>>5802841>>5802890>>5802901>>5802929>>5802958>>5803316>>5803326You were out here in the Goblin Wastes for goblin knowledge of your estranged friend and her malevolent mother. That was your primary goal, of course. But, well… This was FAIRY KNOWLEDGE from a FOREIGN LAND on offer. Even if it was a less-direct way of approaching the situation than, say, an organized raid or rapprochement, you simply could choose no other option and remain true to the core of yourself.
“I want to learn your Feycraft,” you told Nemenmo, and her eyes widened at the impropriety of it. “I want to know the secrets of how you did… What you did. Swam through sand, shone like the sun… Can you teach me?”
She frowned deeply…But nodded and beckoned you still higher up the mountainous terrain which she and her people’s Fairy Court seemed to inhabit as if a castle. Terzo watched you with idle interest but said and did nothing, and your father was far too busy by this point to pay your passage any heed, but Pearce regarded you with some concern. You shook your head and held up a hand to put him at ease, and he sat back down. You felt his eyes on you as you rounded the great stones which ascended like spires from the sandstone below, into the night.
Up above the caves and caverns was an almost bowl-like shape, full of fine sand that must have been carried up to fill it. It was brocaded by tall, narrow, flat-topped stones like pedestals or pillars holding up the sky. Eachw as carved with complex patterns, weathered by the elements and yet seemingly aglow in the night with captured, golden light of mid-day sun to your second-sight. They depicted dancers, and swimmers, and climbers going about their art; some carried the eagle-claw blades of the Ashuarti, some wore silks. Wavy dividing lines seemed to symbolize the earth, depicted like an ocean; the minimalist figures flowed between the surface of the world and the realms below it as easily as a fish might leap and jump from water to air and back again in Hawksong’s harbour. A fairy flame of reddish gold shone atop each like a miniature sun, or a star brought down from on high, visible only to those with the eyes to see it.
