>>5803516“I am no master,” Nemenmo told you, once you turned your wandering, wondering gaze back to her own. “I am young, as you are young.”
“I’m not that young,” you protested.
“How old are you?”
You hesitated, and answered: “A little over thirty years.”
She laughed, a sound that—to your surprise—was actually rather pretty.
“You are a child,” she said.
“I’m half-human!” you countered. “I’m mature for my age, by elf standards.”
“Well by the standards of this one, and the Neme, you are young,” she said. “I am fifty years of age this spring.”
You tried not to be surprised. After all, those elven students with whom you’d studied with as contemporaries when a very young child were forty years old by now, and Nemenmo—while she looked young—was clearly and adult by her, ah, physical architecture.
“Cease with your distraction,” she said, as your eyes flitted back up to her face, “and strip.”
You felt your face burn.
“Wh-what?”
She sighed, hands on hips, and spoke as if toa child: “You wish to learn to swim in the sand. Do you see me wearing robes, even ripped and tattered ones? No. It is not possible.”
You fidgeted uncomfortably. This was… Rather unorthodox. She was a strange woman whom you didn’t know. You were outdoors! Then again, it was Feycraft; a bit of nakedness under the moon wasn’t unheard of among elves, on ritual days, in sacred groves… But you’d been living among humans for quite some time, and gotten used to wearing rather thick school-clothes, or TROUSERS.
Nemenmo saw your hesitation and sighed expansively.
“This was your idea,” she said.
“I know!” you snapped.
“I could teach you the magic of the rising sun at dawn, if you would prefer?” she said. “That does not require nakedness. Or maybe how to cast and recover voices upon the waves of the wind, with the aid of the hidden spirits of the wilds?”
You considered your options, and decided…
>To learn <Sand-Swimming>[You’ll have to get naked, and you can only use it where the soil is loose, but it will allow you to pass throughs and, dirt, and ash as easily as water; also grants a point of Athleticism]
>To learn <Daylight>[You’ll be able to produce a light which non-magical creatures can see by, turning night to day in a small area and briefly blinding the dark-adapted entities of this world… Like goblins. Also grants a point of Elementalism.]
>To learn <Message>[You can whisper a message to someone far away, and receive responses, even around obstacles and corners, though not through impermeable barriers. Also grants a point of Illlusion.]
