#cloudmarsh

Yeah, the border misalignment is an error. The pattern was, admittedly, put together in a bit of a rush.

Maybe… D'ni explorers, but witchy?

The cavern was a liminal space, according to Fran. It had potential to be something great, a new undertaking, but things had fallen apart time and again when it came to investigating the place. Funding and bureaucracy had hounded every step of the process. Among other threats, of course.

People had to leave at various points, when the cavern had closed, but there were always those who found their way back or tried to recreate that sense of scale and wonder in one way or another. Fran had been one of those, sinking herself into her paintings, trying to figure out the best way to deal with being ousted from a place she’d come to see as a second home. 

Firefly Nest Hood wasn’t often visited by people outside of the group who’d made it their chosen home years ago when the DRC had opened the cavern for exploration. It had been a closed group at the time, founded by Wren  Davis and their brother, Shaan. 

They tended to follow the rules of not messing the place up, but they did have certain things of their own that weren’t exactly DRC-sanctioned. Odd crystals and simply pretty rocks lined the ledges that were unoccupied, a small banner with some kind of symbols along the edges hung by the linking book pedestals.

Wren would tell laughing stories about a time that so immersed one of the DRC interns was in their current surroundings, that they had though that the runes were some kind of undiscovered writing,

The weekly story circles were when you would see the most people, gathering around a fire pit in the Hood to tell of what they’d seen since they’d last been with the others. Swirls of light seemed to dance between Fran’s fingers as she juggled firemarbles. Blue and green and white flickered through the air as she listened to the others talking.

Gabby was working on translating some notes they’d found in the buildings off of the Hood, having nicked some translation guide from somewhere. They didn’t ask where. She’s been getting friendly with one of the DRC interns a while back, working something strong into her appearance to get what she needed. 

The Cavern was full of stories, and stories were life to some. After all, weren’t the existence of actual, real linking books proof that words had power? that if one were to Name something so exactly and in so much detail, you would have a piece of it that you could grasp?

Firefly Nest was a sort of middle-path community, feeling disconnected from both the DRC and the lofty machinations of Yeesha. They just wanted to be and to learn and to see. sure, they got dragged along by the whims of what was happening at times, but there were some to balked at both the bureaucracy and the manipulation that they felt in either.

“Life would be so much simpler if people would just communicate.” A number of the people raised their glasses in a amused toast to that sentiment. But in the end, they would find a home, find a family, find a path, and learn.