Vykeli was alive with adventure recently. Jorri didn't know how, but lately nouls had been discovering all sorts of things. Talking dire rats, plenty of new species of familiars, strange gifts...
Brightheart had put out a call, recently, for nouls willing to attend a resurrection ceremony. It wasn't as though Jorri had never attended one before, but a creature had never found its way to his side anyway. That was fine, he thought. There had to be destiny between them, for one to choose him. And it was exciting coming anyway, even if just to see what everyone else had been up to lately.
People liked to attend resurrection ceremonies. Everyone else was there, after all, so they all made sure to groom themselves well and display any new trinkets they'd foraged or created.
And Jorri...well, Jorri didn't have any new trinkets, but he was an apprentice now, and it was important that he show up looking the part. He wasn't some hoity-toity member of the upper class or anything, but he knew how to look his best for the occasion. Only he wasn't sure what exactly would match. He had been told that his gift was called Spectrum, but most nouls didn't know much about it right now (Jorri didn't even know how to use it - he'd heard something about changing the colors of things, but had never remotely succeeded in his own attempts), and it wasn't as though light was something he could just pick up and braid into his hair like vines or fungi.
He was dishing on his troubles to his closest of yearmates just now. She was a clever sort of noul with a sharp gaze, though she had yet to be chosen yet. It didn't stop her from combing through her mane and coat, and tucking a little sprig of pine behind her ears. She liked to look her best for resurrection ceremonies too.
"You could pick a whole rainbow of flowers," she suggested, having been subjected already to his verbose descriptions of the prismatic light that had awaited him after his vision.
"That's work," Jorri whined, and she laughed, though she didn't disagree.
"Perhaps glass?" she asked. "It refracts light, doesn't it? And the colored kind - it wouldn't need to be a whole rainbow. Maybe...three colors."
"That's a thought, isn't it?" Jorri asked. "I could - oh!"
Their little cluster of friends had chanced upon a whole host of glass things once. They'd been small and delicate, and had glittered in blue and green. They weren't exactly rainbow in color, but they were close enough on short notice. Only he couldn't quite recall where he'd placed any of them, in the shelter they all shared.
"Do you remember those little trinkets hanging from hooks - the ones shaped like flora?"
"That's an idea," she said approvingly. "Ah...where did I put them?"
Jorri could not remember. They'd taken them because they were pretty, and transportable, and they must've intended to use them to decorate their shelter somehow. But they had never gotten around to it, and he had to admit that there was a whole pile of junk just hanging around these days. Their friend group had diverse interests, to say the least.
He tried to recall those trinkets' shape and color, the way they glinted in the light, and the color of the cloth bag they'd been carried in, since every noul knew glass could be prone to shattering. What had they done with them? It hadn't quite been Jorri carrying them back; they took turns with that sort of task. It must have been...
He opened his eyes, turning to face the bedding of - what?
"Do you see that?" Jorri asked, gawking in disbelief. A halo of silver light outlined something very familiar, but it couldn't be...
"Sorry?" his friend asked, but Jorri was already stepping toward it, picking through the things around it carefully.
The little pair of trinkets were indeed there, wreathed in light, and they waited for Jorri to take them gingerly into his mouth before the light faded.
"I think," Jorri said, taking a breath. "I think I just did it. I think...I think I managed to use my gift!"
She turned to look at Jorri, and where he'd laid out the pair of trinkets, hoping to catch sight of that brilliant light again.
"...I didn't see anything," she said uncertainly, but she picked them up just the same to affix into his hair. "But. But we must try again later. After the ceremony."
They were going to be late, weren't they? Jorri could hardly wait, though, and the fact that he'd managed, at last, to see some hint toward his gift's use...
He had a lot of hope riding on this particular ceremony; that was for sure.
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