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The first, most obvious thing about Pendour was probably that it was in a glass bubble under the ocean. The lighting was diffused, and rippled, and tinted just a hint blue.

There were plenty of other things to notice, too. In front of them, just at the edge of visual range, there was a cove within the bubble. To the left was a curved, grand staircase. To the right, down a path a ways, were the gardens.

To Pendour the Knight, none of this was new. The glow on her skin said as much. When she landed on her Wonder for what had to be the fiftieth or hundredth time, this time shoulder to shoulder with a Velencyan, her eye was immediately drawn to the small details.

Nothing about this place was natural. It had been people who had come here and painstakingly engineered everything about this Wonder and then built it, piece by piece, in the middle of a harsh sea. Yet, there was no trace of that harsh, utilitarian style, here. Everything was art.

The mosaics under their feet were colorful things, studded with pearls and shells. The balusters on the staircase, which she beckoned Fae-Fae towards, were carved from marble to look like curling waves.

"We can look around, but I think you'll like what's up here the most," she said, beginning to climb.

Pendour had never been the impatient type, just as she'd never been uncomfortable with silence. She paused halfway up the stairs and leaned over the marble banister to watch the cove and listen to the sound of the waterfalls that fed it while Fae-Fae had her moment. Every few seconds, she glanced down to make sure that her guest was okay, and when she saw that Fae-Fae was staring upwards at the water, Pendour too turned her face to the sea.

She'd have to say something later. She'd have to repeat the offer of resources that she'd given to Lyndin.

For now, though, it felt rude to interrupt, and so she stayed until she heard the footsteps of the Corporal behind her.

The pavilion wasn't far from the top of the stairs, and that was where Pendour headed. The roof had been a grand display of oversized shells once, but they were crumbled, and a few had even fallen whole onto the ground where the two would have to step around them. With the gardens, and the cove project, she hadn't spent much time cleaning up here, yet, but even decayed as it was, it was clear what this place had once been.

Three of the sides were open air. Towards the back was a wall, and a stage, all decorated with the same swirling architecture. A hundred people could have fit easily under the roof, probably more.

"The musicians would be there," she said, waving towards the stage. "Um, I think the Knight, mostly, since the notes to the song I played for you, the magic one, are on the wall over there, but there were probably guest performers, too. Then everyone else would be here, and listen, or dance, or party."

She twirled, slowly, to demonstrate, her mermaid skirts swishing behind her.

"Oh," whispered Pendour, and there was no judgement there, just a slight flush to her cheeks since she hadn't considered that Fae-Fae might not understand these things.

"So, um, we were talking about music. You could call music the creative form of sound, maybe. People take sounds and make them into something beautiful, or something meaningful."

Fae-Fae knew that, or at least she was learning it, so Pendour moved on. "Dance is the creative form of movement, and it's also something a lot of people do for fun."

The artist deep in Pendour's heart knew that it was an oversimplification, but if Fae-Fae had more questions, she could answer them.

"Parties, um-" she trailed off on that one, because she knew less about parties than she did about creativity. "Well, there's so many kinds of parties, but they're basically celebrations, or people coming together to enjoy themselves."

"Not just pleasure," said Pendour, and while she didn't mind that Fae-Fae had pulled up a screen from somewhere to take notes on, it made her want to make sure that she wasn't saying anything that was wrong. "There are sad songs. There are sad dances. There's art about things like grief, and war."

Powerful art, great and terrible, and as Pendour thought about that, a light came to her eyes.

"Communication, yes. That's what it is, and that's how you could explain it to your people, maybe."

There was a passion that came to Pendour's voice every once in a while, often when she was talking about space, or about her friends, but it was there now. "Your text to speech is Velencyan, isn't it? Um, so they're okay with putting effort into things that help people communicate? Music can be that thing for a lot of people. Any art, any creative thing, can."

Pendour gave a simple nod. She could see the way that Fae-Fae was typing away, just as she could almost see gears turning behind her sparkling eyes.

It only seemed right to give her a little time to process all this new information, all these new conclusions.

"Yes," she said. "That's probably the biggest goal of music, especially."

She brought her ocarina back to her lips and played through a few stanzas of Ode to Joy at a cheerful tempo. "That one's joy," she told the Velencyan.

"Let's see," said Pendour, twisting at the Neptune symbol on the cord of her ocarina as she thought. "I'm still learning myself, but I have picked up a few melodies."

She propped herself up on the edge of the stage, and for a long time after that, the pavilion was filled the deep, clear tones of her music.