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Post by Noa on Jul 2, 2020 19:23:09 GMT -6
Aster imagined the trip must have been pretty strange for the two of them. Aster had taken them to a few different places in the interest of getting them out and about, and also as a rather informal way of trying to socialize them a bit. It wasn't a perfect arrangement, especially since they weren't particularly well trained, so he had to avoid any areas with a lot of, say, people, and especially kids... Though to be honest, he would probably have done that anyway, since he hated to be around crowds and the like. Children didn't bother him as much as adults, but where he was going to find a place where the crowd was just kids, no parents or anything, was anyone's guess. Or rather, considering the implications, Aster hoped that kind of place didn't exist; and if it did, he, as an adult man, probably wouldn't be welcome there either, whelps or no whelps.
But the whelps had been out to a few places, so it wasn't like this was their first foray. That said, they had never been underground. Aster had no reason to travel underground for any purpose other than mining, and it hadn't really occurred to him to bring the whelps along for that kind of thing until today.
"Say," Aster said to the gargoyle, casting a glance over the two whelps. "The black Sarane. Are they any good at finding rocks, like you are?" Neither of the whelps he had with him were black bloods, but still...
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Post by Jack on Jul 2, 2020 19:35:06 GMT -6
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Post by Noa on Jul 2, 2020 19:40:43 GMT -6
He did have a few Sarane who did have black blood in their lineage, and if they had a sense for gems, it might not be a bad idea to take them down here for a stroll. Rici and her siblings came to mind; if they were any good underground for anything other than... well, just being a whelp, then that might be some food for thought for the next time Aster wanted to make a trip underground.
The gargoyle's eyes, or its eye sockets, or whatever was going on in right about that area of its face, widened at Aster's words. Aster was confused for a moment, since he didn't think he had said anything particularly surprising, but the gargoyle began to look distinctly... troubled. Aster frowned, and thought over what he had said again. "Oh, no, I'm not trying to, uh, replace you," he clarified awkwardly. He felt a little bad, then, that he hadn't taken Cinna out in a while. The gem drake had been his companion for these underground trips for a long time, before the gargoyle came along and took that job over. Aster wasn't exactly sad to change over, since Cinna, despite having only roughly the intelligence of a Vulticus, somehow managed to have quite the judgmental streak. The gargoyle was fortunately free of this flaw, as far as Aster could tell.
Aster glanced back at the whelps to make sure they were still holding up okay, but the motion of the cart didn't seem to bother them.
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Post by Noa on Jul 2, 2020 21:55:05 GMT -6
They were actually doing pretty well, considering they had never been transported in quite that manner before. Aster thought they would freak out over it more, since it was such a new experience for them, and things were generally so much more confusing to a creature that you couldn't explain things to. But apparently in this particular instance he had overestimated the amount of shock inherent to the experience. But, well, better that than to find that he had underestimated it, by far.
Returning to the conversation he was having with the gargoyle, Aster said, "We'll still go together. We have a deal, right? I just thought, if it made a difference, maybe next time I'd bring along a Sarane who was a little more useful down here in the caverns. But it doesn't really seem like they'd be good at it, does it?" The gargoyle hadn't answered his question, but the more Aster thought about it, the more he supposed it must not be the case. He didn't know about those bug looking types of creatures that people sometimes brought back from their forays into the cavern, but the gargoyles and the gem drakes and all, they ate rocks. So of course they would have a better sense for it than organic creatures like a Sarane. Cave dwellers or not, the black Sarane of the caves ate meat the same way all other Sarane did.
The gargoyle nodded its head once in response to what Aster had said, sealing the deal.
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Post by Noa on Jul 2, 2020 22:01:25 GMT -6
And the gargoyle would know better than Aster, at least as far as this specific topic was concerned. "I figured as much, but you know, just a thought," he said. He didn't miss the dubious looks that the gargoyle was leveling at the whelps again, but this time he really couldn't tell what the gargoyle was thinking, so he decided to just leave all that alone for now. The whelps were still behaving, so it couldn't have been anything they were doing that was causing the problem. Hopefully they'd find some interesting rocks soon, so that the gargoyle had something else to think about. Aster felt as though he maybe hadn't carried on that conversation as well as he had hoped, but if he had given the gargoyle any mistaken impressions of anything, he didn't know where the problems lay there either.
They really did need to find a better way to communicate.
The two of them walked together for a while, with the buggy and its cargo of whelps in tow, without much going on. Near the entrance, it generally wasn't too eventful anyway, so Aster wasn't surprised by it. Besides, if anything exciting happened down here, it usually wasn't anything good. Besides finding some nice, rare gemstones, the only things of note that had ever happened to Aster down here were cave ins and things like that.
He wasn't in a particular rush to find anything either though, so for now, this kind of sedate journey suited him fine.
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Post by Jack on Jul 3, 2020 6:47:59 GMT -6
A couple of stones stuck out of the rock while you dig around.
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Post by Noa on Jul 3, 2020 22:31:51 GMT -6
The gargoyle did seem to settle down more as they headed deeper in. At first it had been pretty unsettled by everything that had been going on, and also a lot of what Aster had said, so the trip had gotten off to a weird start. But now that it was starting to more or less resemble a normal trip, Aster was glad to see that the gargoyle was also settling somewhat.
Eventually the gargoyle brought them to a stop, and Aster stopped with it, waiting to see what kind of verdict it would pass on the area. The fact that it had stopped meant that there must have been something valuable here, though from its lack of very visible excitement, he figured it wasn't an elemental or magic crystal. Probably just the normal run of the mill gems, which was a boon for Aster, even if it wasn't such a windfall for the gargoyle itself.
The whelps, who had been sitting in surprising contentment in the buggy for the trip thus far, took a little while to even realize that they had stopped. Aster took another look at them just to check on them, and he could tell from their slow reactions that they must have dozed off a bit while they had still been moving. That would have explained why they had been so quiet, rather than kicking up a fuss and making trouble like he was used to seeing from them when he brought them out like this.
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Post by Noa on Jul 3, 2020 23:23:25 GMT -6
He had been thinking that they were unusually well behaved for what he knew of them. In fact, he had actually started to feel sort of concerned over what was happening, wondering if they were sick or something. Well behaved whelps were a blessing, but he didn't want it to come at the expense of their health, and if they were acting so out of character, there had to be a reason for it.
But if the reason was something as mundane as the fact that they were falling asleep, then he didn't need to worry after all. He felt like laughing at himself, a little bit; he was really becoming broody over these whelps, without quite meaning to do it. They were Sarane, but even Sarane had a vulnerable baby stage. Aster wouldn't have called them cute, but they were endearing in their own troublesome way. And because they were kind of helpless, you couldn't help but try to take care of them and worry over their well being, right?
The whelps were still groggy, so Aster felt that it was probably alright to leave them be long enough to check out whatever it was the gargoyle must have found, so he parked the buggy on a relatively flat area of the tunnel and walked over to where the gargoyle stood, inspecting the rock face. The tunnels weren't exactly smooth going for most vehicles, given that they weren't generally made with vehicular travel in mind in the first place.
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Post by Noa on Jul 3, 2020 23:27:15 GMT -6
Aster wasn't sure exactly how they had been created. Some were probably natural, and those were likely the most uneven ones of all. Others were likely dug by other enterprising miners with either more equipment or more manpower, but Aster wasn't going to hew his way through a bunch of rocks by himself. It was much easier to go through existing tunnels with a familiar, and just pick up what he could where the familiar sensed there was a valuable something or the other to be found. Most individual miners took this approach, as far as he could tell, and there was certainly enough of a surplus of tunnels as well as valuables to make it a viable strategy, even now.
Though that begged the question of where the majority of the tunnels came from. Aster didn't think natural caverns were responsible for most of them, and he didn't think that many were man made either, though sometimes he came across ones where there was very little room for doubt one way or another. But his working hunch was that there were some massive tunneling creatures who had eaten their way through these mountains, creating most of the trails they saw now. He sure hoped those things had either gone extinct or moved onto greener pastures elsewhere though. He would not have wanted to run into one of their ilk while he was just out here looking for shiny rocks to take home.
"What have you got?" he said to the gargoyle.
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Post by Noa on Jul 3, 2020 23:30:58 GMT -6
The gargoyle turned at the sound of his voice, but only long enough to beckon Aster over. He must have found something worth digging around for if that was the case. Aster waited, knowing that the gargoyle would let him know if it needed his help unearthing what it had found. Sometimes it didn't, if the things in question weren't so deep under the surface of the rock he was examining. In those cases, all the gargoyle needed were its own claws. It had a sense for how to dig efficiently, so it didn't even take all that long when it was applying itself to a job like that. That made things easier for Aster, who up until this point had been following Cinna around; and Cinna didn't have the smarts to give him specific instructions meant to save effort and time, when Cinna had signaled to Aster that he might want to dig somewhere.
Still, even that had been better than guessing blind. Who knew how many miles of rocky tunnels there were here. He would be a fool to try and dig through it all. Back before he had a familiar at all, Aster operated more like a scavenger when he came down, hunting around for gems and such that had been dug out and forgotten by other miners, or possibly mining creatures, who came down here. The gems existed in such abundance that this did sometimes happen, though it wasn't a very lucrative way to make your way down here.
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Post by Noa on Jul 3, 2020 23:34:33 GMT -6
If it were, there would definitely be more people down here doing it, and if there were more people down here doing it, then it would cease to be lucrative again... In general it was better to just do your own digging if you could make it work. And so the moment that Aster had a reliable way to tell where the gems were hidden inside the rock, he opted to buy a pick and do that instead. When you had nothing else to your name, it really wasn't a terrible way to make money. And through trial and error, you sort of learned how to work with rocks, which came in useful for stuff like fixing things around your property, when you made enough money to be a home owner.
... He was really living the life out here, wasn't he?
The gargoyle was still inspecting the rock face, but a sound from behind him caught Aster's attention. He turned around to see if one of the whelps was in trouble, or possibly up to no good, and found that in this case it was the latter. Or, well, maybe he shouldn't make assumptions about the whelp's intent, but that was definitely Havoc trying to get out of the buggy, and therefore doing something Aster didn't want him to be doing. Velvet, bless her, was staying put, but then by this point Aster sort of figured he didn't have to worry about that with her, considering what she was like.
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Post by Jack on Jul 3, 2020 23:41:55 GMT -6
A couple of stones could be found, deep within the mines.
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Post by Noa on Jul 4, 2020 18:31:40 GMT -6
If all he needed from her was for her to stay where she was, then Velvet really was a veritable little angel. It matched her white coloring and her baby blue eyes. It would have been nice if her temper had been sweet in general, though he supposed that might have been too much to ask for from her. He supposed it was enough that she wasn't out there giving him grief all the time, even if it was kind of hard to get her to do anything when you needed her to move around.
Havok presented the opposite problem, which he was showcasing pretty well right now. Even though it hadn't been that long since he had awoken from his nap, he was already up and at 'em, trying to make his daring escape. It was a good thing Aster had thought to check on him in time. Sighing, he wandered back over to the buggy, not in any particular hurry since it looked like Havoc was having trouble getting himself over the side of the buggy. It was a good thing he was still so small. Aster would probably have to attach a leash to him once he got older and a little taller than he was now.
"No you don't," he said, and reached over to scoop up the errant whelp. Havoc had been picked up often enough by now to know exactly what was happening, but evidently not enough times to have made his peace with it.
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Post by Noa on Jul 4, 2020 18:37:11 GMT -6
He began kicking up a fuss immediately, flailing around as though his life depended on it. It was kind of a funny display, except that it sure didn't make Aster's job any easier. It would have been a lot funnier if he didn't personally have to deal with it.
But picking up a whelp to deposit him back into the buggy was merely a moment's work, and after he realized he was no longer being carried, Havoc calmed down after all. The nice thing about him was that his tantrums didn't persist. As soon as he was out of the situation he didn't like, Havoc seemed to forget about it. In the grand scheme of things, he really wasn't an aggressive whelp either. In fact, Aster felt that he had lucked out with this batch of whelps in one sense, since none of them were particularly angry personalities. They didn't try to nip him often, and he could head it off if they ever did. None of them were particularly crafty either, which was good, because those tended to be the most difficult ones for him to deal with. Having to head off an aggressive whelp was one thing, but having to outsmart one constantly would have been exhausting.
It was a shame that Rici was turning out to be rather timid, but, well... she wasn't here right now.
Velvet glanced up to see what all the commotion was about, but settled back down immediately when she realized it was just Havoc.
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Post by Noa on Jul 4, 2020 18:41:23 GMT -6
Familiarity bred contempt, or so the saying went, right? That was definitely the case with her and Havoc, it seemed. But then, they had been together pretty much since their respective hatchings, so that was a pretty natural reaction. Aster hadn't grown up with any siblings, but he had grown up with an adopted family of street kids, and even though it was less a family of choice and more a necessary thing for them to stay together in order to survive, sometimes it did feel a lot like having real siblings. There had been plenty of joking and taking each other for granted, and even a little mutual contempt sometimes.
... But the whelps were living a nice, safe life. Aster's compatriots had been picked off one by one, not always by death, but inevitably leaving the group for one reason or another as they got older.
Then again though, when the males grew up, they did have to be separated. Velvet and Rici could stay together, but Havoc would be going the way of all drakes when his time came, and getting his own space just to prevent complications or fighting. So maybe it wasn't that different.
"You stay put, or I'll pick you up again," Aster said firmly to Havoc. He didn't know if the whelp would listen, but Aster felt confident that he could at least look away for a moment to check on the gargoyle again without Havoc being able to get too far away from him.
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