Reflected Light

"Bastien is the reason I didn't seek her out in the first place," Jigano pointed out with an inelegant snort of amusement for the fickle 'priest.' "Turns out he wasn't doing the best job representing her. Though... I was sorry to hear about his passing over Long Night," he added more soberly, touching a hand to his heart in respect for the dead.

"It might be?" Jigano mused helpfully, grinning at his friend. "Luckily you don't need to worry about them yet, young Edy... though... don't you have a birthday this season?" he mused, eyes twinkling as he gave Bobi a wink - and Isuma made another leap for the bigger kitten's unguarded tail.

"Between fire and flammable? Hmm... oh, you mean flirting?" he asked in all innocence. "Fire, flirting, and flammable liquids, yes. Though perhaps I should go with 'booze, banter, and burning things to a crisp?' ....No, the 'f's have better cadence," he decided with a nod. "I am rather good at collecting some pretty juicy local gossip, after all," he added with a smug grin. "You might be surprised what I end up concerning myself with, in the name of chasing down a good story!"

The compass changed hands, and he struck a comical salute in return. "Lead on, my boozy baroness!" the bard declared, laughing at her antics and falling in beside her as Isuma squeaked happily and bounded along at their heels, encouraging Bobi to chase her for a change.

"Alleged passing. I went to that funeral and something was reeeeaaaal fishy about it." Edy said with a casual shrug. "So I yelled real loud that I was going to go riffle through his things. If he's alive, I'm sure that'll bring him out of the woodwork. And if not, well, no harm!"

Glancing towards the bard, for a moment Edy narrowed her eyes. Again they were in that dangerous almost-friend territory. Because you know who gave a shit about birthdays? Your friends. But you know what else friends did? Checked the fuck up on you after you legit killed a chick with your powers and then had to rush her off to be healed.

"Oh is that what you said. Huh. Must'a misheard." The not-teenager cackled in response. Pursing her lips, Edy weighed whether she liked booze, banter, and burning, but like Jigano, the Fs had a certain je ne sais quoi that she liked. "You would have been a hit in Northaven." Edy gushed happily. "Gossip was basically a national past time.

Rolling her eyes, Edy snorted. "You don't salute a baroness. You bow. But since I was a soldier, I guess I'll let it slide. Just this once." She added waggling a finger.

"I thought there was something strange about how the notice was written, too," Jigano admitted with a slight grimace. "But what sort of monster would fake his own death after so many real - and terrible - deaths on Long Night? That seems a bit much for Bastien... I hope..." he trailed off, trying not to think the worst of his coworker-who-might-be-dead.

He caught her look of - was that suspicion? - and some of the sly humor faded from his eyes. Edy was generally a forthright and strikingly honest young woman, and he had taken her earlier dismissal of his apology at face value. But... she was also very young, and very wounded, and it would take more than wounds to mend what had been cracked between them. "Ah, well," he murmured. "Perhaps I misremembered. A shame, since I had a gift for your birthday, but if the timing isn't right..." he smiled slyly at her, tilting his head in a fox's mischievous tease.

He grinned as she went with his 'correction' and placed a hand over his heart theatrically as he accepted the compliment. "It is here, too," he chuckled. "For which I'm grateful! It's one of the more entertaining parts of my work." As a bard, of course, but also as a lorekeeper. Much of what he learned came from people rather than books, after all.

Edy's correction was met with a solemn bow artfully balanced as he kept walking, but as he rose he turned the recovery into a salute. "Why not both?" he grinned charmingly at her in a shameless attempt to bring the smile back to her face.

"Honestly I thought it was going to be...uhhhh, what's it called...performance art? Like he was going to jump out of the casket and say some shit about aesthetics or death." Bony shoulders shrugging, Edy huffed off the idea.

"I mean, for your sake, I guess I hope you didn't misremember. You're supposed to be all about knowing shit right? So if you're already starting to go senile, that doesn't really bode well. Though I guess you do have the hair for it." She added with a wink and youthful grin.

"Well that is good to hear. Well, if you need any more gossip, and not that I would ever speak ill of the dead—" Though the shit-eating smirk on her face suggested that she was about to do just that, "—I have it on good authority that Bastien used to get BJs behind the bar at the Rathskeller while he was working."

With a cackle, Edy shrugged buoyantly with a grin. "Hey, I don't make the rules." Which, given her upbringing, was beyond an understatement. But Edy was taught not to question, and for all her piss and vinegar, there were quite a few social niceties and cues that she really did take at face value.

"That sounds like Bastien," Jigano agreed wryly, but he let the matter of the absent bartender drop with a shake of his head. He didn't want the curl of anger at the thought of the man using the pain of his friends and associates for a joke, or mocking the tears and loss of those whose loved ones would not be coming back. It was an awkward position to be in: not wanting to hope the man was dead... but knowing he would be livid if Bastien still lived.

"Hmm?" He glanced over to her, raising a hand to cup around his ear. "What did you say? Speak up, young'un." He smirked, reaching up to pat a stray hair into place and sidling towards her to peek at the compass. "Which way are going? You know these old eyes aren't as good as they used to be..."

He hadn't taken into consideration Edy's casual vulgarity which, to be fair, was his own damn fault. At her little tidbit of gossip his face screwed up as if he'd just bitten into a bad lemon, and a shudder rippled through him. "I... gods least fortunate, Edy, now I can't unsee that." He reached over to punch her lightly on the shoulder with a grumbled "Brat..." and his deft fingers slipped a little cloth bag with a red ribbon holding it closed into her pocket as he withdrew.

"...I don't want to know how you know that, do I?" he added, a hint of not-entirely-theatrical horror in his voice.

"I SAID—" Edy bellowed comically, her grin warping the words as she shoved the compass nearer to Jigano's face as if his eyesight were truly failing and she were was about to rehash their conversation again several decibels louder.

Cackling at the bards suddenly sour expression, Edy just shrugged. "Hey, no one said you had to picture it." She replied with a laugh, scrunching her nose playfully as she was punched and strangely relishing the feeling of it.

"I mean...one way might be because I can sorta see through Bobi's eyes. So." Shrugging youthfully, she glanced down towards Bobi who was still making up some strange game with Isuma that seemed to involve running, stopping suddenly, and then proceeding with a weird bouncy-sort of step as if there were invisible things on the ground they were avoiding. "I mean, it could be that reason."

He peered dutifully at the compass, frowning a little as the arrow seemed to shift a little as he watched. Had it really latched onto something? Or was it just a trick of the Oasis? Before he could tell, Edy had seen fit to scandalize him and he pulled away in not-entirely-mock horror. "By the time I realized what you were saying, it was too late," he pointed out mournfully.

His frown turned genuine, and thoughtful rather than aghast, as she gave a possible explanation. "I... think I kind of did that a little... maybe accidentally during Long Night," he mused, glancing down at the little companions as they ran and pounced and dodged around... something that had Isuma chirruping with delight, her long, fluffy tail lashing as she followed Bobi's lead. "Though I haven't tried it since. I suppose I should..." He paused, and then looked up at Edy with a wry grin. "And thank you for that explanation," he added dryly. "I think I will choose to believe it." It certainly was better than the most obvious alternative!

"So have you set fire to any other weird monsters lately?" he asked instead, in a not-so-subtle bid for a change in subject, before Edrei could offer any other reasons for knowing about Bastien's on-the-job, er, 'jobs.

Ignoring the ignored bit about Bastien, Edy just grinned and shrugged. "I set fire to loads of things," She cackled proudly. "Not for me to judge whether or not they're monsters." The Launceleyn added, as if making an important point about morality.

"Ooohhh, let's do a test. Close your eyes."

A fire-mage not-teenager a second away from exploding at any moment telling you to close your eyes in a secluded woods. What could go wrong?

"K, ready? Imma show Isuma something, and you're gonna see what it is, mmk?" Assuming he agreed, Edy promptly spun around waiting for the gryphonlet to appear. "Okay reaaaaady?" Edy called with a sly grin, holding up 3 fingers. "Watcha see?"

---

(breaks the timeline, oh well)

"Just try not to set fire to too many not-monsters for a little while, yes?" he suggested dryly. "Or the Atheneum. I suppose anything else is fair game, though." Preferably stone golems or Magna Vermis, but he'd take what he could get from the wildchild. Not-people and not-books was really the best he could hope for!

Her suggestion was met with an arched brow at first. It wasn't that he didn't trust Edrei...

But he wasn't that naive, either.

"Alright, I'm closing them..." he said, a little dubiously, but he did as he was bid - and strained his hearing to gain a feel for whatever she was doing. It was awfully quiet - suspiciously so - and as he stretched his senses his mind seemed to flow with them, reaching out to a familiar little soul bursting with warmth and love and light.

Interrupted from her game of hopping and pouncing, Isuma looked up curiously at Edy. She tilted her head to the side, blinking golden eyes. Reep? Reeeep? she peeped then paused and bounced in place. Reep!

"I see the inside of my eyelids," Jigano said dryly. "And three... ah. Three... sticks?" Three something, at least, he'd picked up that much from Isuma, though exactly what they were was unclear.

"Well now you just sound like Loren. Or the bossy one. Amalia." Edy said with an unhappy sniff. Yes she was young and did act childishly, but she was not in fact a child.

Edy wiggled her fingers as the gryphonlet looked up. Bobi, knowing full well the contents of Edy's mind sat down and watched the spectacle. Had she a tail it would have been curled mischievously about her, the end flickering impatiently.

"Sticks huh? Well, we'd better try something else." Winking down at both animals, Edy took a breath (why? who knows), sucked in her stomach (also why? maybe it was just the thing that was done in these situations), and then raised her shirt, flashing her breasts to the two animals before her.

"Mmmk, how about now?" She asked casually, her widening grin partially obscuring the words.

"Never met Loren," he admitted, and without much disappointment at that fact. "Amalia's a friend of mine too, though, so I'll take that as a compliment." Oh, Edy hadn't meant it to be, but Jigano grinned and took it as such anyways.

Not sticks, then. Damn! It had seemed a good guess, based on the faint impression he'd gotten. Jigano sighed and crossed his arms over his chest, brow furrowing in concentration as he tried to firm the connection between him and Isuma, a connection that had largely been one of emotions and general images rather than specific sights through each other's eyes.

This time the gryphlet let out two tiny reep!s of encouragement and Jigano's lips twitched towards a smile at her helpfulness. There was a sense of... roundness? With... stems?

"Two... melons?" he guessed, a little dubiously. "Seems a bit early for those, but why not? I've seen stranger things since coming to this world than early fruits in spring time."

"He's a right fuck." Edy summarized with a shrug, which quickly turned into a smirk. The first time she'd met Amalia she thought the librarian had been 10/10 bangable. Then she'd turned screechy, then...basically dead. So Edy's feelings towards the baker were garbled, to say the least.

"Melons eh?" Edy cackled, winking at Isuma. "Your eye sight really must be getting old." Pulling her top back down and stifling a joke about telling how melons were ripe, Edy took an elongated and nimble step closer. "Okay okay, one more." She urged, before wiggling her fingers dexterously and reaching a hand towards one of the bard's droopier pockets. With any luck, her long fingers would snag whatever was inside while she stuck her tongue out at Isuma for the bard to guess at

"I'll take your word for it," Jigano agreed cheerfully. It wasn't looking like he'd ever meet the mysterious Loren, and he had far too many other things to worry about these days to try and find someone who didn't want to be found.

Even if, judging by Edy's opinion of Amalia, they'd probably get along quite well.

"Wrong again?" he asked, crestfallen, as his guess was poo-pooed in typically wicked Edrei fashion. "I thought I almost had it that time, too..." Had he been wrong about the roundness? But if not that, then what had they been...? A mystery he would never solve, it seemed, as his friend moved on to round three. He stifled a sigh of frustration at how difficult this was proving to be, without the adrenaline of fear to spike through the bond and shift things into focus. Instead he squeezed his eyes shut more tightly, brow furrowing in fierce concentration as he sought to see through his companion's eyes.

"I see..." he said slowly, as Isuma chortled happily at Edrei's antics. He might have noticed the fingers slipping into his sleeve if the gryphonlet hadn't chosen that moment to bounce closer, cracking a twig and making the bard wince. "Isuma, please hold still!" he begged the little one, oblivious while he shifted his weight to the lightening of one of his pockets as Edy's fingers closed around a fragile construct of wire and glass. "I don't.. I don't see your hands. I see... your... tongue?" he made a final, almost desperate guess, trying to reconcile the blurry, ground-level image with the woman he could imagine in his mind's eye.

Slipping the glasses into her bra, a place she was absolutely sure Jigano would never think to check nor leer at, Edy clapped her hands together. "Well, well, one outta three." The fire mage cackled, grinning down at Isuma with a happy bob of her eye brows. "At least I know you two won't be cheating at cards in the Rathskeller any time soon." She added smugly.

Edy might indeed have given the glasses back immediately (she wasn't even sure what she'd taken really, Edy just liked to see what she could lift from time to time), when there came a rustle just to the west of them.

"Bobi, was that—" The not-teenager hissed, but quickly the bobcat appeared between her legs, looking up and shaking her head. No, not Bobi then. Looking at the compass, Edy frowned. It...did not appear to have done anything at all. "Either this things' broken, or I'm hearing things." Edy decided doubtfully, raising a brow in Jigano's direction.