Allura - Open Log Prompts For Mareuer

[quintessent]

Who: Allura and [OPEN]
When: Vague times around March
Where: Aefenglom and specifically Diplomatea for some options
What: Allura is getting settled into life here and also experiences her first rainy season
Warnings: None


A. Princess' First Job (At Diplomatea)
[Allura is thankful to Everett, for giving her a chance with his shop. The flowers and the scent of the tea was what drew her in in the first place – when she found herself without a coin to her name for the first time in her life, and the atmosphere had been warm and welcoming. He'd even been kind enough to give her some clothes (or, a uniform, as some put it. Allura thought it was quite cute.)

She's never had a proper job before but she's a hard worker and so far she's been met with nothing but patience. Putting together flowers is her favorite part, though the tea serving took some... learning.

Maybe she's not paying attention, or it's just a bad stroke of luck, but there's a clumsy moment where her knuckle brushes against the heated side of one of the tea kettles – just for a second but it's a second long enough for her to feel a sharp pain and she yanks her hand back with a startled yelp.]

Ah- [She winces, already hearing someone else hurrying over to her side – one of her fellow employees, or a guest perhaps.] I'm alright, just careless.


B. The vague open ended one (Diplomatea)
[It's late one evening, when the lights from the tea shop glowed warm against the cool night air, the business empty and Allura was sitting, enjoying her own cup of tea, her limbs heavy after a long, but good day of work. It was... nice. She still had thoughts of getting home that hung heavy over her, but days like this it was a little easier. To fall into a routine and feel a little more normal than she has since she arrived here.

The bells at the door pull her from her reverie and she looks up, setting the cup down,]

Can I assist you?


C. Rolling up her sleeves. (In town)
[Now that she has a little money to her name there's an item in town that she's been eying for some time – a simple, sturdy wooden trunk from a local carpenter's shop. It's nice and she's been wanting a safe place to put her belongings from her world until it's time to go home (and maybe a safe place to hide shiny valuables from her Merrow housemate.)

Coin exchanged and trunk at her feet, Allura only now realizes a big mistake: When she arrived in Aefenglom it was without any of her Altean-born powers. Which means no hoisting around heavy boxes like they weight nothing. But what to do with the trunk?

It's pure stubbornness that gets her as far as she gets, lifting and hefting and pushing until at some point down the road she has to stop, Panting as she leans to take a rest against the large trunk.]

Stars, how do humans live like this? They're made of gossamer compared to Alteans.

[Help a princess out?]


D. It's like rain
[Altea didn't have rain. Not in the same way that humans knew thanks a lot Voltron canon and certainly Allura has never experienced anything like the rainy season in Aefenglom. What is a normal, even annoying phenomenon for one has Allura looking up, shielding her eyes the moment rain starts to pitter-patter on the roofs of the buildings around her

It's not the first rain she's seen, and she's delighted, but delight quickly turns into distress as the gentle sprinkle turns into a real downpour. And she quickly jogs for shelter- but not before getting absolutely drenched in the meantime.]

Apologies- [Allura sputters, standing in the doorway of the first building she came upon with water absolutely coming down in rivulets from her hair and dress, in a puddle on the floor underneath her. She holds her hands out, a little at a loss of what to do with herself] That's- Is this a normal amount of rain?


E. Wildcard
[Feel free to throw anything at me, or my plotting post is over here if you'd like to talk something specific! I'll probably be adding some closed starters below as the month goes on as I make plans with people too!]

Comments

[quintessent]

[It’s one of the fascinating things about being exposed to so many different people from different timelines and worlds. An endless possibility to learn about cultures different from their own.

She nods,] We lived in Altean-made structures that- [Wait, hm.] Do you know of the planet called Saturn? Or any with rings around it? It is like that, only manufactured.

[That is the hard part of an endless possibility of answers: she never knows just how much someone understands about science and technology as she knows it.]

[silentsavant]

[Alas. About the only thing he sort of understands is that a world is a planet, which is round, basically a star. He looks just a little quizzical. Sorry you're stuck giving Soren astronomy lessons all of a sudden, Allura...]

A planet can have... rings? [AND BE... MANUFACTURED? The questions just keep tumbling down.] Every day, I come to discover there is so much I don't know...

[quintessent]

[Oh dear. Allura hums, then turns towards one of the flower-arranging counters. Here she places one of the pruned flower-heads on the table, then places a long string of grass in a circle around it.]

Yes, rings. Normally they're made up of rocks and ice and debris - caught in the planet's gravitational pull. [Ah, but this is getting even more complicated.] Like a belt. Around the planet.

[silentsavant]

[He watches her floral demonstration and tries to envision the plant matter as a celestial body girdled by... rocks and ice. Hmm...]

It must be cold up there. Dark... A place where the sun doesn't reach it...?

[quintessent]

Well, the sun comes from beyond the rings of course.

[Said with a laugh and then it dawns on her that maybe his understanding of solar systems was even more simple than she originally thought. Oh dear. She'd better wait awhile before getting into Balmeran crystals and worm holes and sentient robots.

She clears her throat,]

You should tell me what the world you come from is like.

[silentsavant]

[Yeah, uh... yeah, take it slow. Soren's smart and all, but he's not sci-fi-savvy. He's met a sentient robot before, though!]

My world? Nobody lives above the clouds, for one. But some can fly. We have one moon, one sun, and you can see the stars clearly when it's night.

[Unlike in Aefenglom. The open sea had granted the best view, but even that had been a rather dull display compared to what he's grown up with.]

It rains, in some places more than others. And some regions toward the north get more snowfall than its temperate neighboring lands. There are deserts where it scarcely rains at all; steppes; deep jungles; a sacred forest; islands... It is diverse, with many kinds of people and many kingdoms. Tellius is the only known continent, the only one that remains after a cataclysmic flooding event that occurred several hundred years prior to my time.

[quintessent]

[She nods, listening attentively to him. His world sounds familiar to many that she's visited - temperate and varied. As ideallic as Altea was, worlds like his were a wonder of their own. Deserts and mountains deep oceans; it was like a dozen worlds wrapped up into one.]

Oh, you get snow as well! I remember visiting a planet with snow when I was a small girl.

[Her expression only flickers when he mentions the flooding. It's hundreds of years before his time, but surely something like that has long reaching effects.]

And what is the name of your kingdom? There is only one on my planet, so it is fascinating to learn about planets that have more.

[silentsavant]

[No rain, so of course it follows that she's not used to snow, either. Soren had never given the concept of precipitation being novel and exciting much consideration before. Barring the natural condition of desert dwellers, of course.]

Crimea. [An inspiration strikes him. He's not sure why he feels driven to go to these lengths just for a simple conversation held beneath the shelter of an awning crackling with rainfall, but he pulls a dog-eared notebook from his satchel, folds it to a blank page, and starts sketching away as he elaborates.] It was a kingdom founded on ideals of peace, born out of political disagreements that created a schism within its motherland, the Begnion Empire.

[Based on the amorphous cloud of lines he's drawing, it would appear that his ink is steadily giving birth to a map of the continent.]

The disagreements were over how to treat a racial group known as the laguz, a people consisting of different tribes with different types of animal traits. Those who went on to create Crimea thought it better to try and make amends with them after centuries of strained relationships. As it turns out, they were met with progress on that front, making peace with the nation of beasts that borders it to the south: Gallia. [He taps the westernmost part of his unfinished map.] Those who backed the viewpoint that the laguz were dangerous "sub-humans" decided to form a country all their own. This would be known as Daein.

[He taps at the northeast of his unfinished cloud, then proceeds with his sketch campaign.]

And they would be fundamentally at odds for a long time. Hundreds of years. Things have only really begun to change within the past year or so since I was stolen from my world.

[quintessent]

[Once she realizes that he's drawing something, she's leaning in, watching with amazement. Even if it's just a map, anyone with art skills might as well be magicians to her, and there's wonder in her eyes as the continent slowly forms out of the ink.

She's so taken by it, she almost is distracted from his detailed description of his homeland. Her gaze snaps up to his face when he taps on the paper.]

There's so much strife all on the same planet. [Hers, by comparison, was peaceful. One nation under the banner of her royal family. Then again, the Alteans were much more homogenized,] It must be nice though, to see humans and... the monsters here, living in harmony here. Proof that it is possible, I suppose.

[There's a lengthy hesitation before she says "monsters". That's the common colloquial for vampires and merrow and the like, but she didn't prefer to use it.]

[silentsavant]

[Soren isn't much of an artist by any stretch of the imagination. However, his penchant for faithfully recreating maps is nothing short of incredible, and anyone who could recognize a map of the continent would be in awe at Soren's nigh-photographic memory regarding this.

And, as such, he finishes labeling the political delineations, and his replication of Tellius is finished. (Sans the helpful colors, since he only has one shade of black to use...)

Upon hearing her take on how monsters and humans are getting along, he raises his eyebrow at her in disbelief. Have they been living in the same city? Does she go outside of the Coven or Mirrorbound circles much?? ]

I wouldn't call it harmony. [Oh, boy. He sighs.] You're a bit new, I take it, and a witch on top of that. You may not have yet picked up on the undercurrent of tension between the two.

[quintessent]

[At that her expression flickers, frowning. A warmth creeps up her neck, realizing that there was so much she didn't know about the planet she was forced to call home. Her experience small and incomplete, given her focus on her magic lessons more than learning about the world around her.]

Viren told me what happened with Dorchacht. [She starts, slowly, realizing that just one story is but a pinpoint of time when it comes to a civilizations whole history.]

But everyone here came together to help them, didn't they? Monster and human alike.

[silentsavant]

[Viren... Soren hasn't seen him around much since their first and last conversation, which had left on a sour, awkward note. But Soren was a recluse who didn't see people often except on his own terms, and he suspected the other dragon didn't want much to do with him.]

Dorchacht's recent past is a fine example of antipathetic views held against monsterkind. If Viren told you of it, then I need not explain why. [He closes his notebook with a soft puff and a tired blink, his cadence suggesting no ill-will toward her, just the kind appropriate for giving a report.] The Mirrorbound played a major role in shaking things up. It is true that there are native humans and monsters who hold little hatred for the other kind, even affability. But the Mirrorbound are outsiders. Of course they would harbor different views on how monsters and humans should coexist from the natives.