when's it my turn | Glowfic Constellation

k-shut-up-now

Since Cyllene's first (licit, chaperoned) visit to the surface, she's visited enough times to watch it get warmer, and colder, and warmer again, over the course of many (illicit, solo) trips. She's gone close (though never that close) to the shore and watched the humans from afar, seen their strange, straight caves, and the coverings on their bodies, and the way they move about on the surface floor upright.

She's seen ships, the things humans use to make there be a surface floor on the ocean, one that moves around. Humans swim, sometimes, but, as far as she can tell, never while as far away from land as ships go.

She's also seen ships below the surface, far below it. But she's pretty sure that's not because the humans wanted them that way; the whole seafloor around them were filled with strange, seastar-configured skeletons. She's pretty sure that swimming in the open ocean is for humans about as sure a death as wriggling her way far onto the surface land would be for her.

She's learned a lot about ships. They are usually in this range of sizes, and sometimes they lower nets and catch fish in them. (Cyllene has attempted to replicate nets, as if they were her idea, and got a pretty good start on it. One of her sisters dismissed the idea as being human-like when shown a swatch of knotted seaweed, and Cyllene has to be intensely careful that no one suspect her of having upward sympathies. She has a real net, human-made, in her secret grotto, and she can see that its purpose is the truly beautiful thing about it, but for now... it will remain solely decorative. It has to.) There tend to be kinds of ship, ones that do the fish-netting and ones that don't, really.

This ship, she thinks, is not one of the kind that does the fish-netting. She hopes she's right, because as much as she wants to know about humans, she does want more to not be netted.

She approaches from underneath, runs her hands along its belly, and then - heads for the surface.

Total: 817

Posts Per Page:

‹ Previous 1 2 … 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Next ›

« First ‹ Previous 33 of 33 Next › Last »

".......I'm going to the kitchens," says Jane loudly, standing near the wheelbarrow which is seaward of the desk chair.

k-shut-up-now

Okay, okay, this might zap her but she thinks it won't - she gets in the wheelbarrow.

Jane's not sure either; she takes two steps, watching for flinches.

k-shut-up-now

Nope!

Alrighty! To the kitchens. It's a bit difficult to bump the wheelbarrow down the stairs so she gets help with that part from a passing footman.

k-shut-up-now

Oh! It's good to know this is a thing that can happen, not so much in a physical sense as a what-people-will-do-for-her one.

And here's the kitchen! It's crowded and busy and full of fire and knives! The servants make space for her when Jane rolls her in to have a look at everything.

k-shut-up-now

Humans are so cool. This is maybe the most she's seen of humans being the most - human. So much is happening and it all works together and this is how the delicious food comes about; it's not luck; it's work and smartness because they care about having food that tastes good.

Okay, okay, she can see - the food starts out looking various kinds of less good than it does when it gets to her mostly, and then they do a bunch of things to it, one of which is heating it up somehow. The main ways of this happening are basically to put it over a thing which is over a fire, and to put it in a tiny room which a fire makes warm. The second way seems easier to do safely, because it's already a whole little room meant to keep the hot in. But it still seems pretty important for humans to have a way to make it not be hot, and ideally different levels of hotness, she learns, unless she wants to make a bunch of them. And that might take a while for Cyllene to figure out.

If she wants to watch for as long as all that Jane will make up her lunch plate right here and serve it to her in the wheelbarrow.

k-shut-up-now

She would very much like that!

Bread and onion soup and scallops!

k-shut-up-now

It continues to be silly that humans eat tiny oceans! And that they eat food from the sea, but not as tiny oceans!

She's not going to try to overtly signal to Jane that she wants to hang out somewhere quieter, but she does gradually become less engaged with her surroundings.