Post by dee on Feb 28, 2023 23:48:59 GMT
Family Business
The map room at the academy is increasingly locked when absent of staff and attended visitors. There’s no particular fear about things going missing, per se, but Calla has become nervy nonetheless. On one hand, the Faculty are more than happy to keep some track of who accesses which maps, and when. On the other, a vague measure of control must be asserted. Maps changing due to (admittedly poorly managed) revisions are fully acceptable. Maps changing due to ill intent or mischief is, if not acceptable, at least explicable. The thing Calla’s been in an ongoing struggle with, and that the locked door is meant to establish, is the increasing worry that they might be changing all by themselves. This is, at a guess, par for the course when she, herself, has just submitted changes for an extraplanar city largely made of flame.
Keys returned to the front desk, Calla steps out into the full winter sun of Daring Heights. Blinking hard, darkening her glasses with parlour magic, it takes a second for her to identify Glade stood out in the light.
"Hello!" Comes a slight and cheery greeting, its speaker’s head filled with cherry blossoms turned towards the Academy, while the rest of Glade’s body rests, seemingly oriented in the direction of the sun.
"Hello again!" Calla catches herself as she closes the distance between the two, and switches to Primordial "Is this better? I do not want to assume, but...", she flashes a smile. The little dark elf's Terran pronunciation is shockingly flawless, if formal and a little old-timey.
"Oh, whichever works for you, really," she replies with a smile and a handwave. "My native tongue would be Sylvan if you really wish to go with something that I'm comfortable with. But, please, you don't have to”. And indeed, Calla notices that there is a distinct accent in Glade's Terran dialect.
"Mine too! That's a nice surprise!" Calla's Sylvan is heavily accented, but very clearly native. "I have a lot of trouble with some bits of Common. I've read a lot more than I've heard, I guess. And my Undercommon is, eh, it gets me where I need to go. Speaking of which..." she gestures at the town, "I've only been here a few months. Where are we going?"
"Well..." murmurs Glade, looking up at the sun, "it is noon... and I am slightly hungry. Shall we go grab something to eat?"
"Perfect, you choose. I'm still not really sure what's good or not. Last week I got introduced to fresh chocolate? That was... eye opening". Where Calla's normally quiet, reserved... controlled even, speaking in her first language is something she's not done much since she got to Daring. The Sylvan falls out of her in a tumble.
"'Fresh' chocolate?" Glade asks with a look of confusion on her face. "Is there... another type? What did you eat before that wasn't fresh?"
"See, that's what they said before. I didn't know it wasn't supposed to be... well, white on the outside. This is my first time in the Dawnlands, and everything's so... new? Not to me. Of course to me. I mean," she gestures at a nearby sign, mostly painted in a eye-catching scarlet, "look at that, it's... I had to look up what that colour's supposed to be". Calla looks up at Glade, half embarrassed, half frustrated.
"That..." Glade looks between the sign and her elf friend, as confused as Calla is embarrassed. "That's red...”. She shakes herself out of the confused state. "Pardon me for asking but... where did you grow up? Not asking to judge, of course, I am not that much different. As a matter of speaking, I grew among trees and I am still new to living in such cities. But..." her voice growing more empathetic, "you sounded like you haven't even seen colours before."
"Oh, no, it's." Calla chuckles at her own fumbling "I found out why. Red's the fastest colour to fade, and it's also really hard to see in the dark, or if you can see in the dark it's still tricky. So I know what 'red' is but when I think about it it's really close to what you think of as 'brown'? The bright reds, I've only ever seen them once or twice before leaving home, and it's rarely been good." she pauses for a moment, adrift in a memory.
"And, well, I could name it, but I don't think that would mean much? It's a place between the Underdark and the Feywild. It's got a bunch of Houses, but if you ever wondered where all the stuff the fey bargain for, but don't really want eventually goes, it winds up in the House of Echo and Ember. Like a lost and found, but one everyone always forgets about. That's where I grew up".
"A place of forgotten things that continues to live on..." Glade mutters, her voice layered with sadness and her face downcast. "That sounds... like a sad place. Um," she quickly gatheres herself, "I mean no offence, it's just that..." She then quickly shakes the feeling off. "So... what made you come here? Wanted to explore the world beyond?"
"None taken! It's not sad, so much as strange? It's an old place, with a lot of old things in it, and the bargains and favours in it are almost as old. It's... apart from being underground, it's... cramped. And, uh... I'd read all the books?". Calla's laugh is genuine, but rueful. "Which, I mean, yes I wanted to read more books, but also it didn't make me very valuable and I was about to be married off".
"'Married off'? As in... a bargain was made and you had to marry someone? Did you... like the person?"
"Not at all. House of Thorns. Most unpleasant".
"And you had to... marry... someone you didn't like? Why..." the sadened expression from before now fully replaced with confusion and a pinch of horror, before scoffing and pinching the bridge of her nose. "I feel like civilisation has some... rather unpleasant or weird customs sometimes..."
"If I had to guess I'd say that it both repaid a favour and got me out of the way? I'm much more useful as a middling gift than an eldest daughter. I envy you, a little, I think. Not accepting this stuff as normal. Why did you come here?"
"Well..." As Glade starts to reply, her demeanour saddens, but this one seems different than the one she had previously. "I... came here to..." a sigh escapes her, as if accepting an unpleasant truth, "to do two things that, in many cases, contradict each other."
"Oh right," she immediately interjects, almost as if trying to shove aside the previous thoughts, "food... Well, I'm not the best one to ask, I either eat at the Hung Rabbit, or just some berries. But, there is this one place that a friend took me. They have these fried potatoes covered in melted cheese."
"I don't think I've had that before either, let's go!" Calla sees her compatriot's expression, and shifts her enthusiasm just a touch. "I'm truly excellent at puzzles, by the way, if you'd like help reconciling an opposite or two".
Glade smiles at that. "Sadly, it has more to do with religion than anything."
A little while later, Calla is standing in front of a small food store that sells cooked goods at its store front, waiting for Glade. A minute later, Glade returns to her with two cones made of parchment and within each she sees what seems to be long potato strips, fried and covered in cheese that has a distinctly yellow colour.
"And here's yours", she says as she's handing Calla her massive portion.
"Wow, okay, thank you. This is lovely but... was there something in particular you wanted to talk about?"
"Well... I was curious about what that was yesterday. If it's not too much to ask, I was curious why did Daisy call you 'kin'? I mean," Glade looks her up and down, "you don't... look like an earth elemental." She tilts her head to the side, squinting. "Do you?"
Calla awkwardly finishes a mouthful of the potato before replying "Would you believe that I'm adopted?" her expression suggests it's a joke, but again, maybe not completely. She backs down from it almost immediately. "It's uh, it's not easy to leave the Feydark, or get from there to the Dawnlands. Especially alone. Almost impossible without a gate, or without help. But my House, I mean, you said it - 'a lot of forgotten things that continue to live on', and I'm not the only one that wanted to get out. I didn't realise it at the time, but I guess I made a deal".
The elf inspects the parchment cone in her hand, narrows her eyes, and conjures a delicate, pen sized spear into her other hand.
"So far", she smiles broadly at Glade, "entirely worth it".
After Glade, equally awkward, finishes a surprisingly long strip of fried potato while listening to Calla, she chuckles slightly. "Well, I cannot imagine a world without colour. Even though the night fades most colour, it still offers its own beauties." Similar to her elf friend, the genasi seemingly grows a small branch from the side of her cherry blossom hair, then snaps it off and uses it as a makeshift fork. "When did you arrive at the surface? Have you seen fireflies?"
“Just as your winter began! It’s been so cold up here. I think so? Little bugs? Drift around? Cook their prey before eating it?”
A small chuckle can be heard coming from Glade, followed by a full on laughter. "Sorry... heh... sorry, I didn't mean to laugh at you." She takes a second to compose herself. "No. They are small little bugs that can be seen glowing at night, sometime between Mirtul and Kythorn. They look like little candles blinking in the distance." She then stabs her fork into a potato piece and folds her rightbhand into a fist. "Greatmother, grant your blessing" she whispers softly as a soft amber light emanates from her hand. As she opens her fist, two ethereal fireflies can be seen swirling in her palm. One of them starts slowly flying towards Calla.
"They look something like this, just more corporeal. They look like small little yellow stars scattered among the trees."
Calla flinches away at first, but then offers one a hand, “They’re so pretty!”
The little bug rests on the tip of one of Calla's fingers for a brief moment before slowly skittering down and around it.
"So... when you got out, you made a deal with some elemental folk? And then they adopted you?" Glade guesses with a smile.
"No, the other way around". Distracted, Calla watches the bug intently while speaking. "A little bit of an old elemental got lost in our catacombs a long time ago, and my House bartered for it but didn't know what they had. I did. And" she switches language to Terran, "even when I was young I already spoke a little Primordial. We've been family since. Without them I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have been brave enough to leave. I'd have been caught. I'd have died in the Underdark. I wouldn't have known how to hit that Cousin at the rift". Having studied every part of the firefly she looks up at Glade, and switches back to Sylvan "I owe them a lot".
Glade cannot help but feel a sense of fondness after such a story. She places her hand near Calla's as the two fireflies climb up their fingers. "Such bonds are strong beyond just bloodlines. Bonds bourn in times of trial are the most precious." The two bugs then fly off to dance their little duet in front of them. "Where are they now?"
“You know, that’s kind of a complicated question. There’s a shard of them here, some in the Dreaming, some in the Earthen realm. Maybe over time they’ll be able to rebuild what they once were. Now that we’re both free”.
"So, they sacrificed their integrity for the both of you to be free?" asks Glade. Although her face seems saddened, her voice did not share a similar tone, it seemed more of an acceptance to one's fate. "Would it be safe to assume that you now read books to hopefully find a way to have them rebuilt?"
Calla tilts her head "Ultimately? Yes? There's a little more to it than that, and it's going to take a lot of time, but I definitely have a debt to repay". She shakes her head, mildly overwhelmed by the scale of what lies in her future "what's next for you though? I got the sense that there's a lot of history here, between everyone. And maybe some, uh... primordial interference in things?"
There's a moment before a response as Glade finishes another piece of cheese-covered potato. "Well... there is history, just more that I wish to have known. This..." a nervous chuckle escapes her, "this place has... seen a lot and it's most likely it's going to see more in the future. But you're right, maybe there will be some primordial interference in my path down the road." She pokes her fork-branch into another potato piece, but doesn't eat it, rather just stares at it. "As for me, well... As I said, I am between two worlds. For all intents and purposes I am basically born of the forest, born of the Earth. I always feel at most comfortable in it... I always feel drawn to it." Glade said that last sentence in a tone that almost seemed mesmerised. "But then I've also been drawn to help others, to heal them and to teach them about how to live with nature, tamed or untamed." She then picks up the piece of potato, hanging it in the air, watching the cheese slowly drip from it. "I came here to find a forest and call it my own, yet I have not searched for it, I felt that people needed my help."
"Have you ever thought that maybe your forest is made up of people?"
Glade frowns, confused, then slowly turns towards Calla. "Hmh?" is all she was able to say with her mouth full.
"Well, most people think a forest is trees, but if a forest were just trees it would die. A forest looks like trees, but really it's a collective way of living for hundreds of different things. Maybe what you want is to live that way, to feel sheltered and interconnected, and in harmony, and to care for your environment, and its longevity? And if that's true you could do that with people. The thing you care for and nurture and are sheltered by could be people".
Calla pauses for a moment, as much to consider her own words as anything else, “Maybe you've already found your forest".
At first, mouth full, Glade still looked confused, but a confusion stemmed from someone saying a completely obvious statement. But the more Calla spoke, the more the confusion faded into a contemplative look as Glade's gaze turned towards her food, but seemingly looking through it. She finally swallows. "I wish it would be only that, otherwise I would already be at peace. I found wonderful people here that need my help. But... as you said, it's not just trees." She lifts her head, staring at the cloudy sky and enjoying the rustle of her flowers in the slightly warmer wind. Spring is near. "It is peace," she says in a serene voice. "Everything in a forest seems so... peaceful. Even in a storm, there is a weird sence of peace. Like... it seems like chaos, but you know that the storm will die down and that once again the skies clear. But cities, however... sometimes they feel chaotic. A forest is always predictable, a city is not. And at times... I find it hard to find the meaning in what some people do, to find the reasoning behind why they do certain things."
Calla eats while listening to Glade, nods as she finishes, and then pushes her glasses back into place. "I don't think I'm the right person to help with that, sadly. Even my chosen school of magic has limits. I mean, that it can only keep things peaceful for so long. And I'm afraid I have almost no idea why most of the Dawnlands does anything, including insisting on going to places that are a danger to life and limb, so..." she shrugs. "Good luck, I guess?"
Calla's smile is friendly, if uncertain. "I think we've both got a lot of work ahead of us!"
Glade returns the smile. "I guess we do. Good luck to both of us, then."
The map room at the academy is increasingly locked when absent of staff and attended visitors. There’s no particular fear about things going missing, per se, but Calla has become nervy nonetheless. On one hand, the Faculty are more than happy to keep some track of who accesses which maps, and when. On the other, a vague measure of control must be asserted. Maps changing due to (admittedly poorly managed) revisions are fully acceptable. Maps changing due to ill intent or mischief is, if not acceptable, at least explicable. The thing Calla’s been in an ongoing struggle with, and that the locked door is meant to establish, is the increasing worry that they might be changing all by themselves. This is, at a guess, par for the course when she, herself, has just submitted changes for an extraplanar city largely made of flame.
Keys returned to the front desk, Calla steps out into the full winter sun of Daring Heights. Blinking hard, darkening her glasses with parlour magic, it takes a second for her to identify Glade stood out in the light.
"Hello!" Comes a slight and cheery greeting, its speaker’s head filled with cherry blossoms turned towards the Academy, while the rest of Glade’s body rests, seemingly oriented in the direction of the sun.
"Hello again!" Calla catches herself as she closes the distance between the two, and switches to Primordial "Is this better? I do not want to assume, but...", she flashes a smile. The little dark elf's Terran pronunciation is shockingly flawless, if formal and a little old-timey.
"Oh, whichever works for you, really," she replies with a smile and a handwave. "My native tongue would be Sylvan if you really wish to go with something that I'm comfortable with. But, please, you don't have to”. And indeed, Calla notices that there is a distinct accent in Glade's Terran dialect.
"Mine too! That's a nice surprise!" Calla's Sylvan is heavily accented, but very clearly native. "I have a lot of trouble with some bits of Common. I've read a lot more than I've heard, I guess. And my Undercommon is, eh, it gets me where I need to go. Speaking of which..." she gestures at the town, "I've only been here a few months. Where are we going?"
"Well..." murmurs Glade, looking up at the sun, "it is noon... and I am slightly hungry. Shall we go grab something to eat?"
"Perfect, you choose. I'm still not really sure what's good or not. Last week I got introduced to fresh chocolate? That was... eye opening". Where Calla's normally quiet, reserved... controlled even, speaking in her first language is something she's not done much since she got to Daring. The Sylvan falls out of her in a tumble.
"'Fresh' chocolate?" Glade asks with a look of confusion on her face. "Is there... another type? What did you eat before that wasn't fresh?"
"See, that's what they said before. I didn't know it wasn't supposed to be... well, white on the outside. This is my first time in the Dawnlands, and everything's so... new? Not to me. Of course to me. I mean," she gestures at a nearby sign, mostly painted in a eye-catching scarlet, "look at that, it's... I had to look up what that colour's supposed to be". Calla looks up at Glade, half embarrassed, half frustrated.
"That..." Glade looks between the sign and her elf friend, as confused as Calla is embarrassed. "That's red...”. She shakes herself out of the confused state. "Pardon me for asking but... where did you grow up? Not asking to judge, of course, I am not that much different. As a matter of speaking, I grew among trees and I am still new to living in such cities. But..." her voice growing more empathetic, "you sounded like you haven't even seen colours before."
"Oh, no, it's." Calla chuckles at her own fumbling "I found out why. Red's the fastest colour to fade, and it's also really hard to see in the dark, or if you can see in the dark it's still tricky. So I know what 'red' is but when I think about it it's really close to what you think of as 'brown'? The bright reds, I've only ever seen them once or twice before leaving home, and it's rarely been good." she pauses for a moment, adrift in a memory.
"And, well, I could name it, but I don't think that would mean much? It's a place between the Underdark and the Feywild. It's got a bunch of Houses, but if you ever wondered where all the stuff the fey bargain for, but don't really want eventually goes, it winds up in the House of Echo and Ember. Like a lost and found, but one everyone always forgets about. That's where I grew up".
"A place of forgotten things that continues to live on..." Glade mutters, her voice layered with sadness and her face downcast. "That sounds... like a sad place. Um," she quickly gatheres herself, "I mean no offence, it's just that..." She then quickly shakes the feeling off. "So... what made you come here? Wanted to explore the world beyond?"
"None taken! It's not sad, so much as strange? It's an old place, with a lot of old things in it, and the bargains and favours in it are almost as old. It's... apart from being underground, it's... cramped. And, uh... I'd read all the books?". Calla's laugh is genuine, but rueful. "Which, I mean, yes I wanted to read more books, but also it didn't make me very valuable and I was about to be married off".
"'Married off'? As in... a bargain was made and you had to marry someone? Did you... like the person?"
"Not at all. House of Thorns. Most unpleasant".
"And you had to... marry... someone you didn't like? Why..." the sadened expression from before now fully replaced with confusion and a pinch of horror, before scoffing and pinching the bridge of her nose. "I feel like civilisation has some... rather unpleasant or weird customs sometimes..."
"If I had to guess I'd say that it both repaid a favour and got me out of the way? I'm much more useful as a middling gift than an eldest daughter. I envy you, a little, I think. Not accepting this stuff as normal. Why did you come here?"
"Well..." As Glade starts to reply, her demeanour saddens, but this one seems different than the one she had previously. "I... came here to..." a sigh escapes her, as if accepting an unpleasant truth, "to do two things that, in many cases, contradict each other."
"Oh right," she immediately interjects, almost as if trying to shove aside the previous thoughts, "food... Well, I'm not the best one to ask, I either eat at the Hung Rabbit, or just some berries. But, there is this one place that a friend took me. They have these fried potatoes covered in melted cheese."
"I don't think I've had that before either, let's go!" Calla sees her compatriot's expression, and shifts her enthusiasm just a touch. "I'm truly excellent at puzzles, by the way, if you'd like help reconciling an opposite or two".
Glade smiles at that. "Sadly, it has more to do with religion than anything."
A little while later, Calla is standing in front of a small food store that sells cooked goods at its store front, waiting for Glade. A minute later, Glade returns to her with two cones made of parchment and within each she sees what seems to be long potato strips, fried and covered in cheese that has a distinctly yellow colour.
"And here's yours", she says as she's handing Calla her massive portion.
"Wow, okay, thank you. This is lovely but... was there something in particular you wanted to talk about?"
"Well... I was curious about what that was yesterday. If it's not too much to ask, I was curious why did Daisy call you 'kin'? I mean," Glade looks her up and down, "you don't... look like an earth elemental." She tilts her head to the side, squinting. "Do you?"
Calla awkwardly finishes a mouthful of the potato before replying "Would you believe that I'm adopted?" her expression suggests it's a joke, but again, maybe not completely. She backs down from it almost immediately. "It's uh, it's not easy to leave the Feydark, or get from there to the Dawnlands. Especially alone. Almost impossible without a gate, or without help. But my House, I mean, you said it - 'a lot of forgotten things that continue to live on', and I'm not the only one that wanted to get out. I didn't realise it at the time, but I guess I made a deal".
The elf inspects the parchment cone in her hand, narrows her eyes, and conjures a delicate, pen sized spear into her other hand.
"So far", she smiles broadly at Glade, "entirely worth it".
After Glade, equally awkward, finishes a surprisingly long strip of fried potato while listening to Calla, she chuckles slightly. "Well, I cannot imagine a world without colour. Even though the night fades most colour, it still offers its own beauties." Similar to her elf friend, the genasi seemingly grows a small branch from the side of her cherry blossom hair, then snaps it off and uses it as a makeshift fork. "When did you arrive at the surface? Have you seen fireflies?"
“Just as your winter began! It’s been so cold up here. I think so? Little bugs? Drift around? Cook their prey before eating it?”
A small chuckle can be heard coming from Glade, followed by a full on laughter. "Sorry... heh... sorry, I didn't mean to laugh at you." She takes a second to compose herself. "No. They are small little bugs that can be seen glowing at night, sometime between Mirtul and Kythorn. They look like little candles blinking in the distance." She then stabs her fork into a potato piece and folds her rightbhand into a fist. "Greatmother, grant your blessing" she whispers softly as a soft amber light emanates from her hand. As she opens her fist, two ethereal fireflies can be seen swirling in her palm. One of them starts slowly flying towards Calla.
"They look something like this, just more corporeal. They look like small little yellow stars scattered among the trees."
Calla flinches away at first, but then offers one a hand, “They’re so pretty!”
The little bug rests on the tip of one of Calla's fingers for a brief moment before slowly skittering down and around it.
"So... when you got out, you made a deal with some elemental folk? And then they adopted you?" Glade guesses with a smile.
"No, the other way around". Distracted, Calla watches the bug intently while speaking. "A little bit of an old elemental got lost in our catacombs a long time ago, and my House bartered for it but didn't know what they had. I did. And" she switches language to Terran, "even when I was young I already spoke a little Primordial. We've been family since. Without them I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have been brave enough to leave. I'd have been caught. I'd have died in the Underdark. I wouldn't have known how to hit that Cousin at the rift". Having studied every part of the firefly she looks up at Glade, and switches back to Sylvan "I owe them a lot".
Glade cannot help but feel a sense of fondness after such a story. She places her hand near Calla's as the two fireflies climb up their fingers. "Such bonds are strong beyond just bloodlines. Bonds bourn in times of trial are the most precious." The two bugs then fly off to dance their little duet in front of them. "Where are they now?"
“You know, that’s kind of a complicated question. There’s a shard of them here, some in the Dreaming, some in the Earthen realm. Maybe over time they’ll be able to rebuild what they once were. Now that we’re both free”.
"So, they sacrificed their integrity for the both of you to be free?" asks Glade. Although her face seems saddened, her voice did not share a similar tone, it seemed more of an acceptance to one's fate. "Would it be safe to assume that you now read books to hopefully find a way to have them rebuilt?"
Calla tilts her head "Ultimately? Yes? There's a little more to it than that, and it's going to take a lot of time, but I definitely have a debt to repay". She shakes her head, mildly overwhelmed by the scale of what lies in her future "what's next for you though? I got the sense that there's a lot of history here, between everyone. And maybe some, uh... primordial interference in things?"
There's a moment before a response as Glade finishes another piece of cheese-covered potato. "Well... there is history, just more that I wish to have known. This..." a nervous chuckle escapes her, "this place has... seen a lot and it's most likely it's going to see more in the future. But you're right, maybe there will be some primordial interference in my path down the road." She pokes her fork-branch into another potato piece, but doesn't eat it, rather just stares at it. "As for me, well... As I said, I am between two worlds. For all intents and purposes I am basically born of the forest, born of the Earth. I always feel at most comfortable in it... I always feel drawn to it." Glade said that last sentence in a tone that almost seemed mesmerised. "But then I've also been drawn to help others, to heal them and to teach them about how to live with nature, tamed or untamed." She then picks up the piece of potato, hanging it in the air, watching the cheese slowly drip from it. "I came here to find a forest and call it my own, yet I have not searched for it, I felt that people needed my help."
"Have you ever thought that maybe your forest is made up of people?"
Glade frowns, confused, then slowly turns towards Calla. "Hmh?" is all she was able to say with her mouth full.
"Well, most people think a forest is trees, but if a forest were just trees it would die. A forest looks like trees, but really it's a collective way of living for hundreds of different things. Maybe what you want is to live that way, to feel sheltered and interconnected, and in harmony, and to care for your environment, and its longevity? And if that's true you could do that with people. The thing you care for and nurture and are sheltered by could be people".
Calla pauses for a moment, as much to consider her own words as anything else, “Maybe you've already found your forest".
At first, mouth full, Glade still looked confused, but a confusion stemmed from someone saying a completely obvious statement. But the more Calla spoke, the more the confusion faded into a contemplative look as Glade's gaze turned towards her food, but seemingly looking through it. She finally swallows. "I wish it would be only that, otherwise I would already be at peace. I found wonderful people here that need my help. But... as you said, it's not just trees." She lifts her head, staring at the cloudy sky and enjoying the rustle of her flowers in the slightly warmer wind. Spring is near. "It is peace," she says in a serene voice. "Everything in a forest seems so... peaceful. Even in a storm, there is a weird sence of peace. Like... it seems like chaos, but you know that the storm will die down and that once again the skies clear. But cities, however... sometimes they feel chaotic. A forest is always predictable, a city is not. And at times... I find it hard to find the meaning in what some people do, to find the reasoning behind why they do certain things."
Calla eats while listening to Glade, nods as she finishes, and then pushes her glasses back into place. "I don't think I'm the right person to help with that, sadly. Even my chosen school of magic has limits. I mean, that it can only keep things peaceful for so long. And I'm afraid I have almost no idea why most of the Dawnlands does anything, including insisting on going to places that are a danger to life and limb, so..." she shrugs. "Good luck, I guess?"
Calla's smile is friendly, if uncertain. "I think we've both got a lot of work ahead of us!"
Glade returns the smile. "I guess we do. Good luck to both of us, then."