middleofsomewhere | Wings of Wonder: NPC Interactions and Investigations

Answering is no easy feat when you're a statue that can't speak, but there may be more to the silence of activity or prompt that follows. Bu a few sparks eventually emerge in the air where the talisman had been used, as some imitation of the butterflies appear. Coloured in golden whites instead of fiery red, warm like the sun, with the tiny flaps of their wings like a light breeze.

Some amount of Wei Wuxian's type of qi starts slowly being mingled in with it, except - unfortunately, it evaporates it, making the butterflies lose their shape like the ripples on the surface of a lake.

The energy disappears. Nothing follows for a few seconds, until the previous warmth takes Wei Wuxian by the hands, a light tug sensation given - one that tickles - to lead them over to the statue's hands.

Time to teach a statue two warm bursts for yes, one warm burst for no. Or, as what happens when he watches the talisman, noting the way that similar and different butterflies of light emerge.

Then they're gone, just as abruptly, with his own qi mingling in. He hums, thinking over that, before the statue reclaims his attention.

"Closer, and clearly you can imitate what I'm doing," he says, but he doesn't fail to return and crouch down again, pressing his oddly tickled hands down onto the statue's open palms once more.

"I'm starting to wonder if we need to join energies each time for things to take form here. We should have some way of trying to speak when I don't hear you unless you want me to start playing for you. Music carries emotion better for me," he says, watching the statue with curious eyes. "One bloom of warmth for a no, two blooms in succession for yes?"

Wei Wuxian's answer doesn't come exactly in the way instructed; there's a warmth given to both hands, light, and then - he will feel another type of sensation. One of an energy in his mind, over a mental link. Led in at their hands, but an energy trying not to mingle, and energy attempting to imitate his own.

It's not too comfortable, and it's exhausted around the edges. But through emotion, the statue can speak. Feelings - fortunately, feelings are easy to translate.

Experiment. Complicated. Time. But there too lingers a worry, a concern, and the discomfort finds place to grow when, so does emotion. Worry. Home.

The islands, everything - this is what home means.

The colour red isn't visual, but Wei's mind may feel in the pieces. The sound of flapping wings. A pain. Disagreeable energies seeping in where they shouldn't. Filling up one's body, clouding the mind.

The experiences are shared, but only the knowledge; there's no pain forced here, only the unfortunate discomfort that still comes with the link. One that presses more as the concentration taken to imitate Wei Wuxian's energy wanes.

A few seconds of exhaustion, a pause of someone who wants to continue to speak, but draws back on the link.

He'd mutter about a serviceable idea being useless if he wasn't more impressed by the press of emotions when they eventually come, let alone the associations that tie in with it all. He frowns, closing his eyes to better focus, and while red isn't the colour in specific, red is the colour of hurt, and pain, and things wrong, just as it's the sign of passion, of fire, of other things in his lifetime.

A preferred colour for him even now, tied into his hair, and visible nowhere else.

Concern for a home, and a hurt alongside it. He almost wishes he could share that pain, and some sense of that emotion might transfer back; pain is not something that stops him, embraced and endured and accepted as it is. However, as his eyes open, as the energy from the statue wanes, he considers its features.

"We're here to help with that pain. The red one?" He pauses, considers. "I wonder if it came from below... but the islands, North, West, South. The flying things, they help bring these bad energies here?"

To be fair, he doesn't expect to have answers in words, but it's one way for him to voice things in return, and to try, to some extent, to again offer from what energy he has to the statue. Not much, he's too aware of his limits, but something else offered freely.

He may not receive answers for words, but for this time, he receives an answer by his idea: a warmth under his palms. Once. Twice. Then gently, or just tiredly, is shared another feeling in his mind: something trying to seep in, to confuse, to rattle minds. Thrashing, trying to consume.

A memory, one that eases way, and a small beat of gratitude is given before apology. A memory; it's easier to recall than to formulate impressions, and that's what the statue does: it shows to Wei Wuxian a memory, one that can't weave and imitate his energy as it would prefer, but still, it does its best to polish it.

So there's a discomfort, a shudder to go through his body, like a force attempting to take a seat in place of where Wei Wuxian's existence sits, cramped in a tight space.

But for it:

The land awakens its eyes, the span of its vision entirety, everywhere. Enshala has called from the South. Danger, watch out. A red sky, coming with the wings of many, carrying this new sky with them. You attempt to grant Enshala power, but the connection snaps.

Mamali, Omerka. You try to call them. Inji, Rosha. You call, but the East does not reply. You know the storm is coming for you, and there is panic in your heart. But you must not waver. This is your home. You must protect it, you must warn your heart to the West.

Shrinlo, you call out, linked to the heart amongst the trees of steel, mountains of stone. Shrinlo, call the people. Watch out. Beware. Danger. You cannot linger for details you do not know, cutting the communication, gathering yourself.

The red storm draws nearer, and before it even reaches, you feel its tendrils. Claws, attempting to dig in.

You will not let it. You will fight back.

The imagery dies away, fading to the darkness of one's mind usually is. The whisper of an apology left with it. Even with the energy given, there is the weariness, a struggle remembered in the memories, an exhaustion attempted to keep down.

The two blooming warmths, and oh, well then. It's with the memory that follows where Wei Wuxian considers that perhaps he's getting a little too used to this without the use of mind-endangering Empathy, but that in such a sense, he has the experience of being along for other's memory rides, or for Chaos's continued spill of them in his nightmares.

So he stills himself beneath the weight of this memory too, and the names, the information that is more about the lack that had been, the steps taken to preserve, to fight, to hold on. To come out of the memory and the apology that feels more than follows, and he looks to the statue, to the defender of a people with their own connections across these floating islands, and says:

"If we find them, can we help them reconnect, while we address what the red storm brought to these islands? What's lingered, and what continues to do harm."

The feeling, underneath it, of compassion, understanding, and resolve: not fierce, like it once had been, but steady, that forward we go, into this unknown, to resolve what we might. To salvage and save what can be saved.

"Can those like you help with the mind swaying, if we can get those suffering from it to you?"

Perhaps the animals, he thinks, and delayed, belated: the people.

Two pulses, once. Two pulses, twice. Emotions backs them each time, quietly so, aligned with belief. The flutter of appreciation for the emotions that cross the quiet line, but none that are made particularly prominent; more of a result of their current connection than anything.

But the statue directs with feeling, Wei Wuxian's attentions to the broken bridge beside them. A rather magnificent width, enough to fit a small army across.

Too bad about the broken parts, circular in nature, mostly. But it's not to the state of the bridge that Wei Wuxian's attention is drawn to it, except for the next implication given.

Community. More.

--of ones like them.

It's a fruitless gesture to squeeze stone hands, but he does, regardless, because it's a means of reassurance familiar to him. He's reminded as soon as he does that he is not, thankfully, obscenely strong, and that stone doesn't give to hands of flesh without reason or enough force applied.

"More of those like you across the broken bridge, to the East?" He glances that direction, along the pockmarked bridge, and nods once, thoughtfully. "Then we'll do what we can to get to them, and to make contact with... their names. Enshala, to the South. Shrinlo, to the West. Is there another to the North?"

This is a course of action to be explored and taken, when otherwise he would have had what? They have all the better intentions in the world, but before people who cannot know that, and the damages they will not be aware they're generating before hitting some breaking point.

Is there another to the North? One pulse for no. Very lightly, there is an impression given, though how intelligible it is - perhaps from exhaustion - it is, is for Wei Wuxian to decide.

But there is a haze of white to the right, a haze of white from below. Left. One comes in at the centre. And then one comes in from above, late.

Exhaustion makes it difficult to understand, and it's by the second haze that he thinks: perhaps, he has a sense of it. This grounding presence, defending islands, connected to each other, yes. One to the right. One below. To the left. To the centre.

The one from above, that, that makes less sense to him.

"I don't know that I understand. Is there meant for one of you to eventually guard the North?"

A pause, for any attempted answer from this exhausted defender.

Two pulses from their hands. It's an easier means of communication than pressing energies together, at the very least. And quicker to understand.

"So eventually, but not yet. North was the only island that had no one to defend it like however you and the rest like you can?"

He doesn't plan to ask much more. Conversing with the rest is going to help, and he shifts his gaze, looking East.

"Is there a way to the East that might assist with your energies, once we've reached out to those Forever Ones?"

Another two pulses in agreement, once, twice. For both questions, and then a brush of gratitude mingles in the air around Wei Wuxian. Perhaps later, some day, they will be able to speak better. But for now, Hemla wishes to convey as they can, what they can.

And at this time, their gratitude is endless, to know that their people on the islands will have aid.

"Got it. To some extent at least, I'll see about going East with some of the rest for the purpose of seeking out the four you named that direction." He gives stone hands a squeeze of reassurance he's not sure this one can feel, and smiles.

"We're a bunch of misfits, but we do more good in the scheme of things than ill. Whatever guidance you and yours are willing to offer will be welcomed with open arms."

Wings of Wonder: NPC Interactions and Investigations

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