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 Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2022 2:18 pm
Spei poured out some more tea for himself. "Would you like another cup?" he asked his guest before setting the teapot back down on the small sterno heat source he'd brought to his Wonder. He had a nice little setup in the solarium: a couple of plushy brocaded antique chairs he'd found on Large Trash Day and cleaned up, a folding tray table, the sterno stove and teapot, and a supply of tea and drinking water. What more did he need, really, for relaxing between cleaning up and repairing the small structure on the lake called Spei? The Page leaned back in his chair and sipped his tea thoughtfully, looking at Nectaris. She was an interesting person: a Knight of the Moon, yet barely his age, she seemed a lot younger in a lot of ways. It was still hard for him to believe she had once been a Negaverse General. He didn't want to question her about that despite his curiosity, though, as it seemed a tender topic for her. So he decided to talk Wonders. "I've managed to do quite a bit here. I come up as often as I can and clean a little bit more each time, and check on the plants here in the Solarium. So far none of them have started to sprout again, but they have been kind of dead for a thousand years, so." He sipped his tea. "I'm not expecting miracles, but I have hope," he said, quirking an eyebrow.
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2022 2:42 pm
Nectaris sipped at her tea slowly. "I'm okay," she said. Tea wasn't bad, not like coffee. When you put enough sugar in it, it was almost good, but there was always just a little bit of a bitter aftertaste that kept Nectaris from drinking it by the gallon, the way she did with certain sodas and chocolate milk. While Spei was watching her, she was watching him right back. He might have just been a Page, but he seemed to have his stuff together more than she did. She'd been running around googling butterfly gardens, but he'd had his feet on the ground, bringing nice chairs and tea sets up to his wonder so he was ready for guests. "Yeah, my plants are super dead, too, and Nectaris is supposed to be this whole garden thing, best me and my family can tell," she told him. "Like, a butterfly garden?" She fluffed up her wing-cape with her free hand. "Your whole setup's really cute, though, I bet lots of people will like coming here for tea."
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2022 5:54 pm
"Thank you," Spei nodded. "I wanted to make it cozy for me, and I guess I made it cozy for everyone." Finishing his tea, he set his cup down on the small table and watched her fluff her butterfly-winged cape, wondering if all Knights got cool-looking capes like that. "A garden? Sounds lovely. I really hope it comes back, especially if it's supposed to be a butterfly garden. That would make sense, with your name and cape and everything." He thought for a moment. "I think my Wonder is supposed to be some kind of sanctuary for people, with the name meaning 'Hope'. Like where people can come and ask for hope, or meditate on it, or something. I don't know, and the Code wasn't real specific. The Wonder itself is the lake, not this building," and he gestured around them. "But I don't know if people drank the water, or swam in it, or used it to reflect on things, like literally, since it's so still… I just don't know," he shrugged.
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2022 6:56 pm
"Yeah, that's my best guess so far, since Nectaris just means Nectar, and, like, I've got all this butterfly swag," she said. It would probably be easiest to figure out the secret of Nectaris when they were actually on Nectaris, though. Right now, they had this lake to figure out. She looked over at its surface, which was as smooth as a mirror, like he said. "Hope, huh?" she said. It was pretty. Nectaris would give it that much. She'd never been the type of person who could just stare at pretty stuff and meditate on concepts like hope, though. Her mind started going in circles really fast. She started thinking about being hungry, or what she wanted to sew when she got home, not, like, what stuff she was grateful for or whatever the hippie types thought she should be thinking about all the time. "Have you, like, explored the lake?" she asked. "Like, swam in it? Have you tried that? Can we try that? I'm way better at swimming than like, meditating, so hopefully that's the answer to making you all hopeful."
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2022 2:48 pm
"No, I… haven't really explored the lake," Spei said with a slightly embarrassed shake of his head. "I've been too focused on getting this place in order. It's been a lot of work here – sweeping, dusting, tending the plants and hoping they'll grow again, exploring the various rooms and cleaning them up…" He thought for a moment. Maybe swimming in the lake, or at least getting wet in the water, was the answer to how it was utilized by the people of the Silver Millennium in the past… "Sure, let's try it." He figured it was worth a try, and if Nectaris was willing to do it with her diaphanous butterfly cape, why couldn't he? Standing, he gently relieved Nectaris of her teacup, as any good host should do, then indicated the front entrance, still open and providing a view of the lake. "Shall we?"
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Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2022 8:08 am
Her clothes weren't made for swimming, obviously. Butterflies weren't supposed to get their wings wet. Luckily, it was easy enough to fix. With one sharp tug, she pulled the cape off of her shoulders, only wincing a little as the seams popped out. The seamstress in hated ruining clothes as cool as this, and she had to remind herself that it was magic, that it would fix itself. Everything would be fine. After that quick internal pep talk, she ripped her over skirt off, too, while handing her teacup over to Spei with the other hand. She kicked off her shoes after that, and with only the babydoll tunic left, she kinda looked like a Page, too. "Amazing," she said, bouncing on her stocking-clad toes. "Exploration and swimming? This place is, like, the best ever." With that, she was off at a sprint, doing a cannonball into the placid waters.
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Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2022 9:30 am
Spei watched Nectaris rip at her outfit with a combination of amusement and horror. Yeah, he knew the clothes they wore as Knights would magically regenerate good as new the next time they powered up, but it was still a minor shock. Then she took off and cannonballed into the lake, and he knew he had to join her. It took him a bit longer to peel down to the minimum – luckily it didn't entail tearing anything. Jacket, waistcoat, gloves and boots all came off with relative, if time-consuming ease. Once he was down to his shirt and trousers, he trotted across the interior courtyard and out the front door. "How's the water?" he asked with a wry half-smile, carefully wading into the shallows. It felt wonderful on his feet and lower legs.
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Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2022 3:34 pm
"The water's awesome," said Nectaris, already in up to her shoulders by the time Spei had carefully gotten all his clothing sorted out. She vanished under the surface for a couple of seconds, long enough to do a backflip, and when she came up for air, her carefully styled curls looking completely deflated, she was grinning. "I mean, it's not, like, whispering the secrets of the Wonder to me or anything, but, like, it's a good temperature." She shook her head like a wet dog, sending droplets of water flying out all over the place. "And, like," she walked a little closer to shore, so she could talk without it being weird, "I know, it's super sad that everything's dead up here, but if there's a silver lining it's that there's no gross squishy algae to step on. I don't always like swimming in lakes if they're all overgrown like that, but this one's pretty cool!"
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2022 10:06 am
Spei waded deeper into the lake until he was up to his waist, closer to Nectaris. It was a good temperature, surprisingly so, warm enough to not shock the system yet cool enough so he didn't feel like he was wading into a bathtub. He had to smile a little (as much as he ever did) at the other Moon Knight's frolicking in the water. She was having fun – why shouldn't he as well? Stepping out a little deeper, he ducked below the surface for a second. The water was crystal-clear, not a scrap of algae anywhere, as Nectaris had pointed out. But the lake didn't feel dead – it felt peaceful, tranquil, waiting almost. Strange, but wonderful. He resurfaced, tossing his hair off his face. "You're right, the water does feel awesome. I'm going to have to do this more often." Thinking for a moment, he added, "I'm not getting any secrets from it either, but it sure feels peaceful out here."
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Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2022 5:45 pm
"Maybe that's what it's whispering," said Nectaris, kicking off from the bottom so that she could float on her back. "Peace. Peace." She lowered her voice so that she was whispering, too. " Peace." Not that she was exactly being the most peaceful, splashing around the way that she was, but it was a nice thought. A couple of moments passed, and Nectaris, still on her back, paddled out to just slightly deeper into the water. "Thanks for bringing me out here," she said. "It's even more fun than I thought it might be." tatterpixie could just fin soonish to them swimming?
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