tumbleweed words

you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody

The orangery hums with soft, lush life; vines curling along glass panes, dew clinging to petals like dreams reluctant to wake. Wildering House is quieter here, its usual ghosts hushed beneath the perfume of citrus and the low rustle of leaves. Flora moves among them in bare feet and gold, sunlight striking off her bangles as she kneels before the stone basin at the room’s centre.

The orange plant she’s chosen is small but radiant, its fruit the colour of molten dusk. She places it gently upon the soil-lined altar and presses her palm against the damp earth beneath its roots. Knowing how little Rae seemed to care for offerings or pageantry, instead she just offers up the plant; something alive and growing.

Her aqua gaze lifts, steady and bright as the ocean outside. "Rae," she calls, voice carrying through the greenhouse like the breath of wind through leaves. "Torchline’s fountain has kept my people, and those from other regions, safe." She pauses, fingers brushing a fallen leaf. "But its reach ends at our shores. The moment that water crosses the border, it’s just water again. I want to change that. I want to carry its healing beyond Torchline’s edge. Will you help me?"

---

Flora would like an RQ to make Torchline's healing water retain its magical properties outside of TL.

She's using 3000/ out of TL's 4255 taxed amount for a Big God Quest.

Magic: Divine Acknowledgement | Can pray to a god from any location (does not have to be at a shrine) .
Type: Light | Rank: Mastered | Cost: (None)

dance beneath the stars as you drink in the night
let the thunder overtake you as lightning fills the sky.

The air in the orangery shifts. The temperature equalises. Every leaf seems to hold still, as if suspended in the breath before a storm. When Rae arrives, it is not with grandeur but with symmetry. One presence condenses from the mist—cool, light, analytical—while the other takes form from the soil—dense, grounded, deliberate. They study one another first, a brief assessment, then turn toward the queen. Their eyes are identical in focus, like two facets of the same calculation.

"You have correctly identified a limitation," one says, voice clean and without inflection. "The magic is geographic. Bound to the leyline beneath Torchline. Beyond that boundary, the effect collapses." They step closer to the orange tree she’s offered. The leaves twitch in response, not from wind but from attention. 

They exchange another glance—a silent audit of variables—before continuing. "We will help you." There’s no change in tone when they deliver what follows, only precision. "Here is what must be done."

The words that come next are not words at all but a sequence, an instruction stripped of poetry, a formula written into her bones. When the last fragment settles in her mind, Rae is already gone. No departure, no ripple of divine farewell, only equilibrium restored. The orangery returns to itself, quiet and ordered. The orange tree glows faintly for a moment longer before resuming its ordinary work: photosynthesis, respiration, growth.

---

Torchline has been given a Regional Quest!

Tasks. There is no time limit. There are currently 11 active Torchers. This means 6 unique characters have to participate. Characters can participate more than once. Flora must participate in at least 2 threads.

1. A thread collecting and distilling ocean water to gather the sea salt from it
2. A thread collecting citrus plants from the Oerwoud and juicing/reducing it to gather the citric acid
3. A PQ cleaning out the healing fountain to ensure there is no contamination, and then adding in the salt/citric acid (steps 1&2 must be completed before this)
4. A PQ bottling the new water. (step 3 must be completed before this)

feel the force of nature penetrate your skin,
spin with the world as the magic sinks in.

you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody

Flora stands very still as Rae speaks. There’s no warmth in it, no grandeur, just the precision of something that understands the structure of existence down to its smallest particle, leaving Flora feeling like a toddler whose just entered into a calculus class. She doesn’t interrupt them, but just listens to the sequence, the sensations, the way their logic embeds itself in her bones like coordinates she can’t quite read but somehow knows are correct.

When it ends, she exhales slowly and nods once. As Rae dissolves back into symmetry, the orangery exhales with them; the temperature equalising again, droplets reforming on the glass. Flora reaches out, brushing her fingers against one of the orange tree’s leaves. Its surface is cool and wet, like the edge of a thought still settling. "Alright," she murmurs under her breath, a trace of wryness flickering through the stillness. "Lets do this."

~FIN