#flowerofiris

Nino has been dropped and is now available!

@flowerofiris

This was an unfamiliar feeling.  Hilda stood at the entrance to Fhirdiad Castle in full armor, Freikugel somehow now clutched tightly in both hands, and she was ready.  She was ready and eager to charge in there and start cleaving through whatever was waiting for them inside.  That eagerness was more unsettling to her than the eerie, pulsing glow coming from her relic.  Hilda didn’t fight unless she had to and she certainly never wanted to.  Everything was different now.  They took her friend and she was going to get him back.  There was no way she was going to leave Linhardt in there.

It still baffles the mind, how they had all been in Garreg Mach just the previous day only to wake up in a completely different place with no clue as to where exactly. Not only that, but why these specific individuals? What of everyone else? How are they supposed to find their way back? So many questions to ask, yet no answers to accompany them save a tenuous connection to that strange dream he’d had.

The emblem of Mercy has been inscribed on your heart.

But he’s already discussed that with Tethys, so Lloyd puts it out of his mind and goes to check on Nino. One less thing to worry about, he thinks—this way, he can keep an eye on her while they figure out what’s going on, and protect her should they encounter danger along the way. Even if he doesn’t have the right to be her brother.

“Nino,” he calls out when there’s only a few feet of distance between him and his little sister. “Are you feeling alright?”

There’s only so much walking he can do in this heat. Part of him knows, on some level, it isn’t actually as hot as Ailell here. It can’t be, if other people are managing just fine. On the other hand, he’s not made for heat of any kind at all. Even in just a pair of shorts, he feels like he might melt out of his skin.

His shoulders might also be a little bit burned. He’s kind of scared to check. But it doesn’t really hurt, so it can’t be that bad.

The palm tree up ahead calls to him with the promise of shade, and he picks up the pace from slow meandering to something almost like a jog. But as he draws closer, he picks up a sound amongst the cheering and laughing of other people enjoying the surf. Something that sounds like...

Help!

Like it’s coming from the... Tree? Wide, perplexed eyes glance upwards, and he doesn’t see anything, not at first. But then there’s movement, the hint of a hand within all the green and... Nino!

Well... This takes him back.

“You alright up there, sweetheart?” Sylvain calls to her, this time with the beginnings of a smile. There’s no pack of murderous bandits trying to cut down here hiding place here, just far too bright sunlight, and pristine sand as far as the eye can see. “Don’t worry, I’ll catch you.”

Reporting to Lady Edelgard | not accepting

“You seem quite fond of Nino, Lady Edelgard.” Hubert discards his report on the desk and leans against the dressers that line the wall below the windows, observing the changes in Edelgard’s expression as she sifts through his papers on her bed. After a moment, he crosses his arms and turns his head to look out the window at the remnants of the sunset fading behind the rooftops.

“I didn’t quite understand at first why you had ordered me to watch over her. She behaves as one rather stunted in her development, and I must admit that I frequently forget how old she is, but I found it unlikely that you would wish for her protection solely for that reason…” His words trail away as if there is something more he wants to add, but instead he falls silent, watching the clouds rolling slowly out into the distance. Some time passes before he poses his next observation, the quiet gentleness in his voice rare even for his conversations with Edelgard:

“She would be Irina’s age… wouldn’t she?” He steals a sidelong glance, but the thoughts that find their way to his tongue stop there. The difficulty of loss. The longing for the past. He knows that she has done what she could to ignore those feelings. Only the future matters: a mantra the two of them share.

Even when the past shows up again and again.

Hubert bows his head and stares thoughtfully for some time at a wrinkle in the otherwise smooth, clean rug that covers the floor.

“A member of her former family has shown up at the monastery,” he notes. “But I assure you that I will continue to watch over her.”

With a quick flourish of her hand, she finished the last of the cakes an hour earlier than she expected, leaving her with plenty enough time to get everything set up for one of the darlings of the Black Eagles house- she wasn’t about to let her little bird have anything but the best for her birthday!

Luckily these cakes were separate, and Sylvain was rather easily bribed with excess batter to watch the table while she set up the 3 cakes and various pastries (and reminding him this was for Nino kept him from trying to get a fingerful of frosting while she went back and forth between the kitchens and the biggest tea table in the yard), including a number of little puff pastry birds and flower-themed pastries- it was practically enough to feed 10 people, but that was even better- it meant Nino didn’t have to worry about taking too much, and she’d have extras for later. She adjusts the cakes to keep the two normal fluffy cakes to the sides of the layered platter covered in the various pastries and topped with the third cake- a cheesecake.

She steps back, and it hits her that maybe this is a little too much- two fluffy cakes, one vanilla and one chocolate, each with 2 layers separated by whipped cream frosting and strawberries, coated again in more of the same frosting and then decorated with strawberry-bit ‘nests’, each with a bird pastry in them, the cheesecake she’d marbled strawberry preserves into, the various fruits and pastries galore. But it was already set up, and she didn’t have enough time to downsize, so a little too much was what Nino was getting- hopefully she’d like it. Mercedes was just settling the present in green wrapping paper under her chair beside the rectangular gift carefully wrapped in butcher paper and tied with a long purple ribbon when she hears Edelgard’s voice, her tone like honey as she spoke to their beloved little eagle, all warmth and gentleness with a sharp sweetness to it. Mercedes smiles as she sits.

Conditional Casualty !! Hit Lukas 3 Times to Force Him In.

Roll: 20. (Worth 2 hits) 

Well, they said a professor that stopped learning from his students was bound to become an incompetent one. He should have listened when she told him to–

DUCK.

Caught completely unawares, Lukas actually felt the stars knocked out of him for a moment. And by what? One of the more accountable students of these parts? If anything, he wondered what sort of fluke that could be to 1) Decide to irresponsibly use wind magic to levitate pie. And 2) Hit him so hard he probably met Mother Mila for three seconds.

But of all things, one wouldn’t expect, the last thing you’d think you’d hear was… 

A laugh?

“Miss Nino.” After his coarse laughter died down, he bluntly called her name. God. He was really so much more amused than he should have been, considering the fact that that probably made him feel more than a blunt axe to the head would.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Ferdinand had been walking around the monastery idly, in one of the few times where he found he actually had some free time on his hands. The air in the monastery was festive these days, crisp and clear and mirthful, and Ferdinand couldn’t help but find some joy in it, the orange-haired man smiling contentedly. Garreg Mach really was a wonderful place, wasn’t it? He was at peace.

-RESULT: 19

-SAVING ROLL: 4