Wave Without A Shore

It was a lot, and he bit his lip as he looked down at his hands, callused from his bow and hunting knife and climbing trees - trees that were very different from the verdant boles of this coast. He didn't know if it would be better or worse to find someplace that reminded him more strongly of home, but the very alien-ness of this tropical paradise made it impossible to forget that he wasn't where he belonged.

And maybe never would be again.

Kel nodded hesitantly at the description of the Greatwood, however un-illuminating it was. It was more than he had known before, at least, and if it was less wet and less hot, that already made it sound more like the Forest he had known. "The Fae on my world didn't care for humans much, either," he admitted wryly. "Mostly we hid from them, or tried to blend in so they wouldn't hunt us." He trailed off as he realized that Jiao thought he was human, and shook his head earnestly. "Oh, I'm only half-human," he tried to reassure the beautiful winged woman. "And I grew up in a dryad Grove. Though... I can understand if your people don't care for halfbreeds," he admitted, deflating a little. It would hardly be the first time he had faced such prejudice from fellow Hidden, after all.

"What and where are the Hollowed Grounds?" he asked instead, curious but still hesitant at all these new names and places.

"Half...human?" Jiao tilted her head, blinking a couple of times. He didn't have wings, and he looked like a normal human..."So...you're...half Fae? Or something else? I don't think that'll really matter to the Fae in the Greatwood though. You look like a human and you're still an outsider." That characteristic Fae honesty shining through she hoped she wasn't putting things too plainly. The Hollowed Ground was hard to explain in detail as she'd not really spent much time there, but she tried to recall it for him, looking up and pursing her lips as she considered what would be best to say. "It's where a lot of humans lived for a long time in a big bubble but now it's burst and they're free to wander about...a lot of them are really boring, but it's a safe place to start off in. There's a lot of houses and shops and um...I think Guilds? And a big building with books, I heard once." At least she could take him there easily enough. "It's by the Greatwood! The portal up there--" Jiao pointed up the beach. "Can take you right to it." JIAO Some girls fight hard Some face the trial Some girls were just meant to smile

Kel nodded eagerly, extending his hand to call a small breeze to it, one that picked up a small leaf to swirl above his palm to demonstrate. ”My mother is of the anemoi, not the Sidhe, but yes. Though I guess… since this isn’t my world, that’s why the winds don’t listen to me like they used to,” he admitted sadly, letting the small zephyr fade away. Jiao’s brutal honesty that he looked too human to be accepted among the Fae of the Greatwood brought a wince to his face, but he nodded slowly in acceptance of her words. They were blunt, but not said with malice at least.

”I’ve visited human villages, and led human caravans through the woods before but… I’ve never lived with them,” he admitted nervously, rubbing a hand over his upper arm. Listening to the Fair One’s description of the Hollowed Grounds only deepened his anxiety and confusion, and he bit his lip trying to imagine it all. ”A bubble?” he asked at last, lost from the beginning. Though at least ‘houses and shops and guilds’ sounded familiar. He’d seen similar things in Haulani while lurking around its edges, and the larger villages at the edges of his own Forest had such things. ”Was the bubble protecting them from something?” Humans could be an easily-frightened lot, in his experience.

Jiao’s pointing finger didn’t reveal much at the moment, but at least it gave him a direction to start in. ”Wait… a portal? Could… could it take me home?” It made sense. If a portal had brought him here, couldn’t one be used to go the other way?

Well, Kellan clearly had magic, but that didn't automatically make him half-Fae; Jiao wondered if magic was something limited to only the fairyfolk in his world. Still, she had no particular reason to disbelieve him either. She only spoke a small correction: "Not 'the Sidhe'. Sidhe is just the name of our town. We're just...Fae." There weren't enough of them spread throughout the world to have made different camps, as far as she knew. She'd never lived with humans either (well, until the ship, but she didn't think that was a typical experience) so didn't have much advice to give on that point. "Umm..no, I think it was to keep in something bad. It's...kind of complicated for your first day, so ask someone else later. Either way, it's gone now." Getting into The Voice and all of that was a lot of legend to dump on somebody when he was already struggling with what she was saying, she thought. Jiao pushed some hair behind her ear, chewing on her lip as she wondered how Kellan would fare learning all about Caido in time. "Oh - no." Jiao shook her head. "It's not..the same kind of portal. This one only takes you around Caido, not outside of it. Or at least. I don't...think it can." She'd only been able to travel within their continent using it, but it occurred to her that she'd never tried to go anywhere different. "None of the other Outlanders have ever gone home." JIAO Some girls fight hard Some face the trial Some girls were just meant to smile

"That's... oh..." Kellan bit his lip, trying to reconcile the words he'd grown up knowing with what was different in this new world. "It's almost harder when things seem similar and then... aren't." He hesitated, but Jiao was patient and didn't seem to mind his misunderstandings, so he nodded and did his best to hold the new facts firmly in his mind so he wouldn't make the same mistake again.

Hearing that the bubble around the Hollowed Grounds had existed to keep something bad in rather than out didn't exactly reassure him that it was a place he wanted to go. The lack of specifics were the opposite of reassuring, his imagination already populating the land beyond the portal with monsters and disease and demons. "So the bad thing is... loose?" he asked cautiously.

Jiao's swift negation about the portal shot down Kellan's brief hope that he might be heading home after all. "How many other Outlanders are there?" he asked instead, perking up at hearing that he wasn't alone. "Does this... do people like me... end up here a lot?"

"Well...soon this'll become familiar!" Jiao declared sunnily, trying to cheer Kellan up, but unsure if that would actually be a good thing for him. She realised at his question that she'd misrepresented quite what The Voice was; it really wasn't a topic she wanted to try and explain on Kellan's first day here, but he had asked... "Um, no, well..sort of? There's a person who thinks she's a Goddess and I guess she has some powers, so the Gods kept her in there for a while, but now she's not trapped anymore. But she won't hurt you or anything unless you bug her, I don't think." True, The Voice's minions had attacked the Mathair, but Jiao had never heard of The Voice or her Ascended spontaneously attacking an individual. At least she had what she thought was good news for him about Outlanders. "Uh huh! I don't know how many there are...but there's a lot. I've met at least ten and I know there's a bunch more. A lot of them are in the Hollowed Grounds." JIAO Some girls fight hard Some face the trial Some girls were just meant to smile

He tried to smile at her optimism - or, optimistic for her, at least. This was her world, and she might think becoming familiar with it was a good thing. But it was a lot harder for him to see it that way, when it meant giving up on ever going home again, or seeing his Dryad family, his friends, his mother...

The distraction of the mystery of the bubble was almost a welcome reprieve in comparison. He listened to Jiao's description intently, eyes widening at the casual mention of gods and goddesses - well, sort-of goddesses - who might or might not be dangerous. "Oh..." he said weakly, trying to wrap his head around it all. "Is that... normal for the gods? To trap people in bubbles?" His own had been far more distant and rare to manifest physical miracles in the mortal world. "How many... how many are there, here? Do you have gods of the elements and nature, too?"

There were so many questions, but her reassurance that he wasn't the only one really did soothe him a little, and he felt a little of the tension ease from his shoulders. "Is... is everyone from different worlds? Or do you think there might be other people from my world there?" His question was filled with a tentative sort of hope, a desire to not be so alone in this strangeness.

It seemed her attempt at cheering him up was only part-successful and not a very big part at that, but Jiao really had no idea how one went about making this situation better for anyone else. Were the humans better at this? They probably had more practice. At least questions about the Grounds could be answered easily enough. "Um. No, I don't think so - I think this was kinda a special circumstance." That said, she hadn't gotten out of the Greatwood til recently, and much of the world was still a mystery; maybe one day it would turn out there were in fact bubbles spotted all over Caido. "There's uh..." Jiao looked up and whispered as she counted for a moment. "...About ten, I think? But people mostly only see three. Safrin, Frey and Ludo. I don't think there's elemental Gods." His last question was one that she knew the answer to was 'maybe but it's extremely unlikely', but even Jiao didn't want to drop that bombshell. Unable to lie, she decided to just give a shorter version of the truth, face forced into a stiff smile: "Maybe!" JIAO Some girls fight hard Some face the trial Some girls were just meant to smile

"That's good, I think." Kellan wasn't sure whether the bubble was a good or bad thing, if it had been keeping someone bad locked away. Or maybe she wasn't that bad? It was hard to tell, but the mention of ten gods had the young man nodding. No elemental gods seemed strange, like a hole was being left in the universe that would need filling, but the names that she gave him to go with a few of the local deities were worth paying attention to. "Those three...what are they like?" he asked, reaching for any distraction that could deflect from the awkwardness of his loss and the Fair One's patience with him.

Strange as she was, even Kel could see how forced her smile was, and the noncommittal answer spoke the volumes that Jiao wouldn't. He was quiet for a long few moments before he nodded in acceptance of her unwillingness to dash his hopes any harder than they already had been. "I guess I'll just have to look for them, then," he said, suddenly feeling very small in this big, strange new world. "Have you met many others like me?" Distant travelers, lost souls, strayed sheep in need of guidance.

Kellan asked about the three Gods that were the most common around Caido and Jiao settled down, slumping a little as she buckled in to be here for a while explaining. While she had only spoken to Safrin, she'd certainly heard plenty about all of them growing up among the spiritual Fae people. "Soo...Safrin is in charge of the night sky and stuff but she also..um...she's really pretty." Jiao laughed awkwardly, glancing off to the side. "Ludo takes people to die. It's kinda spooky and wears this big black robe. And ummm...Frey is..uh.." Jiao paused; she wasn't usually easily embarrassed, but having this conversation with a brand new stranger was a bit far. "Sex, and relationships and things. I've never met Frey or Ludo, though." When he asked if she had met others 'like him', Jiao wasn't quite sure what he meant. Outlanders? Humans? Men? "Um..I've met a lot of people. There's all kinds of people in the Hollowed Grounds. I really think it's the best place for you to go." JIAO Some girls fight hard Some face the trial Some girls were just meant to smile

Kel listened eagerly, glad to take his thoughts off his own troubles for the moment to hear about the strange deities, almost able to believe they were something from a story rather than an intrinsic part of his life now. The names were strange, almost alien things, and their domains so broad it was hard to wrap his mind around them.

Frey's domain in particular left Kel ducking his head and looking away awkwardly, equally reticent about discussing such a god in more detail with someone he had just met. Luckily Jaio's words caught him by surprise and he looked back at her sharply as some of the things she had said earlier clicked into place. "Wait... you've met a god? S..safrin?" He tasted the name on his tongue, finding it sweet in spite of its strangeness. "How... how often do they show themselves to people - mortal people, I mean?"

He shrugged noncommittally at her suggestion to go to the 'Hollowed' Grounds, considering what else she'd told him about bad, trapped goddesses there. It didn't sound like a very good place to be if the other gods decided to put their bubble back up.

Kellan's surprise when Jiao said she'd met Safrin caught her by surprise in turn and she tilted her head, a little confused. Did people in Outlander worlds...not meet Gods? She'd hardly made a hobby of it herself, but growing up she knew plenty of people that had regularly met the Gods, and knew it was more than possible. "Yes? I prayed to her in the Observatory in Sidhe and we spoke for a while." Jiao sounded proud, giddy about this: It had been quite the conversation. "They appear to anyone they like that prays. Sometimes people they don't like, but it doesn't usually go well..." From what she'd heard, anyway. Leaning forward as if about to share a great secret, she said: "Safrin likes pretty things and personalised gifts, Frey likes fruit and flowers and Ludo likes toys, if you wanted to increase your chances. Maybe...leave it a little, though. Don't run right to a shrine. If it goes wrong...well, you should live a little before you get smote." Cheerily, she smiled, hoping he'd understand this. JIAO Some girls fight hard Some face the trial Some girls were just meant to smile

Kellan was visibly taken aback by Jiao's casual conversation with a god, an entirely new level of respect for the Fair One in his deferential expression as he watched her with a little awe. To be so close to the divine was hard for him to comprehend, and her meandering warnings afterwards were taken quite strongly to heart.

"How will you know whether or not they'll  like you?" he asked cautiously. "I wouldn't want to offend them." So he carefully took mental notes on how to entice their better intentions, wondering which - if any - he should pray to for a way home. "Have... have they ever been able to send anyone back from where they came from?" A faint hope at this point, but since Jiao knew Safrin personally, maybe she would know?

He nodded vigorously in agreement at her suggestion to give the shrines wide berth for the moment. "I wouldn't even know where to begin praying to them," he admitted, shoulders slumping again. "The gods of my world were distant. They intervened in mortal affairs maybe once every couple of centuries or so... The humans tended to have a few generations pass between miracles, but the Hidden live much longer. Enough have witnessed divine intervention directly that we know the gods but not... not for casual conversations. It's more like... like blasting a crater a mile wide. Or raising up a new river to divide warring nations." Unsubtle, in a word. Not the kind of deities who stopped by for a chat and some tea on a whim.

"Um...you just gotta hope they might." Jiao shrugged, unsure what exactly she'd done to earn Safrin's approval other than be Fae. "Oh. Um...do you have magic powers? That means they won't like you." She was sure some Abandoned still got audiences with the Gods, but she knew not all of them had gone well. As for Gods taking people back to their lands, she shook her head. The sooner Kellan learnt that he wasn't going home, the better. His deities sounded dramatic and honestly Jiao thought his version of the Gods were a little cooler. A bit more distant, harder to get to, more interesting when they were there. "Maybe in time you can go pray. They might even blast a crater for you, if you ask nicely!" She laughed at her joke lightly, as if she wasn't informing someone they could never go home. JIAO Some girls fight hard Some face the trial Some girls were just meant to smile