Desert is commonly thought lifeless.
It is not. Scorpions prowl the sands; rare birds of prey circle overhead; snakes and small rodents dig their burrows, concealing themselves from the heat of the day and the cold of the night, coming out at the time that suits them best, hunting and scavenging, looking for what small drips of vegetation manage to survive in the harsh climate - and each other.
Their burrows aren't normally that easy to step in, though.
Nor do they commonly enlarge under one's feet, dropping you down through a suddenly gigantic tunnel of an entirely preposterous depth.
If Eirene were to hear this story from someone else, she would have assumed they were the one who shrank. But her control over and understanding of her own qi was superb, and her body was entirely hers to control - and so she knew for a fact that she stayed the same size. It was everything else that did... that.
Now she was falling with what
should have been terminal velocity by now but was instead slow enough for her to see random furniture embedded in the walls of the tunnel - no, it was more like the tunnel was formed by furniture. She was inside of some carpenter's Dao, except also with random knickknacks in cupboards and on shelves that she could just - reach out and take? Experimentally she did just that, noting that it slowed down her fall and... warped? some of the furniture out of the way so she wouldn't hurt her hand. Convenient. So she was meant to do this?
Still, she snatched her arm away quickly with the loot - she wasn't sure she was meant to linger, and she was most definitely not meant to start examining, experimenting and scientifically documenting the phenomenon. Her every sense was telling her that she was inside a story, a dreamscape, working by its own rules, and those rules did not appear to be particularly friendly to reason, from the looks of it.
That was fine. Reason was, on occasion, quite boring; she did not entirely mind a vacation from it.
She had... a parasol? A parasol made of sturdy fabric that looked like it was meant to withstand liquids rather than sun's rays. A rain parasol? She was vaguely aware of the concept, little relevance though it had for desert dwellers.
She had a statuette of a cat with an unsettlingly monstrous, yet somehow friendly looking, smile full of sharp teeth. She spent several seconds attempting to estimate its size before realizing that it resized based on how she was looking at it. The biggest she managed to get it was... uh, bigger than herself, bigger than a house, for a moment, when she looked at the cat like it was a local benevolent deity looking down on her. That was nice, and especially nice how the tunnel resized even further, accomodating the space to this encounter - but she was more interested in making it... ah, pinkie finger sized. Eirene would have tried to make it smaller but after how the last one had gone - she didn't think she even hit the limit, she just urgently pulled the reins on trying - she wasn't sure she could
find it if she did that.
She had a very nice looking silver spoon. This one wasn't resizing, but the more Eirene looked at it, the more she liked it - in fact, she didn't want anyone else to have her, she definitely wanted it for herself. It was just
such a nice spoon.
Yeah, and Blood Path was a convenient way to quickly and reliably become stronger. She hooked the parasol over her elbow - it had a crook at the end that looked like it was meant specifically for that, and proved remarkably amenable to staying there, heedless of laws of inertia; hid the cat statuette in an inner pocket of her tunic; the spoon, though, she held out at a distance from herself, resisting the urge to
claim it at all.
She fell some more, but as soon as she thought that the fall was starting to become a bit samey, and perhaps somewhat worn out and cliche - she was dropped into a pile of... dried out leaves? Was this an alchemist's stash? It certainly looked like an inside of a basement, or perhaps a burrow - walls of dark, dry soil with some bits of roots and stones sticking out of them... wait, where was the furniture? Eirene craned her head up, and there the tunnel she'd dropped through was - an... unpleasantly undefined height up, looking more like a warp in space than an actual tunnel, but it looked more like the tunnel she'd been in the more she looked at it, seeming to enlarge and come closer...
She looked away.
In front of her the burrow gave way to what looked like an ordinary corridor of an ordinary house. Actually when she considered the details she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye she was pretty sure she'd never seen a corridor or a house remotely like this, but what she was looking at with her eyes, her brain stubbornly insisted on evaluating as
utterly regular, usual and not surprising whatsoever. At least this distracted her from the spoon. Ah, shit, now she remembered the spoon.
Ugh.
There was little to do in the nook she was in, the leaves did not look like anything she knew to be useful, little to do but venture into this corridor; then proceed... right, why not? The corridor stretched into the distance, with some pleasingly round doors on it - Eirene wasn't sure why doors being round was supposed to be pleasing, but the place seemed really insistent on that, and sure, she was willing to go along with it. The doors were covered in variously colored paint, slightly darkened and peeling from age, with round handles in the exact middle of each; the corridor itself - Eirene was better able to discern it when she mentally conceded that yes, this was the very epitome of a very usual corridor, she was just establishing for herself what the most regular corridor in the world looked like - was covered in - some sort of texture? It didn't look like paint and it wasn't anything she was familiar with, and trying to figure out more didn't seem like a productive activity in this odd space. Either way, it was dark red and faded yellow and beige, and it looked rather pleasing to the eye, if a bit dull, and the doors would have been welcome splashes of color if they weren't quite so old. The floor was made of wood and also had a long rug, also dark red with faded yellow, rolled on it - Eirene was
not considering the sheer wealth of this apparently extremely unconspicuous and utterly common corridor, no. She was just walking forward, like a very regular girl in a very regular corridor was wont to do.
She didn't mind playing by this space's rules, but she was keen on introducing her own, too, by this point. So she took out her flute - it seemed to shine brighter in this undefined, liminal space, as though its nature as an utterly ordinary yet personally dear object somehow made it an item of power in here - and started to play.
The walls listened. The doors, too, and the rug, and she was suddenly aware of the existence of the ceiling - which looked like a burrow wall trying to convince her that this was what a regular ceiling to a regular corridor looked like - and the space suddenly seemed to contain plenty of independent, odd entities each with their own interest in her song.
Some doorknobs were apparently sentient independent from their doors. Others weren't; she wasn't sure if there was a pattern to which was which.
The spoon in her hand, held between her fingers in a complicated way so it would not interfere with her playing, had its own interests too. Music allowed Eirene to impose some of her own rules on this space, just as she'd expected, and her rules were figuring things out; her business was knowing stories, so what was this spoon's?
Images flickered around her and in front of her mind's eye, the spoon's history unspooling obediently into both the past and the future. Apparently the thing really wanted her to want it for herself, steal it, fight for it; about what she'd guessed, really. She had no interest in that though, and insisted on flipping the old book's pages towards where other people interested in the spoon were. There were some odd animals, human sized yet not monstrous in the way the desert's inhabitants touched with qi tended to become, wearing some bits of clothing and accessories of a fashion she didn't know but that
felt like it was quite usual and regular, same as the interior decor. Some of them appeared to be plants; she didn't look too closely. What was interesting to her was which door this was through -
that one.
She suspected which door it was was determined by which one was
just the right distance from her when she reached this point in her investigation; it was just too dramatically conveniently placed some paces ahead of her, giving some room for buildup while she approached. Well, and she could appreciate some dramatic convenience! She felt properly trepidated as she approached, focusing on how there were certainly incredible adventures waiting for her on the other side.
The door did seem to like that; it opened for her without her even needing to touch the handle.
(Which was very convenient, between the flute and the spoon, and Eirene's readiness to resume playing as soon as she felt in need of requesting some more concessions from the local anomalies.)
On the other side there was a garden; there were roses, growing in the great amounts Eirene had seen in the gardens of wealthy cultivators and mortals out to brag that they could grow whatever they wanted in the desert, even if there was no practical use at all; they somehow looked more like they belonged here, though. The environment seemed rather not-desert-like, more like what the inside of the Golden Devils' cities was like, but
outside.
(Well, it was rather a burrow making a great decoration of being this place, but this place it was trying to be was definitely outside, and definitely not a desert.)
Some of the roses were red, some were white, and some seemed dripping with paint. Some paint was white, some was red; all roses looked like they were just that color naturally, including the dripping ones. It looked like some gardeners had a strong disagreement about which color they should be and decided to give each other silent treatment over it while all insisting on their own vision - Eirene could feel the story of it from looking over it. There were also fallen ladders and some paint buckets and brushes that seemed to fade into existence as she considered that they would, perhaps, be here; quite neat exposition, she decided.
She was alone, at first; not for long.
"That's a really nice scarf!" someone squeaked behind her. Someone whose approach she had not sensed through qi; she could not sense qi outside herself at all, in this place, it just didn't like her looking at things that way. Eirene turned around and was utterly unsurprised to not discover a door; there was more garden behind her, and she was looking at a... mouse? A white mouse standing on its back paws, about half her height, dressed in... some manner of... jacket? It looked feminine, and quite admiring of her scarf.
Eirene took a step back, reflexively clutching her scarf protectively; quite a feat, with the flute and the spoon already in her hands, but she was great at not dropping things, yes, she really was, she convinced this space even as it tried to insist she drop something.
No, her story was that she didn't drop things, thankyouverymuch.
"Ah, I'm sorry, I startled you!" the mouse continued in what was at the same time entirely authentic mouse squeaks and a the voice of a young woman. Eirene took note of the effect; perhaps she could figure out how to replicate it with qi later.
"It's just such a nice scarf, such a nice scarf; ah, but I must be going! The Black Rabbit is looking for his spoon - wait, is that the spoon you're holding? Oh, I would hide if I were you, I would hide!"
Upon finishing her monologue, the mouse dove into the nearest rosebush - didn't those have thorns?! - and disappeared from sight.
It was Eirene's move, she guessed. Her move was to stay right where she was and wait for whatever happened next. She'd come here to return the spoon in the first place! Thank you very much!
The next was a wave of small animals - well not all small, ranging from the actual size of non-magical mice to the actual size of giant desert scorpions, although none of them were scorpions that she could see, which was quite heartening - rushing towards and past her. The story tried to make her drop something again; instead, she allowed herself to be spun around and thrown into a bush, in a manner she would normally be rather too well-trained and coordinated for.
(Yes, she confirmed, rose bushes had thorns. Ouch, ouch, ouch.)
That left her slightly trampled, but with all the treasures - the scarf, the flute and the spoon - still securely in her hands.
The rain parasol was also still hooked around her elbow, improbably. It didn't seem to mind that gravity was supposed to be pulling it in a different direction; it was being pulled in whatever direction would be down if she was upright with her elbow pressed to her side. She assumed just that position; the parasol seemed to like it.
"Oh, my spoon, my spoon, my wonderful silver spoon!" a male voice that was unmistakably also a rabbit's came from the same direction the mob was from. "Whoever took it, I will wreak eternal vengeance upon them! I will rend their flesh from their bones and feast on the marrow! Oh, my favorite spoon!" The voice was high, somewhat whiny and definitely ridiculous, but the fleeing mob gave some... credence to the threats.
Eirene knew she was meant to panic, try to flee or hide the spoon at this point; but she also knew a better story when she saw one.
She stepped forward, hiding her flute back where she kept it, and thrust her open palm forward with the spoon on it just as the black rabbit - slightly smaller than her, it looked like she could take it in a fight, but she wasn't going to try it - came from behind the bend some meters away.
"I found this lying on the ground, is it yours?" she asked, just as the rabbit ran up to her, jealously grabbed it from her hand - she had to forcibly suppress her fingers from closing and yanking the spoon away - and muttered something indecipherably threatening while he... polished it?
Eirene considered him for a couple of seconds, then decided where she was going with this.
"Rude," she stated, then flounced away, right into a rosebush hedge, which conveniently opened before her, allowing her a rather dramatic exit off the stage.
Excellent.
Now she was in a forest; she knew it was a forest, she wasn't
ignorant, but she'd never actually
been in a forest before. This one submitted itself to examination with quite a bit more readiness than the corridor before; it had gone through quite some effort to be a forest, it seemed, and was rather proud of it. Eirene made sure to pay it some complimets out loud - "how exquisite!" "fascinating!" "oh, I am learning so much, this is quite authentic" - as she stared at everything, touched everything and listened to sounds of birds and wind and small animals around her. It was wet and airy and so full of everything, it was like she was in the middle of a city, except the city was of wild things instead of people. Mostly small wild things, ones that preferred to not be seen by her; those and plants, utterly indifferent to her presence, looking like they were there hundreds of years before and were still going to be there when even a cultivator's lifespan ran out.
She liked forests, Eirene decided.
"Mm, it does so like praise," a purr that was also a voice came from... above her? Eirene looked up, and among the moss-coverred branches of a large old tree there was a... well, a cat, looking quite like the one the statuette was of. Actually it didn't look much like a cat, per se, considering it was purple and grinning, but it
evoked a cat rather undeniably.
"Hello, Mr Cat," Eirene said, because manners cost nothing and were worth quite a bit.
"Ooh, you're a polite one," the monster cat purred as it... wound around the tree in a manner that Eirene was pretty sure cats generally didn't, but that was yet again somehow undeniably catlike. "Say, what's that you've got?"
Eirene hesitated for a moment between the options, then went with the most visible one.
"This?" she took the parasol off her elbow and held it up. It sat in her hand, no longer showing any particular special opinions about which way was down.
"Ah yes!" the cat seemed to open its eyes wider in delight. They were green and yellow and rather monstrous, yet somehow undeniably aesthetically pleasing. Eirene took mental notes.
"My umbrella, you've found it! May I?"
Eirene handed the cat the rain parasol - the umbrella, out of courtesy refusing to question what exactly it would do with one. The courtesy was appreciated, as the cat held it up above itself in one... paw? The umbrella yet again seemed to have its own opinion about how it should move, using the paw more as a beacon for where it was supposed to be held than an actual support. It was also smaller than the cat's head - no, it wasn't that small, the head was just that big, appearing over half again the size of the body - but the picture did fit well, somehow.
Eirene stepped back and bowed, then took out the statuette.
"Ah well, my token," the cat purred as it wound back up around the tree, this time with the umbrella, which made the whole process even more ridiculous, yet rather perfectly aesthetic. Eirene continued taking mental notes.
The tree branches rustled, leaves swaying, as the oddly not-dry wind sighed between them. Birds were chirping only at a distance now, appreciating the presence of a predator, which looked quite self-satisfied as it settled on a branch definitely too small to hold its weight.
"You have quite nice taste for what you grab, yes you do, yes you do... Hmm, keep it, and I'll come to your rescue once; perhaps do me another favor sometime, and it'll be more than once, who knows?"
Eyes and teeth glistened, Eirene's entire perception suddenly narrowed to them.
"Now that's quite enough of you; this dream is about due to be dreamt somewhere else, back to your ridiculous desert you go..."
- the cat waved the umbrella parasol, and Eirene felt the forest shrink around her, somehow, as she moved... back and up, through the earth, between roots and stones and worms, up towards the sky and -
- - -
up was down and down was up and which way was what, and what even were directions?
- - -
- ah, there the sand was. She fell on it on her hands and knees, rather disoriented, hair in disarray and the scarf threatening to wound somewhere it wasn't supposed to go at all; took a few moments to recuperate, as her mind reaquainted itself with such fascinating concepts as staying in place and being the same shape several consecutive seconds in a row.
She could swear she'd lived like that for her entire life until now, yet the experience seemed entirely new. And fascinating!
There was no burrow, of course, as she checked around; that felt quite natural. She did seem to be in around the same place she'd been walking, which felt decidedly less so - but she did, she reminded herself, hope so. Getting lost in the desert was not one of her favorite pastimes.
She sat back, fixed her hair and scarf; took out the statuette. It was right where she put it, and the exact size she'd made it be; but now there was also a slip of paper attached to it, of the sort she'd seen some store owners put on displayed items. She checked it. It said:
"Mesmerizing Cat Summoning Token: £15.75
Let the cat bite your finger for a one-time miraculous survival!"
What the fuck even was that symbol?
At least it was clear how this was supposed to be used: the statuette's teeth looked wicked sharp, and quite ready for a finger to be stuck into them. She hid the statuette quickly, not wanting to examine that more closely.
"...Thanks, Mesmerizing Cat," she said out loud after some consideration.
Well, that... happened.
end omake
Well, that... happened. Credit to Falconis#9484 on discord for the prompt, bless you and thanks. This was great ;u;
