Welcome to Gaia! ::

Pendour sat, as she often did, on the hillside, her fingers tangled in the grass, and her soul grounded by that small gesture. Her eyes were turned skywards, towards the meteor shower. The house where she lived was busy, and it was nice, sometimes, to just come steal a few moments for herself, and to watch some of the seasonal events.

But then, meteors or no, she always loved watching the sky.

The other aura drew close, warm as the summer air. Pendour didn’t flinch away from it, although she did instinctively turn her scarred side away on instinct when she saw that it was a stranger that was coming near.

“I’m Pendour,” she told him, with a small smile, “Of Neptune.”

A moment passed, and then she had to ask, “Do you get hot? In all that fur?” That wasn’t rude to ask, was it? She hoped not. “It’s beautiful. Your clothes, I mean,” but it was summer. She was sweating a little, and all she had on was her dress. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a knight like you before.”

“No, don’t think I’ve seen a Polaris Knight before. If I did, it was maybe a long time ago.” The colors were different, though, all soft and lovely. She thought that she would have remembered them. “It sounds nice, though. I like snow, sometimes.” When it got cold, instead of coming out to the hillside to watch the stars, she could curl up by a window with some tea and watch the frost and the snowflakes on the windowsill. “If I wore boots, maybe I could come visit sometime.”

She was curious about his son, but he was asking about how everything was with the Code.

“It was bad, there for a little while. Neptune’s all oceans, you know,” she waved at her own clothes, at the scales, “And when I was finally able to get up, everything was all flooded.”

She pressed her lips together and finally looked at Whisler face to face.

“I was able to get everything reset, though. I ended up, um,” she swallowed, “Experiencing my ancestor’s death as my own?”

Usually, she would have thought that something like that was a heavy thing to admit right away, but many people’s visions that night had been hard to take, and if he’d seen something like that, she didn’t want him to feel alone.

“It worked, though. After that, everything was okay.” She saw the glowing marks on his own skin, and knew that something like this might have affected him as well. “What about you? How is your Wonder?”

A baby, and a lover? Pendour found it easy to smile at that, even if her exhale had a little too much relief in it. The memories that she and the three others she'd been with that night had all had death in them, in one way or another.

It was nice to know that not everyone had gone through that just to stabilize their Code pieces.

"It sounds lovely up there," she said. "I'm glad you were able to get it fixed. I've always wanted to see hot springs. It sounds like the perfect place to relax."

The fact that there was a brothel there did not seem to bother her much. It wasn't like Irving hadn't done some of that work himself, even if she didn't quite think that her Wonder had been advertised as such.

"I could show you my Wonder sometime too, if you wanted." She loved bringing up guests. It always made the place feel more alive. "It's um, enclosed, underwater? There's a cove, and gardens, and a music pavilion, although I haven't quite gotten to fixing that one up yet."

"Even with the trouble, it was just some of the pipes inside that were leaking," she told Whisler. "Whatever magic or structure it is that's holding back the sea must be strong as strong. I've never seen it falter."

She'd used to be anxious about it herself, since some of the arches holding up the glass dome had crumbled to time.

She could breathe underwater now, though. Even if something did happen, she knew that she'd be able to get herself and her friends out. She also knew from her experience on Abzu that the Code pieces that gave them their powers were waterproof.

"It's not so scary once you see it, really. I promise."

"That sounds lovely," said Pendour. Of course any invitation to a new planet was enough to have her in a good mood, enough to have her tip her chin up towards the sky and wonder about what would be awaiting her up there.

They could wait until later to deal with the fact that Neptune made her nervous.

"I should probably get home, but send me a letter when you're ready to go up, okay?" she asked.

She'd power up every night to check for it.

For the moment, she waved at him, and then started to walk away under the faintly glowing sky.