Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Good," Alassëa smiled. She lowered her staff. "Remember, it is not always what you hear ... but more often, it is what you don't hear. What you have to do is learn how to distinguish exactly where it is that you hear or do not hear something ... learn to gauge the size, shape, hardness and velocity of whatever it is. This is the beginning of you sensing what is around you."

She paused. "I am going to go inside now," she told the two, "and I would like you both to wait a few minutes before following. Do not take off your blindfolds until you find me back again. You may ask directions, but not to be led, no matter how long it takes. Do you have any questions?"

"Where's my staff?" Amalirahc asked immediately. He had dropped it earlier, and had no idea where it was now.

Without hesitating, Alassëa knelt and picked it up for him. "That is the last time I will get it for you," she told him solemnly. "Next time you will have to find it for yourself."

"Then good luck," Alassëa said, somewhat solemnly. "Remember, no removing your blindfolds, or allowing anyone but me to do so."

Amalirahc sighed. "Right." He paused a moment, then asked, "So how long do we have to wait?"

There was no answer. It seemed Alassëa had already slipped away.

"That's not fair," Amalirahc frowned, annoyed. "She didn't even tap her staff or anything!"

He tilted his head one way and the other and then looked in the general direction of Miyuki's voice. "Um ... which way is the door?"

Amalirahc exhaled loudly. "Now what?" he frowned, gripping his staff tightly with both hands. He was really not happy with being dumped in the courtyard like that without warning, even less so that Alassëa had vanished on them without letting them know when she was going.

"You do realize that whoever's playing the music could be all the way in the city," Amalirahc pointed out, not realizing that even Miyuki's hearing was not quite up to par with elves.

He frowned. "Still ... I guess if we get turned around, we can use it to see which way we're facing ... compared to where we started, anyways."

The thought crossed his mind that they could always scream and wait for the guards to rush into the courtyard to see what was happening. But even he knew that that would be cheating.

"I think we had our backs to the door," he decided, turning so that the music was coming from the other side. "Come on."

He took a step and walked straight into a hedge. "Ow!"

"Stupid bush," Amalirahc muttered, swatting it away with his staff. He heard Miyuki moving around, and it sounded like she wasn't hitting anything, so he followed after her, staying behind her.

"How are we supposed to find Alassëa even once we get inside?" he asked Miyuki. "By the time we get in, it will be too long since she went in and no one will remember which way she went."

For that matter, how in the world could she remember her way around the castle so easily, when the rest of the group, who were fully sighted, couldn't figure it out?

"Nope," Amalirahc replied sourly. He paused a moment, then reached up with his staff and felt above them. It hit an archway over them, and he grinned. "But the entrance into the maze is the only one where there's hedges even over our heads! That means we're at the outside of it now! The door to inside should be right in front of us!"

He started forward, but he was too hasty and he ran into Miyuki - not hard, just a bump.

"Sorry," he apologized, his face growing warm. "Didn't mean to hit you."