#Fun fact: “dense” and “density” actually showed up in two of the other snippets that I'd pulled for different words.

[autumnalwalker]

Find the Word tag game

Thank you for the tag, @fearofahumanplanet.

My assigned words are sense/sensation, chaos, crowd, wide/width, and dense/density.

A slightly hilarious coincidence given that I just established in the last "Find the Word" game that "chaos" is somehow not yet within my written body of work. Alas, I fear I will need to skip that one. I'll make up for it by hitting all the variants too.

Passing the tag on to @monstrousfreedom, @kaiusvnoir, @careful-pyromancer, and @junypr-camus

Your words shall be: awkward, waiting, water, & tree

Excerpts below the "Keep reading" line.

Sense:

Apparently it is traditional for archivists to know the stories in the library well enough to tell them as entertainment at whatever gathering they happen to be at.  Having mostly just been skimming as many books as possible for organizational purposes so far I wasn’t really familiar enough with their contents to recite them on the spot like this.  But my outsider status afforded me a unique advantage.  While I couldn’t remember much at all of history, whether my own or my world’s, I could still remember a number of works of fiction.

And so after a moment of consideration I launched into a (heavily abridged) retelling of a classic.  A story of a man from a quiet village much like this one who was invited out on an adventure to recover stolen treasure from a dragon and found a magic ring along the way.  I was hesitant and awkward at first, neither confident in performing in front of others nor in my ability to do the story justice, but as I went on I got more and more into it (even if I had to make up names for characters I didn’t remember).  It’s funny, I have this sense of a memory of being averse to speaking because I dislike the sound of my own voice, but I didn’t feel that at all last night.  Or since I’ve been here for that matter.

I’m glad to say it went over well.  Strangely, Marva had memories of her grandfather telling that same story when she was young, albeit with some differences in the details.  Perhaps a previous outsider told it as well? It was, as I said, a classic.  Abridged as the story was though, it was still a long one and by its conclusion it was well into the night and we were all tired.  Not that that stopped the kids from asking for an encore, although I suspect it had more to do with not wanting to go to bed than with my storytelling talents.

Sensation:

“What are you doing?”  Ashan asks.

“Opening this the fast way,” Eris says while staring at her hands and tracing the glyphs on the left glove with one finger.  Back of the hand then the palm.  “Get back.”

“But this ward is only partially undone.  Unstable as it is -”

“It will make what I’m about to do that much easier.”  The corner of her mouth twitches up in anticipation while she traces the right glove’s glyphs.  “So thanks for that, but get back.  There might be some backlash.”

Eris claps her hands together and twin jolts run through her palms and up her arms to meet at the base of her neck.  She throws her head back involuntarily at the shock and bares her teeth in an expression closer to grin than grimace than it should be.  The initial sensation fades as she lowers her gaze to look at the shelf in front of her but her hands are tingling now and will be until she takes off the gloves.

Crowd:

“I hate anime,” Ashan grumbles to himself for the second time that day.  

No, that was not quite fair.  He had some vague recollection of enjoying some show or another as a child.  What was it called again?  Something with magic cards and a girl on roller skates.  An interesting concept for quick casting of spells, but unlikely to be practical with its reliance on bound spirits.  There was also the one with the talking hamsters.  That one had been fun.

Perhaps it is not so much anime itself as anime conventions that bother him.  Even after being back on the world of his birth for a few years now, he is still not used to the sheer density of the crowds.  And the novelty of convention goers stopping to ask him who he is supposed to be wears thin quickly.  Even worse are the ones who mistake him for a favorite character and ask for a picture.  And while he is used to being mistaken for a woman - and even finds amusement in it so long as the mistake is not repeated after correction - the well-intended compliments mistaking his white robes for a dress are beginning to test his patience. 

All that is secondary though to the fact that such concentrated escapism and suspension of disbelief makes for a Masquerade breach waiting to happen.  Coupled with the sheer number of cosplayers making it easy for outsiders to blend in, it was no wonder that there is nearly always an incident at these events.  

Wide:

As we rounded that curve the cave opened up around us into a truly massive cavern.  Clusters of glowing crystals grew from floor, walls, and ceiling alike, ranging from barely finger-sized to huge, angled, floor-to-ceiling columns wide enough to fit a person inside.  The colors varied in much the same proportions I’d noticed coming from windows in the Village at night; mostly blues and magentas, with the occasional green, and more rarely yellow and orange.  What I hadn’t expected was for much of the cavern floor to be given over to scattered pools of water.  Most were fairly small and shallow, but a few were easily big enough to swim in.  Daianna advised us not to.  And not to drink from the pools either as it tends to make people sick.  All of these pools were lined with crystals at the bottom and the scattered clusters seemed to be more dense around their edges.  It was markedly cooler down here than up on the surface yet just as humid, a combination that gave a bit of a chill.  Curiously for such a wet cave there were no stalactites or stalagmites, but there were crystal growths in analogous formations here and there.

Daianna, in the lead now that there wasn’t brush for Butat to clear, continued to take us further and further in until we reached what could only be called an underground lake, wide and deep enough that the light from its far depths was faint.  Here she instructed us to unload the crystals we’d brought and toss them into the water.  This was something of a surprise to me.  I’d been expecting to find a pile of previously deposited crystals that had “recharged” that we’d be collecting and replacing with a dun pile.  Instead, Daianna explained that the lightless ones we’d brought would dissolve over time in the water, providing material for new growths.  And it was those new growths we’d be collecting. 

Width:

The rocky coastline makes for a significantly bumpier drive than the commute from the manor to the estate’s forest.  Less bumpy though than Ashan would have expected from riding in the open flat back of a brake carriage drawn by a pair of roughly horse-shaped constructs.  It seems that the late sorceress Bridgewood had preferred the transportation modes of her youth to modern vehicles and left her estate furnished accordingly.  Had she personally built and enchanted this vehicle?  Being her work would explain how it had managed to fit itself through the trunk of a tree half its width, and perhaps even how they had remained upright when emerging vertically from the floorboards of a ruined cabin in the middle of this ice and lichen-strewn wilderness.  

The personal transport of one of the most powerful mages of the past century across multiple worlds and now he was riding in it.  The thrill of the thought sends a shiver down Ashan’s spine.  Or maybe that was a regular shiver.  Road had not exaggerated about the cold.  Given the ice floating in the water in the summer, he guesses that they’re somewhere near the Arctic Circle, if not above it.  And while the air might not technically be freezing the wind made it feel that way, even with the enchantments sewn into his robes.  At least they seem to have arrived during a lull in the storm.

Dense:

The docking point was another protruding cliff, much like Siren Overlook.  Similar enough to make me wonder if both of them were artificial.  This one however was overgrown with creeping vines and broadleaf ferns.  (They looked like ferns to me anyway.)  There was another matching arch here as well, but it had collapsed and shattered, now easy to miss except as raised blocky patches of greenery.

This rampant growth stopped as it met the treeline at the landward end of the cliff.  Gazing into that forest was more like peering into the mouth of a cave.  Little grew from the ground other than the great trees.  Each of them was nearly big enough around at the base to fit my cabin inside, and it easily could have fit in the spaces between them with room to spare.  I wouldn’t have expected such tall trees to be able to stand with expansive branches, yet up at the edge of our lantern light we could make out the bottom of the canopy and the branches of the trees tangled together with their neighbors in a dense web.  A web that helps them hold one another aloft perhaps?  But certainly a web that catches the sun.  It would not surprise me if the forest floor is as dark at noon as it was while we were there.

As much as Cass wanted to, we did not walk beneath those branches this night.

Density:

Eyes darting to my periphery, I caught sight of the nature sprite walking beside me in lockstep.  The sound was not truly a tapping at all but a clicking, a clacking, a clattering.  The noise of jaws housing wooden fangs barely opening and then snapping back shut in time to an incessant beat.

As the creature of the woods became aware of my awareness, it stopped walking, although the sound continued unabated.  The opening in the trees to Siren Overlook in sight, I took a few more steps before turning around to face my companion.

I’d rarely seen this being by daylight, and even now it was backing into the shade of the trees at the edge of the path, eyes aglow under its cloak of leaves, branching antlers curiously uncaught on the jungle density, and gnarled wooden hand outstretched, beckoning.  There was a rust red stain on those fingers that had not been there before.  Around the mouth as well, creating a mockery of lips.

This was an invitation.  An entreaty to turn back.  An offer to follow into the woods.  To abandon my worries and cares, my fears and anxiety.  To lose myself in the rhythm of the hunt.  To become something else.  To run frumious through the jungle with jaws that bite and claws that catch.  To let the song fill me until I am more it than me.