The Fe'gan Mountains are the highest, coldest mountains Lambastia has to offer, with the highest peak recorded at 8589 m (28,179 ft). Only the toughest creatures survive here, and the trek to get to the Basantha Shrine lays through these harsh conditions. (+3 Endurance)

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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/25/2017 8:04 PM

cat mafia wrote:[CLAN] Gumiho: '>g< btw anyone have an extra demagnetised compass? need it for the romantic.'
[CLAN] Mischief Managed: '[a] isn't that the second time you've been asked for a rare cosmetic?'
[CLAN] Mischief Managed: '[a] who'd you kill for this shit luck? remind me to stay away from them.'
[CLAN] Chi Squared: '[^2] I think Vers got the last one that dropped.'
[CLAN] Chi Squared: '[^2] Otherwise, let's farm the run when I get back, I want more drop rate data anyways.'
[CLAN] Gumiho: '>g< thanks!! it would be my honor to contribute to chi's spreadsheets. c:'


And so life continued, as it always did. Nestled as comfortably as she could be - not very - in the rocky niche she'd found for herself, snuggled in a fairly thin, but ostensibly dry, blanket she'd packed, snacking aimlessly, she could almost imagine she was in her apartment, sitting in bed with the lights off, her laptop on her lap and a bag of wasabi peas on her nightstand, simply content to exist.

A drop of hit the ground a few feet away. Almost.

Honestly, it felt like it had been a very long time since she'd felt that way.

What had her life been like, the past year or two? Grading homework sets, grading papers, grading exams, teaching; a smidgen of research, here and there, when her university had the budget to support it. She'd met a boy at a networking event - he had been brilliant, far more brilliant than she thought she'd ever been, and she had fallen for him like a rock for Galileo.

She had known for a very long time. When she started scheduling her office hours later and later so she could sneak back into her own apartment, when she spent late nights putting together spreadsheets for her helpsite just to indulge into the feeling of being useful again - she had known. She had just always thought, maybe, she could fix things; she had even thought they'd get back together after this, if she just let the anger subside and begged for his forgiveness or something.

But now, miles away from civilization, alone with nothing but stone and water, she felt less lonely than she had in years.

'This sounds so contrived,' Chi complained futilely to the sky. 'Girl breaks up with guy. Girl goes on adventure that turns out to be a journey of self-discovery. Girl discovers the treasure was actually in our hearts all along.'

'I'm too old for my life to be a shitty young adult novel.'

(chi voices my own thoughts about this post. i'm not sure i like how i handled this, or even that i actually should've included this in my caving plot.)
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/25/2017 9:01 PM

The cold woke her up. Her breath joining the mist in the air, lit from above by a pale morning glow, she reached for her phone and -

5:38 in the morning?
Who even wakes up at 5:38 in the morning?
Was it even physically possible to wake up at 5:38 in the morning?

For the final question, Chi was scientifically certain the answer was 'no.' She offered concrete evidence to support her hypothesis: first, she was awfully sore from sleeping on hard rock; second, the cold was making her arms and legs numb; and third, it was just too damn early. As the only other person here, she declared her theory adequately peer-reviewed (by herself) and ready to be published (by herself) and accepted by the scientific community at large (meaning herself).

That being resolved, she shifted to a more comfortable position, curled up to go back to sleep, and realized she was simply not sleepy enough to ignore the obvious disadvantages of napping in a cave. Making a grumpy sound that closely resembled the cry of a broken dishwasher, she stood up, straightened her spine, and examined her surroundings.

Everything looked - well, just about the same as it had, yesterday. The lighting was not so dramatic this pale, wet morning - looking up, all she could see through the skylight were distant clouds and a clinging mountain fog - but there was still an air of tranquility and timelessness about the cavern. If she stayed here for a thousand mornings, she suspected each one would look about the same.

Then there was no more to see here. Time to get going.
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/25/2017 11:52 PM

cat mafia wrote:[CLAN] Chi Squared: '[^2] Good morning!'
[CLAN] nebu!a: '/// ...wtf. when'd it become morning.'
[CLAN] nebu!a: '/// i'm going to bed.'

Definitely still too early in the morning.

Stretching slightly - she was still very stiff - she gathered her stuff and hopped down indelicately from the little nest she'd made for herself; her landing was a little awkward for what was essentially a one-foot drop.

When she had first arrived in this cavern, she'd noted there were four other exits - one on the left, three on the right. Clearing the entire left side had sounded like an impressive accomplishment last night, but in the morning, the extent of how much left she had to explore loomed in front of her. Hopefully she wouldn't have to spend the night again to complete mapping the cave - she wasn't sure if she had enough supplies for that.

To reach the passages, though, she first had to cross a slight dip. Now that she was actually at its brink, slight seemed a bit of a misnomer; it was maybe six or seven feet in height, and the most gentle part of it was still practically vertical. Considering she'd had trouble just getting out of her resting location, she wasn't about to try jumping this.

Luckily, this was something she'd actually planned ahead for - she fastened a piece of rope to a conveniently located rock and held onto it as she lowered herself down.

When she was done, she tugged the end of the rope and suddenly remembered that she was not, in fact, an adventurer by trade, and she had no idea how to get the rope down. You were supposed to be able to just pull on the end and have it come loose magically, but she didn't have the skill for that. Besides, wouldn't that be a safety hazard?

'Well, let's hope I won't die from fall damage later in this cave,' she said, and walked on.
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/26/2017 8:01 PM

'Three roads diverged in a cream-colored cave fork,' Chi said. Then, a little more quietly: 'Okay, this joke wasn't even funny the first time around.'

She hadn't come up with a heuristic to rank her choices, but it didn't seem particularly useful. After much consideration, she could only describe the passages thus - the first one was rocky, marked with a multitude of rocks; the second one was stony, delineated by its assemblage of stones; and the third one was where her vocabulary of rock-facing terms ran out. Not for the first time since she had arrived here, she wished she knew something about geology.

cat mafia wrote:[CLAN] Chi Squared: '[^2] Someone pick a number for me, 1-3.'
[CLAN] nebu!a: '/// ...i said i was going to bed.'
[CLAN] nebu!a: '/// 3.'

Honestly, she would've picked that one too - it was the closest one to her current location and she was lazy. With a little excitement in her step that hadn't yet been quashed by falling into sinkholes, getting violently dripped upon, or discovering another patch of nothing-but-rocks, she squeezed herself into the uncomfortably small passage and hoped for the best.
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/27/2017 4:17 AM

Sixteen minutes and seven seconds of crawling on the ground later, Chi was starting to suspect this was not a good idea.

No, she was thinking this entire 'go into a cave and walk around and bring back a map' thing was a bad idea. She had started this adventure with regret; her entire experience yesterday was regret tinged with a few smatterings of wonder; she was currently on her hands and knees, the very picture of someone seeking pardon for her regretful mistakes.

The direct cause of all of this was simple - she had gone into this tight passageway assuming it would either hit a dead end or open up quickly. Instead, it had simply continued exactly as it was, until she became more and more frustrated with constantly hitting her head on stray rocky outcroppings.

Now that she was actually thinking about things, she found she had had no reason to think that would happen in the first place. 'An excellent lesson,' she pontificated. 'This is a fine example of why it's important not to make assumptions. I will surely use the knowledge gained from this in the future.'

It was not that she'd been at this stubbornly; she had started thinking about turning back about ten minutes ago, but each time she'd be confronted by the fact that she'd already crawled along for so long and going backwards would be even more utterly miserable. She was just hoping, now, that the cave would either become so narrow that she would have no choice but to turn back, or she would finally reach an exit.

The latter was not as expected.
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/27/2017 5:43 PM

The cave finally widened out, at least.

Now, the dilemma: which was better? To be crawling around in a dark, cramped passage, chafing on rock and rock slime, bumping her head against protruding proto-stalactites, having to awkwardly sandwich her flashlight between her head and shoulder since she needed her hands for balance - or this?

It was as if the cave had been flipped on its side. From the ceiling, now several feet above her head, long stalagmites hung like stone icicles; from from the floor, stalactites reached upwards like - upside-down icicles. Many of them had met over long years of growth, forming a thin network of columns, like a growing spiderweb or a moss-clad, vine-woven forest.

Or one of those security systems with the lasers from the movies, really. It was certainly accomplishing the same job of making it very, very difficult for her to continue moving.

'Honestly,' she grumbled. She was doing an awful lot of that today. 'Way to make a girl feel bad about her weight. I'm not skinny enough to fit through half of these crevices.'

The passage seemed to continue ahead of her, though; she hoped there was something good at the end.
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/27/2017 6:32 PM

Some elaborate gymnastics later, Chi was mind-numbingly bored. There was only so much neural stimulation you could get from trying to squeeze through tight crevices, hopping over annoying protrusions, and balancing herself by grabbing wet, slippery rock formations and potentially ruining centuries of growth.

She'd actually tripped, flailed, and broken a few of the columns - some of them were very thin and very fragile, almost like translucent strands. The first time that had happened, she'd frozen for a moment waiting for the entire cave system to crash down on her, or for some dejected spirit to appear and curse her for ruining its castle, or something; instead, there was just the quiet tinkling noise of shattered rock hitting the ground and the ever-present drip drip of more stalagmites being born.

The next few times, she just felt guilty. Those rock formations were far older than she was; they had survived eons only to be destroyed by some inconsiderate wannabe explorer with nothing but a map and a horrible sense of balance. But rocks were just rocks, in the end, and she didn't have the patience to really care.
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/27/2017 7:34 PM

'This column looks like the feather on a Pingune's head,' Chi commented, currently wedged between that column and a particularly large stalactite. 'And this rock looks like a chili pepper.'

When she was very young, her parents had taken her caving - not an unexplored cave like this one, but one that had been developed as a tourist attraction. They'd waited in line in the summer sun for about half an hour - she wasn't sure on times for things long-past - before being ushered inside by a hassled-looking tour guide. His form had long departed her memory, but she clearly remembered his bright red hat and the sound of his voice as he explained where to go and what they were seeing.

'You'll need imagination or this trip will be a waste,' he'd said, pointing to one rocky outcropping spotlighted in colorful lighting. 'This rock formation is called 'Two Monks' Pilgrimage.' That one is the first monk, walking with his hands cupped in prayer, and the second monk is following behind him, reciting scripture on his horse. In that corner, a group of bandits are hiding to ambush them.'

She'd craned her head, trying to peek between the sleeves of the adults in the tour group to get a better look. Truthfully, it had all looked like rocks to her - but if she turned her head the right way, looked at it from the right perspective, she could make out the shapes of a story.

Like a puzzle, really, or a math problem.

She doubted any of her names would stick, or if people would ever flock to visit this cave, but she figured she could contribute a few of her own stories. At the very least, it would relieve her boredom.
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/27/2017 9:16 PM

'And this rock formation is 'Cat Mafia Wiping on Their First Run of the Vanished Monastery of Rimeward,'' Chi said in her best tour guide voice. 'The big rock in the center is symbolically representative of the final boss, since it looks absolutely nothing like an enraged bird spirit, and the small rock in the back is the hard-working wizard, Chi Squared, doing her very best to keep the whole party from dying horribly.'

She paused, briefly, to shimmy under an overhanging rock ledge, and because there really weren't enough rocks to represent the rest of the party.

'That small pebble by our heroic wizard is the small and adorable witch, Versailles, who was the only other competent member of our team this time around. If you look closely, you can see a tiny bump on the left side of the rock, which is her raising her staff to cast a crowd-control spell on the boss and save her useless teammate's life.'

'And the useless teammate in question is the baby stalactite in the shadow of the big rock. That's Mischief Managed, who's single-handedly responsibly for royally screwing up this run by not being able to calculate aggro. Guy gets his entertainment from griefing other people's runs, but apparently he can't be trusted to not ruin our own, either.'

Her word choice was angry, but she was smiling - it had been years, and nostalgia was a powerful mollifier. That failure had cost them first-clear credit - and as a result, first-clear loot - but they hadn't yet made a habit of going for those records then; it wasn't much of a loss.
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Adelie
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/27/2017 10:47 PM

Instead, that run had inspired them to actually recruit.

Cat Mafia had begun as a casual group of gaming buddies; when in-game clans were first introduced, Blaze had simply sent Chi an invite with the words, 'Hey, you seemed cool last time I played with you. Want to join?', and she'd simply accepted. She'd been a little surprised at the company she'd ended up in - she had not expected her erstwhile occasional dungeon buddy to also be friends with two of the most notorious PKers in the game - but they'd become a close-knit, albeit insular, little group that pulled off all sorts of crazy stunts together.

As new and increasingly complex content was released for the game, though, it became obvious they'd need more people. The Vanished Monastery of Rimeward was intended as a ten-man dungeon, and they'd tried to run it with a group that was not only suboptimal, but also several members short. Honestly, it was amazing they'd even gotten to the boss.

Blaze had been particularly neurotic about who they accepted when she opened up applications for the clan, but eventually she settled on a few people who, like Chi, 'seemed cool.' Years later, it almost seemed strange they hadn't been a part of the group to begin with.

'That rock looks like the weird unique weapon Gumiho always uses,' Chi said, naming one of those members. Her imaginary audience followed her words knowledgeably. 'I wish I remembered what it's called - it's got some long, fancy title, just like these rock formations should have.'
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Adelie
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/27/2017 11:10 PM

'Now, this rock formation is 'Experimenting with Damage Numbers,'' Chi declared, pointing at two stubs of stone jutting out from a small clearing in the rock forest. 'Once again, it features the intrepid wizard, Chi Squared, but here we see her engaged in the highest of pursuits, scientific research.'

She paused, again. Was research even scientific if it were done on magic? Whatever. She wasn't getting paid to be a rock tour guide for a bunch of air molecules; a few mistakes of wording would do no harm.

'Her hands -' she gesticulated at two small bumps in the stone that took a significant amount of imagination to visualize as anything but two small bumps '- are outstretched as she is in the middle of the 0.25s cast time for the 'Color Spray' spell.'

'On her other side stands the jack-of-all-trades magician, Nebula, who is currently assisting her in gathering information about the correlation between spell damage and skill power.' Jack-of-all-trades magician wasn't exactly the best nickname for the archetype her friend had chosen to play, but she couldn't think a better term for Nebula's fairly unique skill builds. Unlike Chi, who had distributed her points fairly standardly for the style she wanted to play, Nebula had taken advantage of the game's classless system and ease of skill redistribution to create a highly versatile and mutable playstyle that defied easy description.

'Were it not for this image being frozen in time eternally, Chi would finish casting the spell, Nebula would report the damage dealt to her, and the data would be recorded in one of Chi's many spreadsheets. Then the process would repeat, on and on, until there was enough data to create a proper model. Collecting such data is a pursuit as eternal as any stone.'
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Adelie
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/27/2017 11:40 PM

Despite the best workings of Chi's imagination and considerable inspiration from her gaming experiences, she could not ascribe a dramatic scene, complete with background and story, to every single rock she came upon. Some things just screamed 'rock' at her and nothing else.

She tried her best, though.

'This rock reminds me of the sturgeon surgeon who mans the respawn point in Atlantis,' she said, referring to a rough-hewn, vaguely fish-shaped chunk of rock she'd nearly tripped over. It lacked the smoothness many of these stones had; likely it wasn't created by water erosion, but rather dislodged from the ceiling some time ago.

Another unusually-shaped stone presented itself in front of her, wedged between two thick columns of stone. 'This looks like that consumable you can get in one of the volcano cities. Honestly, I never understood who came up with that one. Why would you have just a scoop of ice cream with no cone or bowl? Do the developers just not eat ice cream or something?'

She allowed a moment of silence for those poor, deprived folks who had not experienced the glories of ice cream in their lives. God, she was bored.

'And this one's, uh, a starfish.' The rock she pointed vaguely at was decidedly not starfish-shaped, unless starfishes happened to be mostly cylindrical.

'And this one's just a rock, goddamnit.'
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Adelie
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/27/2017 11:56 PM

Chi was well and truly out of ideas, but she had finally narrated herself through the maze of columns and spires; the area that presented itself to her now was decidedly uninteresting, but at least open. It took a little finesse with her flashlight, but looking back, she could still see the little crawlspace she'd come out of initially - it had taken her quite a few to squeeze through a relatively short distance.

She was definitely not looking forward to coming back the same way.

Mapping was mapping, though - and speaking of maps, had she even remembered to mark anything down on her map? Reaching into her bag, she found the piece of paper she'd been offered - now crumpled significantly - and gazed anxiously upon its utter blankness.

She'd been so preoccupied yesterday that she'd completely forgotten to mark down the locations she'd visited. Quickly, she pulled out the pen she'd been given too, and began to - oh. Oh god.

Now she remembered that it had been a conscious decision to not work with that map. Despite spending a whole day buried in her bag, the smell on that pen could still be described as 'not safe for life.' Gathering her courage, she put her nose in her bag and immediately determined that this pen was no longer allowed to go back in there. Map be damned. She doubted the professor would do much to verify her results - she'd just draw it from memory once she got out.

Gingerly, as if it were a weapon of mass destruction - not unlikely - she placed the pen on a rock and left it there, a beacon of stink lighting the darkness.

'If I get lost, I guess I can always follow my nose.'
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Adelie
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/28/2017 8:08 PM

She walked forward into the unknown and was greeted by a very familiar sight.

'Dull rocks! Would I were ubiquitous as thou art,' Chi lamented with a decided lack of regard for rhythm or meter. 'And - er, something something still, still to hear these godforsaken water droplet sounds, and I'm pretty sure trying to make a pun out of this poem was a mistake.'

The dull rocks she had exclaimed at paid no heed to her poetic butchering, as rocks are wont to do.

'The poetry of earth is never dead,' she tried again. 'When Chi is faint with the stinky butt-feather, and hides in a rocky grotto, nothing actually happens because I forgot the rest of the words. The poetry of Chi is ceasing never, and it gets worse and worse every time.'

Enclosed spaces and excessive exposure to rocks might be driving her a little mad. Just a little.

Honestly, though, she was frustrated - frustrated and a little amused, in a resigned fashion. As she had almost expected, the only thing waiting for her at the end of the tunnel was a dead end. Once upon a time, it might not have been a dead end: there was a cascade of jagged and broken stone on the far end that looked strangely recent. No way around it, though. The only thing she could do was turn back and return the way she came.

She was definitely not looking forward to that.

(posts for the next section: 2 + 5 + 2 = 9.)
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Adelie
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Re: Minimum Spanning Tree [Caving] [L?] [H by Z]

Postby Adelie » 08/30/2017 9:07 PM

Oh, right. The feather.

Briefly, Chi wished smells had a color. Not for any practical reason - it wasn't like she could avoid it in enclosed quarters - but just to visualize exactly to what extent she had infested the cave with this horrible odor. Maybe she could even feel proud of her accomplishment.

It was honestly a fascinating scientific question; she had half a mind to take the feather home, study it, and publish a paper on exactly how such a tiny thing could generate such impressive quantities of olfactory molecules, defying all known laws of matter in the process. The other half of her mind was screaming at her to get out of here before she went insane. In any case, disregarding the opinions of her mental halves, she was surprised that taking the feather out of her bag had had such an impressive effect on the cave ecosystem.

Well, it certainly wasn't going back in there. She would just have to hold her nose and make her way back through the forest of stone as fast as she could.

And as one might expect when she made a decision like that, she immediately tripped and landed directly on top of the feather in question.

She wasn't sure which deity she'd offended today, but she was really thinking about an apology.
and if you ask how i regret that parting:
it is like the flowers falling at spring's end
confused, whirled in a tangle.

what is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
there is no end of things in the heart.

ezra pound, exile's letter
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Adelie
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Location: a place further than the universe.

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