{{wst>shyriath|It fell to Puugwol to escort Einriss around the colony on Oghiras, though this proved to be of mixed benefit - his new colleague had clearly learned her way //around//, but was only erratically aware of what large parts of the settlement were //for//. On the other hand, she knew where the important things were, such as where to get food and supplies, so perhaps she simply wasn't interested in most of the rest.

It also appeared that Puugwol knew the names, but not much else, of many of the people. Indeed, it was hard to escape the impression - though she herself acted blissfully unaware of it - that she was not well-regarded, with many responding to her greetings with wary tones or brusque responses, or even openly hostile expressions. By far the most civil individual seemed to be the settlement's chief quartermaster, who politely acknowledged both her and Einriss.

Under the circumstances, the pleasantries were at least brief, and Puugwol concluded them with a hopeful invitation: "I have a task that must be done outside in the woodlands. Perhaps you might wish to come and see what they are like?"}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|It was a question with only one possible answer, and Einriss grinned accordingly, assuming from his interaction with Puugwol so far that she would know how redundant it was and understand the grin. "Please," he said, for completion's sake, and continued: "And what tasks are these? Anything I could assist with?"}}

{{wst>shyriath|Puugwol looked immensely pleased, and led him toward an area that (as he had already learned) was full of carts and wheelbarrows. "I am not certain," she replied, selecting one of the smaller carts and starting to install herself into its harness. "But perhaps an alchemist's senses might prove of assistance; I am collecting dead wood, but it must be dead wood with specific properties, including a chemical signature. So far I have been tracking it through smell, but I have not found enough specimens that way to consistently identify which trees are appropriate."

Having harnessed herself to the cart, she motioned for him to follow and maneuvered it along a downward-sloping corridor toward a distant light with the characteristic color of the alien sky outside. She continued, "In truth, I am looking for a suitable substrate for the cultivation of //bilaak-tesh//. It grows quite well on many Avishraan woods, but the Citadel does not have many trees and the quartermaster says he cannot justify the expense of finding and importing appropriate wood."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|"I'm afraid I don't know what bilaak-tesh is," Einriss remarked, although he could imagine it being either a fungus or some vegetation with low need of light. On Oghiras, though, that hardly narrowed it down. "Nor sort of substrate it needs. Can you clarify?"}}

{{wst>shyriath|"Oh. Oh yes, I suppose you would not know of it," Puugwol replied. She paused for a moment, and then explained, "It is a fungus of the forests of my homeland. A parasite of trees. It displaces their native fungus-symbionts and causes the trees to die, and thrives on the fallen wood. It prefers trees that concentrate certain elements and compounds, particularly indoles. It is part of how I speak to my gods."

In such a context, that last sentence was... unexpected. A psychoactive fungus, possibly?

"I have found pieces of wood with the correct properties, but in such small pieces that the //bilaak-tesh// cannot thrive properly on them," she added, as they emerged into the harsh, dim light. Ahead of them was a track that led down into a valley at the foot of the mountain; flanking it on either side were tree-stumps in sufficient quantity to suggest that the Oracle's followers came this way to harvest timber.

As they continued down, Einriss could observe that the trees, or at least tree-analogues, were relatively low and wide, forming broad roofs of leaves at a height that he could probably reach if he stood up on two legs and reached up as high as he could.

"Look!" Puugwol hissed with delight, pointing ahead. A small, crablike animal was scuttling across the track on three pairs of legs, evenly spaced around its body. "The animals here are based upon a three-way symmetry."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|Einriss had no particular connection to spirituality, having always been so tied to the practical considerations of everyday life that it simply never really occurred to him. Of course he was familiar with what 'gods' were and the importance they had to other takmar, but he hadn't expected them to be mentioned in this context, and it gave him pause, between his quiet attempts to remember how indoles //felt//.

...but it couldn't quite give him pause for long, because Puugwol's comment on native life pulled his attention back to it in a hurry, and he latched his senses onto the creature, tracking it in the crimson light as it moved. "Where is its head?" he asked, but more to himself than to Puugwol, resisting the urge to try catching it and picking it up.}}

{{wst>shyriath|"On that one, the nearest analogue is in its center," Puugwol replied gleefully, as the creature scurried out of sight into some black-leaved undergrowth. "The nervous system and sensoria are centralized in a cylindrical area in the core of the body. Some higher animals here are bilaterally symmetric, but even in those cases it is because two of the three sections have folded backward and partly fused. I managed to briefly capture one example to study it; but after a vigil or so it managed to release itself. There was much mayhem that followed; I have been asked not to capture any other animals until the containment facilities are completed."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|Humour was usually lost on Einriss, but it didn't mean that he wasn't occasionally amused. "What did you capture that caused that much trouble?" he asked, conversationally. It turned out there //were// things Einriss was fond of making conversation about, after all - it just had to be biology-adjacent.}}

{{wst>shyriath|"It was-" Puugwol fidgeted in her harness, obviously excited by the topic, but struggling to find words. "It has not been named, you understand," she added, "but it was an arboreal creature. Dextrous fingers. And apparently quite clever, because it was able to unlatch the door of the room I had been keeping it in. It got into the cafeteria and availed itself of the fruit, both to eat and to throw at the occupants. I have wondered if it could be trained, or communicated with in some basic fashion." She sounded wistful.

Absently, she sniffed at the air, trying to find the wood-scent she encountered before, but instead caught a faint whiff of the odor that she'd picked up from Einriss' wing when they'd been introduced. Oh, yes, she'd almost forgotten about that. "If I may ask," Puugwol said, "I have been detecting a persistent smell... like plants, leaves, from your wing, and I had been wondering what it was."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|Domesticating wild animals was a delicate matter, of course, but Einriss wasn't a stranger to the principles. As a Lifegiver, there were some aspects of it that he, too, took to easily, although not so much that it would have been a great boon for him to try over any other takmar. He was about to comment on what she'd had in mind for its training when she brought up his wing. 

"Oh," he said, more to interrupt his own thoughts than to communicate anything, and lit up. "Yes. It's a replacement membrane. I stitched it together from the altered leaves of leather cabbage," he said, using the colloquial name for a hardy plant that the Lifegivers were growing as part of the regular agriculture back in the Citadel, high on certain micronutrients, but low on energy. "I can't feel very much through it, but with some simple tricks, I managed to get it to play nice with my circulatory system, so it's alive and can recover from damage. And, most importantly, it lets me fly if I need to; it's just as robust as the original membrane."}}

{{wst>shyriath|Puugwol turned to Einriss and, for the first time that day, eyed him intently, and tried - with limited success - to hide a rising excitement. //He //modified// himself!//

"That is very clever," she felt moved to comment. "I understand that many would have gone to a healer to have it repaired in a more, um... conventional fashion." As conventional as healing could be when stimulated by magic, anyway. "But you did not do this?"}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|"The damage was such that even a skilled healer would have left the wing in worse shape than before the damage," he shrugged mildly, omitting the fine detail that he felt himself more than well-equipped enough to do said healing himself, and thus felt uniquely qualified to make the claim. "So it seemed like a good opportunity to practise grafting. These days, I would do it a bit differently, stimulate nerve growth along some of the thinner capillaries by letting them grow into the capillary wall, but I can't do it on the finished product without compromising the structural integrity or, well, ripping it out and starting over." He didn't say that he wasn't particularly interested in that self-mutilation, but it seemed quite clear from the tone his last sentence ended on.}}

{{wst>shyriath|So, a practical decision, or mostly so. Still, it was not a course many would have taken; people could be so... //conservative// about their morphology. "I quite approve," Puugwol said warmly. "It was an open-minded approach. I wonder if a similar symbiosis could be used for less restorative purposes - imagine a symbiote based upon an aquatic plant, for example, that could filter oxygen from the water and provide it to the host, and allow them to remain submerged indefinitely."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|Einriss nodded in agreement. "Is that something you've experimented with? With apologies if this is an ignorant question - I don't understand the limits of your shifting abilities particularly well," he admitted. Dimly, he remembered that he had wanted to ask something of her in regards to that. "Although, on that subject," he said. "Without meaning to be rude, could you not... disappear organs while I'm around? I noticed it's remarkably unpleasant to sense, earlier, when you removed your third eye."}}

{{wst>shyriath|Puugwol was slightly disappointed, though not completely surprised, since others had reacted to certain changes of shape before this. They had, however, not really articulated their reactions in quite that way, and she considered how to respond.

"You must understand," she said at last, "that I did not //cause// the eye to disappear. Through willpower, I caused it to //exist//, along with the feathers; the disappearance happened when my... not concentration, but..." She struggled, not being entirely clear on how to say that one was 'in the zone' or 'in the flow' in Imperial. "...but when my mind relaxed, I reverted to my default form.

"I can attempt," she added, slightly tartly, "if I have formed so visible an organ, to withdraw to another room to allow it to go away, but an attempt is all I can promise. I cannot always predict what kind of stimulus will cause me to lose my transformation."

She took a moment to compose herself, and then added, "But I have not experimented much with symbiotes. Such capabilities as I need, I have usually brought forth from within myself, if I can. Between Life and Shift magic, I can bring about significant permanent change to a living thing, if given enough time, but for the most part the only being I am guaranteed to have so much time with has been myself."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|"//Visibility// isn't really the issue," Einriss was saying, but it was a distant comment without vehemence - in his tone was the sadness of understanding the problem. He certainly wasn't going to ask her not to //manifest// any spare organs purely for the sake of keeping him from witnessing their disappearance. That would be too high a price to pay. Maybe he would bring it up again if it made him throw up - the eye hadn't and the feathers hadn't had enough connections to the rest of the body to register as anything but an itch as they disappeared, but he could imagine a greater change's reversion having rather intense effects. Maybe it was best to cross that bridge when they came to it.

Besides, the other topic of conversation was much more interesting. "How does Shift work when you want to affect another creature? Does it need to be holding still? Do you need to touch it?" he asked, never having dealt with any Shift user before that could affect more than just their own appearance.}}

{{wst>shyriath|"I do not need to touch them," Puugwol said, "but they must remain within a short distance. It helps greatly if they do not move. For obvious reasons," she added, "animals are usually best restrained during the process. If it is purely an exercise of Shift magic, the changes will simply revert if an animal moves away or moves around too quickly to remain in focus. If I am using Life magic to try to freeze the change in place, an interruption may not be so benign."

The trail, by this point, ran beside a stream. Though it was shallow enough to see through, its color was still blackish, giving the impression of looking into a liquid example of smoky quartz. There were a few alien-looking fish frantically moving against the swift current, but most of what life could be see in it clung tenaciously to the bottom, protected by shells resembling low domes or hiding between pebbles.

Puugwol stared down at the sight without really seeing. "I can effect change well, so long as the changes are purely of shape and structure," she added, "but I cannot exercise good control over... hormones, chemistry, things like that. Not outside myself. My grasp of them is... indirect. From what Dlyss said, you have more direct access to such things."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|"I tend to the seeds of life most of all," he said, in a tone of acknowledgement. "Under my guidance, life grows into a different shape from its inception. My leaf-wing, for example, is from a specimen I grew from an altered seed, then grafted its pieces into place once it had matured. That said, that was a special case - some of the most important parts were instructing my own body to merge with it. It took time - not at all as convenient as your shifting," he smiled. "But I suppose the permanence is built in to how I do things, which grants it some charm. And if I have done it once, the result can usually reproduce, or be made to do so somewhat easily. And yet, it's difficult to see what will work and what will wither; Dlyss has helped me considerably by looking into the futures of my creations."}}

{{wst>shyriath|"It is good to hear that she can be so forthcoming... when she chooses." These last words Puugwol pronounced with a certain amount of disapproval. "She has not always been willing to provide me with answers to //my// questions - I understand that she is a busy personage, but when a refusal takes more time to say than 'yes' or 'no, one wonders what the motivation is."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|Puugwol's observation startled Einriss mildly. Of course the Oracle had not always been perfectly forthcoming, but it had always struck Einriss as more of an issue of vocabulary - that they might talk past each other. What Puugwol was describing seemed to involve no talking at all; not in any meaningful sense.

But it was also less of a biologically-themed topic than before, and so he was able to split his attention and spread out his perception to look for signs of what Puugwol was looking for, even as he asked: "She does not assist you with her gift?"}}

{{wst>shyriath|"She has not yet had work for me," Puugwol grumbled, "so there was nothing to assist with - at that time. It was... curiosity, of a sort. But I believe that having answers would improve my understanding and capabilities in the long term and that giving them to me would have been a worthwhile investment on her part. The one that was most frustrating was a question, ultimately, about the past.

"Some transformations when shifting are easier than others, you see. I understand that when cutting gemstones, there are particular planes and angles along which a clean break is more easily obtained - I imagine it is something like that. There are things... implicit in the body that can be brought out. Some are things that are... variations, mutations. Things that appear in people sometimes, like a different scale color, or even the third eye I had when we met. But there are others that are not like that, that hardly ever appear in people, but which are... buried, somewhere inside..." She trailed off, struggling with a better way of putting it, then gave up.

"I had an idea about why this was. I think perhaps that neither we, nor other beings, were created as we are. I think that we //became// how we are, proceeding from living things that were different from us. So that was one of the questions I asked of Dlyss, since of all people she should know how it happened." Puugwol assumed a sour expression. "She did not like that question," she added.}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|By now, Einriss was inspecting a fallen, aged tree that was partly hidden by other foliage, sniffing at it with some interest, verifying his initial impression that it might be suitable for Puugwol's purposes. "This, maybe?" he interjected into the ongoing conversation, summoning her attention, but then continued with their talk by saying: "What you say sounds intuitive to me. In what manner did she not like the question?" There was confusion in his voice; he couldn't conceive of being upset at a question like that, and so by proxy couldn't conceive of someone else being upset at it, either.}}

{{wst>shyriath|Puugwol lifted her own muzzle, her nostrils working; she brightened up and slowed the cart to a stop, disengaging herself from the harness. "She said-" Sniff sniff sniff. "Yes, I think this might be suitable. -what she said was..."

There was a pause and a faint movement in her throat, and then she said, in a very passable imitation of Dlyss' voice and inflection, if not her accent, "'This is not a matter meant for common knowledge. The gods have told us what we need to know about the origin of people.'" There was another movement in Puugwol's throat, and she added, in her normal voice, "I wonder at her gods, for being so stingy with their knowledge."

She hunkered over the fallen tree, examining it, sniffing, clawing carefully at the bark and sniffing again, and then looking at the leaves before looking around. It was clear that, although there were a number of different species here, at least some of the living trees, scattered among the others, were of the same kind as the fallen one, even though they didn't smell quite as promising. 

"Perhaps it must undergo some decay before it has the right concentrations," she mused aloud. "But if we can cut some pieces off this one, they will be enough to last for some time, if this wood indeed proves suitable."}}

{{wst>pinkgothic|Einriss shook his head mildly at her Dlyss imitation. The accuracy of the voice entertained him, but certainly not what it was saying. It seemed like a strange thing for Dlyss to get so defensive about, when she was actively encouraging the manipulation of all kinds of life into different forms, but he was willing to leave it at that. He was, after all, used to not understanding people's emotional reactions.

"I can help you carry chunks back," Einriss offered, looking for suitable weak points in the rotting wood by careful touch, reckoning that it likely wouldn't even need cutting as much as a good yank at the right moment.}}