taxonomites | Arrival Post

Briar's wary gaze slid around the unfamiliar room, and he prepared a tiny shoot of power to untie the hemp cords that held knives in place under his shirt, an impractical sheath for anyone but a plant mage. No windows, no visible entrance or exit. Metal walls, metal device above his head, metal pedestal with a partly metal device on it. And as he focused on his knives, Briar noticed something unfamiliar on his wrist just below the hilt of the knife. He rubbed at the metal bracelet that bisected a bright blue orchid tattoo. It didn't budge.

"Great, everything's metal," Briar grumbled, magically reaching out to the shakkan, his only company in the bare and polished room. The tree's calm and patience steadied him through their connection. "Y'know," he called out to no one in particular, "I think maybe you were aiming for my sister. I can't do anything with all this metal." That's of course if they were aiming for someone to work with metal. They could just as easily have been looking for someone helpless against it. That last part was what had Briar fighting down a growing urge to panic.

Confusion only added to that urge. Briar couldn't think of anyone who'd capture a person only to give him an anchor and boost for his power. He went down the few steps, fingers running over the walls in search of a catch for a hidden door. Seams would be awfully hard to hide in a smooth metal surface, but illusions and metal mages were both things that could just maybe manage it.

Several minutes of searching later and no closer to figuring out where he was or how to escape, Briar sighed. He tapped into his bond with the shakkan again to give his power the greatest possible reach, speaking through his magic, Daj'? I don't know if you can hear me, but I could really use a hand right now. If anyone could get him out of a metal room, it'd be Daja. When no answer came, Briar strained for a sense of any of the three girls. None were there. He had to be cut off magically if he couldn't even feel them; they'd certainly been in range before, even if all four had closed doors on their minds.

"I'll just sit here then," he remarked dryly, "And wait for someone to tell me exactly what you've snatched me for." While he waited, Briar strained his magical senses for hints of plant life outside the room. He concluded that his suspicions about a magically shielded room were tentatively confirmed, as he could reach no local greenery either, not so much as a blade of grass. The mage stopped trying, saving his energy for whenever his captors did make an appearance.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Briar stopped to think about that for a minute, obviously taking the question seriously. The pause when it was spoken said that his answer meant something. "I like it in the city as long as I can have some plants around. I need a garden or trees." Briar wilted like a plant without sunlight if he didn't have at least a few green things around him. He frowned, adding, "All cities have good sides and bad sides, though. If you have to live in the bad parts, they're not nice places. You can get by in them, but you never really get enough to eat."

"I like trees," Kobra nodded. He still wasn't over that obsession. There had never been enough food in his world, nor was there now because Party and him refused to eat what the aliens provided. "You been living in the good parts then?"

Liking trees was a pretty quick way into Briar's good books, and he raised his shakkan to show Kobra, grinning as he did. "I do too." The miniature pine tree had been companion to Briar on all of his travels so far, and if he didn't have Rosethorn or Evvy or any of the girls, at least the shakkan was here.

Briar nodded an affirmative, clarifying, "Lately. Not before I went to the temple though."

Kobra's eyes widened slightly. "That's amazing," he mumbled, leaning closer to the tablet as if that'd make him able to see better. "How do you do that?" It had to be some new kind of technology.

Briar couldn't take too much credit for this particular tree. It had been 146 years old when he got it, and all he'd done was care for it since then. But it had chosen him back before he even knew what he was doing, so it was special.

"It's mostly just making sure the tree agrees to being shaped and then a lot of patience," he shrugged off the rest of the work that went into one. Those were the most important factors anyway. "You don't want to force a tree to grow a way that doesn't suit it. Then once it's shaped, you have to tend it carefully." The genuine interest and admiration of the beautiful shakkan was gratifying. He sold a lot of shakkans to people who saw them as status symbols, and it was always nice to find someone who appreciated the trees he worked with for their own sake.

Kobra nodded, trying to understand it. "but how exactly does it work? Is it a hologram or really a tree? Some new technology?" he asked, because Kobra liked to get how things worked.

"It's a real tree," Briar told him, ignoring the unfamiliar word 'hologram.' "I didn't shape this one. It's more than a century older than I am." He put the shakkan down for a moment, using his hands to demonstrate.

"When the tree is still pretty young, you can use wire to bring a sapling into a shape that suits it." Briar's hands held imaginary wire as he explained, loosely wrapping the shakkan's trunk and branches. "If you do it right, the shape will work with the tree, concentrating all its strength down into a small area rather than fighting the tree's growth." No real technology involved, just a little bit of training, some patience, and knowing trees well enough to know what shape they ought to have.

"Wow." Kobra's obviously impressed. "I'd really like to see that in real sometimes." Not just over the tablet. "Does it feel like a real tree too?"

Briar grins again. "I can meet you and show you sometime. It feels like any other tree, just smaller."

Getting him focused on green things may have been the biggest help to Briar's nerves at the current situation. Plants always been a comfort and an anchor for him, so focusing on his shakkan is a temporary respite from the sharply new and unsettling.

"That'd be milkshake," Kobra nods. Nope, definitely still not over his obsession with trees. "When you got time?"

Arrival Post

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[holo] - Kobra's totally getting one once Briar has a chance to shape it.

[holo] OMG that'll be like christmas! :D

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