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She beamed at Niter, like he'd just made her whole day, or even week all the better for his answer. "It's up on the surface, we'll take a scenic route this time."

The scenic route took them through the rest of garden, the different shades of hearthflame creating deliberate patterns with extra dimension as it grew across the garden statues and friezes. The exit let to another huge, mostly vertical room, but instead of plants, it was dominated by a single, towering statue. Shadow ate at the figure in robes, some of it simply due to the size of the structure,, the small bobbing lights not up to the task of fully lighting it. The face, though, that was gone because it was gone, with massive pieces of nose and lip and brow scattered across the chamber floor. A white marble eye stared vacantly at them from a corner of the room.

What followed was stairs. A lot of stairs. Niter was getting some cardio tonight.

Climbing the stairs at a slow but steady pace to accommodate her guest, Hestia didn't notice that Niter had literally fallen behind until she noticed that it had become even more quiet. Oh. She couldn't hear him panting behind her anymore. Turning she saw his struggling figure well behind her, struggling up from some kind of...rest break maybe?

Hurriedly trotting back down, Hestia apologized, "I'm so sorry, Niter! Here let me..." crouching down she pulled one of his arms and then the other over her shoulders. Then patted his leg with a solemn, "Hop on."

There had been a brief flash of a moment where she'd considered a noble princess carry instead of a piggyback, but it had been swiftly followed by a vision of her tripping over his hair and both of them tragically rolling all the way back down to the bottom. It'd be so embarrassing and frankly uncool!

Standing up, carefully shifting to balance Niter's weight, Hestia began walking up the stairs at exactly the same pace as before. Possibly, she could have just jogged up, but she figured that wouldn't be a very comfortable experience for her guest at all.

Without having to struggle with life and death on an endless series of steps, Niter had time to enjoy the frieze that rose up along the walls. Broken in places, and worn by age, it was still clear that it depicted a long march of hundreds and hundreds of different figures descending the stairs. All of them humanoid, save for a handful of cats, but not all were human. Here there were tails and fins, and horns. Something closer to the Negaverse's half-youma. The symbols of the sol system's planets marked out some uniform's, with many other, more foreign symbols mixed in.

The two smoothly climbed until suddenly they were exiting through an ornate portico, and once again met by an immense amount of night sky. Gently letting Niter down and resisting the urge to help straighten his uniform, Hestia gave him a chance to get his bearings back before gesturing to a large lot of empty basins. They varied in size and shape, bearing a large spectrum of colors and patterns. Some, once again, bore the symbols of planets and those found on senshi brooches and tiaras. Found on the uniforms of knights.

"Pick any one you'd like."

Niter seemed particularly helpless and fragile after being set down, and in the back of her mind, she was already wondering about his eating habits. Was he getting enough nutrition? He liked plants, so he also liked fruits and vegetables right?

Looking to where he pointed, Hestia moved around the other basins. Picking his selection up, and it did not look light at all, she carried it over to a nearby alcove. The urn had been cleaned not too long ago, so it just needed a nice little wipe down first. Rubbing it briskly with a crisp white handkerchief, she answered lightly, "We don't use lighters here."

While at a distance the basin seemed very plain in design, just two mildly contrasting tones forming simple shapes, on closer look he would find a subtle, intricate floral patterning within the darker half.

Pulling out two small vials from her apron, Hestia began the small ritual with a confident smile, "Please hold out your hand, Niter. Whichever is your more dominant one."

"You'll be fine," Hestia assured him. The first vial held oil, and she poured several drops onto her own hands first, before taking Niter's and gently massaged the oil onto his fingers. It started warm, and quickly began to feel hot, but not to the point of pain at least. It'd give tiger balm a real run for it's money, though. Not to mention it smelled better, like the tea and the incense only more so.

The second vial was clear, and held something like sand? Glitter? "It's powdered marble from this world. It helps make this a lot easier for visitors." And then she was bowing to Niter, as if she planned to kiss his fingers like some kind of high lord or mob boss. Instead, though, she blew that powdered marble over his fingers, making them gritty and adding a big of sparkle along the way.

"You'll use your fingers, instead of a lighter," she explained. And then gave a snap of her own fingers, oiled and gritty, in the air. A small puff of fire was there and gone within the blink of an eye.

"Hold your fingers over the basin, and focus." It would be getting hard to do anything but focus on his fingertips now, actually. Something about the oil rendered them keenly sensitive. "Feel the air flow for just the right point, where your fingers and mind feel connected to something that's been waiting, primed and ready to ignite."

A small fireball burst from his hand and hovered for a moment in the air before dying. It didn't last long enough to warm his hand, let alone burn it. Watching the small failure always Hestia back to her first time trying to light one, outside of the current day and caught up in a memory of the past. Of a small, little bald girl a thousand years ago, on a new world, frustrated and lost as to why she was here, and why she was failing where others succeeded.

"Niter, just take a breath. Can you feel the pulse in your wrist? The way it travels through your palm and into your fingers? Close your eyes if you need to."

A ball of fire, the size of his hand, bloomed from Niter's fingertips and...wavered. For a moment looking like it might be snuffed out again before its shape tightened a bit further into a sphere and simply began to gently bob up and down above the basin.

Hestia was once more bowing to him, intoning, "May you burn ever brightly, Niter."

And then, there in her hands, was a soft, clean towel. A means to finally end the sensory torture inflicted on his hands.