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Post by Noa on May 15, 2020 2:33:15 GMT -6
You would think, given all the strange ways the mansion warped itself on other months, that seeing it take a normal shape might inspire a little confidence that nothing untoward would happen this time around. You would be wrong. Aster didn't trust this shape at all either, for all that there was nothing on the face of it to suggest that there was anything amiss. Contrarily, he now felt that at least the other months had been upfront about it, and that this one must have been concealing its eccentricity by some trick, which must have meant that whatever it was hiding must have been all the worse for the fact that it necessitated such a deception in the first place.
The Malii had no qualms. Aster found that, having taken his gaze off the Malii for a moment, when he looked back, the Malii was trying to squeeze himself between the bars of the wrought iron fence.
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Post by Noa on May 15, 2020 2:35:54 GMT -6
Swearing under his breath at the creature was starting to get pretty old, but that didn't mean he didn't do it when the occasion called for it. If the Malii was picking up any words from him, then he wouldn't have been surprised if the Malii's first attempts at speech ended up being made up of nothing but expletives. "Come here, you," Aster said, and with some effort pulled the Malii from where the creature had lodged himself. "If you're going to go in, at least go through the door."
Seeing that the Malii was willing to resort to such means to gain entry, Aster had little choice but to sigh, swallow his own misgivings, and push open the gate. They had come here to pay the place a visit, after all, and he suspected the Malii might riot now if he wasn't given a chance to even have a romp within before they left.
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Post by Jack on May 15, 2020 20:20:14 GMT -6
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Post by Noa on May 15, 2020 22:15:19 GMT -6
The Malii slipped in as soon as there was a large enough gap for him to do so, but Aster had more or less expected that after the stunt that he had just pulled. At least this time the Malii didn't immediately go running off deeper into the grounds, instead sniffing around at the grass as though he were looking for something. Observing him like that, Aster thought he really didn't seem all that different from a dog... or a fox, as it were.
After a bit of searching, however, the Malii seemed to have uncovered something that caught his attention. At first, Aster paid him little mind, thinking it was just some insect or something else mundane. But the Malii's attention stayed fixed for long enough that eventually Aster became curious, and wandered over to take a closer look. What he saw surprised him; underneath the Malii's paws was a glimmer of something...
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Post by Noa on May 15, 2020 22:18:15 GMT -6
It looked enough like metal that he wanted a closer look. "Here, move over, let me see," Aster said. He stepped closer, but the Malii was not at all intimidated by his presence, for all that Aster was technically bigger, and heavier to boot. It was only when Aster crowded against his side that he moved aside, as if shocked, and then came back around immediately. But Aster had moved in when the Malii moved back, and now he could at least get a better look at what the Malii had found.
It was an old coin of some sort, he determined, after studying it for a moment. It wasn't a currency he knew, but maybe it was one of those tokens that the Wishing Well accepted. There was a great deal of variety among the things that one could throw in there; if these were it for the month, they were the most normal iteration Aster had seen.
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Post by Noa on May 15, 2020 22:21:20 GMT -6
But then, he wasn't about to complain about that. Coins were nice and flat and small, easy to carry around. Some of the other objects had been more of a hassle, even if they were none of them very large. The bottled bits of murk from the last month had been cumbersome thanks to their shape, and Aster hadn't had the nerve to be anything less than careful with them, lest they crack and leak out whatever was inside.
"Well hey, thanks," he said to the Malii. "I'll be keeping this."
The Malii saw him pick up and then pocket the coin in silence. It was only when the coin slipped inside his pocket that the Malii raised a protest, though it came out in the form of a whine rather than any spoken words. The Malii immediately went to the side that the offending pocket was on, and pawed at Aster's clothes.
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Post by Noa on May 15, 2020 22:23:53 GMT -6
"Hey, knock that off," Aster said. It wasn't that he was worried about his clothes getting dirty, since that was a necessity a lot of the time when he worked anyway, and as a result his clothes tended to be durable and not very fine. But it wasn't a pleasant sensation to be scratched at, and while his clothes could stand up to some punishment, that didn't mean he was going out of his way to invite it upon himself either. The Malii didn't stop when he asked, because of course nothing could be so easy, but Aster didn't expect it to. Instead, he drove his point home by placing a hand on the Malii's chest and bodily pushing the Malii away from him.
His arms were, fortunately, just long enough that the Malii couldn't reach him anymore when he fully extended it, though in this case it certainly wasn't for a lack of trying.
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Post by Noa on May 15, 2020 22:26:40 GMT -6
The Malii pawed and pawed in vain before eventually giving up, almost visibly deflating as he did so. "Oh, come on," Aster said. "It's just a coin. What were you going to do with it anyway?"
Maybe he was just imagining it, but it felt as though the Malii was shooting him a rather dark look after he spoke those words. And maybe he did feel a bit guilty about essentially bullying the creature out of something that had, after all, been his find. "Alright, alright, how about we compromise?" Aster said. "This, I'll just keep it for you for now. Later, when we have enough of them, I'll take you to a place where you can turn them in for something nice, and then you can keep whatever you get." He said this without actually knowing if creatures could make use of the wishing well, but then, whether the Malii understood him was also up for debate.
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Post by Jack on May 16, 2020 18:47:44 GMT -6
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Post by Noa on May 17, 2020 0:09:07 GMT -6
The Malii didn't look much appeased, but he did eventually subside, and began exploring anew for other objects of interest. Aster watched him, and soon he was glad he did; in quick succession, the Malii found several more of the coins. Aster was pretty sure after the third coin that this was probably the wishing well currency for the current situation.
The coins themselves didn't even look that remarkable, was the thing. These things just looked and felt like coins, though not in any currency he recognized. Rather than numbers denoting their value, the markings carved on them resembled... What, some kind of claw? No, upon closer inspection--- and he had to rub off a bit of dirt to do it, since they had all been buried slightly in the dirt and needed to be dug out--- it looked more like the skeletal structure of a dragon's wing, of all things.
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Post by Noa on May 17, 2020 0:11:26 GMT -6
Or perhaps it was a bat. Either was a possibility. Aster simply thought of dragons because he dealt with dragons far more than he dealt with bats. The Pteropty existed, but they were too much in the order of companion creatures to do him much good. He had heard rumors that there was some sort of drug made from the secretions of one particular breed, which was used recreationally by some portion of the city populace, but that kind of thing wasn't for him.
Granted, he had plenty of things he'd wanted to get away from, once upon a time. And not all of those things were done or resolved now either. Maybe if he had discovered this a few years earlier, when he had only recently arrived at the city, and his circumstances were still more dire, and the unpleasant memories dogging him were a little more fresh in his mind...
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Post by Noa on May 17, 2020 0:14:11 GMT -6
In that sense, Aster supposed he had been lucky not to fall into that particular trap. But then, maybe even if he had encountered it at a less opportune juncture in his life, he might not have gone for it either. He had known about alcohol, and managed to abstain from that temptation.
But by now he had absolutely no interest in anything that dulled his senses, or elevated them beyond any useful purpose. If he wasn't alert and functional, he couldn't prepare himself against anything untoward that might happen to himself, or maybe to one of his charges.
At any rate, the Malii kept finding tokens, and after a while, he ceased to complain when Aster took them, though he still didn't seem particularly happy with the situation. But now that it had happened several times in succession, the Malii seemed to come to a decision to resign himself to this arrangement.
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Post by Noa on May 17, 2020 0:18:21 GMT -6
It made Aster feel a little as though he was bullying the Malii, but... Well, there was no real way for him to explain. And what would the Malii do with the coins anyway? It wasn't as though the Malii had any pockets to put them in, and the best he could have hoped to do was to keep them on a little pile on the ground. It would have hardly made any difference to keep them in Aster's pockets instead, where they might be a little more secure.
Aster had tried to explain, and that was the best he could do. Whatever understanding they came to, or could even manage to come to, would have to suffice for now.
The Malii's search for coins took them around the perimeter of the grounds, which was a considerable walk considering the size of the place. The house was pretty big, and the grounds were even bigger.
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Post by Noa on May 17, 2020 0:20:51 GMT -6
Granted, the grounds were usually also cluttered with a bunch of oddities, like hedge mazes or beaches with deep pools, so it didn't always look as though it was just a stretch of expansive space either. Even now, it wasn't that, but the fixtures looked oddly normal; statues here, an artful arrangement of flowering bushes there, all ordinary things one might find on the grounds of an actual property of this size that was owned by someone who resided there, and not some strange magicked location that shifted with the seasons.
Aster didn't trust it one bit. He kept a careful eye on the Malii as they walked along the grass, finding one thing after another. But the objects they found were unremarkable, and the grounds stayed unremarkable too, and eventually it was kind of hard to keep up the effort of being wary of the place. Nothing was happening, after all.
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Post by Noa on May 17, 2020 0:23:14 GMT -6
The longer it went on, the more Aster's vigilance made him tired, and the more he felt as though he was just being paranoid... No, maybe that was just what the house wanted. But maybe it wasn't. It was all a game of guessing and second guessing, and Aster had never been fond of mind games; even thinking about it to this extent was exhausting.
Eventually the Malii turned up something other than the coins. At first Aster thought, well, this is it. The mansion was about to show its true colors for the month at last. He caught sight of some sort of cord, which the Malii tugged on with his teeth until the rest of the item pulled free from the surrounding soil. But then he got a better look at it, and... Well, at first he had been a little taken in by the way the light glinted off it, but...
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