Welcome to Gaia! ::

Sitting at the large fountain, Halle checked the time on his signet screen and figured that it should be nearing sunrise at his wonder. Perfect, in the summer at least, Halle was truly best seen in sunlight. There was a cooler resting next to him, something for breakfast...or maybe dinner? Anyway, with the lodge's first floor at least in perfect condition, he wanted a chance to show that off a bit too.

Though...ugh, it was a bit weird to want to show off for a relatively strange older woman. Even after a couple years, it felt a little wrong, even though they were equal, and in some ways he was even her senior. Well, whatever. He'd been getting over it. Enough to feel comfortable inviting Joy purely to give her a tour of his wonder, without any world ending science project involved or anything.

If it took long to fully embrace how homogenous ages were once magic got involved, well. He'd be eighteen in a little over a year, right? Then he'd be one of the adults and...probably get to feel really weird about the fourteen year olds fighting alongside him.

The first time Halle had seen Joy, she'd been a page on the outskirts. Clearly a bit cautious of curious, and not showing a very keen interest in joining in. Not afraid to have an opinion of sorts either. And now she was a full knight. Clearly, however she'd started, the commitment she felt to either a cause or simply her wonder, had deepened, and with a strong grip.

He would have congratulated her for it, but then she opened her mouth and mentioned pot luck of all things. Teasing him about bringing food. Trying, and failing, not to flush with embarrassed irritation, Halle answered, "No. I'm the host. The host provides the food."

Just because he was young didn't mean he wasn't able to show basic manners. Plus, this was the first time he was inviting someone over to his wonder after the lodge was nearly done. He intended to actually invite someone inside and this was what he got for it, huh? He shouldn't have started with an adult, though. That was his problem. They always took this sort of thing for granted, or, even worse, didn't and then made a huge condescending production of it.

At least she started acting better right after, and Halle nodded, trying to be serious but not too serious about it. "Thank you for agreeing to come. It used to be a place for visitors, so it feels...right, when people come by."

Taking her hand he shook it, then held onto to it and let the call and oath for his wonder begin to sweep them both to another world. "The uniforms will make a lot more sense when you do," he sighed.

And when they arrived, it was in a great clearing. Before them was the treeline of a forest, carpeted in light purple grasses and speckled with the blue of its signature bluebells. The trees had leaves that varied from light greens to pastel yellows, pinks, and blues. Not far away, a cluster of tiny, deer-like creatures were pronking playfully, not yet having noticed the two.

Behind them was a massive hunting lodge of stone and wood, looking both stately and inviting. Not at all like something that had fallen from a thousand years of disrepair.

"This is Halle, the flowering forest."

The praise was extremely satisfying, nearly enough to smooth over the irritation over the potluck joke. His flowering forest was beautiful. And the lodge now held a certain majesty that he couldn't help but take pride in, like it truly reflected something about him now, rather than some kind of silent failure he had to steer people clear of.

Looking at it with Joy, he nodded, "Hard work and time." In the distance, the tiny deer-like creatures in all their varied pastels, had noticed the two and begun to prance as a small herd toward them, their floral ruffs bouncing and losing petals as they danced about.

"It was a pretty dangerous ruin when I first got here. I've done some work, cleaning and repairing inside the lodge. Clearing some trails in the forest. But a lot of it was actually just..." he gave a shrug, "...it repaired itself over time. I don't know how to fix stonework and I'm pretty bad at woodshop." He grimaced remembering some of the attempts at fixing small pieces that he'd brought back.

"But more and more small things would be fixed when I came back, bigger things too once I became a knight." The tiny deer things encircled the two and began bumping up against Joy for attention, just in case she hadn't seen them.

Leaning down to pat one absently, Halle went on, "I think there's a sort of magical multiplier here, like there is with our strength and speed. The more you put in as a base amount of work, the magic multiplies its effectiveness."

After a moment he added, "They're called blessings."

As Halle ushered her toward the lodge, he considered the question. "Sometimes, when I get memories of this place in the past, there were visitors. Actually," he scratched his head for a moment, finger slipping under his cap. "I think it was something of a tourist spot, for visiting dignitaries."

As they got close, a sphere lit up by the stairs, then the door lit up and swung open on its own. "It's kind of surreal knowing I own like, a house. In space." Glancing over at Joy, his brow scrunched at the entered the lodge. "How does that even work for you, anyway?"

The inside of the lodge matches the outside, save for that it held a more delicate touch here and there. In its tapestries and furnishings, the glint of gilded edges. The entryway was large, obviously intended to hold a large gathering of visitors upon their arrival. Turning to the side, he led Joy into a small sitting room, with several overstuffed leather chairs along with a few small wooden pieces, elegant in their lines.

Vaguely, Halle wondered why she was inspecting everything in a weird, hands-off manner. But Joy kind of gave out a weird vibe to him anyway. Better not to ask. To know someone's weird was to be infected by it.

"I guess things getting shifted to a side dimension makes sense," Halle answered, voice going a little distant. "Maybe all the magic stuff becoming a secret was like, fast, forced, and intentional then."

Earth's place in the universe seemed more and more off to him over the past couple years. It felt like it made a lot of sense at first. But the more time he spent in space, more people he met who were clearly not from here, the more that sort of default understanding of Big Picture Reality shifted out of place.

"Actually," he began, a little proud but also somewhat reluctant to share this little hope with a relative stranger, even if she did seem pretty trustworthy, "I've been thinking of reviving one of the old festivals they had here. Sometimes, if you need it badly enough or there's a world's princess to help you, getting a bunch of people to your wonder isn't out of the question."

"It's total mulesquat," Halle nodded in agreement. "I get that like, things were basically destroyed for a thousand years and are only now getting back up and running. But it's been over a decade since knights started being able to power up again. Forced recruitment and zero training period really don't have any excuse anymore."

Shaking his head, he led her into another room, this one a kitchen that was a mix between medieval, clearly magical, and a touch of modernity. "The code is sentient, and not like, stupid. But I think it's not very motivated in making the process for pages any easier. Just full knights more powerful."

There was a certain grim process worthiness by elimination in that.

Better to talk about things like festivals, something in his control, that didn't have life and death at stake. "There's this tiny, flowering crab in the forest's ponds and lake. Called a frontwise fascinator. And the meat of it is actually really delicious? And there's a lot of ways to raise them to alter the flavor?"

It'd take awhile for him to get things to that point and have the time for it, but creating new breeding grounds for flavor experiments was definitely on Halle's Wonder Bucketlist.

"So in the winter, the best time for harvesting them, there was a sort of food festival held here, lots of tourists and foodies visited for it."

"Yeah, they started coming back pretty early on," Halle answered. opening what proved to lead to a massive larder. There was a tidy line of jars, plastic containers, boxes, and ziplocs in it, but it all seemed fairly pathetic compared to the amount of space available. After hesitating for a moment, he pulled out two small bags and a jar.

"These are some of the no frills like, control groups I've made." He first tapped the jar, full of small pale medallions in liquid, "Preserved in oil." Then both of the baggies, with thin golden slices of flakey meat. "Both of these were preserved by smoking, they're from fascinators I fished up from different ponds. I didn't really season them beyond some salt."

While Halle enjoyed experimenting with seasonings and preparations immensely, not everyone enjoyed the results. For now, he'd just let Joy try out some of the most basic version of the little crabs. From a drawer he pulled out a little fork and handed it to her.

"Don't worry, I only got a little high off them. The two extra hands went away in about an hour. What do you like to drink?"

He gave a her a can of Mountain Dew, which Halle assumed was close enough. He tried not to be weird about watching too intently as she ate, but well...he couldn't help it!

Joy would find the bite to be a little firm, almost bouncy, but then practically melt away in her mouth. At first it simply tasted clean, then a light but savory flavor followed. In the aftertaste, there was a hint of earthiness. Mushroom?

Seeing that she didn't spit it out, keep over, or break out into hives, Halle suppressed a sigh of relief. "This batch is pretty simple, but like, some ponds with more plants around them, have ones with a more like, herby flavor? It's been fun trying them out."