Obscurity Steals The Spotlight [Aero & Liza]

It was a trial to deal with Russell on an occasion or two, but he was a big help otherwise. Her temper was no longer such a big deal and she took things less seriously now, but she still got cranky when she was woken from naps. She wandered over to Russell and tried to help him unpack before pausing with a smile. "Believe it or not this isn't the best this town has to offer. I've heard that the beach is breathtaking, but that's an adventure for another day, yes?" she asked with a yawn.

Something told her though that she'd be doing night swimming if Russell had anything to say on the matter. In any case that'd mean wandering through jungle brush by moonlight and risking all kinds of injury. After waking up a bit she stood next to him and smiled. "If only the rest of the island could be like this, eh?"

"I'll be going for a swim I dunno what you'll be doing." she replied smiling. "Haven't been swimming in years." She pulled out her old boots and tugged them on forgetting how odd they looked with a skirt. "Can you even swim?" she asked as she started off walking. Sooner than she thought, she was navigating through dense underbrush and wishing she'd worn pants instead of a skirt. After figuring out what tugged at her skirt and what didn't, she quickly adapted to hopping over briar patches and tangles of vines.

"So, you think you'll find a girl to settle down with now that you're out of Kaionar?" she inquired. Made no difference to her, he wasn't her type or so she thought. He was attractive, but he was a shapeshifter and a well-trained assassin. She still didn't exactly trust him, but now that she wasn't a target she didn't really fear him to any great extent, except when he got that mischievous smile on his face, THEN she feared what he could do.

She was quite happy to listen to him until he mentioned HER. She paused and picked up a rock from the forest floor before launching it straight at him from where she stood. When she turned, her face was a mix of several emotions: angry that he'd make such a bold assumption, flustered because of that same statement, and downright stunned that he'd said it at all. "You'll learn not to take the things you say to me for granted. After several years of being on my own I don't think I'm really good enough for anyone, at least not good enough where it really counts." She'd been talking about her outspoken personality, but she almost knew that he'd have gone in the opposite direction. Her face made a slight change from anger to hurt and she shook her head.

"I certainly don't think I'm good enough for you." she muttered as she turned to keep walking. Sure, she knew she had looks going for her, but her personality was like alcohol, an acquired taste. Some never learned to like her and forever avoided her, and others couldn't like her enough. For a moment she thought back to when she was little and her father always expected too much of her, thus she never believed she was any good at the things she was asked to accomplish. Since then she'd grown and found that she "could" do all those things that tormented her as a child. Her only trouble seemed to be with the male gender, except in the case of people like Russell who had a vested interest in the out-of-the-ordinary.

Her confidence level had never been an issue until she'd gotten past 18, it was when she'd grown out of being a child that things started to get complicated and confusing. Moreso now than before she'd gone to Kaionar it seemed. That was the way with fate though, apparently, for her company got stranger and stranger.

She couldn't resist a smile. "I suppose teaching you to swim is likely out of the question. . .and seeing you flail about like a fish out of water does sound fun. . .Alright let's keep going!" Just before the forest started to thin out she paused and pulled a twig from her hair. "Now honestly, were you just joking about me being the only girl for you?" She wouldn't really care if he'd just been joking, and it was the answer she expected to hear. "Because I really do think I'm not good enough for you. Or at the very least I don't think I'm your type." To be blunt she had no idea what his "type" was, and after she'd said it, it made little sense for her to assume such a thing. The reason for that being that he liked her company well enough to stay this long, so in theory he might just prefer girls with a bit of spark.

As she felt the ground change from underbrush to sand, she removed her shoes and wandered out to the water. "If I didn't live with a circus, and I had free reign to choose where to live, I'd likely choose here or some other place with a beach. This climate is truly perfect!" She debated actually going swimming, since it was getting late and it WAS the open sea. Best to stick to tidal pools and water guarded by sandbars.

"Am I now?" she asked with a slightly shocked look. "Suppose I were to turn my affections to 'you'...How would you deal with that based on your previous statement?" She had been MAINLY teasing, but she couldn't help feeling a tiny bit of attraction toward him, what with all the time they spent together. Not to mention the fact they'd been staying together for a while. The latter not of much consequence since there wasn't really anywhere else to put him. Neither of them minded really. "If you want a swimming lesson, a lesson you shall get." She wore a pair of knee length leggings under her long skirt, mostly for convenience instead of frilly knickers, but they also doubled as excellent swimwear.

Upon removing her now useless, hindering skirt, she fixed her shirt and jumped straight into the water. "Come on no chickening out now! Let's go you desert birdbrain!" How she'd missed swimming! The water was just deep enough for a swimming lesson, but not deep enough to sink and drown. A moment to tie her hair back and she was as ready to teach as she'd ever be. In the interim, she floated on her back and enjoyed the last rays of the setting sun. "Any day now. . ." she taunted with a smile.

She frowned and splashed at him for poking her side. "Nyehhh!" she squeaked. With a slight flail she stood and gave him a peeved pout. "Poking me won't help." She straightened up and took a tiny second to look at Russell before pointing down the shoreline. "If you don't get it right we'll stay here till dawn, got it? Speed and endurance come with practice, for now we're going to master form." With the tide going out, a sandbar made itself visible, so she hopped up on it. "First though, you need to learn to float. Lie flat on your back and try not to move. Put your feet on the sand when you feel like you're going to sink, ok? Let me know when you've got the hang of it, or you if you need help."

Upon realizing she couldn't nap and teach her admittedly attractive pupil, she got back into the water and sank down to do some diving, perhaps find a shell or two under the moonlight. Something told her this would take a long while, but Russell was likeable and charming, and he didn't mind her company. She surveyed the floor and managed to find a shell or two, as well as an angry hermit crab, before quietly returning to the surface and checking on her finch. "How you holding up there, sugar?" she called.

[OOC: Water's just about 5 feet deep.]

With a sigh to herself she walked over and put her hands under his shoulders to steady him. "Stop flounderin', Russ. That was a good start though, since swimming is controlled flailing anyway." After giving her two cents, she moved back a bit and prodded at him. "Speed and endurance? You? I'll believe that when pigs fly!" It was all in good fun, until the bird learned to swim, then she wouldn't be able to tease him and get away with it. Just to mess with him she sneaked a little closer and splashed him. "And I think you've known me long enough to call me by my name, haven't you?" she asked unable to resist laughing. Since it'd been a good few weeks he'd been staying with her, she thought he'd have abandoned calling her 'lass' ages ago.

"Oh, a trick for trying to float, inhale and hold your breath, then lay on your back and don't move. Shoulda mentioned that before, shouldn't I?" Maybe getting floating right would kick start his confidence on learning to swim. She could only hope at this point, it was this or toss him into deeper water and force him to learn the hard way. Tossing him would be difficult though, it'd have to be something different. Something to scheme about while he practiced...

After a while it seemed her teasing had gotten to be more an annoyance than anything else, so she shut her mouth and gave, instead, quiet nudges. "You learn faster than I expected, you'll have this down in no time at all." At his "if I don't die today" spiel, she rolled her eyes. "You might as well just call me by my name, you're not dying if I have anything to do about it." She quickly found that his splashing was making her vision worse, courtesy of the salt content of the water, and thus moved away to the sandbar to watch from a distance. "Stand up Russell. I want you to stop for a minute and relax. Can't have you passing out from exhaustion, can we?" At least now she wasn't trying to be funny. This teaching business was never going to be a permanent career choice, no way. Being in the water so long herself had already made her eyes turn red with salt irritation and her lips were a bit bluish from the cool temperature, no telling how bad a condition HE was in.

"Come sit for a while and catch your breath." Most of the rest period she'd planned to spend in total quiet and enjoy the stars, but knowing Russell that wasn't how it would go. She pulled her knees to her chest and shivered, unknowingly from being "in the drink" too long. "Don't think I'll go into teaching, I'm horrid." she mumbled with a hint of a smile. "You might've been better off jumping in and figuring it out on your own, looking at my methods at least." Exasperated at her less than successful efforts, she flopped back in the sand and stared at the stars wondering if it would rain, what with clouds gathering in the distance.

"I'm a wee bit sadistic with you though, you make my mistakes look hilarious!" She'd been referring to his flailing attempts at floating, when he'd first tried it. It couldn't be helped; she'd starting laughing. "Seeing as the first impression you gave me was a dangerous assassin, your first attempt at floating puts that to shame." Soon it was taking all her self-control to quit, but a clap of thunder several miles off in the distance made her pause and glance around for the source. "Looks like I get my answer." she remarked. Thankfully the storm itself was taking its sweet time in getting to the shore, but it was going to be one Hades of a tempest. Noticing that there weren't many clouds over the mainland, the only answer was the sea in front of them.

"Lesson number two concerning the sea, get as far away from squalls as you can in the time you have." The first was obviously "learn to swim", the second was more common sense, but for one such as Russell, it occasionally needed to be explained. "Think of it this way: a storm that forms over land, or near it, loses its strength fairly quickly, like soup loses heat once it's poured from the kettle. A storm that forms out at sea and has a few miles to gain strength before making landfall is like soup that's still on the fire, no outside forces to cool it down or splash it about. In far simpler terms, we should start heading home." She sat up and watched the horizon for a moment or two to try and estimate how far it was away, but then found the idea to be a waste of time. "Shall we make haste sometime this century?" she asked jumping back in and swimming to shore. Once the water was shallow enough that she didn't need to swim she looked back at Russell and waited for him to join her.

Once Russell was ready to move she yanked on her boots and haphazardly folded her skirt. "I work with fire for a living, I think I'll be alright for now. If not, I'll suffer through it. But thank you!" In a moment of strange, albeit welcome, affection she kissed his cheek and set off into the foliage without the slightest idea of where she was going. Soon after she set out she stopped and looked back at Russell feeling rather like an idiot. "Is this the way we came here by?" It didn't exactly matter, so long as they got away from the storm and into some place sheltered. "Oh well, even if it isn't, onward we go brave squire!" She didn't care to put her skirt back on for two reasons: one was it would make a darn useful blanket later if need be, and two it was just a bloody hindrance in the woods. Every now and then she paused to look back and make sure the elf was keeping pace, then kept moving forward.

It was that tunnel vision of "forward" that led to her marching her not-so-sane self into a tree, and got her nose covered in some sort of verdent moss. "Hell's bells and pulpit upstarts!" she swore rather angrily as she sneezed the vegetation onto the ground beside her. Along with the moss had been a bit of blood, but in the dark it was almost unseen even in the moonlight. "Might need to light a match if this happens again, hang it all." she grumbled. "Russell you alive back there?" she called turning to where she thought he would be.

"Not so worried about temporary damage so much as permanent rearrangement. So long as the latter doesn't come to pass I'll suffer whatever injuries I obtain." When the light went out again, she reached out to grab his hand and lit a match. "Foolish mistake I made earlier, withholding information. I've this broken crystal from one of my previous adventures in the Azure Caves, and it seems that putting it next to my skin amplifies whatever small amount of magic is already there." She let go of his hand for a moment and brought out a small glove from somewhere in a compartment in her right boot. "I'm an idiot today, can't imagine how I forgot these." It then occurred to her that she'd never mentioned them to her companion, and she was now beginning to wonder why.

Something tickled at the back of her mind and while she paid no conscious attention to it, she knew exactly what it was and it was getting worse. Attraction. She'd noticed his eye color change and a light scar across his nose, or at least she 'thought' she'd noticed. Once the glove was on, she pulled the fire away from the match and made it a bit brighter. "This is about all I can do for now, but it'll suffice to get us where we need to go." It felt an awful lot like she was showing off, but really compared to most who used magic that wasn't even worth looking at. "What's that up ahead?" she asked pointing to a patch of light.

The fire jumped with blue sparks and she shivered. "Right, let's get moving then!" Over logs and under fallen trunks and such was how it went for a good distance, and in the middle of the jungle where the moonlight was coming from, was a good sized lake. To Silence the world might as well have been standing still, and the storm nothing but a summer breeze. Something about that lake was familiar to her, but she'd never been here before...had she? She stepped further into the clearing and noticed a rather large pile of wood that was likely a home or barn a good few years prior. "It...I-It can't be..." she muttered. Out of impulse rather than logic, she let go of Russell's hand and took off like a bolt to see what was in the remaining rabble that was once an decent sized house.

Of course with every storm comes rain and thunder and lightning, but tunnel vision had its uses. Under a fallen beam, sheltered from nearly outside force except time, was a somewhat frayed piece of canvas on top of a sheet of thin glass. "A picture?" Trying to use the edge of the roof to shield her finding from the rain she just about dropped it in shock. How on earth did her family portrait get here?! "Russell! Come here, quick!" After looking around she noticed that trees had grown up around the barn, but it was still standing. At least it had a roof and likely a place to put a small fire.