The Caves (5) : To any explorers visiting the new Reservoir, they may find that just a bit away from the sandy water are a set of caves. Some of these connect back to the lake, but others rapidly plunge into darkness. It wouldn't be hard to get lost in here, but thankfully there are some very odd lights to help guide you out. If you turn off your light down some of these dark paths, you may find yourself surrounded by glowing pastel lights. A closer inspection reveals that you seem to be looking at some sort of glowing caterpillars. An internet search will reveal that Destiny City scientists have been researching the strange, unnamed creatures, but the articles are very limited. If you take them out of the cave they seem to shrivel up almost immediately. They’re neat, but clearly meant to be stay in their natural habitat.
There was so much to experience here.
Nearly a full cycle around the Sun since their initial arrival, and Ny still felt she'd learned barely anything at all about this planet, its people, its customs, its potential usefulness. Nearly a full cycle around the Sun, and they were really no closer to being able to "fix" Velencya, if it was even possible. But if the Commodore thought no place would better serve their needs than this place, Ny didn't mind doing her due diligence to research the resources around them.
She went out nearly every day. Sometimes just to her classes. Much of the information on Earth physics or calculus was not unfamiliar to her, but at least Earth history and the biology of their specimens was interesting enough. She didn't know if it was distinctly helpful to her current mission, but it couldn't hurt to know!
If she was out for a little more than class, she usually went to the "foreign" grocery store or the small bakery down the road from the Vanguard house. They had what she thought were good, quality vegetables (the sign on the grocery store's window said so), or fluffy, sweet cakes from the bakery. Henley was quite enamored just looking at the sheer diversity of items to purchase, the sheer number of things people could put in their mouths! Everything usually tasted fine. Not her favorite, but not the worst. She didn't have the same cuisine struggles as some of the Vanguard did.
She also didn't distinctly hate it here. It was fine. Just fine. They certainly could've been sent somewhere worse. In her worst imaginings of their missions, they'd be sent to some heatwave planet consisting of little more than lava and active volcanoes. They'd have to burrow underground to get some Special Ore, but there was always the possibility magma would pour into the tunnel and kill them all. Enclosed, hot quarters wherein they dug deeper and deeper to danger or profit.
Not a good time.
But this wasn't her worst imaginings. It was Just Fine.
When she went out as Ny, she hoped for more than vegetables or cakes. She hadn't really gone out of her way to interact with anyone early into their arrival, and considering what had come of that, she expected no one really wanted to meet her now. But meeting people was the best way to figure out how to progress from here. Either find Cadeus so their original objective could be completed, or find someone who could figure out a different way. Hadn't been going well so far, and tonight didn't seem to be any differently.
She huffed softly and kicked a small stone across the sandy path. Admittedly, she didn't care much for this terrain. The wind grabbed her hair and tangled it all around, buts of dirt and debris flew into her mouth and eyes. It smelled funny here. But the humans liked it. There were a bunch here during the day. Only a few at night, though. It seemed like a good place to find something, even if Ny couldn't say what with any degree of certainty.
But she knew she liked to bring something back for Fysarius when she went out without him. It felt like the least she could do is use her best judgement to try and pick out a suitable snack for him, or a book from the library, or a weird bug she'd found on the sidewalk. She had to bring him something! So he would stop being so sad... and angry... Of course nothing on Earth explicitly helped in that department, but she was under no impression that they wouldn't be here for a while. If she could find literally any single thing to bring him joy, that would be ideal.
And maybe if she brought him presents, he wouldn't hold it against her for not hating it here like he did...
It was just one of very few things they didn't really see eye-to-eye on. He'd never been mean to her, of course! Never acted like he wished she despised being here, never expressly verbally relayed that he was unhappy with her position or opinion. ...She just thought he was different than usual, is all, like a weird, lonely air even when they were together and Ny did desperately hoped it was a temporary different...
When she'd first come upon the shadowed entrance to an underground tunnel, her initial thought was that it seemed like a location for a human to hide. Even if it wouldn't be so easy to stumble upon who they were looking for, it could be any of the senshi or knights who didn't want to be bothered by civilians while they were powered. Maybe a Mauvian kept a secluded trove here. Or one of the senshi from space could've carved out a hovel away from the most active parts of the city?
Or maybe it was literally nothing but a sight to see, and she should explore it, anyway.
When she'd found dimly glowing caterpillars inside the cave, of course that seemed like the perfect specimen to bring her broody boy, Fysarius! She doubted he'd come all the way out here to collect anything, and it seemed like very much of Earth's wildlife did not practice any manner of bioluminescense, making these a rare and unusual treat. She'd seen a handful of lightning bugs and knew those had already been harvested, but these caterpillars were fat and squirmy, and she hadn't labeled any jars with fat, squirmy, glowy caterpillars inside. Hadn't seen any of Fysarius' notes that may reference their unusual properties. And there were so many available in here that the cave wouldn't miss the three that she took.
Beaming, Ny scooped them into a little jar that she carried for just such an occasion, stored the jar in her subspace pocket, and made back to the Vanguard house.
It wasn't until she'd made it fully home and was prepared to show off her findings that she realized there wasn't very much left to show off. Just a few scrawny, shriveled carcasses remained where there had once been three glowing larva... What a waste. And a huge disappointment when she'd wanted to give her boy something he hadn't seen before...
[WC: 1051]
