"Oh! Sorry about that," Jigano grinned ruefully at his misunderstanding, offering a slight shrug. "Carnivorous plants, you mean? Viper vines, xtabays, bramblelashes, assassin vines...though probably tendriculoses are the closest things to Wicker Women, based on the description. I avoided most of them, to be honest," he admitted cheerfully. "There were enough things trying to kill me without adding hungry plants to the list!" Minions of the Technic League and nightmares from the Dark Tapestry, mostly, not to mention Unity's servants. The line had seemed endless for a few years, and he didn't regret leaving that life behind.
The clearing revealed its queen, the solitary Wicker Woman left sole ruler of the sunlit space almost painfully out of place in the otherwise-somber and shadowed woods. Jigano paused at the edge of the reddish trees they had been traveling through, and recalled the compelled raven to his free shoulder while Isuma eyed its tailfeathers with dangerous curiosity. His hand dipped into a pouch at his side and he absently pulled out a limp vole, offering the snack to their guide in payment for services rendered. As the raven gulped down the treat head-first, the bard studied the great tree, a faint frown creasing his brow. "A cat... statue?" he asked, curiosity split between the story and the challenge that lay before them.
"Hmm... I wonder how fast those branches can contract?" he murmured, eyes narrowing as he stared at the tree. "We just need one branch, something about arm's length should be sufficient." Careful of his two passengers, he looked around and then knelt to pick up a stick fallen from another tree and tossed it lightly at the Wicker Woman's branches to see if they would react.
The clearing revealed its queen, the solitary Wicker Woman left sole ruler of the sunlit space almost painfully out of place in the otherwise-somber and shadowed woods. Jigano paused at the edge of the reddish trees they had been traveling through, and recalled the compelled raven to his free shoulder while Isuma eyed its tailfeathers with dangerous curiosity. His hand dipped into a pouch at his side and he absently pulled out a limp vole, offering the snack to their guide in payment for services rendered. As the raven gulped down the treat head-first, the bard studied the great tree, a faint frown creasing his brow. "A cat... statue?" he asked, curiosity split between the story and the challenge that lay before them.
"Hmm... I wonder how fast those branches can contract?" he murmured, eyes narrowing as he stared at the tree. "We just need one branch, something about arm's length should be sufficient." Careful of his two passengers, he looked around and then knelt to pick up a stick fallen from another tree and tossed it lightly at the Wicker Woman's branches to see if they would react.
