Difference between revisions of "4364/Alchemical Science"

Latest revision as of 04:19, 11 August 2016

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  The sun is high over the aerial city of Skyloft, and residents are going about their business with a contentment born of a lazy summer afternoon. Although there are still a lot of people left here, there aren't nearly as many as there were, once upon a time. A lot of folk chose to go to the colonies on the surface, following in the footsteps of Link, Zelda, and others. Some chose to stay.

  Some are in-between, like the Sheikah scout and her Hylian companion -- spending time up above or down below, as orders take them. Their home is here in Skyloft, but that doesn't mean that either of them are averse to staying below for long periods... provided it's not a terrible place.

  Right now, the Sheikah in question is perched atop a precarious stack of crates (which is really not precarious at all to her). She's cross-legged, elbows on her knees, chin resting in one cupped hand as she watches Aedan on the square below testing a batch of potions.

  One might, if they're lucky, see other Sheikah passing through -- for while they go where duty calls them, they all treat Skyloft like a central hub, given its convenient location amidst all the places they might go.

  In fact, there's one Sheikah passing by, freezing in mid-stride to swivel its head around and stare, blankly, at the Hylian testing his own potions on himself. Aedan might recognise the indistinct figure as Liat, the Scourge. Her hair is a few shades more towards dusky blonde than Yalai's stark white, the red of her eyes is much darker; and, like her husband Kherem, there is a vicious scar halfway circling her throat.

  Right now she's just sort of staring blankly, because what else are you going to do? Those potions can have some pretty strange effects... he does, hopefully, have equal potions on hand to /reverse/ whatever he's testing.

  Eventually tearing her attention away, the figure of Liat looks up to Yalai, atop the crates. Yalai takes her chin out of her hand long enough to shrug. No, she has no idea, either. It's one of the strangenesses of Aedan that she's never quite figured out; presumably, a Sheikah alchemist wouldn't be above testing their creations on others. Preferably on enemies, Just In Case.

  And then, with an effortless leap and a vault near the top, Liat joins her compatriot to sit beside her. Both Sheikah women content themselves with just... staring, just a little blankly.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
The quarters of the Rescue Knights on Skyloft is a tower. At the base of the tower are shared dormitories for less seasoned knights, many of whom are merely cadets going through the academy and do not have loftwings. As you rise, the accommodations become more personal and the number of beds less. Towards the top quarter of the tower that is actually occupied by humans, the quarters are individual rather than shared. Although it would seem to be counterintuitive, among these it is actually preferred by most to be /lower/ on the Tower.

That is to say, the topmost levels are the least desired. It takes too much time to find your way out of the tower, barring leaping out a window to one's waiting loftwing, which some do. This has only been exacerbated since Aedan MacCarvill was assigned the topmost quarters and started experimenting with potions there, which he is /mostly/ not permitted to do now. Safe ingredients only, they'd told him, after one incident in which he'd blasted a hole in his own roof.

Which is why the personal laboratory of the Knight is /not/ where he is performing potions testing at the moment.

No, he's out in the square being stared at by two Sheikah. One of them was, without a doubt, to be expected. Aedan MacCarvill had asked Yalai along but it was more because he wanted to /test/ some things -with- her, not merely as a point of observation. Contrary to appearances some of his tests don't involve unstable potions, and in the case of a few of these he mostly wants to know how well they'll work on Sheikah.

The rabbitfoot potion is mostly what he's thinking about /there/.

"I can't tell," Aedan thinks aloud as he shuffles some spare crates around to set up separate spaces for his little experiments, "whether or not you're entertained by this or just curious. This is what /she/ usually does, but it's the first time I've had more of an audience that wasn't mostly children." He casts a friendly, if inquisitive look towards Liat.

"One of these is for you, by the way." He shoots a deliberate look in Yalai's direction. A very small bottle is withdrawn from his myriad pouches and pockets, and set on a crate apart from the others to indicate which one is intended for the Sheikah's consumption. But it doesn't seem to be where he's going to /start/.

Aedan moves aside to a crate on the opposite end of the row, from within which he withdraws a potted flower. Replacing the lid, he puts the flower on top of the crate and leaves it there while fishing another bottle out of his pockets. He explains, "Now, I'm about to show you that I actually /am/ responsible, and not just lethally self-testing things entirely on myself. This little transformation potion was brewed using some scales shed by-- well, we don't know. Some scouts found an enormous molt along the banks of a river and brought it back. We want to know what it was, and this is a quick way to do it."

"Unless you're particular with the ingredients," He continues, "full body transformations retain the mind of the original entity you're transforming. Hence why we're still us as foxes and dogs. For that reason, a plant is the safest thing to ingest the potion and see what we're going to get."

Aedan stops struggling with the stopper, managing to tug it out. He raises the bottle carefully over the plant, "And like so."

The liquid trickles down over the flower and into the soil it's sent in. For a few moments, nothing happens. Then, it begins to grow and change, in a manner that Yalai is already familiar with but which is much more odd since a flower is doing it instead of a person. After a moment the change rapidly accelerates, dirt flies everywhere, and the pot /explodes/ as a completely insensate river zora lays flopped out over the crate, staring into oblivion.

The knight looks at it.

"I've no idea what this is." He concludes, looking towards Liat and Yalai questioningly. They've been on the surface longer.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  Neither Sheikah seem too inclined to bother with looking very closely at the setup of the different experiments. Only Aedan really knows what he's going to be doing, here, and anyway, the Shadow Folk don't always seem to hold interest in something unless it has some kind of practical or relevant value to them -- to draw a much more simplistic parallel, predatory creatures stop noticing something once it stops moving.

  Of course, the Sheikah are much more intelligent than that, and when they stop paying attention to something it's more of a conscious decision, but on the whole that's how their agile minds tend to work. It isn't that they're stupid, or that they're unobservant. They are in fact some of the most observant people in Hyrule, because that's what they were created to be. No; it's more that if they don't /filter/ their perceptions somehow, paying attention to every intricate detail would probably, as a race, drive them mad. So they prioritise what they pay attention to.

  Occasionally they'll notice and pay attention to things that are not normal for them to pay attention to -- like Liat, stopping to watch Aedan at his potion-testing. Of course, one could argue that there is also practical application, here. She could easily take that information to her husband, Kherem; a known apprentice of healing arts. That information could very well be useful to him.

  Yalai, however, watches because she was specifically asked to. More than that, she was asked to demonstrate one of those potions, a fact that she was hoping Aedan might forget about which, she realises with a subvocal curse, he did not.

  "Yes, yes." Her acquiesce is somewhat lacklustre and resigned. "I was not forgetting that."

  As to whether or not Liat is amused or curious, the Sheikah merely turns that mask-like expression on him and shrugs. Not once does her expression change when she says, "What is the thing being, that you Hylians are saying? 'Perhaps it is being a little of the first column, and a little of the second column?'" Only then does she allow herself a swift, cat-like smile that seems more feral than amused. Her husband Kherem is a comparatively gentle man as far as most Sheikah go, but that is a trait Liat doesn't seem to share; at least not among the general public. "By every mean, Hound, be carrying on with your work. Do not be letting me be stopping you."

  Yalai scrunches down a little further on her crate, narrowing her eyes as Aedan announces that he's going to be doing science, and they're going to be learning something useful out of the bargain. Apparently 'scales from some river molt' isn't promising; Yalai and Liat share a look that isn't really encouraging. Both are somewhat apprehensive when they look back to the table, where Aedan is already starting to pour the concoction out over the potted flower.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  Poor flower. It was a nice flower, until it turned into a comatose river zora.

  When the pot explodes, both Sheikah curse in unison and nearly overturn the crate they're sitting on in their haste to backpedal away; Yalai even goes so far as to slip off the other side, though she unsurprisingly catches herself and lets herself down on the flagstones of the plaza. Liat cautiously emerges from the other side, her strong features arranged into a suspicious squint.

  Frowning, Yalai unslings her quarterstaff with a sinuous gesture, using it to prod, very lightly, at the vegetative river zora. The thing makes a somewhat disgusting sound as it's poked and prodded; Yalai wrinkles her nose in obvious disgust.

  "Well, that is not being good," she observes. She doesn't even protest as Liat snatches her staff away from her, using it to poke and prod at the creature in morbid fascination. "It is being what we are calling a 'Zora,' and we are finding them mostly in rivers," Yalai continues, without even skipping a beat. "They are breathing fire. Mindless and territorial. I have been seeing bigger, but I have been seeing smaller, too."

  She sighs, stepping away, nose still wrinkling.

  "They are also /smelling/ when they have been out of the water for some time, yes?"

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Good. It'll be /fun/, not dangerous. Promise." Aedan asides to Yalai, catching on to the dullness in her response. "Like turning into a fox. You like /that/, don't you?" But he doesn't have to put anything special into the mix to bring /that/ out of her. It's just her. Most of the time, anyway. As for Liat though, he grins over towards her plainly and replies, "A little of this and a little of that, yes. Well, you're not /stopping/ me, it's just customary to engage one's acquaintances and friends when they start milling about."

He notices that shared look between the pair of them. That's exactly why he decided to use a brainless /plant/ to do something like this. An ordinary plant, not a man-eater, or a giant flytrap. Bloody things actually will try to eat you. In this case, he rapidly decides that he'd made the right decision by using a plant.

Unlike the pair of Sheikah, he's not worried about the thing spitting fireballs at him. It can't! Doesn't have the brainpower required for it. Aedan moves around the River Zora, examining it from various angles. At one point he circles around the front of it and forcefully tugs its mouth open to get a look at its teeth, but there's no obvious /organ/ for producing fireballs that he can see.

Really, he'd think it would be uncomfortable for a water-dweller to spit fire.

"I take it," he begins as Yalai moves forward and begins prodding with her staff, "that you expected it to become hostile. Well, I've got you covered, because the last time I did this using a test subject that /could/ think for itself, it was a mouse I turned into a snake and it bit me. Stopped using intelligent creatures for transformations after that."

"How the bloody hell does it spit fire?" He asks, gesturing towards it. "And don't worry about the smell, it'll only stay in that shape for about ten minutes. Then it'll go back."

"Oh and since you're down here," He can practically hear Yalai's internal lamentation at this, "let's go ahead and get this out of the way."

He passes Yalai a small bottle of milky liquid. "Once you've downed that," he says, "just try jumping around for me. High as you can go, but avoid the edges of the island. It's /functional/, I've used it before, but I want to know what it'll do for a Sheikah because you can jump farther than we can anyway."

Aedan's gaze flits to Liat. He grins, "'less you want to try it in her place."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  It'll be fun and not at all dangerous. Uh huh. Yalai turns such a look of skepticism and outright suspicion on Aedan that she might as well be looking at one of Demise's minions. Why does that do exactly the opposite of reassure her?

  Oh, right, because this is Aedan, and doing science is what he does. Also, ingesting weird and disgusting things that even the Shadow Folk wouldn't put in their mouths. They might be willing to bend standards when they're on the surface and literally starving, but even Hylia's servants have their limits...

  "Whatever you are saying, my love." Her response is so flat it could be stepped on.

  To her credit, Liat doesn't snicker, still wearing that mask-like expression. It could be that she's busier investigating the disgusting thing flopped over the crate than listening to the back-and-forth. Every so often she prods at the thing with Yalai's quarterstaff, frowning thoughtfully.

  It does match the pestilent things they've seen in the river, and she's well familiar what one of them is. But short of a dead and decomposing specimen, or one she's been forced to grapple with to try and kill, it's the closest she's ever personally gotten to one. It's a valuable chance to study the creature and look for weak points--

  "Uh?" Liat looks up, a little startled. "No. You were telling us it was not becoming hostile. And I am understanding what you are doing with your potions. This is the closest I have ever been being to one of these," she explains, husky and rasping voice soft. It's always soft. It's doubtful either she or Kherem could ever shout again even if they needed to. "Alive. Dead ones I have been seeing, and killing them, at a distance, with my Scourge." She pats the neatly-coiled scourge at her hip; a whip laced with steel, black glass from Eldin, and all manner of unpleasant things, finished with a hooked blade. "Grappling, once, to be killing one with a knife. It is having harder scales than it is looking."

  "She is studying for weak points," Yalai clarifies, folding her arms beside the other Sheikah. She herself tilts her head, regarding the river zora dubiously through blood-red eyes. "Ugly, yes? They are being a good example of something to be avoiding on the surface. I do not think they are being one of Demise's; they are simply being... there, like animals, and they are reacting poorly to intruders. Very poorly, yes?"

  She mimics what must surely be something breathing a fireball. Baow~.

  Yalai's expression falls as Aedan remembers something she'd really rather he'd forgotten, and sighs a long, drawn-out sigh of absolute resignation.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "Fine." A tomb might have more enthusiasm than Yalai's affirmation.

  She reaches out to take the vial, holding it up and squinting at it critically. Something to leap higher with, or to leap longer? That could be useful, especially in combat applications, and as usual she foregoes asking what he's put in it. Not because she thinks he doesn't know. He made it. No, she doesn't ask, because he'll /tell/ her.

  Liat backs away and holds her hands up. The gesture is universal -- 'you're on your own.'

  "Nayru preserve me," Yalai intones morosely. Prayer done, she pulls out the cork and quaffs the vial, making a sour face as she hands the empty glass back to Aedan.

  Shrugging, she glances back to the Tower of Light, not too far from the square. "Fine. I will be seeing what this can be doing..."

  With a brief crouch, she gathers herself and springs, only to find that she's overestimated both her agility and how close to the edge she was. The brief flash of her expression that goes by as she plummets over the edge of Skyloft is both long-suffering and resigned.

  From far below comes the high, keening shrill of Yalai's whistle to her Loftwing.

  Wings thrash overhead, the shadow of a great bird streaks overhead, and the Sheikah comes plummeting down none the worse for the wear, landing neatly in a three-point crouch. "You were being right," she observes, grinning, hair ruffled from the wind. "That was fun." The grin fades. "And something like that, that could be proving very useful in combat, I think, yes...?"

  Just imagine a whole bunch of Sheikah using that in combat. Not horrifying at all!

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"I'm not going to ask you to drink anything too experimental, don't be so gloomy." Aedan complains a little bit, his expression turning amused as Yalai continues to poke at the nonresponsive Zora. With regards to the quality of its scales, he sidles back over and gives the Zora a couple of good thumps with his hand. It's a flat, forceful movement, but not really intending to cause damage. He whistles a little at the sting of it. They /are/ tougher than they look, though he knew they wouldn't be slimy as some people might imagine. More like an oversized snake, or a crocodile.

"Might as well wrestle with a crocodile," He comments, "but the crocodile won't spit fire at you. Wonder if I could get it to spit like this..." Something related to the throat? Aedan examines it for a moment more, but doesn't actually do anything. He offers a nod on the subject of avoiding the Zora on the surface, and says, "Well, they're big enough to make prey of hylians and we haven't been down there long enough for them to be afraid of us. Big as they get they'd probably still be opportunistic if one or two humans wandered along."

"Bet they cook their meat, though, if they spit fireballs." He adds, interestedly.

Aedan can't help but chuckle a little at Yalai maiming the act of spitting a fireball.

The experiment with the white potion carries on. Aedan nods vigorously and makes a vague 'move along' gesture, pocketing the empty bottle. The taste of it is actually quite pleasant, as long as you like the taste of rabbit. It's rather like drinking the broth of a rabbit-based soup stock, although it's a little thicker than a typical soup. If it was more meaty the lack of texture would be unpleasant.

It does, however, stick to the mouth and throat like a syrup.

Aedan watches as Yalai goes up... and then comes back down again off the side of the island. He sighs exasperatedly, but isn't /terribly/ surprised by it. He'd warned her to be careful of it! Fortunately, this is what Loftwings are for, and Yalai actually seems fairly pleased by it by the time she returns.

"Told you." He says to her, lightly bumping her shoulder with a fist. "Probably safer to use on the ground though, enough hylians fall off the islands without enhancing their jumps. Back away from that Zora."

Aedan does the same, pulling a small circular bottle out of his pouches. This time he doesn't get in close, instead chucking the red-and-white swirl onto the River Zora. It seems to be more of a soft, waxy sort of container than is typical, and collapses under the pressure of impact, coating the Zora in a foul-smelling liquid.

Every Cucco in town shows up and starts harassing the flower-Zora relentlessly in a flock of angry.

Aedan stares at this blankly.

He's really not sure what to make of that one.

Looking back towards Liat, he asks, "Are you /sure/ you don't want to try the jumpy one?"

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  A crocodile seems to be a better comparison. The River Zora has strong scales, but they're too strong to be mere cartilege. There must be bony plates beneath the skin, natural armour that lends them their seemingly indestructable nature. They'll go down, eventually, and it's possible to kill them, but it takes a lot of dedication and force to do it.

  Yalai watches as he tests the scales, snorting a voiceless chuckle. "Tough, yes?"

  "No," Liat immediately protests, when Aedan muses how he could get the thing to spit. In one motion she shoves Yalai's quarterstaff back to the Sheikah, who holsters it; in the same she's got one of those needle-shaped throwing knives in her hand.

  It isn't to threaten Aedan with, though, despite potential first impression. Instead, she draws up to the creature's throat, using it to pry aside a few particular scales and point at a series of grooves running down its throat, under the protective flap of armoured scales. "We are thinking it is being here, in here, somewhere." The knife is withdrawn. "I would be cutting open the loathsome thing to be finding it for you, but it will be only changing back to its true being, I think.

  "...And they are being most disgusting creatures." It'll smell bad and be awful times, in other words. Also it might scare any nearby children. A lot. Liat flips her throwing knife in her palm, reversing her grip on it and sheathing it again. "That is being some kind of... organ, we are thinking?" Liat seems uncertain in her choice of nouns; her grasp of the Hylian language is considerably poorer than Yalai's, and her accent even stronger.

  Yalai eyes the insensate creature curiously. Maybe if he can figure out some way to get at whatever organs the River Zora use to breathe fire, that might be a horrifying and effective potion to brew up. Ah, but man was never meant to breathe fire. It would probably burn out one's own throat in the most literal sense...

  She reaches up to straighten her hair now that it's been thoroughly mussed, chuckling as she's bumped on the shoulder. Neither Sheikah needs second encouragement to get away from the disgusting River Zora; because when he tells someone to do something, it's usually with good reason.

  Both Sheikah summarily vanish when a storm of angry Cuccos suddenly converges on the flower-Zora. There one moment, gone the next; they simply vanish like ice in the sun. Where the hell did they go so quickly? Did both women panic and bail into the Silent Realm? It's a place that has no real penalty for them to enter, after all; they can afford to do that if they feel genuinely threatened.

  And let's face it, Cuccos are a threat to pretty much anything when you get enough of them together and sufficiently angry.

  No; Yalai's head shows from behind the crate once the storm of angry birds dissipates, and feathers drift serenely down over the clearing. Liat's head emerges from the other side. The latter stares for a moment, before she turns her wine-coloured eyes on Aedan, somewhat blankly.

  ".../No/," Liat hisses, face drawn and bloodless.

  Yalai just grins.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"More than it /looks/. They look squishy to me." Aedan observes, plainly. He wouldn't want to fight one with hatchets, that's for sure. Bow and arrow or a spear, perhaps, if he was feeling brave. He looks towards Liat when she protests, blinking a bit as she draws a knife and moves in, prying at scales and pointing out specific anatomical features. He nods slowly and says, "Well, we'll not be doing a dissection here and now but if somebody can find me another molt I can make a bigger batch of potion and get you a body that will last a hell of a lot longer than this one."

"Not forever, mind. But it'll be /alive/, which I suspect is more than is typical when you investigate this sort of thing."

"And yes, organ is the correct word." He adds, for Liat's benefit.

The Cucco experiment proceeds, runs to a resolution, and the angry birds flutter off in different directions. Actually, come to think of it, Aedan supposes he should've done that somewhere in the wild. No doubt some people's /domestic/ cucco got caught up in the frenzy. He jerks a thumb towards the heavily pecked Zora-Flower, which is in the process of turning back into a flower just now.

It's a ragged, sad-looking thing now. Almost no petals left, and wilted to be sure.

"They give off a chemical when they frenzy like that. It's what brings a bunch of them around. I can get you some of /that/ too if you want, but it's honestly too fragile for field work I think. Squish it and you make them all angry at /yourself/." He gestures towards the crate they're hiding behind, "As you're already familiar with, I think."

"Wonder what you'd turn into with a transformation potion," He ponders aloud, squinting towards Liat curiously.

"This /last/ one is more of a delivery method than something in itself." Aedan explains as he moves around to a cleared crate, setting a large bottle down on top of it before withdrawing a second from his pouches. "You need to add an active ingredient /and/ an additional ingredient to make it smoke up. All by /itself/, all it does is..."

He upturns the bottle in his hand into the one on the crate. As soon as the two liquids make contact smoke billows up into the surroundings, obscuring the knight where he stands and creating an obnoxious cloud in the square in general. It's not very thick, and fairly easy to get on the edges of. But /annoying/, to be sure. Aedan waves a hand into the air as he emerges from it near the crates the pair were using to hide behind.

"I was thinking about combining the cucco potion with the smoke potion. Gets it everywhere, you see. What do you think?" He asks them both, genially.

This is a horrible idea.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "They are looking that way, yes? But they are being tough, like crocodiles." Yalai mimics something hard resisting a blow, long fingers tangling and untangling effortlessly. "They are best being killed from range. Arrows, but it is taking a careful shot to be finding the gaps under the scales, yes?"

  The mention of dissecting one that's alive earns an arched brow from Liat, but it's an expression of interest more than disgust. Far be it for the Shadow Folk to shy away from something disgusting if it means learning more about their enemy.

  They're pretty predictable in some ways.

  Having returned into the shape of a flower, said flower drops one of its last few ragged petals. It's a bit of a sad spectacle. Once upon a time, it was actually kind of a pretty flower.

  Aedan's lecture about the smoke catalyst earns two flat looks and a backward flinch from each Sheikah woman when he demonstrates it. Liat is glowering a little when it clears up a little, holding a arm up and keeping her mouth and nose in the crook of her elbow. Yalai is looking at Aedan somewhat evilly, coughing and waving smoke away.

  "That," she pronounces, "sounds like it is being the worst idea I am hearing from you, in all the time I have been knowing you, /yet/."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Uh... you know, I didn't mean it like that. A plant turned into one doesn't really--" Aedan folds his arms over his chest and adds, "I wouldn't seriously suggest vivisecting something that is actually capable of reacting appropriately, is what I'm trying to get at here. It's safe because it's just a body without a mind. Like a cadaver, but without the need to preserve it right away." In other words, he wasn't /trying/ to be callous as all hell.

Yalai knows he's not cut out for actual cruelty. He's not so sure of Liat.

The rescue knight steps in alongside Yalai, curling an arm around her as he does and nodding his assent, "You need to know me a little longer then, I've had much worse ideas. You could put a lot of really awful things in the smoke. Lot of really /amazing/ things in it, too. Dilutes it quite a lot, though. You sprinkle a red potion in there and you get a very mild restorative that covers a large-ish area like this square. You sprinkle some cucco potion in there and you get a wide area covered by angry birds."

"Sorry," He asides to Liat, "though I think you'd be used to /something/ like this. Maybe not."

Clearing his throat he continues, "At any rate since I'm so full of bad ideas, I'd be interested to know what kind of potions /you'd/ like to see. Not 'no potions' please, I need ideas."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  Neither of the Sheikah seem to comment on his explanation; neither of them seem to have mistaken his offer for anything but what it was -- a chance to study a comatose target that won't react appropriately to being cut open. One could probably view it as somewhat cruel, but sometimes certain cruelties are necessary. Doubtless the River Zora have eaten their fair share of unsuspecting Hylians.

  Yalai narrows her eyes, very slightly, and tilts her head as she regards the shabby potted flower. She has been known to indulge in uncharacteristically cruel acts, but almost every instance has involved Aedan being threatened. The circumstances have to be incredibly specific to goad her into that level of intentional cruelty.

  Liat, however, is hard to read. Harder, even, than Yalai; and there are times when Yalai's face is no better than a mask.

  Leaning into her companion when he curls an arm around her, Yalai looks to the wilty flower again, thoughtfully.

  Already sidling away from him a bit, Liat curls a lip, though whether it's an expression of disdain or gallows humour, it's hard to say. "We are preferring more... /direct/ means." She vaults to the top of the crates again, content to crouch up there where Yalai had been. Sheikah seem most at ease in high places, where they can look down on things below them -- they like having vantage points and escape routes, and they seem to become very agitated when they can't get at least one or the other. Even Yalai, relatively more Hylian-like than her bretheren, becomes upset when she feels penned in.

  Liat curls her hand into a fist, slightly flattened, and taps her knuckles against her chin in thought.

  "Antitoxins. Antidotes. Being dispersed over a wide area, like that you are saying. Those could be useful, I think, when we are fighting large numbers, and poison." In other words, when they're fighting on the ground, and there's a lot of sneaky, guerrilla-style combatants using poison.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"I... suppose you wouldn't care so much." Aedan decides in reaction to the non-response to his hurried explanation. He knows that the Sheikah are much more comfortable with the idea of vivisection than he is, but he hadn't meant to offer the impression he suspected he had. It was rather /ghoulish/, and it's simply not something he's all that used to compared to his slightly shady companions.

The rescue knight moves away from Yalai for a small while, to do some cleaning up. Crates are re-stacked where they once were, empty bottles picked up and returning to their spots in his pouches and pockets. A rag is produced, momentarily, to wipe down the crate the smoke had been upon, clearing moisture from it as he does. The rag looks like it has been used for this many, many times. It's quite filthy.

... But he does take a moment to collect several cucco feathers from the ground, gazing at them critically as he shuffles them into his pockets. Then, finally, he resumes his place at Yalai's side. It's hard for the knight to read the sheikah, and in Liat's case this is more true than most because her tells are much less familiar to him than Yalai's, insofar as they have any at all.

But he can tell that, if nothing else, he had been /interesting/, and probably not too off-putting.

If he hadn't, Liat wouldn't be troubled with hanging around and watching. Aedan seats himself on a crate-- not one high up, but close by-- beckoning Yalai to join him as he does. He replies to Liat, "Fair plan, I'll write up the recipe to that. Bit tricky, have to keep it separate 'til you're going to mix it, but you're right that it would be a hell of a thing for those applications. Little less /fun/ than I was going for, but I can't blame you at all for being entirely practical about it. Could probably make a container that has the materials stored in sides, so you can break it to mix them on the go."

"Take it a step before poisons, you could get a nice, thick fog composed of powdered hot peppers going. Not too bad on the tongue, but the /eyes/..." He raises a hand illustratively. "Make 'em nice and useless and softened up."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  When Aedan moves away to start cleaning up, Yalai makes no move to help him. It's all his stuff, and out of necessity he tends to keep it reasonably organised. It wouldn't do to reach for a restorative draught only to get one's hands on a corrosive poison, after all. So she settles herself comfortably atop an unused crate, one leg folded beneath her, one left to dangle over the side.

  Liat settles for leaning against the side of the crate Yalai is perched atop, folding her arms and watching the proceedings with the flat-eyed curiosity of a cat. It's interesting only as far as it's something new and different. There are Sheikah who practise alchemy, like Akht the Venomer, but their methods are very different from Aedan's.

  Neither does Yalai miss Aedan stooping to collect a few cucco feathers from the ground, and she hisses in alarm. The meaning of that feral little sound is pretty clear: No, don't do that, that's a /terrible idea/.

  She does hop down from the crate when he makes his way back to her side, though she's eyeing him a little warily, settling beside him when he picks out a spot on the jumble of crates.

  "I will be bringing the recipe to the Venomer," Liat states, looking down as she considers. "And a copy maybe to my husband the Dirge, I think, too. He will be having use of it, some."

  Kherem is also a student of Ikram, but in a different manner than Yalai is. He's learning the healing arts from the Loremaster, but he himself is not a student of lore, inasmuch as Yalai is. All Sheikah know some lore, lest the whole race be ignorant of their own roots, but only the Loremaster and their apprentices are given wholly the most secret and ancient of their lore.

  Encoded in those strange, whorling tattoos over their entire bodies, only the Loremaster can actually make sense of the graceful markings. The marks are beautiful, even separate from being some kind of actual writing system -- and Yalai wears them well, and bears the pain of having them inscribed with admirable stoicism. They are tattoos, and they are also scars, of a fashion.

  Even Yalai arches a brow at the mention of pepper powder.

  Liat looks mildly intrigued.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"What? Slow-fall potions are useful and require feathers. Can't rightly go plucking them /out/ of a cucco, but they left plenty behind and it beats taking them from loftwings." Aedan squints over towards Yalai, grinning a little. "Waste not, and all that. 'Course, I need some to make more of those scenting potions too, and /that/ probably is a bad idea." She didn't exactly make her aggravated noises that explicit, but he knows Yalai's cues welle nough to know what she's responding to and how to verbally address it.

A vague wave towards Liat, "I'll give you two, assuming you don't mind it being in hylian. I'd like to know what they think later on, though. Even if it's just that the whole concept is very, very silly." Judging by his vague disappointment at the sheer practicality of the previous suggestions, he probably /prefers/ the silly stuff a little bit. Not entirely. But certainly he prefers 'playing' with his trade as much as plying it.

Sitting there on the crate, he fumbles around on his person looking for something to write with and on. Eventually he digs out a beat-up looking pen and a roll of parchment to scribble on, using his leg as a surface. Aedan makes a point of printing, because he's not sure how legible his joined up writing is to other people (it's not), and especially not to sheikah (double not). The ingredients for producing smoke are actually fairly straightforward if easier to find on the surface world than they are in skyloft.

"You can actually," he rambles a bit while writing, "get a similar effect just by putting /soap/ in. But adults get over it fairly quick since we've all gotten soap in our eyes now and again, so it isn't very useful. Ground-up pepper in this batch saturates the smoke with the pepper oil so it gets all over everything in a thin film."

"You inhale it, it gets all over your eyes. Not fatal at all, but you'll definitely have a bad day after. Like the air in spots around that damned volcano." He tears off a strip of parchment, divides it, and passes the pair to Liat separately. The ink is still drying. "Probably get worse if you could find something spicier than our typical peppers."

"... Not sure I'd want to test that, though."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "/Loftwing/ feathers," Yalai protests, a little icily. She's still eyeing the cucco feathers like they're some kind of deadly weapon. They look so small and innocent, but somehow they're capable of being mass-murdering agents of destruction on an absurd scale. Even predatory creatures seem to know better than to hassle with them.

  The Sheikah are pretty savvy about that, too, and they know better than to go messing around with them... although that doesn't stop them from occasionally chucking a distressed cucco into enemy lines, and gleefully watching the chaos unfold.

  From a safe distance, anyway.

  As far as the Shadow Folk go, Yalai is a little more direct. It's easy to tell when she's bristling, and she's definitely bristling a little. Only an insane person seriously uses any part of cuccos as a reagent in their alchemy.

  Then again...

  "The Venomer is reading Hylian," Liat clarifies, tilting her head and eyeing Aedan as he fumbles around for something to write with. "So is also the Royal Shadow. And your Stave," she adds, flicking a hand at Yalai in careless gesture. "Better being than I."

  That is to say, Liat can't read a stitch of Hylian. She can barely speak it in a way that she can be clearly understood, and the more distraught she is, the more it devolves into some kind of weird, incomprehensible Sheikah-Hylian amalgam.

  Folding her arms, she leans against the crate, though she reaches out to take the two strips of parchment when they're offered, flicking them to and fro in an effort to dry them faster. "Yes, yes; pepper is having effects on eyes. The Venomer is using it, sometimes, I am thinking... but dissipated in smoke, that is being useful," she muses. Blanketing an enemy formation with that could be advantageous; he might be onto something. "The only problem is being controlling where it is going..."

  Yalai only shakes her head, expression sour. No, Aedan is /not/ allowed to self-test anything involving peppers. And if he does, she's not going to listen to him complain about the effects.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"/Any/ feathers. Loftwing, duck, pigeon, robin, bluebird, dodo. Yes, dodo, don't ask me how that works." Aedan can't fathom why a feather from a flightless bird would possibly give you a featherfall effect. He supposes it's probably because the associations of a feather are stronger than the associations of dumb-bird-what-can't-fly. Actually there's probably a practical difference in potion strength, he supposes, but he's never had a need to worry about it.

Almost all of his featherfall potions come from loftwing feathers.

He considers Liat's statements concerning hylian, and nods. Then he passes the pen to Yalai, "Well, she can translate if she wants. I'd offer but my shadowscript is about as useful as a hornbeast on a tricycle."

He's never really asked to learn, though occasionally he'll coax out a word he's interested in here or there. Eventually, he imagines that Yalai will /want/ him to know more, but he isn't certain of that, and it's a topic he's not inclined to push. As for Liat, he adds, "And your Hylian's perfectly fine. If you want some help learning how to read, let me know, I'll give you a hand. Though... I... suppose you'd just ask all of those other people instead of me anyway."

He considers this a moment.

"The Hylian language was known on the surface while we were gone, wasn't it? How different was it when we returned?" He wonders aloud. Even skyloft's version of hylian has evolved quite a lot over time. He can't imagine that it's a completely comprehensible barrier after total separation for... how long? Hundreds? Thousands of years?

As regards controlling it, he suggests, "Use it for traps in confined places without a lot of air flow. Between a pair of portcullis would be quite nasty. Little less useful in the field, unless you can get 'em to go someplace a little bit tight. Caves, and so forth."

Aedan observes Yalai's sour expression, and reaches up to ruffle at her hair affectionately, perhaps a little teasingly. "How /ever/ am I to make my mischevious ways up to you?" He asks.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  One does wonder why a dodo would be useful in a featherfall potion, but there's not much point in questioning rules Nayru set forth for the natural world. Their natural world, anyway. Some of those rules seem to be bizarre by the reckoning of other places. Dodos are also uncommonly thick-witted. If Yalai were an alchemist, she'd be leery about inflicting /stupidity/ on her victim.

  Without skipping a beat, Yalai reaches over to take the pen, scratching out a translation on the parchment, which she plucks from Liat. The speed with which she scratches out those weird, flowing marks is unnerving; she, for all her seeming hangups with Hylian grammar, is much more fluent than she lets on.

  Sometimes, when she's really serious, that affected accent falls away entirely, and she can speak as crisply as Aedan himself -- but those are urgent measures, and it happens only rarely. That accented, somewhat mangled speech seems to be more of a strong subconscious affectation than a conscious decision. She doesn't think about it, and that's why it seems to be so strong.

  Liat looks up with flat eyes when Aedan asks about the Hylian tongue, but rather than answer, she shrugs and looks to Yalai. Yalai's pen pauses very briefly, and she narrows her eyes, thinking.

  "It was being different," she offers, "and it was probably being unrecognisable to you. Languages change as they are being used, yes? Except ours." She flashes that swift, feral grin again. "We are being slow to change, but that is being a measure of who and what we are being, I think, more than that we are not open to change. We are open to it -- and we are changing, when we must be, and when it is being the thing we must be doing to be surviving..."

  If they know how long that was, though, they're not telling. Liat seems to tune out again, and even though she goes back to her writing, Yalai's head is tilted to show she's still listening to him.

  "Ghk--" That, when her hair is ruffled; Yalai glares, although there's no animosity in the expression. Stop that, it seems to say. "If you are testing peppers on yourself," she proclaims, icily, "then I will not be listening to you complaining about how much it is hurting." She jabs him in the shoulder with her pen, for good measure. "And you will be working at that a long time, yet, I think. You are not being half so devious as I," she teases.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
The flat look that Liat gives Aedan is one which is met with an equally /knowing/ look. He looks between the pair of them, studying the changes in their facial expressions. There's some sort of /secret/ to the information she communicates, but what might it be. He frowns a little and says, "Usually when you start internally conferring like that it's because something awful or interesting happened and you're trying to figure out exactly how much you should be bothered with telling me." In other words, he's /very/ interested in whatever was left off of what he was actually told.

With regards to the Sheikah though, the knight folds his arms over his chest and looks contemplative. He says, "I'd think the smaller population combined with a lot less typical free time would make it more difficult for language to evolve. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that with the return of contact between skyloft and the surface, you'll be having the sharpest and quickest changes in your language since... well, since the two realms were sealed off from each other to start with."

"It's probably worse for us since we have to come up with new words for more things. The surface is more versatile than the sky." He adds, turning a critical eye towards the wilted zora-turned-flower. That's certainly nothing they've ever had a cause to name before now. Actually, come to think of it...

Aedan looks at Yalai, and asks, "Is 'Zora' what you call them natively, or a hylian name you gave to them to communicate with us? That is, have you been giving us your names for things, or inventing names for them /for/ our use separate from your own words for those things?" It's an odd question, and not one which he had considered before now.

He blinks, a little. "I'll be working on making it up to you for a long time because I'm... worse... at being mischevious?" Nope, didn't follow you there at all.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "Most probably," Yalai observes, rubbing at her jaw in thoughtful gesture. "I am not thinking that it will be staying the same over the next few generations, but I will most probably not be living to be seeing the full scope of its changes, yes?"

  The full ramifications would probably come over the course of generations; generations that she will not survive to see. All Sheikah are pretty fatalistic about their own lives, but her observation is more over the long-term. No Sheikah lives that long, and indeed no Hylian even lives for that long.

  Part of her would still be keenly interested in seeing those changes, though. Maybe she can hang about as a ghost after she's gone...

  She doesn't show it very often, but Yalai is fond of learning, and she hoards knowledge like most folk hoard rupees or silver. New things to study can hold her attention for a long time. That casual, off-hand comment about the linguistic evolution of the Shadow Tongue is just a small insight into that; but he'd know better -- she really is suited to be Ikram's apprentice, and the next Loremaster. She genuinely loves knowledge.

  Both Sheikah glance to the wilted zora-flower when he looks at it; Liat is thoughtful, and Yalai looks a little dubious. That pitiable thing has had a very bad day.

  When he asks her about the name of the River Zora, Yalai shrugs. "It is being one of our names for them, the easiest we are thinking you Hylians can be pronouncing."

  "Never mind." Yalai huffs a sigh, mostly because she's not sure how to put it into words that make much sense. The gist is pretty simple, though. He's a pretty straightforward person in most regards. The Sheikah are a little more devious in their daily lives because circumstances have forced them to be. Yalai is capable of doing some pretty convoluted things, and she tends to work in very non-straightforward ways... but who knows?

  Maybe he'll surprise her. He /has/ been hanging around the Sheikah progressively more, after the cloud barrier came down.

  She finishes her writing, tossing the pen back to Aedan and handing the parchment off to Liat, who tucks it into a small pouch at her belt. Somewhere in between one breath and the next, the older Sheikah just... isn't there. Sheikah in general have a pretty unsettling habit of doing that. Yalai is downright noisy compared to most, but it's deliberate. Aedan is better at noticing them than most of Skyloft's populace, but she doesn't necessarily like to give people heart attacks.

  "So. Then. I should be introducing you to the Venomer again, some time," Yalai muses, folding her arms and resting her chin in one hand. They'd met before, but all of the Sheikah have been quite busy with matters on the surface and assisting with Hylian colonisation efforts. "I am thinking you and he would be having many interesting conversations, yes...?"

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"You'd be surprised. Language changes shift with generations, even if it's not as drastic as what we're talking about." Aedan nods out towards 'Skyloft in general' and continues, "Kids start making up different ways to use words, or make up new words entirely, and the nature of the language shifts just a little bit as they grow up. Their folks and older siblings have no idea what they're talking about, and the creep goes on from there. /I/ sure can't understand the youngest cadets a lot of the time, and I'm not that old. But I think that has a lot to do with the surface opening up, too."

"I'd bet the same is true of the youngest generation of Sheikah." He adds, though he is uncertain that's appropriate to say. Aedan knows their birth rate is relatively low, but he can't imagine they /haven't/ got a bunch of up-and-comers, even if there's not a lot of them. Though, that in itself may stunt the potential of language drift. Not enough newbies to make it stick.

"Ahh... and you never know. Old Man Sahasrahla is practically a fossil. And isn't the Venomer pretty old?" He really can't tell that well with Sheikah. They age funny.

You can practically see the questionmarks appearing over Aedan's head when she issues her 'never mind'. He waits for her to be done writing, then nudges her lightly with his elbow. "What'd I say that got you reacting like that? I'm just curious, it's not that big a deal, and I know I'm not terribly intuitive about the way the Shadow Folk tend to work, language or otherwise."

"I appreciate that you've been coming up with names and categories for Hylians though. Hmm... is that a job of the Loremaster, or the Loremaster's apprentice, since you're sworn to the hylian family? Recording information in a way comprehensible to the royal family?" It hadn't ever really occurred to him that that might be the case, 'til just now. Most of their information is... well, stored in oral tradition or bizarre ways like on a full-body tattoo that doesn't maintain a consistent shape.

Liat stops being there somewhere during the conversation. Aedan tries not to react to it, because that's how other Sheikah seem to do it, but Yalai can probably catch the brief double-take of his eyes flitting from Yalai to where Liat had been to confirm that, in fact, she's not there. He doesn't remark on it, though.

With regards to the Venomer, he shrugs. "If you think it /would/ be interesting for him, he's got fifty or more years on me. In the meantime it looks to me like it's just us."

Aedan tilts his head slightly towards the tower-apartments, "I haven't got anything else I need to do out here. Do you?"

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "I am being a student of such things, but our language is being more resistant to change than most," Yalai concedes, folding her arms. "The Shadow-Tongue is not being a good measure of these things, even at its most flexible, which is to be saying, 'not very.'"

  She glances aside, following his gesture to the rest of the city. "I suppose we are being more serious than you, and more literal, yes? Things are being what they are, and that is how things are being. But no," she adds, shaking her head at his guess of the youngest Sheikah. "It is not. As I said, we are being more literal. It is being out of necessity, yes? We are not straying far from how Nayru in Her wisdom was making us."

  One wonders what would happen if they /did/, but it probably boils down to losing efficiency, and then being dead. They're pulled in too many different directions to be able to afford to change the status quo very much. They recover their numbers much too slowly to afford mistakes.

  "Yes," she considers, but her tone is thoughtful. "The Venomer is being the oldest of us, though by how much, no one is knowing fully. I would say he is being of an age with Sahasrahla, perhaps."

  Snorting, she eyes him sidelong, one red eye sliding closed; the other squinting at him. "Only that it would be taking too long to explain, and the joke is losing its humour, now. You are being more straightforward than we of the Shadow Folk; we are being devious because we are having to be, and thinking in ways that would be matching us, or overcoming us, in terms of finding ways to be expressing your mischief would be taking longer." A half-smile curls one corner of her mouth. "Much longer, I am thinking, although I am also thinking you would be getting there in time. You are being closer to us than any other Hylians I am knowing of, save perhaps Zelda."

  Even then, though, Zelda's something of a cheat. She carries in her the reincarnation of Her Grace, the Goddess Hylia. She's not wholly herself, and Hylia knows how to interact with her shadowy protectors. They are her servants, after all.

  When she catches him looking for the departed Liat, Yalai just grins, showing her teeth. Yes, she caught that.

  Settling back on her heels for a moment and then stretching onto the balls of her feet, she favours the mostly-empty square with a last look. "Hm. I think he would be finding it interesting. You are looking at things differently than we are, yes? I am thinking you would both be having things to be teaching one another..."

  "No," she agrees, on having nothing else to do out here. Yalai does manage another one of those swift, feral-looking grins. "Nothing that I would like to be doing in public, anyway." Does she ever stop teasing him? Nope. "People might be complaining, you know. Already I hear they are thinking you are taken by some kind of dark, frightening fairy, yes?"

  Maybe the wildest theories think that he alchemised Yalai up out of the aether... well, maybe when there were fewer Sheikah in Skyloft. Now that half their race is in and out on a regular basis, that hypothesis doesn't hold water so much any more. "Ah, those people," she finally says, with a grin and some obvious relish. "So easy to be rattling their chains. So very /easy/." And she /loves/ it. Weirding Hylian people out just because she can is one of her favourite hobbies.

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"I'd say 'that's boring', but honestly it's probably for the best." Aedan concedes concerning the Hylian language and Shadow Tongue, "if your language drifted as hard as ours does, you'd have records a hundred, two hundred years ago that are hard to read and five hundred years ago it'd be impossible. I get the impression that anything you see fit to write down is something you want legible much, much longer than that."

"Anyway, we devote too much time to coming up with new filthy words."

"... As old as Sahasrahla, though? Isn't he in his hundreds?" It looks like the mystery of how old the Mysterious Old Wizards is carries over between cultures, because Aedan sure as hell doesn't know how old Sahasrahla is. He supposes the old wizard is probably kept alive more than by good health alone.

Magic. Would Sheikah extend their life with magic, he wonders?

"Ah, well... the usual stuff sure wouldn't work on you. You don't use doors. And you'll probably start checking the windows now. But I was mostly talking about making it up to you for dragging you into things like potions testing, not catching up on /pranking/ you." He scratches at his chin a little at this. "I could /combine/ those things, but you hate the potion thing enough all by itself without making it deliberately annoying."

"And no, I don't already do that."

To Yalai's little grin, he snorts and remarks, "It's subtle as I can get, for now. Not enough for you I know, but bear with it."

He extends an arm towards Yalai, encouraging her to loop hers though and walk with him. Aedan replies, "In fact, I was suggesting that we should go home. You were the one slow on the uptake this time, don't you deny it." Or she was throwing him a bone, but he doesn't mind either way, he'll take it.

"... And as for frightening fairies, well, you're too light-skinned to be a /dark/ fairy, but perhaps a /feral/ one. There's a better argument for that, you grin like a fox." He cants his head to the side. If he wasn't so /big/, he'd probably rest it against hers. "You want me to encourage them, or do you want them to get better used to you?"

"And if you /really/ want to rattle them, just put out the square lamps at night in irregular patterns." He suggests, mischeviously.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "Yes, just so. We would be unable to be reading our oldest records. So there are being reasons we cannot be letting our language be changing too drastically, yes?" Yalai muses, watching a trio of distant Skyloft Knights glide past. The more cynical part of her has to wonder how dumb some of these people have to be to fall off the island so regularly that there's a whole career sprung up around rescuing them. Honestly. Putting the matter aside, she glances back to Aedan over her shoulder, arching a white brow. "Mm?"

  Sahasrahla? "I am not knowing with certainty. I am not even knowing if Loremaster Ikram is knowing with any certainty. All I am knowing of the Venomer is that he was being an old man when my mother Yasira the Spear was being a child," she offers, a little uncertainly. Maybe it's a direct correlation with his habit of never fighting from the frontlines. Akht is a devious bastard among a race full of devious bastards, and as it turns out, that's an indirect survival skill.

  "I am not hating potions," Yalai points out, a little testily. "I am only being nervous about some of these combinations, because..." She gestures, vaguely. Because he uses disgusting and gross things most normal people wouldn't think about ingesting as spell foci and binding agents.

  She takes his arm when it's offered, and though she leans on him companionably as she walks, it's not very off-balancing. She's a fraction of his weight and bulk, and she probably couldn't tackle him off his feet even if she seriously tried. The only way she could bring him crashing to the ground is by cheating and leverage.

  "Of course I am," she responds, to grinning like a fox. There's a reason why even a neutral transformation potion tends to reconfigure her into the body of a humble little vulpine. It's most like her in personality, and that's just how the magic works. It's the same reason why Ikram turns into a harsh-voiced raven, or Hakim into a big burly wolfos, or Impa into a sinuous panther. They change into what reflects their personality and methodology the most.

  She eyes him, a slow smile twisting her mouth as he gives her some glorious ammunition. So, the little Hylians are obsessive-compulsive about their street lamps, are they? "Why, I thank you for the tip." Reaching up, she chucks him on the chin, but lightly, partly because she's being gentle and partly because she can't quite /reach/. "Sometimes, I am thinking there is being hope for you, yet..."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Well, we /can't/ read our oldest records, so there you go. Sahasrahla excepted. Who knows if he just studied or is old enough that it makes no difference to him." Aedan remarks, a little dismissively. The difference is academic. They've got a couple of books in the libraries that can only be read by specialists who know ancient hylian. One of them is probably magic, and he wouldn't wonder if /that/ thing will crop up in some hero's story down the line.

With regards to the continued meandering on Sahasrahla's age, he mutters, "Well I'm not going to go probing on /that/ subject, so your mother's age is hardly a useful metric..."

He still doesn't know whether or not it is rude to ask a Sheikah how old they are. Distantly, it occurs to him that it may in fact be rude to ask a Sheikah /anything/, but that seems a little extreme. More likely, he decides, ambiguity is simply the name of the game rather than wholesale evasion. They like to keep people guessing.

A non-answer is information in itself, but a half-answer offers a focus to run wild with.

People like to /correct/ more than they like to /answer/.

"People eat and drink weird things all the time," He points out plainly, "we drink goat's milk. And cow's milk. That's pretty strange, you have to admit, even if it is very good. Most anything you put in your mouth can be argued to be disgusting looked at from a certain angle. And roast lizard isn't half-bad."

"Although to be fair, yes, drinking something with dissolved hair is strange."

Momentarily he considers explaining the concept of bezoars to Yalai, but decides she'd just be supremely disgusted -- as even /he/ is supremely disgusted -- and decides not to.

Aedan guides their walk into the lowest floor of his building, and begins to ascend. He snorts and leans over a little so she can get at his chin a bit easier and answers, "No problem at all. I know you won't put out the lamps that are actually /dangerous/ to have out. We like our lamps, because we can't bloody see in the dark. It's like being in a thick fog, only with less color."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "I do not think it would be mattering, after a certain point," Yalai muses.

  Sahasrahla is pretty well assumed to be old as dirt by everybody. Nobody's sure if he's older than Skyloft's dirt, and it wouldn't be surprising if he were. There's a chance that Sahasrahla and Akht are peers. Akht seems to have a similar reputation among the Sheikah, and there aren't very many people who remember when he was young. Probably closer to the point, there's nobody left /alive/ who can remember when the Venomer was young.

  She lets him open the door and let them both into the apartment, although she grins when he leans over so she can reach him more easily. "Mn. No, I am knowing generally how far you and your kind can be seeing. You, though, are seeing better than most. More time than most being spent around us, hm?" She chucks him on the chin again, but more gently, and pauses long enough to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth (although she has to stand on tip-toe to reach him properly).

  ""If you are ever finding a potion that is showing you how we are seeing in the night, then you will be knowing it is not being like you. But if you are using that potion in the daytime..." She spreads her hands wide. "It is being like your people trying to be seeing at night-time. We are not seeing so keenly in daylight. And on days it is being very bright, it is being painful to our eyes, yes?" Standing as tall as she can manage, which isn't very tall, she reaches up and touches the outer corner of one of his eyes, lightly, long fingertips barely brushing his darker skin. "It is being like... hmm... like looking at the world through gauze, yes? Everything is seeming too bright, and you cannot be telling light from shadows."

  She lets him get into the building proper, though, trailing after him; then slipping ahead of him to unlock and open the door, producing a key from a ring on her belt. Once she's let them both in, she unclasps her cloak, hanging it on the wall; her various weapons are next, hung by their holsters or bandoliers on the same peg. Kicking off her boots, she settles on the corner of their bed, folding one leg beneath her and letting the other dangle as she watches him. "Hmm. I suppose the same is being true of us seeing in daylight. We are not seeing colours as well, yes? They are all..." She gestures, vaguely. "Running together. Being bleached. White."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Nothing to do with training my eyes. Just luck. Like some people don't really need to sleep that much, or they're born bigger than other people. I suppose you could say I'm twice lucky in that regard." Aedan responds, jokingly measuring their heights against one another with his hand. There's a pretty big difference, so there's really not much point in it otherwise. "Anyway if it was something to do with that I wouldn't be useless at night, and you'd be a fairer hand at seeing in the day."

"'Course, you /can/ fix that, a little, through exposure. But biology will be biology, and it's not entirely reparable. As we /both/ well know." He staggers around in the dark same as anybody, and she... well. As far as he can tell, the light treats her as unkindly as any.

Can't imagine her skin burns any less than his does.

"Hn? A potion like that is easy, I just haven't asked for the ingredients... and also, I'm not sure it would work. Either way it's kind of pointless. That is to say..." He shuts the door and locks it behind, beginning to shuck off his heavier gear in a little cubby by the door. Armor, cloak, hatchets. "Switching our visual acuities would be a weakness in itself since we'd be overspecialized. I'm also not sure how much of that is magic on your part, and how much is biology."

"Depending, I might need tissue from an eye to make it work and... well, you get the idea. I could /try/ it with hair, or a few drops of blood. But I think it's better if we're good at different things, don't you? Besides that, I don't really want people getting the idea that they can become like the Sheikah by consuming bits of them."

The Knight takes longer to get out of his gear than she does. It's heavier and has more parts, but after he does he turns back up carrying some cheese, and bread, and wine bound up in a scrap of cloth in his arms. No bothering with a tray, evidently. Aedan sets the little parcel down near the middle of the bed and eases down along the side of it, grinning broadly at Yalai.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "I suppose." Yalai seems a little dubious at that explanation, as though she were trying to decide whether she believes it or not. She arches her brows, nearly craning her neck to look up to his full height. "Yes, you are certainly being lucky in certain things. And other things, too. You are being clever and quick of mind, yes? Even if you are not being fast, or agile."

  She settles more comfortably on the corner, finally hunching the line of her back, resting an elbow on her crooked knee, and dropping her chin into her hand, watching him with the feline disinterest of a cat. "It is probably being a bit of both. We have never been finding alchemical means to be correcting our own eyes in daylight. Some of us are seeing better in sunlight, as you say, than others; just as some are seeing even better in darkness. But none of us are being very well-made for it, yes?"

  "Oh? And what is this?" Yalai can't help a grin; she likes cheese almost as much as she likes fish and particular sweet fruits. Being from such a militant culture, the Sheikah rarely keep livestock of their own, tending to trade for what they might want or need. Finished goods like cheese are a luxury for them exactly because it's something they can't make for themselves.

  The Sheikah produces a knife from... somewhere (hadn't she taken them all off?) and helps herself to a small piece, cutting off a corner and then slicing that into even smaller pieces. There is surety in how she handles the needle-like throwing knife; not so much as a red line left on her own fingers. It would be a poor Sheikah that would cut themselves on one of their own knives.

  "Wine, too? You are spoiling me, my love." She grins that fox-like grin, settling a little closer to him, the better to lean on him more comfortably. Being drastically shorter and lighter than him means that he makes a pretty comfortable perch, although the reverse is true, too; there are a few ways in which he can sprawl on her and it's not uncomfortable for her. In a few instances, they've lain on sunny sky-islands, his head resting on her stomach for a nice summer nap, although time for such pleasantries is rare these days.

  She demolishes another piece of cheese, eyeing him curiously. "No, that would probably be giving them wrong ideas, yes...? We are not being ingredients in some potion, and they are having trouble enough viewing us as... well... as /people/," she finally says, shrugging. "I am not thinking they are needing any encouragement in that..."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"I'm plenty agile for my size." Aedan retorts, half-jokingly. He has the agility of a bull, or perhaps a bit more since he's been taught by Yalai, but the idea is more or less the same. The bull might not be that /fast/, but ohhh boy if it gets going you don't want to be in front of that angry thing. That is, of course, still orders of magnitude slower than Yalai is unless something has gone very very wrong.

But you still don't tempt a charging bull.

As to alchemical means, he gestures loosely, "Mostly it's just more trouble than it's worth to get more than generalized traits out of things like that, and modifying the eyes is delicate stuff. You modify things in degrees from whatever the imbiber's baseline traits are, so a nightvision potion for me would just mean really painful eyesore for you."

"Probably make /every/thing washed out. It's also really difficult to adapt to, changes in your perception. You grow up and learn and adapt based on whatever the Goddesses gave you and then, maybe you can correct it with glasses or the like, but actually changing your eyes?" He shakes his head a little. "There's only so much you can apply to your person and still be able to function normally within the duration of the potion."

"Full transformations are actually easier," He continues, "because you have to fully adjust to the experience, and if it's something like a consistent animal form you can work at it for a while before you really deploy it in a real situation. There's also very little expectation or reflexive understanding built in."

"Supper, I s'pose. But surely you can't think that cheese, bread, and wine are spoiling you." Aedan fixes Yalai with a bit of a flat stare. "Come to think of it I don't even /know/ what Sheikah staple foods are, other than fish... and I'm not sure that isn't particular to you." He scoots in next to her, lifting their food up so it overlaps along their legs.

Carving off a piece of cheese with a dull knife he had sitting along the bedside table, he replies, "Isn't that a bit harsh? I don't think they think of you all as non-people, just... you know, frightening. Plenty of things out there to look at as non-people."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  A bull can be a shockingly agile creature in spite of his size, given proper motivation or a poke with something sharp. Charging in a straight line is mostly a misnomer; they may not be able to double back and turn on a dime like a deer, but they can certainly outmanoeuvre all but the fastest humanoids... especially when they're angry.

  "Well... fast, or agile, when held up to we of the Shadow Folk. You are actually being fast for your size, I am thinking," Yalai muses, eyeing the Hylian speculatively. Those blood-red eyes are thoughtful. "Most would not be expecting much, yes? Though you cannot be keeping up with us, you can still be surprising your enemies."

  Surprise and scare tactics are favoured strategies of the Sheikah. When you lack brute force, you learn to fight smart and use every advantage. Or, you learn to make your own advantages.

  She shrugs, mostly in agreement to the full transformation. Turning into a fox for the first time was something of a trip, but she was able to master herself physically and coordinate walking on all fours. Physiology wasn't so bad; it was the vision, and the senses of smell and hearing, that took the most adjustment. The sense of touch, too -- though keener than her humanoid standard, it was mostly that it was /different/. Every hair, every whisker, serves a purpose.

  "No. But the wine is," she adds, leaning on him. Sheikah trend towards spare, lean physiques, and those tend not to be very good at holding one's alcohol. They generally avoid it except for celebrations or special occasions. Or, in Yalai's case, to forget. To the staple foods, she rolls one shoulder, sinuously. "They are not being so different as you Hylians', yes? Barley. Wheat. Fish. Venison. We are hunting on the surface; we are not keeping livestock so much, but tending fish-ponds is not being unheard of." Fish are pretty low-maintenance as far as animal husbandry goes. Find a suitable wild pond, make sure nothing eats them. Toss bread crumbs in once in a while! Actually, it's a lot more complicated than that, but fish are still pretty easy.

  Harsh? She shrugs. "Not especially. It is being what it is being. I am certain there are being some who are not thinking of us as people as you are being, yes? We observe. That is what we are being trained to be doing." That people view the Shadow Folk in such a negative light doesn't seem to bother her too much, and she takes her needle-sharp throwing knife to cut a small piece of bread. Like the River Zora. She's pretty reasonably certain they're not people. The Sheikah have watched them for the centuries that Skyloft has floated above, and they've never been given any sign that the hideous things are more intelligent than a territorial animal.

  "I am not caring, either way. It is not changing what we are here to be doing, yes? Their approval, their disapproval. I am having /your/ approval," she adds, pointng briefly at him with that razor-sharp knife, "and that is all that is mattering to me."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Most would not be expecting much, huh?" Aedan regards Yalai with raised eyebrows, but it's purely a teasing look. What a glowing vote of confidence, his expression says, but he doesn't actually /mind/ it. He knows that he's like a great lumbering cow in a china shop by comparison.

Lifting the wine bottle in one hand, the rescue knight looks between it and Yalai skeptically. Popping the cork and passing it to her, he remarks, "That's a bit of a surprise. I'd think that you'd default to things like this, since water sources down on the surface are much easier to pollute than the ones up here. We get a lot of moisture from temporary streams dropping from higher sky islands, and you can't really..."

"Make befouling stick to that. But down below the water gets murky in places." He screws up his face a little and adds, "Goddesses only know their purpose, but I think that swamps may literally be the worst thing since war was invented. Disgusting places, and the /bugs/. We'd be better off -without- some of those, and the little rock-spitting shits don't help the places."

"Why'd anyone go build a palace in a /swamp/..." He mutters.

"Anyway point is I'd think wine is the preferred drink down below, or something like it. A lot cleaner, you see." The rest comes as little enough of a surprise, and the realization that cheese is a luxury because they usually don't keep livestock settles in, earning a vague nod.

Aedan sighs heavily at Yalai's insistence regarding how the Sheikah are viewed. He says, "Well, /I/ care. It's important for there to be reasonable understanding between people fighting together for the same things, even if some of us aren't seeing the others half the time. I'm not going to pretend the shadow-folk aren't frightening, but you /try/ to be frightening. Part of the job.

"But yes," he smiles, looking up, "you do have my approval."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "Well, to be looking at you, you are being a great big bull of a man with no finesse whatsoever." Yalai gestures vaguely with her throwing knife, as though to indicate the whole of Aedan. "You are being tall, and broad, and also a great deal heavier than most, yes?" Even his Loftwing reflects that solid build, mostly out of necessity. A smaller bird wouldn't be physically capable of bearing him through the skies... unless it were 'falling' instead of 'flying,' anyway.

  She shrugs. "We are finding the clean water," she says simply. "And we are often carrying it with us in waterskins and canteens. You are simply avoiding the murky water, and remembering where to be finding the clean water. It is being best if it is moving; it is being hard to pollute moving water."

  Eyeing the wine bottle as though to question whether he's going to drink that or whether she needs to snatch it from his hands, Yalai settles and waits.

  "Because it was not being a swamp when it was being built," Yalai points out, both literally and figuratively -- her knife inclines toward him again. "It was being a plain. Then something was causing the river to be damming itself, and then the plain was being overrun. Once the water was collecting, well, you are seeing what was happening to it." Maybe seismic activity halted the river in its track, or some other natural process caused it to stop up.

  The Sheikah mumbles something under her breath. "...I was preferring when it was being a plain."

  "Yes, it is being cleaner, but we are also being more susceptible to it. And if we are watering it down, well... we are still needing water to do it with, yes?" She spears herself another little piece of cheese, delicately plucking it off her knife and chewing on it thoughtfully. "On the other hand, it is being easier to be doing our jobs if we are not having nosy Hylians prying into our affairs, yes?" Yalai flashes her fox-like grin. "More seriously, it will be taking time. They will be getting there, I think, but this is still being new... for both our people, yes?"

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Absolutely true. I'm just teasing you, you know." Aedan relinquishes the wine bottle to Yalai. He'd mostly intended to pass it to her to begin with, before getting distracted with simply chatting. On the subject of preferred drink he meanders, "You build a resistance to it /as/ you drink, but I take your point. And you aren't like to have milk about since you don't have livestock to get it from in the first place. I s'pose juice made from berries would be the next thing you might start looking at for drinks."

"Or tea. Everybody's got tea, because you can find half-decent leaves of one stripe or another everywhere. Even up here." He jerks his head towards the ceiling to indicate skyloft in general. "Some lunatic out in the boonies started brewing drinks from some beans he found. Sounds questionable to me, but half of our food came from somebody just trying something theoretically disgusting to begin with."

He makes a face. "Cave Moss."

The knight squints over towards Yalai's mumbling on the subject of the swamp palace. He pokes her lightly and says, "Can't have been that long ago that it happened if you remember it when it wasn't a goddesses-damned bog. You don't suppose it was something that was done deliberately, do you?"

Demons being the source of more mosquitos makes a tremendous amount of sense to Aedan. Useless little hell-flies.

As regards the Sheikah being regarded as people-or-non-people, he inclines his head solemnly and says, "If you say so, Yalai, but the way you talk about it I can't tell whether you lament it or think it's useful. Or is it both?"

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  Rather than pour it into a glass, Yalai is perfectly content to take a swig of the wine straight from the bottle. She offers it back to Aedan; once he takes it, she sets to cutting the remainder of her cheese into tiny and easily-impaled cubes. Those knives are murderously sharp, and it's no small wonder that they're sharp enough to be lethal in the right hands. What's strange about them is how narrow and small they are -- in spite of their size, they must be very well weighted to make them suitable for throwing.

  "We cannot be affording to be compromising ourselves like that in the first place," she points out, flipping the knife sideways to gesture at him. "As much as I would like to be having an opportunity t be drinking more wine, I am thinking that that would be dangerous for we of the Shadow Folk, yes?"

  Shrugging at his description of different beverages, she pops another small piece of cheese into her mouth. "Yes, we are having tea. It is being preferable in the winter, especially if we are being in a position to be starting a cookfire." That's not always possible, especially if they suspect they're being followed, but the ability to have hot food and drink is a luxury whenever it's viable.

  "No, it was being a more recent temple." She swallows another piece of cheese before placing a relatively whole piece of bread down, positioning a tiny cube of cheese on it. "This is being, we will be saying, Skyloft." It's near the top left corner. She places another one down near the bottom right corner, where it would be far past Faron Woods. "This is being the temple. I will be taking you there, some time, but if you are being that averse to swamps, there are being other, more pleasant places we could be going."

  She doesn't say it in so many words, but Yalai probably doesn't want to go slogging through a swamp, either, unless she absolutely has to. "It could have been," she muses, studying her cheese-map. "Or perhaps it was only being something more easily explained, like the river shifting its track. That is being known to be happening, in some rivers. A bank is giving way, here; there is being more rain, there..." She throws her hands outward in a gesture mimicing opening floodgates. "And then you are having practically a new river. Or the opposite, perhaps, yes? A dry year, or two, or even three; and then you are having something that may as well be a new river, too."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "Must it be only one or the other?" She twists slightly to regard him, blood-red eyes serious. Tilting her head slightly, the white-gold chain in her ear slithers softly, gleaming as the light catches it. It's one of the few ornamentations she allows herself, beyond her tattoos, or whatever embroidery is on her clothing. "There is being much and more in this life that is not being so cleanly cut. We of the Shadow Folk are being many different things to your people, and there is nothing to be saying that we are not being all of these things."

  "We are being at peace with whatever it is we are being viewed as, because the Goddesses are willing it, yes? It is being a pity, to be certain, but I am thinking that gap will be bridged, as the years are moving on. And true, I will not be denying that your peoples' abhorrence of my kind is being useful to us in some ways." She gestures with her long and slender fingers, complicated. "We can be moving quickly, and doing what we are needed to be doing, without interference. If we of the Shadow Folk are in an area, I am noticing that most Hylians are being content to walk the other way, and quickly, yes?"

  "It will be correcting itself in time, so I am not being worried about it at this particular time." She gestures again, this time indicating first herself, and then Aedan. "Before now, I am thinking that even if a Sheikah were being in Skyloft, they would not be willingly coming together with you Hylians. But need and hardship are pulling us together, yes?" She flashes that fox-like grin again. "It is already correcting itself, yes? Look at you and I. Willingly have I taken a Hylian for a lover; an achievement that cannot be said so of any of my fellows, as far as I am being aware."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"You might be surprised. We've a few martial artists who specialize in getting blackout drunk and fighting that way. I s'pose that's probably too far in the strange direction for the Shadow Folk, though." Aedan meanders, concerning drinks and the like. He glances critically towards her cheese cubes, raising his eyebrows inquisitively. Sure is fancy cheese cutting there, fox-ninja.

With regards to the possible temple venture, he waves a hand dismissively. "Let's just say that I'll give it a shot on the condition that you help me test out a bug repellant potion." Aedan says in turn, smiling wickedly. It'll probably actually work if it's something he would want to use for that at all. He adds, "But there's a reason I don't like those places. They're just /filthy/. I think you know that well enough yourself, though."

"What do the Sheikah do to keep bugs at bay?"

As regards the shifting of the rivers, Aedan nods along a little uncomprehendingly. The movement of water on the surface is /actually/ a relatively new science to the Hylians. They've only seen micro-scale examples of what's seen on the surface, and Skyloft doesn't erode like the surface does either. It has a very... static quality to it.

No doubt this is so they didn't lose landmass that they really didn't have enough of to begin with.

Idly, Aedan reaches up and lightly pushes the chain dangling from Yalai's ear.

"Ah well," he rumbles, so completely seriously as to be absurdly comical, "you never know, you might just be stringing me along so you can suck the life out of me and make devil children that strangle men to death in their sleep."

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  "Mayhap you are having them, but we of the Shadow Folk are not having any. We are avoiding such drink most times, as I have been telling you," Yalai insists, reaching over and prodding Aedan on the nose with a forefinger. "It is being too dangerous for us to be risking loss of control and precision in the midst of our battles. We are not fighting in friendly sparring matches; we are fighting in skirmishes where our opponents /will/ be killing us if they are being given half a chance."

  Settling more comfortably over her folded leg, she pops another piece of cheese into her mouth, considering as she chews on it. "Well, yes," she offers, simply. "Swamps are being full of uncleanliness. They are also being places where wounds will be festering and putrefying if being given half a chance." She shakes her head. "I am preferring drier places. It is being hard to keep clean in places like swamps, yes? It is being even harder to be keeping /wounds/ clean in such environs."

  "Bugs?" She arches a white brow, at the same time trying to tilt her head sideways to see what he's poking at; but she can feel the movement of the chain against her ear and that answers her question. What's he doing? "We are burning herbs, mostly, that they are finding repugnant and we are not. And we are keeping strong herbs on our person, like cinnamon, or other things, like shavings from the wood and bark of a particular tree."

  In other words, natural remedies that don't require much fiddling with to work as they are. It's a lot easier when there isn't much in the way of preparation needed. They can make themselves comfortable on the march. Yalai shrugs. "Some are preferring to be stoic, but I am preferring not to be suffering." Mosquitos are terrible things.

  She stares at him somewhat blankly with those blood-red eyes; it's hard to tell whether she didn't understand him, or whether she's just formulating a reply with a straight face. It goes on long enough that he might well seriously doubt that she actually understood. And then...

  "But I am," she says, so flatly that it's obviously not meant seriously. "However were you finding out my plan so easily?" It's so absurd even she can't help that swift fox-grin. "That is being one of the stupidest things I have been hearing yet. Was someone actually /saying/ that...?"

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"Martial arts like that may sound like silly, dangerous nonsense but they're not just made for fun. Not least of all because getting drunk for a fight is pretty rough on the recovery." Aedan taps at his own head illustratively. "The overall idea is to be confusing and seem off-balance without actually being as much. Most people don't rightly take a drunk for anything worth worrying about."

"It also helps relax the body," He explains, making a loose gesture with both of his arms, "most of the time a hylian walks out one of these upper floor windows they're in a great deal of trouble, because you tense up something fierce when you're falling normally. If you're a bit tipsy--" Aedan reaches over and flicks the wine bottle lightly, just enough to produce noise.

"You relax normally, so you don't suffer the impact as badly. 'Course, it won't help as much if you fall from absurd distances."

Looks like the answer is 'he was just playing with the earring', much like he was just playing with the wine bottle.

"I'll be needing a list of those herbs and barks." Aedan remarks, off-handedly. He knows a few already, cinnamon is familiar enough even up on skyloft, but he's sure there's a few things he ought to know about that the shadow-folk are more familiar with.

During the lull in their conversation spawned by Yalai's lack of comprehension -- or incredulity, more like -- he takes a few opportunities to rip off some cheese of his own, and scarf it down. Just when he's about to break from eating to re-explain matters for the Sheikah's benefit, she cracks and joke and... well, she /is/ incredulous, just for completely different reasons than might be initially expected.

Chuckling faintly, the knight shakes his head and answers, "No, or at least not that I know of. It's just the sort of common folk lore that springs up about a variety of supernatural entities and phenomenon that are easier explained by people getting up to no good all by themselves. Mysterious pregnancies and vivid nightmares, and the like."

"It's the sort of thing a Faerie or demon would do." He adds, plainly.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  The Sheikah more or less glosses over the talk of drunken martial arts. It doesn't really apply to her,nor does it really interest her, so she just lets Aedan talk and get it out of his system. Sometimes he likes to logic his way through things out loud, and she suspects that sometimes he doesn't realise he's even doing it out loud. Especially when he's walking himself through the possible components of an alchemical concoction.

  On the other hand, she supposes she must be the same way when she's muttering to herself about how to overcome seemingly impassable defenses, or the fine art and exacting science of stalking and killing demon armies much larger than the Sheikah detachments doing the stalking. There's an art to it, to move and strike without being caught.

  Her hand reaches up to still the swinging of the chain, red eyes flicking sidelong when he comments on wanting a list of those herbs. "I will be writing them down for you. Better yet," she corrects herself, wrinkling her nose, "I will be finding you samples; it will be easier for you than reading my Hylian."

  Of the spoken language, her command is far better than she lets on. When it comes to writing, though, her hand just wants to keep mimicing the river-smooth shapes of the Shadow-Tongue, on parchment.

  Yalai snorts, then, at his explanation. "Yes, yes. I have been observing the Hylians living here in Skyloft, and those being on the surface. Those being on the surface are being less prone to this nonsense, I am finding. They are being entirely too busy fighting demons, I am thinking." Shrugging, she cuts herself a piece of bread. "No idle time, not like those of Skyloft are having."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
Aedan knows when he's being quietly indulged, and decides to just roll right along to another topic when he's finished rambling about drunken martial arts. Grinning faintly, he shifts the remaining food over to the other side of Yalai. She still seems to be picking at it, but he's pretty much done for the moment. As to the herbs though, he answers quickly, "Nope, write it down."

The tone in his voice is a little bit teasing, and the knight scoots over so he can curl his arms around Yalai and lean over in her direction, shutting his eyes. "If you think your hylian's not up to snuff, you should do it just to get some practice in. I can correct you and we can go from there. Bonus if you write it in shadow writ beneath so that I can study that myself."

He's mostly joking. Aedan is fairly certain that anything with Hylian and Shadow Writ on it side by side is something that any Sheikah will rapidly be burning to prevent anybody from decoding their language that ought not be doing so already.

The knight inclines his head further so his chin rests against the top of Yalai's head. Squeezing a little, he answers, "The surface hylians don't need to make stories up because they're already making stories with what they're doing. Why dream up false demons to explain away infidelities and quirks of their bodies when the demons are real and tormenting them in truth? I wouldn't wonder if some of those stories weren't really from the last days before Skyloft was raised, when demons were everywhere to start with."

"I assume you've just killed all the suspiciously hylian-looking sex demons in the interim." Aedan concludes, matter-of-factly.

Yalai the Stave (879) has posed:
  The Sheikah sighs, both resigned and exasperated. Most of the time she favours whatever method gets things done faster and more efficiently, and in this case, it is both faster and more efficient to just foist samples of plants off on the alchemist. Ten times out of ten, the Shadow Folk will choose the more efficient and fast solution to a given problem.

  Yalai leans back when she feels arms curl around her, head cocked slightly to regard the tray he'd shuffled over. Not really because she wants anything off it, but it's something to look at, since she can't look directly behind herself toward him.

  "Maybe," she offers, to his request to write things down in both languages. The reason why she's not is more or less the reasons he's thinking. It's likely to be chucked in the nearest open hearth. It'd be a security risk if anybody who weren't Aedan got ahold of it, and it might well be a security risk even if some other Hylian scholars got hold of it. The Sheikah are not inclined to trust even their own allies... if only as a bizarre, inside-out way of protecting them.

  He might feel her relax against him at the familiar pressure of his head resting over hers. Such happens when one person is short and the other is freakishly tall, but she's never minded that too much. "Maybe," she adds, to the matter of killing off suspiciously Hylian-looking demons. "Or I can say nothing, and keep you and everyone else guessing, yes?"

  "Maybe so." The Sheikah laughs. "We will let them be living with thier stories and superstitions. It is being more fun that way, yes? Some of the things they are doing are most amusing." Twisting to press a kiss to his throat, she sighs, settling more comfortably against him. "Stay with me a while. I would like to be lseeping, I think, while I can. I am tired."

Aedan MacCarvill (891) has posed:
"You have free time too, little fox, or at least more than you had before. There's no harm in practicing your hylian, especially in practical circumstances like these. It's good to be sure of what a thing is in either language." Aedan answers her exasperated sigh. He inclines his head a little further and murmurs, "And you don't /really/ have to write it down in both languages. I know how the Shadow Folk feel about that."

"Some stranger," He jokes in a whisper, "might go and try to read you, if you're not careful about those things."

It's a joke, but the knight has a feeling that it isn't actually impossible for that to be the case. It wouldn't surprise him if a few past Loremasters had in fact been murdered specifically for the secrets etched into their body. For that matter, he ponders, if the tattooing itself means that one day Yalai is intended not to be the Staff, but to be the Loremaster herself.

How does that work with the understudies? Certainly, he has never seen another with the tattoos. But it isn't as if the Sheikah show that much skin...

"You wouldn't," He bites back quickly, "because if there were hylian-looking demons still around you would most definitely tell us to avoid having to deal with infiltrations. You're secretive, but you're not impractical. I therefore conclude that no such thing exists."

Aedan has not met a Gerudo yet. At least they are distinct enough, though, that they could no more be mistaken for hylian than for a sheikah. In answer to her kiss, he re-adjusts himself to be lower -- and also so they can lie down, since she seems of a mind to get some rest -- and presses a light kiss to her lips before settling into the pillows.

"Okay, silly fox. Sweet dreams." He breathes.