Eruptions

[Vega]

81st Trial of Zi'da during Arc 717
the trial after this

Watching the dawn at sea was beautiful, unlike anything one saw on land. Vega was convinced of this, despite the freezing temperatures and frigid waters which surrounded her. She'd been up since before the dawn, leaving Arlo in a deep sleep and she figured that she'd be back in bed before he woke up or noticed she was gone. Last night, he'd been given a blessing by Cassion, the Immortal he had worshipped since the first trial she met him and for many arcs before, she knew. He'd been completely delighted and thoroughly overwhelmed with it when he'd got back to the Wanderlust late last night. He'd been wound up like a spring, she thought and she grinned to herself as she pulled her knees up under her chin. It was no wonder he'd been so... intense and over wrought, she thought to herself. It was like he'd been given recognition for being who he was, she supposed.

Whatever words she thought, they weren't enough for how happy she was for him, so that would just have to do.

The sun tipped over the horizon and the water briefly lit like molten gold. Vega watched it with delight shining in her ever-changing eyes; soon sunrises would be a thing of memory and Cylus would be upon them. This place was cold, colder than anywhere had a right to be but here at the edge of the world it was beautiful and she had to admit, she liked it a lot. Not enough to stay here, Immortals no. There was nowhere which would convince her to stay anywhere for any extended length of time, Vega genuinely believed.

So, a couple of breaks after dawn, Vega came into their room with a cup of tea for him. "Mornin'," she said with a grin and she perched on the side of the bed "'ow're you feelin' this morning? That arm a'right?" Her eyes watched him as he woke up, looking wonderfully disheveled, not that she was anyone to comment. "I've been doin' some preparation, an' then I just wanted to watch the sunrise. Let you sleep" The reason that she was doing some preparation, though, was something she needed to make clear.

"So," she said, more business-like and stern although it was all a ruse. "I figured it's a special trial. You got marked by Cassion yestertrial, so we've got to 'ave an adventure on this one, don't we?" There was no denying how pleased for him she was, it was written all over her face. "So, to trial, we're gonna sail out to Faldrass. The volcano island place. An' there, we're gonna sit on a beach of warm sand and take off our shoes, feelin' the sand in our toes. Then, I thought we could explore. They reckon there's caves runnin' all under the island, you know. So, I thought we could go cave explorin' and then," She leaned forward to kiss him, her hand reaching up and capturing a stray bit of his hair, which she twirled around her finger but her eyes were serious. Nervous, even. But determined.

"An' then, I was wonderin' if you'd help me learn to read?" She looked at him and smiled. "I've been thinkin' about what you said," she explained, with a thoughtful frown. "An' you're right. I can spell words with my 'ands, so it's about what I see, or... somethin'. I dunno. I don't know about this 'ole brown eyes thing, though, so you're gonna 'ave to enlighten me there." She smiled and poked him in the shoulder. "What you say? Wanna come see a volcano with a fiery redhead?"

[Arlo Creede]

Since he'd left home and had been on the road, at least during the time he'd been completely on his own with the exception of Peg, Arlo had been a fairly light sleeper. It was necessary to be. The wilds were full of any number of dangers. The worst of them prowled the night and were known to creep silently in. Lyova had changed that. The diri never slept and even though she was a whimsical creature given to silliness as often as not, when it came to looking out for genuine dangers and warning him about them, she was as serious as they came. Arlo had slept sounder after that. But not so soundly as he had the night before. It was rare that the sun beat him to rising.

He'd been wound up like a spring though when he'd returned to the boat and had told Vega what had happened. About his outing with Cassion and what had come of it. And even after they'd gone to bed, well, it had been some time before he'd actually done any sleeping. His eyes slowly opened, bleary, when Vega slipped into the room they shared. But when she sat on the edge of the bed with a cup of tea, it all came rushing back to him. "Morning," he said, smiled and sat up, running fingers through tangled curls before he took the mug she handed him. "What time is it?"

Looking down at his arm when she asked, he smiled and nodded. The scar wasn't a pretty thing, never would be he figured. And yet he couldn't be prouder of it. Wriggling his fingers, he nodded. "It's fine. A little itchy, or rather it tingles a little. But I think it's more to do with the nature of the mark and not the scar itself." He'd get used to that and it would settle down, Arlo figured. He was feeling a little of something still going on. A transformation of sorts? He couldn't think of another way to describe it. "Preparing for what?" he asked.

"Not just me," he reminded Vega when she decided they ought to have an adventure as a way of celebrating or acknowledging his mark. "You as well or did you forget already," he teased her, leaned over to kiss her. "But you know, Xiur, Cassion, U'frek, that's a team that's hard to beat." Told exactly what she'd planned though peaked his interest. All of it, it was a good way to spend a trial all told. "I'm game." Though when Vega kissed him, Arlo would have been more than happy to delay their departure. Except that there was something else on her mind.

"Of course I will," he said when she asked about reading. "What's changed your mind?" It had always been up to her to do that, after all, and he hadn't wanted to put any pressure on her by mentioning it again. Plainly she'd been thinking about it though and he was pleased about that. "Any time, any place," he promised. Same as heading off to the volcano now that she mentioned it. Getting up out of the bed and pulling on his clothes, he considered how long they might be gone. "We should eat something first, you think? I'm starving."

It didn't take long in fact for him to put together a good meal that would stick with them. An oat porridge with berries he'd put back from the fall, a little butter, brown sugar and a drizzle of honey. Some chopped nuts thrown on top and they had a meal th at would warm them up and stick to their ribs awhile. After that? Well what was she waiting on? Wasn't it time to set sail? It wouldn't take any time at all even just the two of them, to get their schooner out of dock and on its way.

[Vega]

It was rare that Arlo slept so well, but he'd had an emotional night and he had seemed like it was impossible for him to settle. He'd eaten rather voraciously and then, he'd been full of energy. That, of course, had led to an inevitable conclusion between the two of them, which meant that they'd neither of them got to sleep until the early hours. "it's a couple of breaks past dawn. You must have been exhausted." Handing him his tea she grinned. "I can't imagine why." She hadn't seen him sleep this late since the first night they were together, back on Immortals' Tongue last season, but then it had been for much the same reason then. Her grin to him as he ran his hand through his hair was crooked, a mixture of mischief and almost shy.

The scar was good, he said. Tingling, but good. He looked to Vega to be still riding on the wave of the night before which was more than understandable. It was certainly affecting him, much more than U'frek's had, she thought. When he teased her, though, Vega grinned and shook her head. "I didn't forget. But, you know, it's... well, it's Cassion, innit?" All his life he had been devoted to the Immortal, Vega wasn't prepared to
accept any compromise, or argue about which in the list of Immortals who had marked him, or the one who had marked her were in lists. She returned his kiss and then told him her plans for the trial.

Plucking up her courage to ask him about the reading, she leaned in and kissed him, but then couldn't help but chuckle slightly at his reaction. "Behave yerself. Do you 'ave no decorum, Arlo Creede?" He should get marked more often, she thought with a wry grin. "An' they're a great team," she said, with a grin, "but I know a better one." But she needed to ask this, ask him to help her with the reading. What changed her mind? "I did. You did. We did, I guess." But then, he was starving? Vega shook her head and grinned at him. "I could eat, aye. Works up an' appetite, don't it?" She grinned wickedly at him.

When they'd eaten though, and he started on the next thing, Vega laughed. "Arlo Creede, you've become a right demandin' boy since Cassion marked you. Come on, then," Up on deck, she looked up at the wind vane, nodding her head. "A'righ' gettin' out of the dock, I'm gonna gybe to port, Arlo, so watch that beam. Wind's good an' we're close to runnin' so I'll just be usin' the aft sail, but you open up the mizzenmast a little, too? Just the mizzen gaff." Glancing at him she added. "Mizzenmast is the middle one. The gaff is the one on the top." He probably knew but they'd agreed she'd tell him once.

As she eased the Wanderlust out of the docks, Vega kept her eyes moving, she was always watching all around them. "It's a gybe when you turn by the aft," she said and then explained, "Better doin' that when leavin' dock cos you're not riskin' the aft swingin' just a bit too far an' hittin' somethin'. It gives more fine control. Not everyone does it that way, jus' what I prefer, especially when we're so close to a runnin' point of sail, you know? Aft is well twitchy with the wind behind 'er. You wanna steer?" With a grin she motioned to where they were heading, not yet seen but they would be able to as soon as they were out of the docks. "Or do you want to plot me a course?" Whatever he said, Vega bumped her should against him when they were standing there together. "Arlo?" She wasn't looking at him, but at the seas around them. "I love you. I know you know that, but it's important to say, an' I'm right proud of you, an' you know that too. But there's no one else I'd ask to teach me, you know."

[Arlo Creede]

A couple of breaks past dawn? So far as sleeping, for Arlo at least, it was unheard of and felt strange. As if half the trial was gone already. "If I'm going to exhaust myself," he teased Vega when she reminded him of why that might be, "There's no better way to have done it." It wasn't just that, of course. But it was a very large part of the equation and she wouldn't hear him complaining.

"Decorum is for politicians and nobles and stuffy old merchants and their blue haired wives," he argued before the topic turned to her wanting to read. Whatever it was that had changed her mind, it was a good thing so far as he was concerned. And if they were of like minds so far as the reasons she hadn't been able to, then maybe the way to fix that would be an easier one than if they'd continued to disagree. Less frustrating all around for both of them, and all the more chance of success. As for his appetite, well, she was right about that. But even the night before when he'd eaten his own substantial portion and half of hers, there remained a sense of...well he could have eaten more still. More, that was the sense of it. More of everything and not just food.

Open up the missenmast, she told him once they were up on deck, and with a grin, Arlo fired off a salute, fingers to the brim of his hat. "Aye aye," he said, and was off to do just that. Just the mizzen gaff, that was. And while she reminded him, he pointed out that just as promised, he remembered. "Also called a spanker or driver," Arlo said, in case she didn't know. She probably did. But no, she could drive he told her, and he would plot the course. Due to the compass that Cassion had given him, had they ever visited their current destination before, then they could probably rely on it alone and not need a course plotted out at all. But doing without the compass was better practice, and he wanted more of that before they sailed too far from familiar shores.

He had everything he needed to do it, after all, and place set up on deck as well where he could work. Something to write and draw with, a parallel plotter with rollers, a nautical chart for the area they were in, and a metronome, sort of, looking sort of thing to count off the bits down to the trills. "Course I know," he said when she told him. "The same as I love you. And I know that too." Her reading, he meant, and him to teach her. "It makes me proud too that you're willing to let me." He knew, really, that she might not be comfortable asking anyone else, and it was difficult to express how pleased he was about it. She knew though, and it was all that really mattered.

But just like she'd told him what she knew about sailing, as he plotted out their course and she did the steering, Arlo told her what he was doing so that if pressed, she'd be able to do it herself. First, he said, he'd drawn a straight line from their current position, to their destination. But as they went, in order to complete the trip, there'd need to be more lines drawn along the way. "These little circles all over the chart are called compass roses. and signify the principal directions on a map, land or sea both." He also needed to determine their magnetic bearing by reading where the course line intersected with the inside degree circle, he explained. Then he had to write that course on his chart above the plotted line in degrees. And he had to repeat that process for every line that he drew on the chart.

He had to determine the distance of each course, using the distance scale on the chart. "Calculate the time it'll take to run each course," he said. "by multiplying the distance times sixty. Then you have to divide that number by your predetermined speed in knots. After all that, you've got to use this funny timing device to run the course." It all sounded very complicated he guessed, but actually doing it? Well he guessed the more he did it, the better and quicker, more smoothly the process would go.

[Vega]

Also called a spanker or driver? "Not on this ship, it isn't," she said, with that sort of determined forceful that she found entirely reasonable yet which just sounded bossy. A sure way to confuse people, she thought, was to have different names for the same thing. And they weren't all as bright as Arlo, specifically she wasn't, so one name per thing. Frankly, she thought, this was all confusing enough to her without him getting clever, showing off and making it even more difficult for her poor simple head. No doubt him, her father and her cousin could deal with it. The three of them could spend time sharing all they knew about all the different bits of the whole boat, but not her. She frowned at him as she spoke, but she said no more than 'not on this ship', because that was all that needed to be said.

He got out a load of equipment, all of it technical looking and more complicated than she could deal with, she was sure, but she'd try even if it was just to ask questions, because that helped him get better, or so she believed. Glancing down at the paper, she nodded. "That first line you draw, between where we are an' where we wanna be? Is it always only one line or if there's land do you go around it?" He then told her about 'compass roses' and that they signified principal directions. That sounded like a complicated way of saying, "so it shows you where North is?" and the rose had a second circle on the inside. That showed their.... "What's that then?" Vega asked of a 'magnetic bearing'. She'd heard of it, but didn't really understand just what it was. Arlo, she was sure, would be able to tell her.

So, once he had all his lines in place, then it got really confusing. But, it was important that she understood what he did as much as he needed to understand what she did. So, with her eyes on the steering, she nodded. "Ok, so you write on each line what direction it is in degrees? But is that on the true north bit of the compass rose, or the magnetic north one?" Then, he worked out the distance by multiplying it by sixty then dividing it by the number of knots they were travelling? That caused a frown on Vega's face which then cleared. "Do you do that multiplication thing cos your speed is knots per break? So, it kind of comes pre-multiplied by sixty an' yer evening it up?" Shaking her head she pre-answered. "No, that's probably stupid, ignore me."

It all looked very complicated, she said and she was glad that she was doing the more hands-on stuff and him the thinking stuff. It probably, she figured, significantly lessened their risk of crashing and dying. Still, she kept her focus on their destination and then, as the docks of Faldrass came into view, Vega looked at Arlo and gave a sudden grin. "Is now a good time to mention that Papa 'asn't taught me 'ow to stop yet?" She was teasing of course. "If we wanted to jus' stop, we could heave to. We do that by jus' balancin' out the sails so the push from one balances the pull from the other. I drop the mainsail so it's backin', which means that sail is gettin' the wind in the front, like it's sailin' in irons. But we're not doin' that." Vega simply used the wind, moving the boom mostly on the mizzenmast to slow them down. Then, it was straightforward to steer them into the small dock and, once there and at a stop, drop anchor. Delighted, once she'd done that, she turned to Arlo and grinned. "I've never done that on my own before, Papa's always been with me."

There was Faldrass. "You've been 'ere before to that murder mystery thing, yeah?" Getting the ship ready for them to leave it took a little time and she was focused on that. "We'll take the rowboat to shore. Or we can swim over if you'd rather. But what do you wanna do first? Shall we go cave explorin'?" Looking at him, Vega raised an eyebrow. "or do you wanna get somethin' to eat first?" Arlo seemed to be permanently hungry, she thought and it was getting past the point where it was just the excitement of the night before. "We can go sit on the hot sand an' eat if you wanna? Or go spelunkin'." She grinned at him as she asked, it made no difference to her. None at all. In fact, it all sounded like a good thing to do on a cold trial, just her and Arlo Creede.

[Arlo Creede]

"Alright cap'n," Arlo agreed, smiling to himself when Vega insisted that there ought to be one name, and one name only for any given place, device, working piece or instrument on the schooner. He might have teased her further about it, except that there was a sort of logic to the approach. Whatever they were going to call something, it should probably be consistent in order to avoid confusion. Even in the case of someone who might be familiar with both the slang and the proper term.

But the original line, the first line he'd drawn, Arlo told her, was the one that extended from their current position to their destination without deviating along the way. "As the crow flies," he explained. But all the other lines, broken down into sections, took into account landmarks such as islands, known things like icebergs and so on. Obviously the distance as the crow flew would be much shorter than the true distance they'd travel, but drawing all of them kept things in perspective. "Right," he said, referring to the roses. "Shows you where north is. South, east, west, and then the marks between them..."South by southwest for example, and so on."

As for true north or magnetic north? That was a little trickier to explain. The difference between them was magnetic inclination, he told her. A compass always pointed magnetic north, which corresponded to a fixed point on Idalos. It never changed, according to what he'd read in his books. "But because apparently Idalos wobbles a little in space, magnetic north isn't always true north. The roses on a nautical map are aligned to true north." Which made perfect sense to Arlo, why that would be the case. To get from one place to another, while it was nice to know where magnetic north was and a compass could definitely tell them that, for the sake of arriving where they were going, true north was the more important thing.

As they neared their destination, Arlo knew she was only teasing about stopping. A life aboard ship didn't happen without knowing. And it would have been like him learning to ride Peg forward, but never bothering, learning how to stop her. So she told him how they might slow and stop, by heaving to, but then actually chose another way to do it. Fair enough, he said, he could remember either tactic. "There a reason you might choose one way instead of the other?" he asked. Either way, Arlo told her as he took it upon himself to drop anchor, she'd done a fine job of it.

"The murder mystery, yeah," he confirmed when she asked about his previous trip to Faldrass. "But I was picked up and flown over, straight to the tower so I can't say I know much more about the place than that." He snorted though when she suggested they might swim instead of taking the rowboat, which he was already lowering into the water. "I think I'd rather not turn into a solid piece of ice before we reach shore," he explained and made sure he had everything with him that he might need. "I've packed some things to eat," he considered. "How 'bout we do that first, on the beach?" he suggested. It would give them a chance to eat and decide for sure where they wanted to go next.

[Vega]

She grinned at him when he called her cap'n and, ironically considering they'd be having a sword fight about it the next night, said, "I can't think of anythin' worse, thanks." As always, she was quick to torment him and added, "except you bein' in charge of course. That would be dreadful." He explained about the drawing of a straight line first and then following it up with a more accurate one, identifying how they moved around the landmarks, landmasses and so on. Vega looked down and frowned. "I couldn't do that, you're well clever." It made sense, she agreed, that true north was the most important one and so that was there on the roses. "It's a good idea, that, puttin' the directions on the map, not jus' in the corner, like. It's good." Very clever, no doubting it.

She pulled them to a stop and he dropped anchor. Vega considered his question and answered, thoughtfully. "In a lot o' ways, there's less control when you heave to. It 'olds you in a place, long as you like, withou' needing to anchor. It fixes helm an' sail so you don't 'ave to steer. It's like.. you stop sudden as you can an' then 'old in that place." It was a good way, she said, of a lone sailor securing the boat so that they could pop belowdeck and get something to eat or rest. Also, it was a useful tactic in a storm. "It 'olds you in the water an there's not resistance, yer not fightin' the storm. It's a better hope." But when she was moving them into a mooring or dock? "I like more control. Heavin' to is more use in the open seas, really."

That she was pleased when he said she'd done a good job was obvious as she thumped him on the shoulder and thanked him by way of her usual pleasantry. "Shurrup." Her smile told a different story, though, even as it turned to a wicked grin. If he'd agreed to swim, she'd have been very sure who was going first, but he wasn't falling for it. So, instead, she watched as he lowered the rowboat and then the pair of them climbed into the rowboat and made their way to shore. "Alright, yep." Vega looked at him and grinned. "I think I'm gonna 'ave to get a better job, or get better at huntin'. You're just more hungry all the time, you know that, aye?" She shook her head but was delighted at the prospect of sitting on a beach with him.

And the orange beach was amazing to her. Surrounded by snow, the sands were warm and she pulled off her shoes in amazement. "Arlo, it's like.. look, it's warm." The beach itself was, Vega thought, beautiful and she beamed at him. "Alright, lets get some food down you." As he fussed around getting the food out and she made fists with her toes in the warm sand, Vega looked over at him and asked, "alright, then, tell me what this theory is about my eyes an' when they're brown? They don't change with my mood, you know, my eyes, not like a proper biqaj." Frowning slightly, she looked at him and tilted her head. "Do they?" So she believed and so she always had. Looking down at the bracelet he'd made her, which thus far had not left her wrist, she grinned. "I'm glad you like them, though.An' my blood. An' my toes." Shaking her head, she looked at him. "Come on, Creede, I'm starvin'."

She was teasing him, of course. However, sitting on the sand she looked at him and there was an edge of nervousness in her posture and gaze. "So, what do ya wanna do an' I suppose, 'ow are we gonna try an' drum stuff into my 'ead?" She understood, she said, that it must be what she saw. It had to be because she could spell out words with her hands, but she had gotten no further than that. With a wry grin, she admitted, "I was kinda 'opin' that you 'ad a miracle."

[Arlo Creede]

Directions, true ones or even magnetic north, marked all round the map rather than just in the corner as part of some sort of table; she was right about that, Arlo figured. It stopped him having to constantly refer to it, rather than just concentrating on what was important. That table was still there of course. But given enough time and practice, he suspected that mostly it would all become second nature. "You could do it too, just as easily," he'd argued when Vega stated that she couldn't. "It's just a matter of what you're most interested in, and then taking the time to learn and focus on it." And it remained that his interests were more aligned to navigation than actually sailing the ship.

When Vega explained the differences between dropping anchor and heaving too, Arlo had thought on it, then eventually nodded. "Makes sense. I'd guess that actually dropping anchor in a storm might do more harm than good." And yes, he knew, Arlo admitted with a grin when they climbed down into the rowboat and he turned its tie loose to start rowing. Hungrier, thirstier, more craving of knowledge, adventure, more...everything. And he was fairly sure that it was how it would be from there on out, rather than feeling like those urges might ever return to what they'd been before.

Once they reached the beach and they pulled off their boots, their socks and dug their bare feet into the sand, he smiled and shook his head in wonder. They knew about this sand already. They used it in packets to line their clothes, or larger sacks to keep the cold out of their tent. But to experience the stuff out in the open, on the beach, millions and millions of grains of it, it made him wonder how it was even possible. "We should take some more back with us," he suggested as he pulled something for them to eat out of his sack. They'd be leaving again after Cylus and far away from being able to stroll down to the beach and stock up.

He'd handed her a chunk of bread that he'd hollowed out and stuffed with meat and cheese, but when she insisted that her eyes didn't change with her shifting moods, Arlo grinned, shook his head and snorted. "They do Vega," he argued. "All the time. In a flash." And the stone that he'd gotten for her and woven into that bracelet, wondrous as it was, couldn't hold a candle to those eyes. They transfixed him, but she already knew that. "And I just know that when you seem better to sort out the letters on a page and make sense of them, your eyes are most usually brown. You're calmer then, more focused I guess."

So, then how would they go about it? "I have an idea," he said, frowning thoughtfully just as he finished up his meal. "How about, I spell things out for you in sign, letter by letter. You can read sign perfectly well. So as I sign the letters, you draw them into the sand, together, one word at a time?" It might firm up the connection, he thought, between what she was seeing and how her mind processed it. If she was willing then, he'd start with smaller more familiar words like cat, apple, tree until Vega felt comfortable. And if that went well? Then they might even move on to short sentences and longer, trickier words.

[Vega]

He was right, she said as he explained what he'd been thinking. Dropping anchor in a storm was a bad idea. How bad the idea was, she told him cheerily, was in direct proportion to how bad the storm was. As one got worse, so did the other. Once they'd clambered down, however, she took up her share of the rowing and a frown crossed her face. "I'll teach you 'ow to heave to, Arlo. Jus' in case I'm not there, or unconscious or dead or otherwise busy. In a storm, do that. No point fightin' Chrien, you know?" Vega shrugged slightly - it was something she understood at a basic level and she was somewhat surprised by how much she did understand. It was a good thing, she thought, that she'd be able to sail the Wanderlust.

He agreed, he was hungrier, thirstier, he felt a greater craving for knowledge, adventure, everything? Sitting behind him in the small rowboat, Vega leaned forward and whispered in his ear, her breath tickling him as once he had done to her in a set of ruins with giant undead spiders. "Everythin'? Every single thing?" She chuckled and left a feather light kiss just behind his ear and then got on with rowing. Revenge, after all, was best served cold. "Keep rowin' Creede, or we'll end up in the drink."

Cold, though, was the last thing they'd be once they got to the beach. It was one thing, she agreed, to see small amounts of it, but this sand was amazing and Vega was delighted. "I'm warm. All of me, it's like. Arlo this is amazin'." She laid down in the sand and grinned delightedly but was quick to sit back up and look around. "Yeah, we should. More is good. But not as good as this, yum. Thanks."

He was insistent that her eyes did change colour and Vega looked at him with a slightly disbelieving expression. "When I was a kid, they used to tell me that my eyes jus' changed randomly." Not like a proper biqaj, not how they should be. "Papa always said that wasn't true, but I don't think anyone's ever worked out any pattern to 'em." She'd always wished her eyes were just one colour, she said to him. So she could be different in her own way, not almost-like, but not quite. Thinking about it, Vega scrunched up and opened up her toes, digging her feet in to the sand and then shrugged slightly. "I s'pose I've never been honest, really, with 'ow I feel with anyone but you." Her father could probably tell him what each colour of her eyes meant, if they did mean anything, she said but then she bumped her shoulder against his and grinned. "Or you could tell 'im."

No one, after all, knew her like Arlo Creede did.

Were her eyes ever brown, she wondered aloud. Ironically, as they sat together, chatting and eating and relaxing, they were."I'm relaxed with you, Arlo, in a way I've never been, really. Maybe on my own, I s'pose, but even that's different." Listening to what he said, what he suggested, though, she nodded. "So, you sign 'em, I write them in the sand? I can try." She was happy to do so, she said. She didn't feel put out or anxious at the prospect of drawing in the sand, that was something she could do easily. It was just pens and quills and things which, as she put it, gave her the wiggins.

It wasn't easy and she got it wrong a lot. But what she got wrong was telling in and of itself; she never misunderstood the sign itself, she always knew the letter, could name the letter and spell the word, not a problem. Somewhere, though, in her mind the letters got turned around so that they were written back-to-front as individual letters, or she swapped them around one with the other as she "wrote" them. So long as she remained relaxed about it, and she did so long as he did, she drew the correct letters, even if they were back to front. When she made a mistake, if he asked her to look at it, even spell it out again, she just couldn't see it. It was in the looking at the letters themselves where her real trouble lay and that was part of the issue with writing them. Looking down at the word she'd just written, having switched out two letters, Vega frowned slightly as she searched for the words to explain what she didn't understand.

"I don't know 'ow to make 'em stay still long enough so I can catch them, Arlo. How do I do that?"

[Arlo Creede]

Hungrier, yes," Arlo had confirmed, grinning and knowing exactly what Vega was referring to when she'd asked. "For everything. You included." Of course she was also right that some topics were better avoided, or at least not actively pursued under certain circumstances. Like these. The two of them, in a small boat that needed rowing over the oceans swells, and not overturned with them in it while they were otherwise engaged. It was something that took effort though, Arlo had discovered. Increased urges were one thing. Learning the discipline to deny them, now and then, was a trick that was going to require some practice on his part.

"They don't," he told her, once they were on the beach and had kicked off their shoes and she said she'd been told that the shifting of her eye color was random. "When you laugh, as if something has struck you as funny, they're blue. When you're happy they're green. And when you're angry, really angry, they turn red." It had taken him some time to learn, to observe and to pick up on the patterns that were clearly there. But it definitely wasn't random, Arlo maintained. And he was sure that there wasn't anything he could tell her father about that, that the man didn't already know. In fact though she didn't say it, he'd guess the ones who'd told her that was her cousins, as a way to torment her back then.

And her eyes were brown fairly frequently. Probably more than she realized. So, he signed, and she copied each letter he signed onto the sand at their feet. She had no problem with that, and he hadn't anticipated that she would. Except that as the words got larger, more complex, some of the letters she wrote were out of order, some of them backwards. But if he was at all feeling impatient, Arlo definitely didn't show it. In fact, observing what she was doing was providing him some insight into what the problem actually was.

So, how did she make the letters stay put? Arlo frowned a little, trying to find a way to explain what he was thinking then. "The problem isn't with your eyes I don't think," he suggested. "I mean when I sign, you don't mistake the signs for anything else. Anything that they're not. But it's not your eyes that do the reading is is? They do the viewing, but not the seeing. Your eyes don't think. They don't know to call a tree a tree when they see it. Your mind does," he pointed out. So there was a link between the eyes and the mind, the eyes took in and carried information and the mind sorted it out, he explained. And that was where things were going wrong.

"So maybe that's what you need. To...train that link so things don't go jumbled between seeing and comprehending," he suggested, digging into his sack to pull out a pencil. Practice some exercises maybe, that would force her eyes to properly track symbols or patterns, which forced her mind to go along for the ride until it became second nature. Showing her what he meant, he took the blunt end of the pencil and drew a long, sideways figure eight in the sand, tracing it over and over again, and then eventually switching directions and doing it all over again several times.

"Maybe," he said as he brushed the sand back in place and he handed her the pencil, "you're mind is wanting to do other things even though your eyes are seeing. It's not following and staying focused on the letters." Maybe in order to train up the link, a little exercise in repetition was in order. "Try it?" Arlo suggested.