>>5906849>>5907001>>5907017>>5907049>>5906811“Actually…” You pause to think on it, but eventually concede. “That sounds great. Thank you.”
Costella beams at that, evidently happy to have made herself useful. She practically skips out of the room for the spring which enters her step. You smile a little bit to see it, happy that the bubbly vivaciousness which returned to her after you cured her condition has stuck, even in your absence. Though… Well, it’s not as if Costella has ever had trouble making friends, as far as you can tell. Even without the friendship which she and Izirina seem to have kicked off, in your absence, you can’t imagine her ever being left lonely for long.
Without Costella present, you are left with alone with Izzy. There is a dearth of comforting back-rubs or cooing concern, which is a curious contrast since Izzy is the one who you are ostensibly dating… If that’s even how she perceived your relationship, or still perceives it. This woman remains a mystery to you in man ways. Every time you think you ‘get’ her, she surprises you, sometimes with dangerous results. And yet…
“it’s good to be back,” you say.
Izzy smiles, and nods, gingerly taking your bucket and helping you to your feet. With another casting of her <Teleport Object> spell, she summons a chair for you to sit on. It’s a welcome gesture, but as she begins to pace excitably before you, it begins to feel uncomfortably like an interrogation.
“Tell me everything,” she demands. “What was it like? Did you… Oh, you must have met GODS, actual GODS. And… The MOON! It must have been amazing!”
“It was different,” you say carefully. “Strange. In some ways a paradise. But… Strange. Unnatural.”
You reflect on your experiences on the moon: the pristine curated woods with their perfectly-symbiotic ecosystems, maintained by powerful fairy ‘groundskeepers’… The sprawling city-sized laboratories, and observatories, and campus, and magical megastructures, all staffed by chalk-white, opal-eyed hermaphroditic ‘high elves’ or ‘eladrin’, long-lived and created wholecloth as adults. A world without natural birth or death. The things that work there are not, you realized before you left, things that necessarily fit in with the way of YORU world… THIS world. Here on Earth, living creatures aren't nigh-immortal, and the ecosystem wouldn't be able to handle it if they were. Aging, death, and decay are natural elements of the grand design… Perhaps a dark design, a relic of the Dark Gods, but you aren’t entirely comfortable with simply discarding all the world’s biological processes in pursuit of such a sterile paradise, even a beautiful one.