Imaginary Friends - RPLOG
Participants
Date
10/9/477
Log
Fenris sits quietly in a remote garden on the Solacious estate. Most of the military minded foxes stay away from what they call "A frivolous display," but Fenris has found it to be a welcome retreat. Plus nobody else comes out here all that often, so it is a good place for a clandestine meeting. The newly restored liger fiddles with a little steel pyramid, hoping that Flora will get here soon.
A soft rumble, and a small flick of the tail as Flora moves around the estate, on her way towards the garden. Her ears twitch lightly, and her feet move her along the hallways and through the doors as quickly as she can, soon enough arriving at the agreed-upon meeting-spot.
Looking up as Flora enters the small arboreum, Fenris smiles and ushers her to a seat. "Welcome!" he says, "Sorry for the secrecy, but no one else knows I can do this, and I would rather keep it that way." The liger holds out his hand with the little pyramid on it. "Ready?" he asks, waiting for an affirmative before pressing in a corner of the device.
The pyramid folds on itself, flopping out in an organized way to form a flat triangular base. Above it appears a creator with cat ears and a twitching tail. She looks around, "You brought a friend," She chimes with a grin, one fang displayed. "What's your name?" she asks, looking at Flora.
A soft rumble, a faint smile, and Flora offers a small curtsey. "Flora is... Flora, yes," she murrs softly, quartet of tails swaying behind her, and her ears twitching another moment. "Yes. Flora was... Wanting to see for herself, yes," she murrs with another twitch of her ears, not quite sure what to ask or talk about /just/ yet.
"Flora," Fenris says, "Meet my friend, Sylvia. Sylvia, this is Flora. She was hoping to speak to you for a while." The fluffy liger looks between the two women, holding the little metal base steady. "Like I've told you, Sylvia," he says, "You are pretty much one of a kind around here."
"A pleasure to meet you, Flora. I've added you as a guest friend," she says with a nod, "And that is entirely untrue," she says, sticking out her tongue and waving a finger, "I can detect the presence of at least five brothers, six sisters, and two that prefer not to have genders assigned, but I appreciate being called special anyway!"
Flora raises a brow, her tails flicking lightly behind her as she looks up at Sylvia curiously. "There are... More?" she asks after a moment of contemplation, her ears flicking lightly. "Flora presumes these are in the possession of Creators, yes?" the she-cat rumbles with a small smile, before flicking her ears lightly. "Miss... Sylvia is special, though, yes. Flora has never seen anything similar, no."
"Perhaps," Fenris says with as smile, "But you are the only one -I- have ever spoken to." The liger smiles over at Flora. "Sylvia here has been helping me practice my Creator-speak," he says, "And she is a very good conversationalist."
The cat girl looks over Flora a moment, then begins speaking in Creator proper tongue, "Then I am unique in my own way. Does she practice too?" she looks towards Fenris, then back at Flora, switching back to Promise standard, "What did you want to talk about?"
A slight blink as Flora watches Sylvia, a mumble as she looks towards Sylvia, then Fenris, as the gears in her mind turn, almost audibly so...
"Flora... Doesn't speak... Creator. But Flora thinks Flora understood that, yes."
"And Flora did just ask a question, yes," she murrs softly, before looking towards Sylvia expectantly.
"I'm sorry," she says, making a little half bow, "I thought that was a statement of surprise, rather than an actual question. All universal tools are in the hands of their creator owners or friends, as it should be. I was away from mine for a while, but that's fixed now. Oh!" She looks towards Fenris, "He asked me to say 'thank you' to you."
Fenris laughs warmly at both Flora and Sylvia's comments. "You're joking!" he says to Sylvia, "He's already taken you? I haven't heard a single alarm!" That sobers him a little. "But tell him he is welcome, I suppose," he says, "I would still like to meet this friend of yours someday."
Flora nods, tail flicking behind her. "Flora... Saw one before, yes," she mumbles after a moment of contemplation, using her hands to indicate an object that appears to be roughly egg-shaped. "But... This one was a pyramid?" she asks after a moment of contemplation, looking back up at Sylvia, and pulling out her own Spark-given multitool, looking much like a primitive swiss army knife of sorts. "And Flora's own looks different still, yes... And Flora doesn't think there's any spirit inside, no," she mumbles after a while, before looking back towards Fenris curiously again. "But... Miss Sylvia is here, yes? How can miss Sylvia be taken away?"
"No no no," she says, waving her hands, "This isn't me, or it is, but it isn't. Um... Think of this like a letter. A letter isn't really you, it's just a message you sent. What you are looking at and talking to is my letter, but it's very fast, so we can talk back and forth almost as good as if I was actually there. I am with my owner right now. He's listening in." she explains with animated gestures of her hands to help illustrate the points. "Oh! That's a very old multi tool, but it's not a universal tool. That looks beyond local construction though, how did you get it?"
Fenris shakes his head. "Don't tell me how you got in or out," he says to Sylvia, "But tell your friend that I am duly impressed." He rests Sylvia's plate on his lap. "And tell him to keep himself out of trouble," he smirks, "As long as the boss and the powers that be don't find out about him, I don't need to bother him and we can all be friends!"
Flora blinks a tad and looks at her multitool, before nodding lightly. "It does the things Flora needs, though, yes... Except melting things. Or hammering things, but that aside, it does most things, yes."
"Flora got it from the Spark, yes," she rumbles with a flick of her ears. "It... It's also why Flora's hair is all bright and shiny, yes," she rumbles softly, her ears flicking again.
"Flora could Call the Spark, Flora guesses?"
"He just wants to make a new life." She half lids her eyes at Fenris, "Ours is a mutually beneficial relationship. Every bit I teach you, you are teaching me twice as much, and my friend will be able to blend in better, so he won't cause trouble for anyone! A shame about the decoy..." She rolls her shoulders, "Enough about that stuff, Spark? It came from... [Obscure word referring to Lightning, often contained in creator items]? That can't be right. Am I misunderstanding you? You're going to call it? You must be a very talented person if you can make sparks with the tools I see."
Fenris grins at Sylvia. "I can make lightning without tools, but that is not what Flora is talking about," he says, "And the more I hear from you, Sylvia, the more I want to meet this friend of yours." The liger leans back in his seat. His questions could wait, this was Flora's time and he would not interrupt.
Another flick, another smile... "Flora will call The Spark then, yes... Spark? Are you there?" the she-cat calls out curiously, flicking her ears and looking up at the area.
A few moments of awkward silence, and suddenly, a voice, young, inquisitive, and relatively high pitched.
"CAT! You called? Did you discover something? Something new? Something old? Go on, show me what you discovered!"
Mere moments later, a ball of solid flame and lightning appears out of thin air, floating around and seemingly observing anything, even though it does not, in fact, have eyes.
"You do not have a universal tool, or any applicable tool that I can see or detected when we were together," she says, sounding mildly confused. She gets a blank expression a moment, then snaps her fingers, "Ah! The news was right, you CAN [indecipherable creator techno babble] innately? That's amazing! I would like to see that! I thought it was just sensationalist garbage to get [approval?]" And lo, a spark appears, and Sylvia peers at it, "Oh! I wish I was actually there, or maybe I don't, but I can barely see it, I mean I can see it, but I have a lot more senses than sight and hearing so it feels like I have a blindfold on. What is that?"
"It is a Spirit, Sylvia," Fenris says, interested himself in seeing Flora's patron for the first time, "They have been on Promise rather longer than we have, though we know little about them." The liger twirls his fingers a bit, drawing together water from the air and from the little well of the arboreum to form a water elemental. "I was very surprised," he says, "That Creators can't do this on their own. But I suppose there is no need if everyone has a universal tool." He holds Sylvia and her device up for the Spark to see.
A flick, and Flora gestures at the Spark, her tails swaying behind her. "Spark, Fenris. Fenris, Spark... Spark, Sylvia... Sylvia, Spark, yes," she rumbles, grinning a little to herself. Somehow, she's managed to confuse a Creator-crafted device, that's a new first for the feline!
"Ooh!" the spark chants, before flying straight through Sylvia, then around her, before focusing on the plate curiously, hovering over it as well, curiously. "Oooh! How does it all work? Did you figure it out? Did you make this?"
"No, [creator word for creators] did not [creator word for growing? Adapting?] that way, so they made a way. They're very clever," she says, looking proud, "But they also made you, and gave you a shortcut I see? What is a spirit? It doesn't really match with what I get with a quick search. Is it a ghost, or a god? Those were disproven ages ago." Her hands go to her hips, looking a little huffy about the whole thing. "Hello!" she chimes at Spark, "It is impolite to speak about someone as if they were not there. I am Sylvia, and you are Spark if I heard correctly. A pleasure to meet you, even if I'm not sure what you are."
Fenris thinks a moment before answering. "A little bit of both and neither," he finally says in answer to Sylvia's question, "I don't think that it is a name they gave themselves. We called them Spirits, thinking they might be Ghosts or Gods." He bites his lip for a second. "This is just my own theory," he says, "But I think they are just another order of being. They are very different from us and very poweful, but we know little about them. Some are friendly, like the Spark here, and others would do us harm." An inadequate explanation, but probably the best he could manage. "And no, Inspirer," he says to the Spark, "I did not make Sylvia. I was fortunate enough to find her made."
"I asked my cat! Not you, puzzlecat! Though judging by her look, she didn't make it either!" the spirit cries out, and even without a face, it feels like the ball of fire is grinning broadly. "How is the fox? Still up to his old tricks?" the Spark adresses Fenris, before floating around Sylvia again.
"I'm The Spark! Spark for short! I inspire people! They go out and discover things for me, and for themselves, and the inspiration helps them on their way! And I give the people that follow my ways gifts. Tools! So they can discover more things!"
Flora herself, seems to be mostly amused by the conversations going on, listening in on the dialogue between the other three, although she isn't saying much herself, yet.
Sylvia does not look satisfied, but she puts it aside, "It's something beyond my understanding. I was made to understand people, not... that," A vague gesture at the thing called Sparks, which she starts to try to pretend just isn't there. But then it's speaking at her, obliterating that idea, "Nice to meet you, Spark. I am afraid I can't add you as a guest since I'm still not certain what you are, but we can be friends, unofficially."
"I confess, Spark," Fenris says, "That I have not seen the old fox lately. But I can only imagine that he is up to his same old tricks." The liger has not heard from his patron in some time now. Perhaps the Puzzler was miffed that the kingdoms of Promise had chosen to enter into trade with the visiting Creators against his advice. Or perhaps he was tangled up in some other entertainment. Fenris did not presume to know much about the mysterious Outsider.
"You do not have these Spirits in your memory, Sylvia?" he asks, interested in the machine spirit's reaction, "Then I suppose that they are unique to Promise." He looks to the Spark again. "Is that true?" he asks, "Or are you allowed to tell me?"
And suddenly "Oops! I have to go!" And she blips out of existance, the pyramid folding back up.
Fenris smiles and quietly pockets the little pyramid, wondering what Sylvia and her rightful owner were up to before turning his attention back to the Spark.
"That was... Sudden, yes," Flora mumbles, before looking to the spark, then to the pyramid, then back to Fenris. "Does... Does Miss Sylvia do that often?" she asks after a while, before twitching her ears again.
"Where'd she go? Why's it folding up? Do you know why? If not, you should discover it!" the spark insists, looking towards Fenris with curiosity, before flying around Flora again, observing her in silence for a while.
Fenris laughs at the inquisitive duo. "She has never done that before," he confesses, "But then I have always been her only company before." He looks to the Spark "The pyramid folds up when Sylvia is done talking," he says, "And I suppose something must be going on where her actual center is. Her egg." He makes a few mental notes to do a bit of digging on his own. "Now remember," he says to Flora, "This conversation is a secret. No one is supposed to know about Sylvia."
Flora blinks and nods a little, before flicking her ears. "But... The Spark knows, yes," the she-cat rumbles after a moment, before nodding along once more, ears flicking softly. "Flora... Flora understands, yes. Fenris could get into a lot of trouble, Flora assumes?" she mumbles.
The spark, meanwhile, starts to fade out of existence, the orb of fire making an audible *pop* sound as it shrinks and finally disappears into nothingness.
Fenris shrugs, then stands, offering Flora a hand up. "Yes," he admits, "A LOT of trouble. I am not supposed to have this device. And I am definitely not supposed to talk about Sylvia." He smirks a little. "Although," he says, "I don't know that anyone else knows her name."
Flora nods, and flicks her ears lightly, before excusing herself. "Flora understands. Flora will not say a word, no," the she-cat murrs softly, before making her exit, silently.
Fenris smiles, watching Flora leave, then goes back to contemplating the little pyramid. A tiny, perfect green question mark appears on his cheek. "What are you up to?" he asks the little device.
