Shelby absently accepts the cup of tea from Lou, looking off into the distance. His words finally punch through her emotions, and she looks at him with a puzzled expression. "Tea? What's that got to do with anything?" She holds the look for another moment, then starts to chuckles, shrugging. "I suppose tea is as good a reason to feel blessed as any other."
She sips at the tea as they wait for the rest of their companions to exit the building and get ready to go. She turns her head, looking at Lou, "Do you ever wonder what your homeland is like? Or, I guess I should say your ancestors' homeland?"
Lou sits beside her sipping his tea, he obviously is ready to listen to her, but instead she asks him.
not really, I mean, my father refused to talk about it. I often asked about the history of our family, where he learned his fighting techniques. but he never really answered.
sips some more tea, After the mess with my sister, I guess I felt a little, i don't know, afraid to ask. So I just made myself content working at the Dragon. I haven't really talked to father for some time now. He does not like Amieko or her family. I don't know why, its like he blames them for something.
"I can't imagine anyone not liking Ameiko. She's so outgoing and friendly and beautiful..." Her brow furrows in confusion. "Perhaps something between her father and yours, maybe? Who knows?" She shrugs, sipping at the tea. "This is good. No wonder Ameiko keeps you around." A small smile sits on her lips, her tone joking for once.
Archibald spends a few minutes packing and tidying up before heading outside with a hearty farewell to his kinsman. It was always nice to meet another halfling, even if the humans got their silly emotional messes all over the place.
He strides out with his pack packed, his tinkling medals gleaming, his head up, and his cane in hand.
Jin offers Walthus a warm smile. "Fair enough. Thank you for the hospitality. And the warnings."
She bows low, in the style of her father's homeland, and walks outside, ready to hit the trail.
As Archibald and Jin come out, Shelby finishes her tea. "Thanks for the tea, Lou. Maybe we can talk some more later." She pats the man on the shoulder, rising to her feet, stretching like a cat. Her tunic stretches up, showing a few inches of thickly-muscled stomach, before she remembers and hastily puts her arms back down. She mutters a bit about holier-than-thou paladins as she gets ready to go.
Datura simply nods at their host in thanks, and is somewhat pleased to see the others getting themselves together and ready to make haste. He makes his way out the door, and calls Awd back to his side when he sees that Shelby did not go far, and has Lou with her. Once they are all gathered together, he offers as much small talk as he usually does. "Well, there's no need to hare off after a witch that we may not find, and may not be friendly, just for information. The obvious move seems to be heading back to the split in the trail and follow the right one."
The warpriestess nods her agreement to the elf. They knew which way to go to find the goblins, so why waste more time finding some swamp witch? She gets her shield strapped onto her left arm, then unsheathes her sword. She indicates her readiness, flicking her eyes to the horizon, letting the 'scout' know to proceed.
After fetching Liera, it's nearly a half-a-day's journey back to the main road. The Old Fish Trail is easy enough to find, but navigating it proves tricker as the underbrush had already begun to encroach on the once well worn path.
As soon as the reach the trail, Datura easily slips back into his previous role of scout.
Awd merely follows along behind Datura, sniffing the air for any signs of food.
"I can't imagine anyone not liking Ameiko. She's so outgoing and friendly and beautiful..." Her brow furrows in confusion. "Perhaps something between her father and yours, maybe? Who knows?" She shrugs, sipping at the tea. "This is good. No wonder Ameiko keeps you around." A small smile sits on her lips, her tone joking for once.
Lou looks up seems its time to move out. oh, and thanks, about the tea. I do hope you are doing better now.
Lou joins the group to head out.
Being around the back of the building considering his position, he gazed wistfully out into the swamp. These changes were difficult. He'd had his share of arguments before, and usually did well due to his quick tongue, but he'd always had trouble with the ladies. One of these days, he'd have to see if he could change his cards about that. He was so caught up in his own thoughts that he nearly missed the fact that his group was leaving, and he hurried off behind them as they went.
The situation puts Archibald completely out of sorts. I am a emissary of my valley! I do not get lost! Bah!
"Um... M-maybe we should retrace our footsteps?" Liera suggests meekly, clutching Speckle to her chest. "I... I don't think it's wise to leave Shelby back there. Sh-she's very stubborn. She's likely to get herself more lost." She bites her lip and fiddles with her hair using her free hand, glancing worriedly back at the way the group came. "A-and the others don't seem too sensible either," she adds, already fearing the tension between Shelby and Tshilaba.
"Well, we know where we're going, right? We'll find the goblin lair, and either they'll be waiting for us, or we'll wait for them." With a glare at Tshilaba (for no good reason, anyway), she starts off, trying to head in the general direction they had been going by using the sun as a guide.
He had trailed off to the back of the group, mostly because he didn't want to have a fight with any of the ladies again today. But before he knew it, the party had lessened somewhat and there was just one halfling, and two humans heading along the trail. This didn't bode well, and as Shelby seemed determined to get them where they needed to go, he let her take point.
But he wasn't very good at keeping his mouth shut, even when it would get him into trouble. It wasn't too long before he opened it again. "You know, this kind of reminds me of when Shalelu found me. I'm sure she's feeling better by now and eager to kill some goblins herself." He very clearly wasn't terribly bothered by anything that had happened so far, including getting lost.
As it turns out, stomping around in a swamp is exhausting work, and soon Shelby is sweating from the effort. Even worse is the fact that going faster has only resulted in losing what little trail the group had, and are now forced to muscle their way through the underbrush.
When Liera shifts her pack, the Iomedaean prayer book Shelby insisted she carry with her falls to the ground revealing to things.
One, it is actually Shelby's from the name on the inside of the front cover.
Two, it isn't a prayer book, but a novel titled The Sorrowful Song: The Erotica Tale of Junchak Skull-crusher and Larielanna Lemunasura that had its cover replaced with that of an Iomedaean prayer book.
Not really keeping it a secret, he pulled out the lot of his cards and shuffled them well. He drew three cards and looked at them to see if he could determine himself a pattern.
= The Cyclone
= The Trumpet
= The Big Sky
The Cards spoke well. This tempestuous strumpet was on the cusp of momentous change and imminent danger. Either he could allow her to continue their course and lead them into further peril, or he could follow her into uncertainty. It seemed rather clear to him. He simply had to endure his lady tongue.
The first thing he did was sit down, finding a log that wasn't likely to leave a stain on his clothes. He didn't really seek their halfling companion for support, but before he spoke he shot him a look of apology. "Your enthusiasm for finding the path is getting us further into difficulty. It would be better if we didn't continue to make it more difficult for us to be found by our party." For a second, an angry faced Jin flashed in his mind, and then he knew he was taking the right path. There's no way she wouldn't be seeking them out.
"Perhaps if I wasn't the only one up here clearing out all this stupid vegetation, we'd be making better time! We've been leaving a trail behind us that only the blind could miss. I've been leaving a trail, anyway."
Still, she makes her way back to the duo, sitting down on another nearby log after sheathing her sword. Her back is straight and proud as she takes out a bit of her trail rations, deciding upon a short break to recharge.
Lou was just as lost as everyone, he is not normally a wilderness kind of guy.
He does his best to keep with those that are not "lost"
after the book falls out, Lou raises an eyebrow. not so much out of surprise but out of recognition, Noro had the same book that she would try and hide from both him and father.
Liera shrugs off her pack at Datura's suggestion, rummaging through it with one long-nailed hand. "I, um, might have something... Shelby insisted I carry this with me. Tried getting me to- oh!" A well-worn copy of the Acts of Iomedae falls to the ground with a soft noise, raising a small cloud of dirt - and losing its dust jacket in the process. The girl stoops, picking up the book curiously, and nearly drops it again when she sees the real cover.
"... Oh. Oh, my." A blush rises in her cheeks as she flips through the pages out of curiosity. Her eyes widen, slitted pupils shrinking considerably as she stares at a lurid illustration. "... I... I didn't know a whip could fit there!"
After a few moments of flipping and staring, eyes somehow widening more with each page, she coughs and hands the book to Datura. "Um, I'd say this would have her scent," she mutters awkwardly.
Archibald sits on the log with them while trying his best to not be drug into this. Halflings he could handle, even the odd gnome now and again, but humans were crazy. Especially these two. He wasn't sure if they should just kiss and get it over with or kill each other and resolve the issue entirely....
For a while he was contemplating asking Archibald if he wanted to have his fortune read, but even he was able to realize how bad that could be. The problem was that he didn't really have much else to offer. He hadn't really killed anything yet, much less any goblins which were worth something in bounty. He couldn't fix his cards magically like Shelby could, although thought he might be able to get the knack of it if he kept working at it.
As long as he thought about work, though, he felt better about the situation, and pulled out his cardstock. It wasn't the best environment for drawing, but he was down one card from before, and it was about time for him to do something to replace it. Sure he had other decks, he had made plenty of cards before, but there was just something unsettling about a less than full deck that he thought he could spend time on.
The backs were always easy to ink, since he'd done so many. When he first began making decks, he had placed his own individual design on the back of every card and he had gotten so aware of how it looked, he could tell immediately when it was wrong. Not everyone could tell, but many of the cards he ended up using for decoration by tossing them into solid wood had ever so slight defects in the back alone. He'd do the rest for practice, and then he effectively destroyed them so they'd never be misused. He'd taken to cutting the cards out of the sheets of paper by magic, it was much better than doing it by hand and it made a more even cut, but he still inked by hand. There was just something to it that made it soothing to his fragile nerves.
The card he was working on was The Idiot. It was just like an idiot to get himself lost and separated from his group. He had learned to identify with every card, to invest understanding and emotion into every card, because that was the only way they would be honest. Honest cards were the best cards after all, since people came to them for truth, it wouldn't do for them to be spurious.
He never really should have tried it. Here was not the environment for drawing, and he never even got to the front of the card before it was unalterably ruined. With a sigh, he lifted the card out of it's sheet with his magic, throwing it about forty feet away just to have it make the solid knock as it halfway imbedded itself into a tree. The whole process took only a few minutes but it was obvious that something else needed to take place here. If only he had more patience.
She is momentarily taken aback by Tshilaba suddenly throwing the card, her eyes reflexively following it as it thudded into the sickly-looking tree. Her dark eyes rest on the fortune teller for a moment, then glance to the halfling. Then her face lights up. "Hey, do you all think we could gather something to make a fire with?"
Turns to Datura, still laughing. "I can't imagine what sort of scent you might find on that."
"The cover now has a portion of each of your scent, and more of Liera's for both having it among her things and flipping through it. The greater scent of Shelby's hands on the pages, if it is an item familiar to her, should have what Awd needs." He explains, as he holds the book open, and flips the pages to push the scent to Awd. Now and again, as it stops unintentioned on a page here and there, Datura blushes slightly, but stays to his task. Finally, during the second pass, he issues a command to his companion.
Liera flinches away fron Datura's harsh chiding, heat rising to her ears; she fidgets with one for comfort, clutching Speckle close to her chest with the other arm. She watches curiously as Awd begins looking for the scent of her foster-sister, then gasps in horror and takes an instinctive step back when the plant begins 'sniffing' at her familiar.
"No! Bad Awd!" she tries to scold, flicking the hem of her skirt in the plant's direction - not trying to hit her, as the hem comes several inches short of connecting, but hoping to shoo her.
His minor magical effects from the spell were still in effect. He did his best to keep the prestidigitation spell ready for any such mishap. It was a terribly useful spell, able to do all sorts of little funny things. Once he was able to clean wine out of his white shirt without leaving any stain at all. If he were able to do that, he might be able to work some kind of drying action on leaves and twigs. It just would take time. He tried it on a muddy leaf that was next to the log he was on, and sure enough, it did clean off the mud as well as the dampness.
"Bring the kindling here anyway." He said as he waved the dry leaf in the frustrated lady's direction. "I can dry some of this stuff out." He cleared a small patch of soft ground from other things and began drying and tossing kindling into a pile at his feet. He made sure he took his time as the others gathered more and more materials.
Explaining himself, he spoke with a dramatic gesture. "The larger the fire, the more smoke they might see. This was a good idea!" Waiting until they had made significant amounts of kindling, he threw other more substantial sticks on top. He'd helped do fires before with his troop, and this particular one was a royal mess. But it wouldn't matter because he had one more trick up his sleeve.
"Give me a little room to work my magic." He said as he directed the others away from where the flames would lick. Muttering some word in ancient Thassalonian passed down from generation to generation amidst his people, he spread out his hands and a sheet of flame shot out, encompassing the dry kindling. Lighting it up quicker than he anticipated.
After looking about for fifteen minutes, you find where they must have gotten split off from the group. It's been nearly an hour and a half since they went missing.
The kindling catches and soon a fire is merrily crackling away. Incidentally, the heat and humidity have now hit the point where it's unbearable.
You walk along the trail that your wayward fellows have blazed and Datura has discovered.
Datura finally gets a lead on the others, indicating a sign of trail that they seem to have gone down. He focuses on the trail, and tries to follow where it may lead. Once he finds those fools, he will have quite the words for them.
Awd just follows along behind her master. Her head is hung, but given she doesn't think and therefore isn't ashamed at being reprimanded, it just may be the first signs of hunger setting in.
The fire kicks up nicely, and the fortuneteller is happy to see that he no longer needs to use up one of his trump cards. The fire kicked up high and quickly, to the point of where it was a bit too much to keep one side toward it at all times. He turned like a sausage at the spit to keep from burning, but ended up with a smile on his face. "That should help them find us! Perhaps everything else out here too!"
Shelby is delighted to see that the fortune teller manages to get the blaze going. She is less delighted as the sun continues moving across the sky, the heat growing from uncomfortable to unbearable. She backs off a few paces from the fire, sweat quickly weighing down her hair and soaking her tunic and breeches. She crosses her arms over her chest, more in a show of modesty than anything else.
Archibald is dying, in his astute estimation. Sweat pours down his face and not even the full skin of water he dumps over his head seems to help. He is reduced to sitting against the log and panting like a dog.