The only constant is change, the force of gravity. Superfabulous animals communicate knowledge of self. The meeting of a hundred yang circles the great escape somnambulist...- *BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG*
"ARRATOI!" shouted Cavall. "If you aren't ready NOW, I'm leaving you here!"
"I'm up!" she cried, stumbling to the door. At least they had been able to get separate rooms since joining the Brigade. Cavall had been extra cranky before then, even after reverting herself the first night, and it was still distressing dealing with her at her worst.
Arratoi threw open the door to see her perpetually-displeased prior tapping her foothand in impatience. "Did you fail your spell check again?" Cavall scolded.
"But it's so ha~ard," she whined. "I don't understand the whole conversion to timecube part!"
"You'd better figure it out, or I really AM going to leave you here one of these days."
"That's so mean!" She was about to throw another tantrum when something crossed her mind—what if she WAS left behind?
"And yes, YOU would have to figure out how to cover the hotel room bill."
Curses! "But I don't have any money!"
"That's why you need to learn how to earn it. You're not getting any sympathy from me from here out."
Did she ever?
"Remember, I'm smarter than you. I've been through this before and have had to survive on my own for more years than you have. If you expect people to just hand you everything you want on a silver platter, think again."
It wasn't fair! Arratoi did so much work and didn't get any credit for it. She studied all her spells and many more, she washed the dishes (when Cavall yelled at her and pulled the plug on her Wi-Fi), she vacuumed the house that one time—how much more did Cavall expect her to do?! SO UNFAIR.
Cavall led her to the commons room, where the other members of the Brigade were waiting. "Ah, the prodigal daughters!" cheered Zorrillo, making a huge display of their arrival.
"Prodigal means spendthrift," Cavall snapped, irritated at being called out.
"Ah. Yes. Anyway, as I was saying, today's goal is Beauty. What is beauty? Beauty is all around us, if you open your heart to it. Everything in nature is beautiful. Look at the person next to you! All of us are beautiful!"
Arratoi looked to her left and saw Cavall snarling. Ugh... She could barely repress a shudder. To her right, Arratoi saw Monggus of Minadali style, a grumpy-looking man with a snaggletooth who crinkled with static. Ugh! Was he serious?!
As though reading Arratoi's body language, Zorrillo walked over to her and put his arm around her shoulder. "Behold this beautiful young lady, for instance! At that tender age of innocence and wonder, yet big enough to succeed on her own."
Despite being put on the spot like that, she couldn't help feeling proud, puffing out her chest in satisfaction.
"So where are we going today?" Nosorog asked, eager to get a start on the day. "I'm not exactly excited to just stand around here and look at everything."
"Patience is a virtue," Zorrillo remarked in a pleasing tone that nevertheless sounded like a wisecrack. "It is not the destination that is important as much as the journey. However, the plan is to make our way to fifth face."
"Fifth face?" Hebi complained. "Why so far?"
"It is not a goal as much as a suggestion. We go where life takes us, and if something should happen to lead us off the beaten path to the road not taken, we are all the better for it."
"So – you have no idea what we're doing."
Zorrillo gave a flourish of the hands. "'No idea' sounds so negative. It is a search for the previously unseen, a hunt for knowledge we did not know, a quest to experience something new. Of COURSE we do not know what lies ahead, because therein lies the challenge! If everything was written down in a script for you to follow, how ever would you learn to discover the wonderful mysteries of the universe on your own?
"Fifth face is merely a point in time and space that is not here, to give us somewhere to start looking. It is silly to say, 'Well, we should look HERE for the prize to find it,' when we do not know where HERE is. Therefore, we start looking somewhere and rule out where the prize is not in order to find where the prize IS."
Hebi, among others, didn't seem convinced. Of course, Arratoi was more annoyed that they changed the subject from her—her one moment in the spotlight taken, just like that! How rude!
Still, she couldn't avoid looking at Hebi, because she was Drache's prior, and they were nigh-inseparable. It was so unfair that she got to spend so much time with him and didn't appreciate it! Arratoi would give anything to have that kind of attention, that dutiful allegiance through thick and thin, to have that tail wag solely for her at her very presence...
Arratoi flushed with glee at the idea, unconsciously squealing to herself, oblivious to the stares she was getting due to it. Cavall jabbed her in the side with her tail spike to get her to stop. "Ow!" she whined. "What was THAT for!"
"You're doing it again," she snapped. "You need to learn to police your thoughts a little."
"Hmph!" Why did she keep getting caught by the thought police?
"So, does everyone have everything?" Zorrillo continued, clapping his hands together. "We will be checking out shortly. Please be sure to take all your belongings, because the cleaning crew can only be so aware of whose personal effects belong to whom."
"Do you have all your things?" Cavall grumbled.
"...of course I do," Arratoi replied, miffed at the idea Cavall didn't trust her.
"Your rod?"
"Yep!" She tapped her wing and brought out...
A rolled-up photo of Drache she had taken a month ago.
"Oops." She tried again—this time producing one and a half pounds of butter.
"Arratoi," Cavall scolded, growing impatient.
"I put it away!" she insisted, pulling out a large book with the words 'Don't Panic' written on the cover.
"GO CHECK YOUR ROOM."
"I put it—"
"CHECK. IT IS NOT THAT DIFFICULT. STOP MAKING IT THAT WAY."
"FINE!" Arratoi was so angry that Cavall had so little faith in her that she almost didn't, thinking to run to the vending machines instead out of spite. Yet she started to worry when most of the contents of hammerspace came out without including the one thing she was asked to have. Sighing the deepest of sighs, she returned to her room for one last look, though she knew it wouldn't be there. Of all the...
When she pushed open the door to her room, Arratoi paused, then frowned. Her rod was lying on the floor under the telly stand. It wasn't so much that Cavall was correct that it was in the room... well, yes, it was. Why did Cavall have to be so disagreeable about her being wrong all the time?
No, this time she WOULD be wrong... "Oops," Arratoi mumbled, going to the cracked-open window and tipping her rod outside onto the hotel's front lawn, making a face of mock surprise. "I guess it wasn't here after all! Wherever could it be?" For good measure, she tore up the room pretending to look. "Oh, no! I need my rod so badly and I can't find it!"
After a good five mins or so of searching, Arratoi gave up, returning to the commons room in pseudo-despair. "So, did you find it?" Cavall growled.
"Noooo," she whined. "I don't know where it is! I had it where it was supposed to be!"
She glowered at Arratoi, stretching herself to her full height. "Repeat after me," she ordered.
"Huh?"
- CTRL-F > "Green-Eyed Rod"
"Let's go, then," she ordered, despite Arratoi failing her spell.
"...fine."
As they exited the hotel, Cavall walked straight up to the rod, touching it with her foothand and chanting again:
- CTRL-SHIFT-H > Today
Despite this, Cavall said nothing. It was perhaps more deflating than any lecture she could have given, any shouting, any whipping or threat thereof—that absolute silence.
"We're leaving," was the only thing she would say after a torturous amount of time. "Hurry up."
Flushing red in humiliation, Arratoi could only nod, feeling the blood drain from her body. She didn't even want to take her rod after that, feeling as though it had betrayed her by not being where she expected it to be. Stupid thing!
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