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Avalon (Hat + Anna)

Hat-tori

Hat-tori

Supernova
Joined
Jan 9, 2009
It was a warm day. She'd feel it, on her neck, the warm breeze that blew over it, the way the sunlight played over the bed. Thick covers made of furs and a soft bed of feathery down. It was a sort of comfort that modernity had left behind. Properly crafted beds were something else.

But it wasn't hers.

A tall, strong-looking man sat next to the bed, waiting. Dressed in shawls of brown cloth that failed to hide the entirety of his torso, or his arms - he had the build of an honest laborer, a club sat against the wall behind him. He was covered with tattoos, spidery things like webbing, lines all over that emphasized his strength. And he was looking directly at her.

"It's time you woke up." he said. The room was stone, no glass windows. Her backpack sat against the bed, her clothing - thankfully - still on her.
 
RE: Avalon

Anna was already experiencing one hell of a headache by the time she had crashed into bed the prior evening. The venue she and the rest of the band had been scraping up the enthusiasm to get a paycheck from barely even qualified as "hole in the wall," and the paycheck had ended up being balanced against enough free, shitty beer that Anna damn well would have rather gotten paid more just to have something better to drink.

But you know what really drowned your sorrows over a terrible gig?

That's right, boys and girls: free, shitty beer.

To say it had been kind of a "crash face first into the mattress on the floor that you have the audacity to call a bed without even taking your boots off first" evening the night prior was a bit of an understatement.

Hangover check list: hair that looked like she had gotten as fucked fun-wise as she had paycheck-wise? Check. That super bad taste in her mouth that made her suddenly want to marry several cold glasses of water? Check. Unable to see a damn thing almost twenty seconds after opening her eyes? Oh yes. A massive aversion to sunlight?

.. well, that was pretty much every morning, and Ms. Williams went and pulled her swelteringly hot fur blankets over her head to try and block out as much of it as she was able. It was around that time that she actually remembered she didn't have fur blankets, or a window that shone damn sunlight on her thanks to her very practical blackout curtains in her apartment. Also, it was fucking hot, and she still had her steel toed boots on under the covers? What the hell was wrong with her?

Flailing her way to something like an upright position, kicking and punching at the cover like it owed her two months back rent (just kidding! That was her slut of a roommate! Sorry for the mistake, covers!), Anna Williams finally managed to get herself vertical enough to let her heels slam down onto her carpet barely an inch or two below the surface of the bed. Or, that was the usual routine. Here, her legs dangled an awful lot more, which was exactly what short girls just loved: a reminder of how short they were.

So thanks for that too, Conan.

Anna glared through her fussy bangs at the damn near bone-grinding bread-eating giant of a man sitting beside her (or well, he SEEMED that big through her blurry, confused stare, anyhow) for about ten seconds trying to make him come into focus. She tugged down on the oversized black band tee to keep it from riding up over her midriff where it had rolled up in her sleep, giving her jeans a quick upward tuck along the way, but by the time she got around to also pushing her hair out of her face she had fallen back onto the bed.

"Nah, no, nope. Too drunk even for this fucking dream," she told Mr. Dream Man, and promptly rolled over to try to get back to .. REM sleep, or whatever you had to do when you had one of those waking dreams to just make it end.
 
RE: Avalon

"Oh, for the sake of me." he grumbled, grasping her shoulder.

And the hangover was gone. Instantly. With a soft hiss, it simply appeared in the stranger's hand, a physical manifestation of a hangover right there. It looked like a cross between pudding and a kidney stone. "I have to remind myself to start using these. Right good for smiting." he grumbled, stuffing it in a sack. "Now, then. I am... Call me Spider." he said, smirking. "Right now, I won't ask much of you. Simply, be awake, and aware - you're not at home anymore. The other thing you need to be aware of: You are in mortal peril, for the moment. Though it's not immediately apparent. The priest knows I brought you here. Seek him out. He's the tall one." he said, "The rest might attack you on sight, but you don't need to worry much."

He nodded. Yes, he seemed to say, this was sufficient. "I've gone to the liberty of... enhancing some of the items in your bag. Be careful when using them, yes?" he said. With that, he stepped out the wall.

Just walked up to the wall and out, leaving behind a glyph on the wall that shifted slightly - a symbol of an eight legged spider. And then she was alone, in the one-room stone hut, with her things - some of which might be magical, maybe? - and her thoughts.

The air smelled clean, in one way. In another, it smelled of a farm - not a bad scent, just a musty one. Wherever she was, it was cleaned often. And if she peeked outside, she'd see something strange.

At first, she might be mistaken and believe she'd landed in a village of pangolins. (( https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR0qAWW2_qcnrA9gYl_Z3JWoL-3oWXZL99w7HxL5RR6NPoBlRdwyg These! )) But no, these were larger - at least four feet tall at most. They wore aprons, held tools, and chittered in some weird language. Children rode on their parent's tails and rolled around in balls in the street.
 
RE: Avalon

Anna was all prepared and ready to shake the stranger's hand off of her shoulder with a particularly emphatic MM-mn of protest against him even trying to wake her up, but she wasn't really prepared for what his touch was about to do. It felt like something reached right into her brain, lungs, and throat and wadded everything bad up inside of them into a little ball that was summarily yanked right out of her entire center of being.

Which let's be honest, is a weird fucking feeling even when you're not hung over. And thanks to that, she wasn't.

It was like a miracle. The air seemed cleaner, her vision seemed better, the sunlight .. was still annoying against her bleary eyes, but at least she had rolled back over to squint at him with confusion over whatever dream logic had just happened to her. She had about enough time to see the snotty thing pulsing in his hand and know on some level that it had been whatever he'd just managed to root around inside of her and pull out before he'd shoved it away, and she was well and truly ready to wake up.

Stiiiiiill waiting.

While she was waiting, at least she sat up and regarded the man -- Spider -- with something other than pure early-morning hatred. Confusion, bemusement, sure, somewhere in there. The fact that he wasn't going to ask much of her was the best news she'd had all thirty seconds that she'd been awake. "I'll give you awake," she muttered groggily, the worst of her scratchy throat seemingly gone but the two-pack smokiness of her voice still intact. Aware was going to have to wait a little longer, but at least the dude was right: she most definitely was not in her shithole of an apartment anymore. Which wasn't to say this stone hut was that much better, but she didn't have crazy barbarian magician Greensheet to consult right now.

She was probably (definitely) trying to think of something pithy to say when he mentioned the bit about mortal peril.

"Wait, hold on, mortal peril what? Who did I piss off?"

If someone was beating on her door, at least she'd admit it was usually her fault. Shoving her messy hair back over her shoulders (it'd get back to something like normalcy sooner or later, her friends hated how little she actually had to do with all those thick chestnut waves) and ears to try to keep it out of her face, she peered cannily around the interior of the room as though that alone would suss out the ne'er do well in question. Even before she could get that far, he was already telling her "the rest" would attack her?

"That's worrisome," she insisted, flinging her hands out toward him like he needed to be thrown the clue if he was ever going to catch it. He didn't seem to much pay the idea that mortal danger and attacks weren't what she wanted today (or any day for that matter), saying something or other about her belongings being enhanced before .. just walking right through the damn wall. Anna spent a few long seconds gesticulating at the absolute nothing where he had been just a second before, leaving his calling card splattered against the wall like the world's most on-the-nose graffiti tagging. We get it, you're Spider. "Really?" she asked the nothing. "Really?" she repeated, before falling back on the bed with a huff.

She only stayed that way for a few seconds because missing hangover or not, the sheer softness of the downy bed made her sink into it in a way that kinda hurt her back and made the blood rush to her head. Instead, she got up, cautiously poked her way around the sparse interior of the hut, and then took inventory of the stuff in her backpack. Her purse was tucked in there, along with all her cards, her little bit of cash, and her cell phone. Probably didn't even have any bars, but she turned it on anyway. Make-up bag, check. Couple of CDs and the beat up old discman she'd had pretty much since the dawn of the MP3 had rendered it obsolete. A few spare, loose guitar picks, not a lot of use without her damn bass. And one (1) economics textbook that she only left in there because the backpack felt too light whenever she took it out.

All the same crap she'd had in there before. Enhanced wasn't the word she would have used for it.

Slinging it over one shoulder (always only one shoulder, c'mon, it's what all the cool kids did. .. besides, both shoulders made it just look like she was framing her boobs. It's not like she actually needed to try to make people stare at them any more than they already did), she finally picked her way to the door to open it up and take a look at just where the fuck this dream had decided to go and put her.

... giant pangolins.

"I hate you, subconscious," she muttered.
 
RE: Avalon

And then one of them saw her, a cry rising in a foreign language from the creatures. The children were fleeing, now, the adults, especially the wider ones, starting to approach slowly. And not with a pleasant look about them. More emerged from alleys and corners, until she was fully surrounded. The general feeling that was slowly dawning would probably be something like 'wrong neighborhood', only executed by a group of creatures more cute than threatening.

The observant might note a few things: This was almost definitely a mining town, with the large quarry to the north, the prevalence of mining picks, and the large smelter nearby. In fact, the town was surprisingly large, but all the homes for creatures of the pangolin's stature were small hovels like the one she'd emerged from. The rest seemed to be human-sized, and far nicer. The human part of town was walled off, even. The only pangolin building that seemed to be of any sound construction was the massive temple, with a spidery emblem at the top of its central spire, carved into stone.

So it seemed she had two choices - run to the human town and hope that they let her in, or... get through the pangolins to go to where Spider had sent her. After all, there was a chapel there, too, though it seemed dedicated to something military - the emblem being a shining fist. She had to make her decision soon - the creatures were closing in now.
 
RE: Avalon

Pangolins were like .. roly poly pocket dinosaurs that never got hit by a meteor. Anna had had her fair share of (possibly inebriated) squee'ing over animated gifs and videos of the things at 2AM in the past. But standing just outside the stone hut where she had awoken, gazed at by their nightmarish cousins that were only a bit shorter than her by a foot and change and much stockier and broader than she was, she kinda wished she had spent all that time cooing over sloths instead. At least they were slow.

Knowing her scumbag brain though, her dream world probably would have made them super fast.

So, sure, she could have just darted back into the hut with one door, but the jig was up. They'd just come right in and suss out why the confused brunette was trying to stage a one woman invasion of their town, probably with big mining picks and adorably roly poly claws and such. Why were they so much less cute at that size? Was it just because she was getting a distinct Yankee in King Arthur's Court vibe, or because she couldn't actually remember if they were herbivores or not -- or if that even applied. And why couldn't she just wake the fuck up?

There were a bunch of tall buildings behind a wall, but with her luck, she wouldn't actually run into humans so much as .. human sized anteaters or something, so far as she could guess. But there was one building that might have passed for some kind of strange church (likely with a giant spider as the priest, who had totally enslaved that weird dude to do his spidery bidding and lure nubile young women into its web or something equally horrific and pulpy), and that was about the closest thing she could honestly see to following the weird dude's directions. Did she want to follow them was the real question .. but the loping motions of the encroaching not-quite-pangolins spurred her to realizing she should probably just go where the damn dream wanted her to.

"Hey, we cool? We cool," she said with a hand up toward the closing in crowd, turning to one side before she began to (leisurely, but somewhat in a panic, but not trying to be TOO panicked, yanno?) jog her way toward the comparatively massive temple with the corner of her eye always on the nearest group of locals just in case she had to break out into a run.
 
RE: Avalon

Thankfully, they weren't all that fast. Their stumpy legs made them stout, but not speedy, and she would be able to maneuver around them with only a modicum of difficulty. They cried at her in a strange language, sometimes using the same word - Ulaka - as claws passed her and picks struck the stony earth. So many of them!

Speaking-With-Strangers sighed as the doors slammed open. He was taller than his many cousins, and definitely smarter. He'd always had trouble explaining more difficult concept to his fellow kobold, and when the humans came and basically put them to the sword or the mine - their choice - he wisely chose for them. But less and less food came from the other side of the wall, less and less was done about troublemakers, and Strangers was at his wit's end. What more could he do to keep his people from getting violent and simply deconstructing the walls around the human settlement? Tell them it was all going to be okay, again?

So of course Anansi told them that their champion was to be a human. Not only a human, a human from outside Avalon.

And of course he had to be her guide, taking her on a wonderful pilgrimage to the other beast race temples. Anansi told him it'd be fine, really, but Strangers had dealt with his wonderful trickery. God of Labor, more like God Of Making Other People Do Your Hard Work. This definitely wasn't the first time he had to deal with his cockamamie plans. And so he turned around, gesturing with his staff as soon as she was safely inside. Invisible strands of power grasped the door, and with another wave, they shut tight. He was about six feet tall, with scales colored in red and gold. They weren't entirely like pangolins, now that she saw a bigger one. Their mouths were snouted like hounds, their hands ended in knuckley fingers with wide digging claws. Strangers wore an apron, fastened to his arms and legs, that covered his front with an icon of his god.

His scepter was long - longer than he was tall, tipped with a sphere of solid iron that had a spider etched in it.

And then there was the temple. No pews except at the very back, instead there were many round depressions in lines. Presumably the creatures simply curled up there and listened to the sermons. Smooth stone rose up, up, with etchings in the walls. If she'd ever been in a church, she might even notice the etchings were like those numbered works of art, depicting a sequence of events. A crowned being holding a glowing sword raising it, a sphere before him, the same figure with arms wide and five lesser beings arrayed before him. One of them, a spider, the others a raven, a jester, a man, and a jackal. From then on the etchings focused on the spider creating the pangolin-esque creatures.

"Welcome to my temple." the creature stated. His english was a bit accented with something that sounded like Russian. "I am Speaks-With-Strangers, Blessed and Priest of Anansi, also known as Spider. God of Work, Guile, and Magical Artifice. Please, come forth. I shall fetch you something to sit in. I'm sure we haven't smashed the latest human delegate's chair yet." he said, seeming deeply put upon. Not by her, but by essentially everyone else.
 
RE: Avalon

Anna ended up needing to dance and jump way more than she was expecting on her merry way from the hut she'd (not yet) woken up in, because despite their sluggish reaction times, it seemed like there was a new monstrous villager right around every corner popping into her view with a mining pick at the ready. She didn't have the best reaction times in the world, so the fact that they were even clumsier and slower to react than she was proved to be kind of a blessing in disguise as she hopped and stepped around sudden swipes that were still about a foot away from even touching her. "Hey, I'm sorry!" she yelled at the first one to try to say something to her. "Just .. going through here!" She attempted to explain, to no avail.

God, couldn't they just speak English?

.. damn, was she secretly racist? Next thing you know, she'd be complaining about the pangolins taking her job.

Anna ended up pounding through the doors to the temple far faster than she had intended, slamming the steel toe of one boot right into the first step on the way in. In a tumble of curses and gasps, she hit the floor of the temple and did a single roll, ending up on her side facing the priest within. The sound of the doors slamming shut at her back were a relief, but .. Anna still took a few seconds to catch her breath, the unexpected exertion required to get past the slow, cute things having put a bit of a stitch in her side and really making her wish she'd worn a sports bra to bed last night. She didn't exactly run marathons, right?

Closing and opening her eyes in the hopes that she was seeing things wrong, she put her hand against the ground and pushed herself up into a half-sitting position on the ground with a groan. Fuck. It was another one of those things, so even if he WAS a priest, how the hell was she supposed to convince him she had no clue what was going on and to please not hit her over the head with that staff of his? "Woah, hey, sanctuary! Sanctuary?" Did that still work .. wherever she was?

It was becoming clear to even someone as willful as she could be when she didn't want to wake up and face the sunshine that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't about to wake up and face the sunshine. And that was worrying her just as much, if not way more, than the fact that she had just run away from a bunch of monsters only to end up in front of the biggest not-quite-pangolin she'd seen yet. But he didn't seem violent. At least, not yet.

Her eyes darted around, taking in more and more of the temple.

Her dreams were never this detailed. And usually there was a surfer or a firefighter or a drummer if there was. And that's one more reason she hated waking up.

She almost missed the fact that he had spoken in English, she was so busy darting her eyes back and forth between him and the various etchings in the stone on the walls and the strange little divots that passed for seats in the temple, but after a moment, her attention was entirely upon him. Still panting a bit, she put both hands down on the ground and grunted, standing up to the full impressiveness of her .. unimpressiveness. The Priestolin was actually taller than she was, which was an unsettling realization given how his cousins had reacted to her. She swallowed and adjusted the backpack over her shoulder, listening to him rattle off the other names of Spider -- that dude who had woken her up? -- before offering her a seat.

.. actually, now that her heartrate was slowing down and she was listening to him, the priest dude seemed alright in her book. He had the exact same tone of voice she tended to have whenever someone called her before 10AM.

"So should I call you .. Speaks? Or Strangers? .. Withy?" she ventured, not exactly rushing up to 'come forth', but at least edging a little closer toward him with only one quick glance backward to make sure the door wasn't going to open behind her. "Uh, I'm Anna. By the way."

Great, very powerful first impression, five stars.
 
RE: Avalon

"Speaks or Strangers is fine," he said, placing a chair at a table behind the altar. "I shall fetch you some tea. Some... Local flavor." he rolled his shoulders, setting aside his staff to work with the tea. "So you are not of Avalon." he began, "But of another place. Somewhere that only has Humans." he said, "At least, as the only intelligent species. We are known as Kobolds." he said, "A poor first impression of my people, I do apologize, but some context is needed, first." he said, setting a cup before her, rolling his tail under himself rather than fetching another chair. "How to begin..." he rubbed his chin.

"First, then, a history lesson." he took his staff, pointing to the first image on the walls. "Long, long ago, in a time before words were writ, a King of another land was in dismay. His people were doomed. There was no escape, so he asked his wizard for a solution. His wizard gave him this - Create a new world, and move the souls of his kingdom there. And so the Creator made Avalon, the Land of Rest." he said. "But the Creator, sadly, was not immortal." he pointed at the next image. "He created beings to watch the world for him, to administrate it in his absence. We call these the First Of Many." he said, "Anansi. Raven. Coyote. Clown. Law. And these were charged with giving vessels for the many, many souls. Each approached it differently. Our god, Anansi, or Spider, created a people of industry, reliability, strength, and fortitude. Our powerful arms and shoulders can carry heavy burdens, our scales are capable of turning many blows. And each god and goddess in turn did the same, shaping their own race. More gods rose in the days after, building their own races, on other continents in the Land of Rest."

He leaned back, taking a long drink, looking into the cup. He found himself uncertain. Could a human - a totally foriegn one, at that - understand what was going on? "Humans... Are blessed with intellect beyond the others." he said. "Except for the Blessed like myself, they are... slower." he sighed, "This has lead to humanity gaining a somewhat inflated opinion of itself. Of... entitlement. This town is just one of dozens like it, where humans found some tribe of beastfolk and... exploited them. Or worse. Slavery is not rare." he said quietly. "They have steel and gunpowder. We have iron and... and our resolve. War is out of the question. I petitioned Spider for help. So did many other races. Their gods have sent chosen, from another land - your earth - to help us. Only Spider can send you back. And only when your mission is complete will he. My job is to guide you. First to a meeting of another chosen. Then, to other places, dictated by Spider."

"Do you understand?"
 
RE: Avalon

She peered cock-eyed at the chair that Speaks had pulled up near the altar for a good thirty seconds probably, making sure it wasn't going to curl up like a pangolin tail or wasn't going to snap like a bear trap or any other kind of weirdly ludicrous thing before she finally seemed ready to decide that it was, in fact, just a chair. She still didn't make her way toward it with any kind of haste, but eventually lowered herself into it with her skeptical gaze firmly in place on the "Kobold" priest. She'd heard that word before, somewhere or another. Josh was probably the one who'd put it anywhere near her lexicon, the fuckin' geek, but she didn't know what it meant other than apparently being Pangolin-People.

"Mortal danger's not really a positive for any kind of impression," Anna muttered as she steam of the tea hit the underside of her nose and she inhaled. Something about hot tea (or coffee (or sake)) always immediately managed to calm her nerves, even before she had tried to take a sip of it. Which she did, a little too quickly, and nearly burned her beestung lips in the process, quickly bringing it back away from them with a nervous cough and shift of her eyes. He was going to think she was an idiot who didn't know what "hot" was, great.

Luckily, he was looking at the walls.

Nursing the cup in her hands, she did her best to keep up. It sounded fucked up, to be honest. A bunch of mumbo jumbo, a mish mash of the creation myth (not exactly high praise from an agnostic, there) and some Lord of the Rings crap. God, she hated that kind of crap. Probably thanks to Josh practically building his life around the stuff, when he wasn't learning to make up for all his geekery by actually being a pretty fucking rad lead guitar. It made after-gig conversations such a drag when she could barely even understand what he and Beth were going on about in their own little nerd world. Thanks to Beth, some of the names he rattled off also sounded vaguely familiar, but .. where from? Fuck if Anna really knew. Maybe every culture had its own myths and stories, and they all intersected in fascinating parallel ways, but if someone was capable of deconstructing that and making a cogent point on the matter, Anna Williams was most definitely not she.

She was more into finally sipping the tea when it had cooled enough and nodding occasionally to pretend like she was getting it all. She got the jist, I mean, supposedly some gods made a bunch of different people, Humans were pretty fuckin' smart, and like all the humans she had ever known, were also complete and total assholes.

"Entitled humans, you say? This is a strange and mysterious world indeed."

Anna didn't stop to think for a moment about whether or not his put upon nature, clear distaste for mornings and pains in his ass, would also translate to an appreciation for rancorous sarcasm. But even saying those words was forcing her to make the further acknowledgement that she wasn't waking up. The tea was too real. This was too detailed. He was too real.

She really was somewhere else, wasn't she?

.. he confirmed it, at least in dream logic. She was Chosen. Not the only one, but definitely one.

Which meant their gods were just as fallible and fucked up as all the Earthly ones, apparently. She was trying not to laugh at the Kobold's misfortune, she really was, and the fact that she might have really, genuinely been in a fucked up nerdland and the fear of that reality causing her hands to shake around the cup she was clutching between both of them was the only thing that balanced out her conflicting emotions.

"Yeah, I get it. I get it, Speaks. But let me tell you, holy crap, if I'm supposed to save you guys or something, and I have to do that to get home, then not a single one of us is gonna be happy with this whole arrangement because I am not the person you want in your corner for all that. So you should probably tell that Spider guy that he should tag me out while he's got the chance."

.. it was worth a shot, right? Maybe she'd get to feel good about waking up in her own bed before noon for once if it followed all of this.
 
RE: Avalon

The kobold sighed.

"Would that I could." he said, "I would adventure myself in your place. But the mandate is made, and I am to follow no matter the inanity." he took a deep breath. "This is not, exactly, an adventure that requires great strength, mind you. Cunning, maybe. Charisma, perhaps. But we are not exactly fighting dragons, here, or exploring ancient tombs. While there will be danger, I can handle that for you. And I have not mentioned the reward, nor the advance payment."

He walked to the altar, sliding it open, reaching inside to retrieve something. A top hat, like they might use in a stage show, or at a costume party. The brim was a little wider than most should be. "This is an artifact of great power." he said, "And if you take on the quest, it will be yours to keep. Anansi has told me it will even work elsewhere." he placed it, upside down, on the table. Inside, even lit by the torches, was total blackness. The kobold took a single gold coin, and dropped it inside, where it fell past where the top of the hat would be, to rest within arm's reach, seemingly floating in a void that didn't have an end.

"It has no limits as to what it can hold, and does not increase in mass as you store items within. Reversing the hat, that is, turning it inside out, will forcefully expel everything inside. Maybe you ask why I trust you with this. The truth is..."

He sighed. "The truth is, this is the last effort the gods can manage. If this fails, or falters... The humans will likely simply take over the whole continent, enslave us, and our gods will die from lack of worship. Thus the reward is equally grand as the importance: Two wishes. No trickery."
 
RE: Avalon

Anna pursed her lips. Some might have even called it a 'pout', but she wasn't being petulant about it as she watched the odd, increasingly less scary kobold man sigh once again and amble his way over to the altar. Her eyes didn't exactly sparkle and light up at the idea of payment for a "quest" she didn't even want to go on, one she barely even believed in at this point, but he was speaking her language with the idea that she wouldn't need strength and that, well, duh. She had charisma out the fuckin' ears.

Some would argue that's not where all her charisma was, but they weren't here, now were they? Assholes.

"Look, I'm not really looking to get paid or anything," she decided with a sigh, watching as he pulled out .. a top hat. A top hat was supposed to be her advance payment for an admittedly dangerous journey into a world of, apparently, beast people, fickle gods, and smarter-than-you humans who wanted to take over the world (like pretty much any humans, like she'd thought)? Her demurral was sidetracked by just how weird it was that he was putting a top hat down on the table in front of her. "You better not be pulling out fishnets and tails to go with that thing," she huffed half under her breath. She definitely wasn't about to start parading about like some kind of crazy magician or lovely assistant, especially not if it meant going without boots that were actually pretty good for a hike (thank Spider for hitting her at that particularly high bout of laziness, she guessed).

She watched the coin, but it took a second before she actually stood up from the little table and peered down inside to see the coin hovering in there. She looked at it, then at Speaks, her incredulity clear. At least an expressive face was good for making it clear when she was actually impressed, and somehow, flying money managed that more than angry, big, animal people had. At least while she had still been assuming this was all a dream. "Wait, it's really doing that?" She paused for a beat. "Can I just like .. pull it out? If I put that thing on, does it fall out? Does it eat my head?" she asked in an increasingly quick pace, her curiosity at what looked like honest to god magic (like walking through a wall wasn't? .. again, dream logic seemed to have trumped wonder up until she really figured this wasn't the fever dream she thought it was) causing her to dart her eyes between the hat and Speaks like a cat following a mouse.

She swung her backpack up onto the table with a resoundingly heavy thunk. "Can I just .. throw all this crap in there?" she asked. "Because if we've got a long way to go, I really don't want to start by throwing out my back. ... if I decide to help," she added, remembering she was supposed to be all aloof and pissed about this whole thing.

But then Speaks had to go and drop two bombshells. The death of the gods, the subjugation of their people? That sucked. Two wishes?

.. that wasn't real, right?

".. wish wishes? Like, anything I want in the universe wishes?"

Forgive her for sounding skeptical about that, even as she was about to shove an entire make-up bag into a top hat and see if it hovered in the black void inside.
 
RE: Avalon

"First of all." he said, picking up his staff, which he layed across the brim, "It must fit within the brim of the hat to enter or exit it. Things within will remain inside unless expelled or retrieved." he said, retrieving the coin and instead dropping in various things - a purse of coins, a small dagger, waterskins, things like that. "Secondly, wishes like this are rather rare, but yes. Certainly you have heard of genies and their sort of wishes. These are a different sort. Should we succeed, the gods in question should be able to read your mind and understand your intent and spirit of your wishes. You'll get exactly what you desire. Not some twisted mockery of your ambition."

He turned the hat over, shaking it a little. Nothing fell out. "Alright." he said, sliding the hat over. "Just think of the item you want to pull out and it'll come to your hand." he said, "You can, of course, wear it safely." he rose, stretching. "We will not be alone, either. We have one other member to our party. A chosen who arrived before you. Frederick!" he called, and a door opened, a young man walking out.

Dressed in iron armor, he still cut an impressive figure. Tall, wide, he might remind her of a football player in gear. A long sword was sheathed on his back, a smaller one on his hip, and a shield rested over the larger sword. His helmet was in the crook of one arm, and his face... Might remind her or a military man with some experience. A scar ran from his forehead to his jaw, crossing over one eye, but hadn't hit the eye itself. Surprisingly young-looking, however, aside from that.

"He arrived roughly a year ago."

"Uhm." he managed, "Hi." he waved lamely. "Just got here, huh?"
 
Unable to quite shove her entire make-up bag into the top of the hat, she leaned back and simply watched as the odd priest began to plunk more items inside. She unzipped the bag and ended up doing the same once he had passed it back over to her, dropping them in one at a time with an almost dramatically pregnant pause as though each one had the potential to fail THIS time while it had worked every other time before. Like a kid with a new toy, she seemed almost disappointed once she ran out of things to drop down inside of it, ending with her cell phone plunking down among the daggers and lipsticks from within. And all the while, he was explaining to her about the whole .. wishes thing. Could she wish for more wishes? Could she even decide what she wanted with that much pressure? Holy crap, she didn't have any idea. "Look, pardon me if I admit that my little human brain is kinda not sure if I'm ready to deal with all this right now," she ended up saying with a slight sigh, biting her lower lip with concentration as she thought CELL PHONE! and plunged her hand too-far into the hat and felt the familiar shiny surface hit her palm.

She hadn't looked so delighted all day as when she pulled it out of the hat. Grinning almost ear to ear, she wiggled it at Speaks to make sure he saw it. Apparently she couldn't be dour and put upon twenty-four seven, not when you could distract her with shiny magic tricks! "Okay, so like, this is cool and all, but .." she figured it was well and good time to suss out whether or not she was actually going to go through with this. Magic hat? Wishes? It really was all too much. Tilting the hat upside down and shaking it a few times, she then peered inside again before upending it and putting it on top of her head. It actually fit surprisingly well, even if she felt silly putting it on. "I'm not super sure --"

She glanced down, feeling immediately even sillier for being in a top hat when the massive slab of man came ambling out into the temple. He looked like a man in uniform, which .. well, yeah, hello, but it was an altogether different sort of uniform. Let's be honest. Even with the whole Dungeons and Dragons look he had going on, he was pretty damn easy on the eyes, and Anna wasn't entirely ready to deal with that any more than she was anything else this morning without the benefit of alcohol or distracting magic tricks. She swept the hat off the top of her head almost too quickly, fiddling with it in front of her instead with a few quick spins that sent it spiraling between her palms by the brim. Still, nothing fell out.

"Er .. yep, fresh meat." She blinked, then looked at Speaks. "Wait, hold up, so he's 'Chosen' too? You're from Earth? Or .. like, just say Earth, okay? Not ready for there to be even more shit I didn't know about right this second, actually," she decided with a deflating sense of overwhelming cosmic overbearingness at the idea that she might have had no actual clue just how big the universe really was. She had to ground herself and focus on the here and now. With stuff like .. sexy scars. For example.
 
"Arkansas." he said with a chuckle. "Was working at a gas station, walked into the cooler, came out here." he said, "Well, rather, in the bathing hall of the chapel of Raven, but... Same difference." he said, setting his helmet on the table. "When are we leaving, Speaks?"

"Shortly." he said, "As soon as the young lady actually agrees to the quest."

"Ah." Freddy stretched, clinking and clanking a little. "Nice to meet you in any case." he said, leaning back. "Nice to know I'll be traveling with a semi-normal person now."

"What, Sister Alabaster too much for you?" Speaks said, with a laugh as he loaded a small cart with supplies. "She took a rather shine to you."

"A man's will is willing, but the body is weak." he said, a little pale, "And she didn't seem to understand that after the fourth night in a row." he groaned.

Speaks cackled, "Well, it's one way to be introduced to their faith." he said, "Blissed out in a hot spring." he finished loading the cart, parking it nearby. "Anyway, Anna. Make your decision. Turn away the quest, and I'll just send you off into the human side of the encampment. Perhaps you can make a living as a bard, I'm sure at least one of them is looking for an apprentice." he said.
 
Arkansas, huh? Anna couldn't help but feel I'm a little bit country .. begin to plink through her brainspace. Good ol' boy, strappin' country strong. She could get down with the cowboy thing, definitely. Granted, the brunette's way of making eyes at new men in her life tended to look quite a lot like a cautious glare while she sized them up, so it wasn't as though she was all visibly agog over the tall drink of water from Arkansas, but still, the thought of some strapping young lad, the only other guy in the whole wide crazy fucked up fantasyland who could understand her, questing together around campfires and shit ..

Yeah, she could get on top of that.

She perked up and tucked the hat back onto her head, feeling no less silly about it, but figuring she could be all smiley and make it the I'm A Cute Wacky Female Lead kind of silly. If Zooey Deschanel could pull that shit off, what the hell did she have that Anna didn't, right? "Yeah, totally good to meet you, Arkansas," she agreed. Her backpack felt significantly lighter now with a bunch of her stuff in the hat, which was awesome, because the hat itself weighed nothing. But while she was lifting it up and feeling a bit perkier about the whole thing in general, Speaks and Country made small talk.

The record scratch needle was probably only in her own head.

Body is weak? Sister Alabaster? .. chapel of Raven?

Holy shit Arkansas, don't live up to every stereotype in the world by fucking the first animal you see.

Her "what the fuck is wrong with you" face, luckily, wasn't too far off from her "checking you out" face, so her side-eye wasn't quite as sudden and sullen as it might have otherwise seemed. The yes-train to yeehaw-ville had just crashed into what the hell is this station, and while she wasn't going to try and be all judgy in case she was leaping to conclusions, she put it back in her pants for the time being anyhow.

"Uh, yeah, I'm not super cool with the idea of plucking a lute and singing about dragons and shit, so I guess a-questing we will go and all that."

She tried to stay on point, but she couldn't help her scumbag brain's morbid curiosity.

".. so uh, what kind of people worship the Raven?"

Don't say sheep. Don't say sheep. Don't say sheep.
 
"They're acalled Seeren." he said, "Like... Big, slender mice." he said, "More humanoid than kobolds."

"Prettier, you mean."

He groaned. "Look, they're tall, slender, furred humanoids with long tails." he said, "With a predilection towards discipline and organization. Most are either religious or militant, and their cities are sort of like military bases crossed with chapel cities." he said, rising and picking up a bag that he slung over his shoulder. When they emerged back into the street, the atmosphere was different. Kobolds stayed out of the way, were even slightly reverent. As they left the city, she would find that the surrounding landscape was almost aggressively green. Rolling plains stretched for miles, to the south a massive white tower tipped with gold was faintly visible.

"These are the Grand Hills." Speaks stated, "We're heading towards a forest." he said, "Where we will meet with a third Chosen."

Time passed as they walked. Finally...
"So, uh..." Freddy said, "I imagine you're pretty lost, here."
 
Mice. Mice.

Frederick ended up being full of all kinds of information about the 'Seeren', bringing the total so far up to one race of OCD rat people and one race of roly poly lynch mob pangolins. But at much as he seemed happy to explain about how their community worked, how they built their cities, how they were devout or otherwise, it was a little hard for Anna to focus on all that when the first thing that had come up about the meeses was that he'd gone and stuck his dick in one. At least one! Look, she tried not to be too judgy. It was just weird, that's all. It's not like she had exactly asked Speaks with Strangers if they oughtta go and back the beast with two shellplates or something the minute she'd ended up all panting and breathless and winsome on the other side of his temple door.

I mean, she liked Speaks pretty well already, but ew. Could not reconcile. Did not compute.

If anything could get Anna out of her brief funk of contemplation, staring, and attempts not to shudder at the thought of Arkansas going native in ways she couldn't actually fathom, it turned out to be the view just outside the city once she was done nervously side-eyeing the kobolds who had been all too happy to fling mining picks her way just a little while ago. Glancing back over her shoulder to the comparatively quaint, squat hovels of the kobolds or even the more advanced (dictatorially speaking) human settlement behind their wall was like seeing three different worlds all nudged up against one another compared to the vibrant green that stretched ahead of them.

Look, there was green from where Anna was from. Plenty of corn to grow and cows to farm and all that. But that didn't mean she spent much time outside of Indy actually appreciating the stuff. And definitely not the clean, open aired scent that came in on the breeze.

Her quiet must have been sticking out like a sore thumb, not only just nodding slightly to Speaks assertion that they'd meet another person from Earth (maybe this one wouldn't have had bad notions planted at childhood by Chuck E Cheese, even), but the way she'd been cagily watching both them and her surroundings since leaving the temple. Partially, yeah, it was just confusion. But she was coming to grips with the idea that this really, truly was another place entirely. It was all the little bits that were tripping her up.

"Yeah, lost, that's a good word for it. I mean, literally too. I don't have a map or anything. But I wasn't really ready to wake up to a .. quest or something. Much less be expected to do group work."

Sure, she was in a band. But she hardly considered that the same thing as finding out she'd need to be working in tandem with other strangers for the fate of multiple races, which she thought was a fair enough take on things.
 
"That's how I was, too. After the first week or so, though, I started to get used to it. Work with some of the fighters. About half of this armor..." he turned in it, "I helped make, somehow. I'm no blacksmith, but... It's more mine than anything I have, really." he sighed. "Look, I hope you didn't get the wrong impression of me. Speaks likes to make fun of how I got here,"

"Hah!"

"...But I honest to god thought I was having a dream." he went on, soldiering on past Speak's cackling laughter, "once I understood that, I had to explain... some things to the Sisters." he hung his head. "So, uh..."

"Relax, Frederick." Speaks said amiably. "Everyone makes mistakes, after all." he looked around as they could hear a brook. "Ah, I hadn't noticed..." Night was starting to fall. "Raven spreads her cloak of stars. We must camp shortly." he nodded, looking around for a likely place, as Freddy withdrew a monocle, and fiddled with it.
 
"Don't get me wrong, it's really cool that you're .. making stuff here and all," Anna said with a genuine appreciation for the fact that if he had actually made a bunch of that armor himself, it was an accomplishment that she hadn't been expecting him to brag about. Hewing metal into something that you could bend and shape as you wished was the kind of bad-ass manly man sort of thing that a big boy from the South like him had probably just been born in the wrong era for, wasting his talents away in the modern world. But it drove home a more salient point. "But you've been here something like a year, right? And you're still kicking around here?"

That more salient point being that she might have grudgingly accepted the idea of magic hats, granted wishes, and animal people from another planet, but that didn't mean she was ready to grudgingly accept spending the entirety of her early twenties trying to figure out how to bring salvation to a bunch of kooks. I mean, sure, presumably she could just wish to go back to where she had started -- hell, she could wish to be eternally young and beautiful and also fucking rich as hell, if it came to it -- once this was all said and done, and a year was probably a drop in the bucket when you thought things out that way.

But the potential of wishes possibly being real, just because magic hats were, didn't make it a lot easier in the short term to consider actually going through with everything.

"Don't worry, I'm not gonna laugh at you for sticking it to the locals or nothing. We've all had super weird sex dreams. I mean, not me, obv, but we meaning you." She was being intentionally obtuse in the face of his embarrassment, sure, but she tossed him a real smirk to go along with it. "Then again, my type's not really "roly polies lookin' to pick axe me", so my situation was probably different than yours anyhow."

Frederick's type, apparently, was tall and slender.

Nah, nothin' that annoyed the short and boobsy one standin' over here, definitely not. Christ, Anna, you'd just been squicked out by him being Arkansas enough to go at the first animal-thing-person he saw in this weird sitch, not really the time or place to have body image issues. She hated her brain quite a bit sometimes. And while she wasn't especially concerned about the encroaching night (let Speaks worry about whatever they had to worry about regarding his world, because it's not like she was going to be any help there herself), she was still ready to quickly distract herself away from the annoyed path her thoughts were going down.

"Is that your magic thingie they bribed you with?" she asked of the monocle, reaching up to flick the brim of her hat a little bit. "I think we're one cane and a big shell away from reassembling Mr. Peanut to save the planet, at this rate."
 
"Yeah." he said. "Lets me see at night." he said, putting it in place. "And it doesn't fall out. Handy." he grinned at her goofily with the monocle in, then shrugged. "I've noticed that, I think these items are related to one person." he said, as they set up camp. Three tents, a campfire, a sound of sizzling meat. Why did it seem like there was more to it than that? Well, let's be honest here: Because there was more to it.

The monocle allowed him to see things 'meant to be hidden'. So if someone was hiding something, he'd be able to see it. Such as, say, themselves, in bushes and behind rocks, which was why he put it on. This site was safe, he determined, and before he forgot about the full scope of its capability, his gaze fell over Anna, who was probably hiding herself. In her clothes.
 
"That's actually pretty cool," Anna admitted. The whole "magical objects" thing was probably the best part of this crazy day so far as she was concerned, because the whimsy and wonder of entire new races and species tended to be dulled somewhat when the first thing they did was try to put a pick-axe through your head. "I mean, it only works half the time, so mine's clearly way cooler, but them's the breaks," she reasoned out, flashing Freddy a grin.

She did what she could to help with pitching the tents, but when it came to helping with the fire and cooking over it, Anna was admittedly not exactly the best team player to have come up from the bench. Still, she was at least happy to take directions wherever necessary. She might've been too-cool-for-school a lot of the time, but it seemed like one way or another, she was going to have to be getting along with these people for a while, so no reason not to get started.

Something Frederick had said vaguely tickled at something, like a memory she couldn't quite remember or a thought that didn't want to be fully formed. If their magical bribes were connected to one person, who had that person been? Anna didn't focus on it too much, because even if she could figure that out, it's not like she would've known anything about the guy.

Anna ended up sitting cross-legged in front of the fire while the meat cooked, realizing quickly once night fell that the warmth of the crackling fire was probably more than just a nice light to see by once things began to get cool. She tucked her backpack between her legs and then turned her hat upside down on top of it, reaching into it and thinking briefly about her cell phone. It popped right into her hand. "I wish you guys had cell towers here," she muttered as she thumbed the power on.

It was probably a waste of the battery to turn it on and play some tunes, but frankly, she couldn't just sit in front of a fire and talk for the rest of the night without a distraction. What was she, a social butterfly?

Granted, she would have had plenty to talk about if she'd realized Arkansas hadn't given her the full 411 on his own mystical doohickey. If she had anything to be thankful for, it was that between the textbook hiding in her bag and the void hiding in her hat that she had propped up in front of her, he wasn't getting the full monty. It must have been kind of weird, seeing the normal world through one eye and the hidden world through the other, causing shifting or overlapping images if you didn't squint to just peer through the monocle .. but in the bright light of the campfire and her interest in her phone, even if he looked at her with one eye, she didn't really pay attention right then and there.

Anna's clothes might not have been the most form fitting, well tailored things in the world, but they gave at least a hint of how she probably looked under them. It was different than actually seeing, though. Her skin was as pale as it seemed from the outside (that whole disliking the sun thing), dotted with only a few freckles here and there, mostly near the shoulders. And seeing the effects of a bra without actually seeing the thing was an interesting experiment in the defiance of gravity .. one that was probably fairly unique, because if Anna had one (two) thing(s) that could be classified as both blessing and curse, it was definitely her rack. There were anime girls who had a more appropriate body-to-boob ratio than she did, and while that was cool when it got her free drinks, it was a pain when they got in the way, made her back ache, and generally just existed all up in her business.

But hey, they looked absolutely incredible, even partially obscured behind a creeper-blocking top hat who's internal void couldn't quite manage to be seen through, just like the textbook inside her backpack that did a great fig leaf impression for the unwary Eve.
 
...And that was when she might notice her cell phone had changed a little. First of all, and most important, it was brighter than before. Secondly, the battery symbol's percentage? Replaced with an infinity symbol that flashed with a small spider logo on and off. Infinite battery, powered by divinity? That, and when she opened her contact list, she'd notice that it was now seperated into two lists: Avalon and Earth. She couldn't contact the latter, but the former had five contacts. Spider, Coyote, Raven, Clown, and Law. The latter two were only available via texting. Magical, infinite-power, god-contacting smartphone.

What.

Speaks looked over the fire and settled in as Freddy flushed and pulled out the monocle, cursing softly. Apparently he hadn't forgotten to divulge that aspect of it, either he had forgotten entirely or simply hadn't put any thought into it.

"I think, it is time for a story." he said softly. "This one is about Feasting Glory Of Gold, the dragon of old." he said, looking to the sky. "Dragons are as old as the bones of the world, this and any other." he started, "But among them all, there was none older than Feasting Glory of Gold." as he spoke, Freddy removed his gauntlets, and unbuckled his armor, stripping it off from the waist up. He wore under it a simple linen shirt with short sleeves, which showed off well the effects of living in a militant society for a year or maybe more. "His bones were made of iron, and his flesh was strong as silver. His eyes and scales were gold in hue, and his teeth were huge and shining. He ate of all things, feasting far and wide - tree and stone, man and beast. A scourge for years untold. But then one year, a hero rose - Noble Knight Artorian, whose courage knew no bounds.

"The king had made a deal with Feasting - his own weight in gold each year. He fasted constantly, the tricksy king, so as to deprive the dragon of its due. But the dragon caught on in little time, and stole away a princess fair. And so Noble Knight Artorian was called upon, to slay the dragon, and rescue maiden fair. But this was no lizard in the night, no goblin with a sword and might, this was a dragon, of wing and scale, a dragon of greatness. And so the Noble Knight quested for allies, and found them in spades. But we shall not delve upon them, for, in fact, the young knight's quest would fail.

"His party was molten by the dragons breath, statues of gold that issued from its maw. The dragon leaned close to Artorian, and laughed mightily. 'I am the victor, mighty knight, for I have slain you, to the man!' it said. 'You have even lost your mighty lance,' and then it laughed. For the Knight's magic lance was said to pierce anything, with enough speed. Stone or steel, flesh or bone, it clove as well as water. 'Without it, you may as well come before me without armor, so I may eat you all the faster.'

"Little did the dragon know, that Artorian had crept to the castle that the dragon had taken in the night, alone. He met with the maiden fair that night, and while he took from her her maidenhead, he left her his magic lance. And she was in the tallest tower, with the biggest window, so she could see the lands she would never walk. 'It is not my place to slay you,' Artorian said, a smile on his lips, 'for you have done me no grief. It is not the kingdom's place either, for your terrific prescence stops invaders cold. Indeed, I can think of only one who has right to call grievances upon you, noble dragon: The princess herself.'

"And that is when the princess leapt, from her window, lance in hand. Her whole body curled around it, a bolt of vengeance in the dark, slamming into the shining beast's back, rending spine in twain. Heart and chest were struck quite true, and the beast roared, and spat, and died. And so the princess, and the knight, traded garments again, the lady knight and princess laughing and joking with one another as the left for home."

Story done, the kobold yawned and curled into a ball, slumbering peacefully.

"I'll take first watch." Frederick said quietly, looking into the night. "Get some sleep, okay?"
 
".. that's fucking weird," Anna muttered as she scrolled through her contacts, heedless of any awkward staring and fumbling on Arkansas' part or Speaks serving out their rations for the night. She poked through her available contact lists, tried to see if the internet actually worked out here, and then ended up doing what she'd intended in the first place before getting distracted by the "enhancements" the wall-walking dude had bestowed upon her phone.

She queued up the music app, hit play to give some quiet mood tunes for the little ensemble they had put together here, and then went back to the list of apparent gods she now had at her fingertips.

Well, fuck if she was just going to ignore something like that.

Group MMS, go!

( hey uh this is anna the chosen if you guys wanna help me save you and shit some miracles would be pretty cool just let me know, i miss my bed, okay peace >

While she was tapping that out and wondering if she was going to get smitten down for not showing proper reverence or something like that (which if so, fuck that! I mean, she was doing her best to keep a level head on her shoulders here and was here to save THEM, right? They should be glad as hell she was going to be proactive about it), Speaks had begun telling a story. She turned off her phone screen, the music continuing to play quietly as she ate some of the campfire cookin'. Not too bad, really. Not a McNugget or anything (yeah yeah, she'd heard all the lectures, screw it, she loved McDonald's), but pretty good.

And the story was .. well, she didn't know quite what to make of it, to be quite honest. Was it just a story? Was it supposed to be allegorical? It seemed as though she wasn't even really sure if the dragon was actually all that bad of a guy, since she didn't know what he had been up to before the King had tried to screw him out of all of his gold.

Maybe Anna was the right person to be a Chosen around Avalon, since she always seemed to sympathize with the poor animals over the people. Even the poor animals with big horrible teeth and glistening scales and all that nightmare stuff.

Regardless, she wasn't sure ANYONE in the story was in the right by the end of it, but hey, the attractive and heroic humans probably got to go boink like bunnies at the end (again) when they'd only met during the course of the story, so it wasn't that far removed from your average Hollywood blockbuster in that way. Just, you know, told by a pangolin dude instead of by IMAX.

Occasionally, admittedly, she took a glance over at Freddy. Dude was built like a brick house, there was no shame in taking a peek (she thought, given she had no clue of his own fumbling with that very thought process). Had he been ripped like that before he'd showed up here, or was a year of this going to turn her into some kind of body builder too? .. nah. If he was around, he could do all the heavy lifting. She'd be like .. the cool moral support gal, who saved the day at the last minute when nobody expected greatness out of her.

"Yeah, sounds good. Uh, just one question," Anna said once the story had ended and Frederick offered to take first watch. Flinging her backpack and setting the tophat inside of her tent, she looked between her two companions. "If he sleeps like that, what's the third tent for?" she asked before heading into her own.

They said they were going to meet someone else out here .. but they must've been pretty optimistic about those odds, then, as far as she could tell.
 
Of course, even her sleep was not safe from weirdness. A normal dream simply froze, and she found herself in a large room, a youngish (maybe 20?) looking young man standing nearby.

"Anna the Chosen, eh?" asked the interloper, looking... odd. He wore a mask split in half, one side white, the other black. "I figured this would be as good an opportunity as any to introduce myself." he bowed deeply. "I am Clown, master of Chaos, Dreams, and Love." he said, "And you asked for a miracle."

He danced around her, thoughtful. "You are new to this realm. You need a little more time before we will consider it." he said, "Learn more, seek more. I can only give you a single gift, and it shall be hopelessly mundane!" he said with a laugh. Just once. I will save you. If you would die, you would instead live, so long as random chance can cause it to work out that way. Entropically speaking, something may have to give."

He leaned closer, grinning wider.
"Let me just say, I hope you learn quickly the value of modesty."
 
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