Jin dispels the muffling enchantment she placed on her ears when she can see literal light at the end of the tunnel. The trip through the sewers was mind numbingly boring, but at least she had time to rest her mind. Just in time too, since it sounds like Sage starts saying something that Jin might be expected to respond to.
“Alright, I know I already told you like, three times now probably in between songs,” Whoopse, “But! I’m super excited to show you this place! I know you must be tired and ready to take a nap the moment the rings’ light touches you, phew, I know I am, ohh or really I just want to have some of my pommen jam.. But it’s so worth it, I promise!”
Best pretend I know what we’re talking about, Jin shifts slightly, careful not to move her head too much to keep the chair spell from crashing her into a wall, “I’ll take your word for it. You’ve gotten us this far, I wouldn’t be here without you.”
Sage jumps, then smiles, “Oh good, you’re awake! Did you fall into a trance or something? You didn’t respond to anything I said!”
Guilt stabs into Jin’s stomach. Ah, damn, now she feels like an asshole. She gives Sage a weak smile, “Something like that. What’s this place you’re taking us to?”
Sage smiles on, unperturbed, “It’s a little glade I found last month. It has a little waterfall and pond and everything! It’s off of the main road by only about ten minutes, and it’s super nearby here. I think we can make it in thirty. From the opening of the sewer I mean, at the rate you’re moving I think it’ll take us another five to get there. To the opening of the sewer.”
“Sounds great Sage,” Jin smiles at the girl, but feels awkward. She’s not usually this nice to other people. The motions feel foreign, strange. She’s used to either mouthing off or maintaining polite distance from other people. Often both. The few people she didn’t do that to were all the type who would include “verbally abuse” and “your friends” together in a sentence, so… Still mouthing off. She and Alize used to spend hours trying to find new and inventive ways to insult each other. Responding positively towards something just feels… Strange.
But she would feel like a huge asshole if she wasn’t at least trying to be nice to Sage.
Sage doesn’t know how to interpret the glum look that passes over Jin’s face, so she just hopes it wasn’t because of her and moves on.
They take the transition from sewer to above ground quickly. Sage notes the time, a bit before dawn, and that the Traveler isn’t in the sky right now.
“Alright, let’s move quickly, I want to get there before dawn! I haven’t experienced a sunrise in the glade yet.”
The sewer leads out to an overgrown sewage ditch just outside the city. Jin’s surprised at first, but guesses that water overflow from rain would maintain the ditch without human interference. More interesting though, is all the plant life she doesn’t recognize. While Jin is no botanist, she at least vaguely knew what the surrounding forest looked like. It was a dense birch wood forest with the occasional thicket of berries and/or briars. One year she had to go foraging for mushrooms in this forest as a part of an ecology project and can say for certain that she saw approximately none of the plants she’s seeing now. Dense underbrush is an unfamiliar sight to her.
Rather than argue with Sage though, she just shifts and turns her head to follow the other girl. Her makeshift chair platform is getting uncomfortable, and the sooner they get somewhere to rest for several hours, the better.
Sage obviously knows what she’s doing here and quickly finds a path to the main road. When Sage picks up singing again Jin doesn’t even muffle the sound.
Sage is… not a bad singer, for certain. But her song repertoire could benefit from a hell of a lot more variety. Music. There’s something she’ll definitely miss more over time. What she wouldn’t do just to hear a bass riff right now…
Soon they’re off the main road again and hiking up a hill. More accurately, Sage hikes up the hill and Jin has to adjust her spell structure slightly to travel more vertically.
Once they hit the top, Jin understands why they came here.
It’s nothing grand, but it’s quaint. A nice place to stop while traveling. A small stream is bubbling down from a higher point in the hill and lazily snakes around the clearing the two are now in, pooling into small sandy ponds. There are large flat areas of rock and dirt alike, and the woods grow tall around all sides. Above the sky is visible. Jin stares at the rings for a moment with a complicated feeling worming through her stomach.
“Tada!~ Oh look! My fire circle is still here!”
Sage skips over to a small ring of rocks, and swings her pack off and sets it down nearby.
Jin on the other hand decides to indulge her curiosity in the local plant life.
She moves over to some nearby brush and plucks a stray branch, bringing the light orb with her. The plant has small leaves and strangely elongated white petals on its multitude of flowers. It’s not one she’s ever seen before. She gives the plant a sniff, investigating the reason she picked this one out. It has a familiar spicy scent to it.
Sage notices and skips over. “That’s a songflower bush! Um, that’s what we called them as a kid, anyway. The church has an official name for them, but we used to dry the flowers out and burn them with some other herbs when we sang at night.”
The curly haired girl has a reminiscent smile on her face. “We still do that sometimes at festivals, but the church frowns on, ah, unsanctioned rituals.” A frown passes by, gone as fast as it comes, “But! Turns out when ground up into paste the inner bit at the base of the petals-“ she points to what Jin identifies at the pistil… or stamen? Shit which one is- “-is super great to put on cuts and stuff. Keeps them from getting infected. We mix it with some other herbs too of course, the church brought us the recipe. And I think honey too! In the salve, I mean. That’s why it’s slightly sticky.”
Sage plucks a handful of the flowers while talking. “Ok, I’m gonna go collect firewood. I have some food in my pack, why don’t you set it out while I’m gone? Oh, here, hold these!” Sage hands the flower’s she’s been plucking to Jin, who holds them, bemused, “I want to add them to the fire tonight! Or uh, this morning! I’ll be right back!”
With that Sage skips away into the woods.
Jin stares after her for several moments, and lets out a long, suffering sigh. She wonders if most conversations with Sage will be this one sided. Or if Sage is going to keep tasking her with things. Wasn’t she all starry eyed over Jin being a “cleric”? She looks at the flowers in her bandaged hands.
She moves her platform over to where Sage set her pack down and gingerly tests her feet on the ground. She hisses in pain as she adds weight to her left leg, but it’s manageable enough… if she gets off it quickly. Casually she dispels everything she’s maintaining and settles herself on the ground. Her butt hurts.
Idly, because she finds herself unable to be alone with her thoughts, Jin starts a magic powered fire in the stone circle to keep her mind occupied.
Then she sets herself to pulling out the promised food.
She finds a mostly filled jar with some kind of red purée packed beside a bundle that, when opened, reveals a stack of herby looking flatbread. There’s a wedge of cheese with bite marks in it, as well as a whole cured sausage that also has bite marks. Jin floats both of these to the side, deciding to leave them to Sage. Finally she pulls out a box labeled “spices” that, when opened, shows a small variety of herbs and spices, a small jar of salt, and what Jin guesses to be a small vial of oil. There’s too little food to feed two people fully in Jin’s opinion. Or… too little food to feed two people if one is a mage.
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Sage returns unexpectedly quickly with an entire log hoisted over her shoulder. For the first time she can recall, Jin see’s Sage huffing and puffing with every movement. This does nothing to stop her mouth, however.
“Ooh! Nice fire! Whew, hup.” She shifts the log off her shoulder to get one end onto the ground with one quick motion. She shuffles to get into a better position to hold the log up with one arm. It’s around four feet tall vertically. “I thought we might be able to get away with burning this whole log if you’re around! Do you think you can cut the log up with your cool miracle powers?” Sage swings one arm in a slicing motion thrice, “That could make the whole wood gathering process super fast! Otherwise I think I just carried this log over here for nothing… Maybe I should have asked first? Ohhhh you already have a fire, maybe I definitely should have asked.”
Jin eyes the log dubiously, “I’ve… never tried, but I don’t see why I couldn’t. It will take me a while though. Gathering smaller pieces of wood will probably be faster. Ah, and maintaining a magic fire is simple, but still requires some degree of focus.” Jin dispels the fire as she speaks, and the flames in the stone circle vanishes, “Having a physical fire source means I don’t have to actively maintain it.”
Sage beams and had already thrown the log the rest of the way down. She swoops down to grab the chunk of cheese and sausage. As the original culprit, she has no qualms with adding another bite mark directly to the chunk of cheese. “Mm… Well, I can go gather some roots and nuts n’ stuff in the meantime. I’ve got snacks here but it’s not really enough for a meal, yeah?” Oh good, she doesn’t think it’s enough either. Sage takes another bite out of the cheese chunk followed immediately by a bite from the sausage. “Mmm… mh! Mhhmhm!” She gesticulates towards the jar of red purée and chews quickly, then clears her throat, “That’s pommen jam! It’s my favorite snack when I put some on Momma’s flatbread. Feel free to try some. I’ll be right back!”
Sage places the sausage and cheese on top of the flatbread stack and vanishes into the woods for a second time. Jin looks at the log. It’s about five feet long? She sighs. Maybe clerics are culturally supposed to do menial labor..?
One of the simplest ways to use magic is as a simple force. Not as simple as energy conversion, but more straight forwards. Lacking anything more refined, Jin creates a narrow wedge of force and, well, forces it onto the logs. Cutting the log horizontally requires liberal usage of her spell amplifiers, but the log chunks split much more easily when cut vertically.
Oh the bright side, the task was mentally straining enough that she hardly had any chance to think about the end of her world when Sage finally returns. The horizon is brightening, and Jin suspects the sun will breach the horizon any moment now.
“Woah! Look at all that firewood!” Sage has a cloak-turned-sack full of whatever she deemed edible in the woods.
The log now sits in a pile of wood chunks roughly where it fell, minus two stumps to be used as temporary furniture, “It kept me busy.”
Sage laughs brightly. She dances over to the fire while her feet take her in a circle around the wood pile. Jin eyes the firewood again, confused. Why is she so happy?
“Oh! Look look! I found a huge patch of what we like to call, chicken-of-the-woods! As well as a buncha greens and nuts too that we can fry up with it! Actually let’s not fry the nuts, that’d be nuts.” Sage giggles while eagerly revealing the bounty within her cloak.
Jin looks dubiously at the spread. Come to think of it, she’s not even sure the last time she’s had a home cooked meal. The academy has- had its cafeteria, and her grandmother always had a chef employed when she didn’t take them to restaurants. Sage seems excited though, so she leans back against one of the stumps she kept.
“Looks… good?”
Sage giggles more in response. She pulls a thin pan out of her pack and starts cooking. Or, prepping? Jin floats the firewood into the fire pit to start a wood based fire.
Jin watches quite nearly entranced. It’s not like she’s never cooked before but… No, if Jin is being honest she lived a pampered enough life that she genuinely has no idea how to cook anything more complicated than boiling pasta. Watching Sage now deftly separating out and adding ingredients makes her almost regret never learning.
Somehow having one hand entirely reserved to holding the pan at an exact point over the fire doesn’t hold Sage back, no doubt due to all necessary chopping being done beforehand.
When she finishes Jin is beholden to a genuinely appetizing looking spread. Green onion halves line one side of the pan, and strips of mushroom that do, in fact, look like chicken, dominate the central pan mixed with various leafy greens and herbs. Jin was tasked with cracking open the walnuts Sage brought with her, which now sit in a pile on top of and beside the flatbread due to a lack of clean surfaces.
Sage procures a three-pronged wooden fork and… a pair of chopsticks? From her bag. They both sit criss-cross across from each other with the pan in the middle. Sage offers both utensils towards Jin, “I don’t have a lot of utensils with me, and no plates either, but you can pick between a fork or chopsticks, either way!”
Jin’s mental imagery of medieval peasants and their wooden forks takes a detour at the sight of ivory white chopsticks. She gently grabs the pair and examines them. Are they… made of bone?
Sage just grins and claps her hands together, “Let’s offer thanks to Thior for our bounty and dig in! Um, I will, I mean, you don’t have to.” Sage closes her eyes and bows her head while quickly mouthing through words too quick for Jin to have any chance of lip reading. Not that she has a desire to. Jin holds the chopsticks and tries to click them together a couple times. They’re well balanced. Her hands, less so. Curling her fingers too far in any direction hurts, and she already regrets not going for the fork.
She looks over at the pile of walnuts and considers snacking on them while waiting on Sage to finish… praying? But holds herself back. Instead she looks up at the ring in the sky.
…Seriously, how the fuck did the planet get a ring? Come to think of it, where’s the moon?
Sage finishes and nods her head once. She looks back up at Jin, smiling, “I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but thanks for waiting! Let’s eat!”
Jin smiles weakly and holds up the chopsticks in her heavily bandaged hands. “I think I need the fork, actually.”
“Oh gosh! Sorry I didn’t think about that at all. Here, it’s all you.” Sage wastes no time in snatching up the chopsticks in exchange for the wood fork.
Her fingers are clumsy, but she’s able to grasp the fork well enough to stab a slice of mushroom after Sage plucks up a piece for herself.. It looks like chicken, smells like chicken… Jin bites into it and her eyes widen slightly. Mushroomy chicken. And it’s seasoned better than half the food in the cafeteria.
The pan is empty sooner than Jin would have preferred, and for the first time since she… woke up? Unfroze? Snapped back to reality? She can feel herself genuinely relaxing. Sage lets out a contented sigh and shifts positions to lying on her side propped up on one elbow, “Nothing like a hot meal to lift the spirits eh?”
“Mm,” Jin agrees. She would have liked more, but it’s enough. Her eyes are feeling heavy now. She decides to close them and quickly regrets the idea when exhaustion settles itself into a shroud over her.
Sage must have noticed, “Here, why don’t you take my cloak and take a nap? If you curl up under that overhang there the sunlight won’t bother you. Unless we stay here till noon, which we aren’t doing.”
Jin cracks an eye open and sees Sage uncliping her cloak. She frowns, “What about you? It was still daytime when I… You’ve been awake far longer than I have. Assuming you woke up in the morning? I’m no stranger to all nighters.”
Sage just waves her off with a yawn, “I’m not the injured one here. You’ve gotta rest. C’mon.” She folds her cloak over one arm and stands to offer a hand to Jin. Jin finds she has little will to argue and takes the offered hand. A grunt and a hiss of pain later and Jin is on her feet with Sage draping the cloak over her shoulders.
Not for long, though. Jin only has to take a dozen or so steps using Sage as a crutch before she’s back on the ground. “Are you sure you’re good to stay awake? I can,” Jin yawns, “probably set up an alarm real quick, if you’re worried of over sleeping.”
Sage looks southwards towards the ruined city and frowns, “No, I’ll stay awake. You just nap for a couple hours, yeah? I’ll keep a lookout.”
“Mm.”
Jin can already feel her mind drifting off and she tugs the cloak into a more comfortable position. It’s a weird feeling. She couldn’t imagine trusting someone she’s just met enough to curl up for a nap beside them before now. Having your life saved will do that to a person, she supposes.
Jin falls asleep faster than she’s done in years.
Sage smiles at Jin, then frowns when she looks back in the direction of the ruined city.
“Why are the arc-wolves active again..?” She muses to herself, then shakes her head.
“Well! At least they weren’t eye-gougers.” Sage raps her knuckles across a piece of firewood before tossing it into the fire. Making herself slightly paranoid, Sage tilts her head to listen for bird shrieks, but only hears the normal morning melody as the world comes to life with the sun. She smiles and lets herself enjoy the dawn.
Life just isn’t worth it when you spend all your time worrying. Sage breaths in the smell of dirt, growth, and fire. She listens to the birds waking up and singing, the gentle murmur of the creek, the rustle of leaves in the wind. No, much better to just enjoy the moments given to you.