As Skyheart Snowsong winched Hisui's heavier dwarven form higher into the air, Jade stared at the view revealed by his character's ever increasing height.
The Augusmin carried branches looked as though they passed through 3 seasons as their bearers flowed past the tree. On one side, the shining leaves dimmed and fell until the rabbit-folk carried nothing but sticks. But as the travelers moved away from the gigantic tree, the sticks appeared to bud, and leaf, at the same time as what appeared to be pollen drifted down from the branches overhead.
Each Augusmin caught a single fragment, ate it, and then sped forward as though invigorated. Not a single individual as far as his eyes could see, seemed to catch and eat more than a single piece of whatever was raining down, nor did any of it seem to land on the ground.
Jade stared, perplexed, at what could only be described as a magical view. When he dragged his attention away from that vast spectacle, and focused on where Hisui's name was carved into the tree, it seemed just as roughly scratched into the trunk as it had from the ground.
As though in response to his gaze upon the tree, a fragment of light drifted into his view. Jade couldn't help reaching for it, though he was a little startled at how easy the item was to catch. The small object in his hand looked almost like a teardrop, or perhaps a single cell from a segment of a gigantic albino orange.
"Are you going to taste it?" Sky asked curiously as she reached down and heaved him up onto the branch she stood on.
"Did it give you one?" he asked.
"One drifted past when I first reached the branch, but I didn't grab it," she explained.
"You told us not to eat anything!" Apella shouted up from below, where she gripped the bag she had tied to the nearly invisible string with white fingers.
Jade hadn't even thought of eating it. Instead he increased the magnification on the darkened lense plate his dwarf wore. It looked less magical that way. It really looked like a simple fruit cell, with zero aerodynamic capability
By the time he had rummaged through his storage pouches to find the lens set he was looking for, Apella was standing beside him.
"What's he doing?" she asked with irritation as Hisui ignored her.
"Investigating?" Sky suggested with amusement.
Jade winced as he raised the darkened lense. Not only did everything in sight glow, but the tiny item on his palm glowed with its own light. When he placed the enchanted scope over one eye, and gazed at the tiny item on his palm again, rather than diminishing it glowed like a high powered lightbulb.
As though the system were impatient, a notification screen popped up asking, "Will you help fulfill the bargain sustaining your life?"
Instead of answering, Jade handed the fruit fragment to Apella, and demanded, "What does this ask you?"
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"I can't talk to objects," Apella objected.
Her fingers closed on it reflexively, and Jade cautioned, "Don't pop it."
Her gaze dropped to the tiny object, and she asked more hesitantly, "What is this?" A moment later her fingers released it, and her eyes raised to read the shimmer of the screen that appeared before her. "It asks if I'll fulfill a bargain!?"
Sky snatched the tree's 'gift' from Apella's open palm, and examined it herself. "Is it a seed? Will branches grow out of me if I accept?"
"I don't know? Maybe?" Jade replied seriously. "What do you think, do you want to try it then?"
Apella's fingers flashed as she navigated menus. Her expression as she read, the way she squinted at the words, mirrored Eric's perfectly. Her lashes and brows weren't quite as thick and dark as his were, but...
The unanswered window pulsed for attention, and Jade asked, "Think if we all accepted at the same time, the item would triplicate itself?"
"They won't," Apella stated decisively. "Other people have already accepted the quest. And they say it's not actually attached, that you don't even have to carry the branch yourself, and a familiar or pet can do it. And that you'll get one of these each time you complete a trip around the entire moon."
"So shall we stop avoiding it and give it a try?" Sky asked a moment later.
Both of them looked down at Hisui expectantly.
"Do we have time for this?" he asked worriedly.
Sky and Apella exchanged a speaking glance and laughed.
Sky hugged Hisui against her as she asked, "Have you got something else you need to do? Isn't this why we came to the Moon? For the new quests?"
Apella squeezed his smaller hands between her own as she demanded, "Doesn't it make you curious? It claims that an unknown bargain is already sustaining our lives."
Jade was silent for long enough that the two women exchanged a more uncertain glance. "I don't know. I'm not sure what's going to happen after I'm registered as a person. I'm not even sure if I should actually register myself as a citizen? An... administrator warned me that I will be facing many more costs just for existing, and I'm not exactly self sufficient yet even without that."
Apella gazed at him with such a blank expression that Jade wondered if Eric had just disconnected. A puff of air from the elf at his back ruffled his hair, and then Sky audibly snorted. Jade tilted his head far enough back to see the ridiculous expression she was making as she tried not to laugh.
Apella finally threw up her hands and exclaimed, "Oh of course you're worrying about something like that, while you stand on the branch of a world tree, five stories in the air, considering accepting a quest that might force your character to eternally circle the moon."
She covered her eyes and shook her head, while Sky lost it, and began to laugh uncontrollably.
Jade didn't know what else to say, so he simply waited patiently until Apella slapped a hand on each of her companions shoulders at the same time, and asked brightly, "So we all accept at the same time then?"
"Of course," Sky agreed laughingly.
Jade didn't understand how either of them had reached that conclusion. "I don't think..." he began hesitantly.
"Obviously not," Apella interrupted agreeably. "This is a game that is fabled to adapt to each person playing it. You can do anything here. So let's do it, okay?"
"Okay?" Jade agreed uncertainly.
The three of them reached out into the air and tapped their waiting notification's button simultaneously, and like some old fashioned flat screen drama, sounds swelled up to fill the air around them as though an orchestra of wind instruments had just begun to play.
Jade watched Apella reach up and touch her ears, as though checking to see if they had lengthened. His own mind was more occupied by its attempts to translate the sounds into words of some kind, at the same time as he read the quest window's story.
Sky asked with amazement, "Can you both hear the tree singing about being invaded by colors?"
"I can't understand it yet, but does your quest also claim that our new goal is to expand the sky?" Jade asked.
"You hear words? I just hear music. Mine says I just need to collect energy so... oh, so that the tree can expand the sky?" Apella replied questioningly.
"Yes, mine too," Sky agreed.