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--- sessions:embrace:2020-05-20 [2020/05/23 17:23] – shyriath
+++ sessions:embrace:2020-05-20 [2024/01/23 11:24] (current) – removed shyriath
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-{{wst>pinkgothic|A left arm went up. Clawed fingers stretched. The unnatural posture was held for a while, then the arm lazily reeled back in, and the process repeated with the right arm.
-Then, elbows pointing outward, he rested his hands on his chest, ran his tongue along the studded plates of his mouth one might call 'teeth' if one were feeling generous, and, yawning silently, settled his gaze on the newcomer.
-The newcomer had an Orb. He was reasonably sure they didn't particularly sell well as tradeable goods and in any case, the newcomer only had one of them, not a selection, clinging to it like one might to one's personal belongings, so he assumed the newcomer was altogether new.
-There was a Colony on the creature's back if he was not mistaken, though, which might ease communication.
-He watched the creature for a while, taking note of the tone of voice, the pitch, the rhythm of syllables, the frequencies of the phonemes, trying to discern whether or not he had heard the pattern before. It was his sole focus for a while, sifting through a vast but poorly indexed tome of memories for anything similar.
-By the time he'd spent ten minutes on it, it occurred to him to wonder whether there may be more to it than whatever his own ears were picking up, and whether there was risk that most of the language was inaudible to him, and even a slight shift in dialect could make him erroneously assume a separate language where there was none.
-Slowly he swerved his head to look between his hips and his left arm, where his largely empty rucksack had been crammed. Listening to more of the conversation the newcomer was having with the owner of the inn, he opened his jar of slugs, taking note that it now only contained three of the delicacies, and speared one of them with a slowly descending claw, then fished it from the depths. It vanished into his mouth to be instantly flattened completely, kept from oozing out by thin but sufficient lips.
-Ta'skaaru, meanwhile, had yet to take note of the sluggish bundle of fur that was crammed into a nook not far from the entrance to the inn that had been largely chisled into the rock around what might once have been a natural chasm, and had some kind of wooden beams to hold up cloth where it had not.
-Perhaps his nook had once been meant to hold a guest book, or some decoration. Now and for the past couple of weeks, it had been his room.
-The creature negotiating with Ta'skaaru looked disconcertingly like a large version of the lizards she'd been eating, but was infinitely more articulate. A human might recognise it as looking very much like a monitor lizard, albeit with a strange set of milky, pupil-less eyes sitting on its snout just before the regular ones.
-<I have a holding area suitable for Orbs,> the lizard was clicking. <And the equipment to hold them. Certain plants are as impenetrable to them as your arms; holding them in place is a solved problem. A bit of distance is all I ask and the holding area is far enough that I am quite willing to risk it, but it would be rude to my other guests to let you into a room with it.>
-They had already negotiated that she would be allowed to stay for a rest and obtain some food as long as she put her wings to good use to retrieve a delivery that he had been waiting for, for a forage through a 'nearby' patch of vegetation that was the local equivalent of a forest for some berries Ehiphem had never heard of before but could relay the description of, and for a tour to the market for a round of groceries in the morning - with her Orb still in his possession, of course, as a simple polite form of insurance, lest she potentially make off with his money. At least she'd evidently been able to convince him that the Orb meant a lot to her.}}
-{{wst>shyriath|Ehiphem was evidently having a good time. Its tiny eyestalks had extended from its shell and waggled in all directions, looking at the inn and the creatures in and around it. Its fascination had interrupted its translation once or twice already, though the innkeeper's description of the Orb-holding plants had recaptured its attention.
-~We had not heard of such things!~ it exclaimed gleefully, after finishing its translation. ~We wonder if they have some rudimentary intelligence that the Orb reacts to. Seeing such a mind would be a fascinating thing.~}}