line of thinking until just then.
He studied the little feathered creature, who was standing perched on his knee now, where Noa had knelt down in the sand to have a better look at the coral that he had attempted to dig out. It inclined its head at him, as if asking him a question. It wasn't really smart enough to understand what he was saying, let alone to understand the concept of what Noa had been thinking about to make himself upset in the first place... But it had, in its own animal way, managed to sense that there was something off about his mood in that moment. And it had occurred to the little feathered creature to do something to intervene, which Noa wouldn't have expected from it at all. He certainly hadn't trained it to do anything like that, for him or anyone.
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Post by Noa on Aug 13, 2021 15:31:25 GMT -6
But the creatures here were rather... attuned to people, most of them having been made to suit some purpose of human use. Companions, fighters, magical beings whose abilities could be harnessed, down to the ones whose purposes were simply to be better versions of more mundane domesticated creatures already serving the world elsewhere. All of them existed here, and most of them were created to bond easily with humans, so that it would be easier to direct them to one's will.
The little feathered creature was a revived fossil, but it had still been revived through a process created by the labs. Maybe there was something similar in the construction, or rather the reconstruction, of its DNA. He wouldn't have put it past them to do something like that.
Or maybe it was merely an animal bonding sort of thing, in a general sense. After all, dogs and the like existed in places other than the labs, and some of those animals still served people even without a fancy lab to program them to do so.
Whatever it was... He would have been fine without the intervention, but the fact that it happened was quite commendable, in a certain sense.
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Post by Noa on Aug 14, 2021 10:47:34 GMT -6
He wondered briefly whether he ought to give the little feathered creature a reward for its efforts, but then decided against it after a moment's thought. It wasn't so clever as to understand such complex ideas, and was more likely to think that he was commending it for pecking his hand. That wasn't a behavior that Noa actually wanted to encourage, since its beak was fairly sharp, and he didn't want to have it constantly pecking at him. It hadn't broken skin this time around, but there was no telling how things would end up if it was being encouraged through food. It might see that as a reason to use more force, and that wouldn't have been a good thing for Noa at all.
Either way though, he forced the unpleasant thoughts from earlier from his mind. There was no point in dwelling on them and upsetting himself, and in the meantime he did have other things to do, like figuring how to extricate this piece of coral... or if he even wanted to do so in the first place. It wasn't as if he couldn't find other things to take home with him either, smaller and easier things.
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Post by Noa on Aug 14, 2021 10:47:47 GMT -6
A waste of effort was not usually something Noa looked for in his daily conduct, and this ought to be no exception. But it had been the little feathered creature who had first showed an interest in this object, and it had done him a good turn just now, or at least tried to, which counted for something -- intent, if not necessarily execution. Noa was loath to admit, even to himself, that the little feathered creature's intervention had actually done any meaningful good. The idea that he couldn't master himself over his own thoughts without outside help was an unpleasant one, and not one that he would easily admit to. But either way, he thought that he might as well have a go at this piece of coral for the sake of the little feathered creature, even if he wouldn't necessarily take it with him afterwards.
The little feathered creature had also shifted focus back to the coral now that it seemed that Noa was fine again. It had hopped off from its perch on his knee and hopped onto one of the coral's many branches, pecking idly at it to see just how hard it was or something like that.
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Post by Noa on Aug 14, 2021 10:48:42 GMT -6
Noa wasn't privy to its thought process, so he didn't know what, exactly, it was doing. Maybe it was sharpening its beak, though he wondered if that was actually something it had to do, given that it also had teeth, and he had never seen any toothed creature sharpen those things manually. There was a great deal he didn't know about the likes of the little feathered creature, and given the recency of their discovery, he doubted there was much of a body of literature on the matter either. Hell, he hadn't even been able to find any records of any grown ones aside from a single specimen of a much different body composition, and it didn't seem like a worthwhile avenue of pursuit to read about that one, beyond finding out just how they had achieved that level of growth.
But it wouldn't be long now until the little feathered creature in his own charge was grown, Noa thought. After all, he had purchased the nutrients. Surely that was the final step, and soon he would see some of the fruits of his labors.
"Rhys," Noa said, calling out to the Faeron, because he wasn't about to start digging alone.
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Post by Noa on Aug 14, 2021 10:49:46 GMT -6
Rhys was well attuned to Noa, and at his call the Faeron responded at once. He must not have been occupied with another shell he had found either, since he didn't bring up anything of the sort in his response. He only said, {What is it?} and fluttered over without Noa having to ask. This was what Noa liked best about working with Rhys. He did sometimes have to explain things when he would rather not have, but more often than not, Rhys anticipated or was able to figure out what Noa wanted without him having to waste his breath. Would that everyone else he dealt with were so accommodating and convenient.
"Help me dig this out of the sand," Noa said, indicating the coral that the little feathered creature was currently standing on. "I didn't bring any digging tools, so..."
Rhys didn't protest this as much as Noa might have thought he would, but then he had been taught how to dig things out before, with the gargoyle, when they had gone down together on one of their mining trips. Of course, when Noa said 'help', what he really meant was for Rhys to do the digging for him wholesale.
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Post by Noa on Aug 14, 2021 10:51:54 GMT -6
But Rhys had come to expect this sort of thing from Noa, so neither of them were surprised, even if Rhys was still often more resigned than enthusiastic. It was funny to an onlooker, probably, that a little Faeron took care of so much of the day to day for a fully grown human, but in terms of physical strength, Rhys actually had a big advantage over Noa thanks to Rhys's telekinesis. Noa was weaker than other people his age and size due to his condition, and likely due to a life spent devoted mostly to magical research. But Rhys had the ability to move things with his mind, and his mind was a good deal sharper than that of most Faeron thanks to his enhancements, so it was natural to leave it to him.
For the matter of digging, Rhys didn't use his telekinesis, but instead went at it with his claws. But even there, his body plan and the fact that he had claws and not useless human nails gave him an edge over Noa, at least where things were soft, like with sand and dirt. They were both equally useless when it came to digging through rock.
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Post by Noa on Aug 14, 2021 12:21:51 GMT -6
The only time they ever had to do it was during their mining forays, where Noa would be carrying the kind of equipment that let him do it, but that was also why Noa never asked Rhys to help with the digging on their mining trips either, since it was usually digging into rock that they did on those trips. Only the gargoyle, who accompanied them sometimes, had claws that could handle rock. But sand was perfectly fine for Rhys to dig through, and now the Faeron sent it flying as his claws made short work of the sand.
Still, the coral was pretty firmly in there so it took him some time to finally unearth the thing enough for them both to pull it out. Just as Noa suspected, it was quite a large piece of coral, completely unsuited for taking along with them. But when he put it out on the sand, it did make a nice perch for the little feathered creature.
The little feathered creature had been forced to leave the perch and flee for shelter behind Noa's leg when Rhys began his digging in earnest, and it had squawked unhappily at being ousted like that.
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