V5 Incline 13: Nin

"A-Alright- Alright! Calm down." I nearly laugh out, barely a few hours of sleep in my system. She just hasn't stopped crying with joy over that damn mountain. It's cute how it makes her tail leap with joy, however, surely there are limits to such behaviour? I've not slept much at all, but it was a solid nap, and in that time all she's done is look at that mountain.

One gods-blessed mountain, but still a damn mountain!

And yet... Her eyes are glued straight to it. She's seen nothing but that distance since bringing my attention to it. A mountain that would never be forgotten by the world.

"N-No... It's too beautiful to stay calm about..." she barely gets out after many failures, all of which are made by hiccups and more. She's only succeeded once in looking away from the mountain. Most she's ever got her attention off of it is to start whacking me with this tail of hers.

"I mean, sure, it is very impressive. With all that magic and stuff. But... It's just a mountain." I say, knowing full well I'm downplaying even my own thoughts about the sight. Much as her behaviour is annoying, I get it completely. Like her, I need to keep my gaze away from the mountain otherwise I'd be just as entranced by it.

"Very impressive? My love... My sweet, precious love..." Rose-sweerui tuts, finally managing her attention away from the mountain just to give me a special glare.

"Hm?" I go, unable to stop a slight smirk from forming over her expression. Even with pitch-black eyes, I know full well how she's looking at me.

"You know how I have told you before about how my kind don't see things the way you do, how we see the world in a more magic-focused context?" she reminds me.

"I do."

"Well, try and remember that before you tell me to stop crying at the beauty of Jhroungijherammujhernosumonaterikra." she huffs, her flawless pronunciation of that name again throwing me through a loop. I could leap right off this here plateau and I still wouldn't be able to compare to how much it baffles me that she can speak such a word cleanly.

"I take it that... This mountain and what it is, it's the purest magic you have ever seen?" I ask, stealing a quick peek of the mountain even as the dying dark of the light gives way to the earliest of early morning lights. She puts her eyes back on me, a sweet smile pushing her cheeks up. She nods away, happy as can be. Almost like a bride at her wedding, just after or before the kiss that seals the bond before the eyes of the gods themselves.

"It is... And, it annoys me." she sighs, that smile of hers vanishing for familiar parts.

"How come it annoys you?" I ask, having a feeling I know where this is going to go. My life has been like this since I died, since I was exposed to the quality of divine craft.

"Because like with that food you gave me after you came back to life... It has ruined my perception of the world forever! No longer can I guess what the gods might be capable of, no longer can I just guess what the Jhroungijherammujhernosumonaterikra is like. I have seen it and experienced it!" she goes, throwing her hands up in the air as a pleasurable frustration disturbs the peace and quiet.

"So... You are worried you will never be able to enjoy anything ever again?" I ask, more so to fill in the lack of speaking.

"No... I am worried this has warped my sense of reality so much that I am going to be nothing but detached from it all." she worries over, and yet, I'm hesitant to say she's simply overthinking. I know what she's feeling, and I know where she's coming from.

"Well, just keep your mind on me then? Not that you need the advice for that." I suggest, teasing the aelenvari with an enjoyable alternative. She focuses on me again, her smile coming back as she squeezes up against me. A soft, warm glow to the bulbs dangling from her forehead. Their message clear even if I can't speak in the glowing tongue of her people.

She giggles, "And what could you offer me that the taste of that dessert could not? What can you display that Jhroungijherammujhernosumonaterikra cannot do much greater to an impossible to describe degree?"

I huff out some joyous and despairing air as I try to think up an answer to that...

And again, that damn word — she just spits it out flawlessly, "Well, I am the one who brought it all into your life. Besides, we were both there together when these joys came about. Here right now. So I'd understand very well what you were going on about."

She flinches at my words, moving her head back as the gears click and turn in her head. A blank face becomes a warm smile unlike anything that's come before, and she wraps her arms around me. She shuffles close, hugging me tight as I feel the vacuuming force of her nose. A hearty sigh leaves her, her gentle grip twitching and tightening up.

She places her forehead against the tip of my nose, her lips but a finger a way from slipping up to mine, "I guess so, I guess so..."

A silence takes over, one timed by her steady slip towards my chest rather than any grain of sand or similar.

"So..." I let out, breaking up the silence, "Want to stay here for a little longer or go somewhere where the other two can find us?"

"Let's build a home and start a family right here..." she pulls out of nowhere, one arm coming up and away so she can gesture. No doubt to that lone tree by our things. Though I don't think I can make a home with just a tree. Besides, there's a whole city maybe a day's walk away now!

"That's... That's so stu-... Now you know we can't do that." I go, eliciting a delightful laugh from her and it settles into a knowing grin. Oh, that damn tease...

"I know, I know... But, let's just keep ourselves here, before Jhroungijherammujhernosumonaterikra for a little longer," she insists, her perfect pronunciation of that word seriously getting on my nerves. Every time she says it, I know what it is, and I'm barely able to take it all in.

"You don't have to keep saying the full name of the mountain, Rose-sweerui." I go, my frustrations at myself projecting on over to her. She snaps away from me, a solidly vile glare on her face. A clear sensation of offence turns her body cold, and I feel all of her go stiffer than I was climbing up through the snow-belt.

"Not say the full name? It is the single most important place in the land, it deserves the respect of its full name!" she barks, her vicious voice right up against my ear making me flinch.

"I'm just saying... I'm just saying, it's a bit of a mouthful, no?" I try to tell her, not meaning any disrespect by my words. But, backfiring as it is... This is just ridiculous. The people of this land are so explicitly formal about names in a way I never saw in Tobaballe. Sure, some people loved to flaunt their hard-earned titles, but most people never did it unlike here!

"So!? A little bit of effort on the part of everyone in this mountainous land is a fair price for the great gift it gives us!" she goes, and while there's certainly a point to it with how this very power is why we're up here and alive to begin with...

"Great gift...?" I let slip out, oh, now I've done it...

"As I told you before! It is the source of all wind magic! Every wind that breezes through the meadows, every gale that tears apart cliffs! They all originate here! Your power comes from that mountain, Jhroungijherammujhernosumonaterikra!" she almost screams, her stiff body not going anywhere else but higher.

"I don't know where my power comes from..." I sigh out, not understanding magic at all. I wasn't born with any of this strength. I was kidnapped by Heiya and her father and then I woke up in that blasted hive, and then there was that emerald light and I... Damn it.

I sigh, and she straightens herself out, an odd curiosity sealing away a fraction of that wrath of hers. Her emotional outburst cools, and she goes through a proverbial step-back to consider my point of view. A calm observation of the situation that she was trained to show. She barely does it, it surprises me when she does, but I know she can do it.

"Did the witches of your home not teach any of it to you? Did they not teach anything you should know...?" she questions, her inquisitive mood having an odd sense of offence that I have no idea what to do with.

"We don't have witches back home." I answer honestly, knowing full well that magic is not a thing back in Tobaballe. There's the mysteries of the golden liquid Iishar showed me back in her apartment, however... That's not inherently magic, is it? It's a liquid and magic is wind? I don't know at all...

"Don't lie to me, your power cannot be cultivated in a witchless home!" Rose snaps, and I still have no idea how to process the emotions she shows. Nothing I've done is dishonest, and nothing she thinks is true is!

"I'm not lying! I have told you before, Rose! This power I have was not something I was born with, magic is nearly nonexistent in my home! Dammit! I only just found out that the Anvil-Peak was a thing for real before I arrived in that hive..." I try to explain to her again, simmering out as I rub a palm against my malformed bug face.

"The Anvil-Peak...?" she says, confusion determining her face while excitement brings waggling back to her tail.

"Yeah, the mountain where Thurnmourer-"

"I know what it is! I'm... Just surprised to hear you say that you have seen such a sight..." She snaps, going off into a gentle mutter as some disappointment fills up her heart.

"She believes I have seen the forge of the Thunder God, but she has a hard time framing that my home isn't magical..." I sarcastically mutter, finally finding a use for all these aimless emotions she's thrown at me. I can just grumble about them like that damn grump Baltanthan does so much! Yet, still, all Rose-sweerui can do is look on at me with awe.

"Can you describe it to me, please, my love?" she practically begs, coming right up to me as her tail slaps my legs, bouncing up and down to each side like the world's fleshiest pendulum.

"Well, you know, as the name is, its top is shaped like an anvil, it has near endless thunder clouds all around it and it is just a forest of *golden* lightning bolts. And at the base, a lake of molten gold that foams with the lightning that drives down into it. The Anvil-Peak and the Molten Sea. Just as the stories describe it." I go, recalling with some difficulty what should be an unforgettable experience.

Yet, despite being the very home of a god, once upon a time... I know full well it never drew out the same kind of feelings I have for Jhroungijher... Whatever Rose has been calling it.

"It is close to your home?" she asks, her eyes widening.

"I am not sure, it took us at least a few weeks by haulier to get there when we initially set out on this journey to find something. Hauliers are big tracked vehicles, by the way..." I clarify, not sure if it was necessary at all to clarify the details of the transport. She can imagine it however she wants, and the details remain the same.

"That is not far..." she mumbles, her bulbs doing most of the speaking. However, it is she's thinking about it, it can only be in a more aelenvari-familiar concept. Large migrations and lots of walking. The opposite of what I know it to be, which was large vehicles and a warehouse of supplies on the move. What was weeks for me could easily be months for her, perhaps longer given how different the size of what our groups were are.

"A few weeks' travel is hardly close." I point out, and she shakes her head at my words.

"No, it is close, but if you are that close to such a divine spot... Then it is no wonder you are so powerful yet raw with your magic! You have been close to the gods since your birth, my love! Their power seeps off onto you!" she goes, going off on something I have no idea at all about. However powerful her imagination might be, it will never be accurate to a hair's width of the truth.

"Debateable..." is all one can really say about it.

"Which makes it make more sense as to why they brought you back... You are the member of some kind of chosen people!?" she comes to realise, going off on her rocker even more than I thought was possible. Much as I've come to see this woman in a favourable light, she really does do my head in at times. But, I suppose I can't really complain.

All I'm experiencing right now is one of the most loving, passionate hugs I've ever got in my life. Pretty sure my mother never held me like this on my first ever birthday, the day I did nothing but cry and whine for air and something other than the gloop of a woman's womb. I feel like a treasured stuffed toy to the young, innocent child that is called Rose'lhia to many. Rose to few, and Rose-sweerui to me by her insistence.

"A very vivid imagination you certainly have." I huff, not sure what else I can come up with as I sit away, enjoying the affection.

"I am only stating likely theory." she shrugs, way too confident- deluded in her thoughts about how my life really has been like.