09-07-2021, 10:25 AM
Enthusiasm breaks through his cool charm, enthusiasm both to break away from the subject of his singing and for showing off the hidden places of Ischia. It is a large island with a great deal to explore, and a history littered with ghosts, if those are the kind of things that Maurtia likes. He does not know for sure where the ghosts congregate, but he can guess, and he pauses to glance at the nearest islet, just visible from the eastern beach where they are standing. The waters between Kelpie and the shores of mainland Ischia are a graveyard, but he is not taking her there today. The tides are too strong now if she cannot swim, too dangerous for anyone unable to survive beneath the breakers.
"Come on! I'll show you!" He grins, washing away the concern that fills him when he thinks too much about the kelpies and turns towards the ridges that mark the start of Ischia's low and lush mountains.
"There are no mountains like ours anywhere else in Beqanna," he adds, matter-of-factly. The continent has many wonders, but all her mountains are bare things, naked, cold, and high. Ischia's are green nearly to their tops, thick with trees and vegetation and colorful birds, and he ducks through two cashew trees, their boughs so heavy with fruit that he is forced to slouch and press his long ears flat to his poll. The branches rap audibly at his slick armor as he squeezes beneath them and, straightening slightly (for the canopy is still a bit low for him,) steps aside to show Maurtia a cavern entrance at the mountain's foot.
"There." His whiskers gesture for him in the cramped space. The mouth of the cave is black and the distant light of its other end is far enough to lend no helpful light. It is full of the sounds of the spaces between, of the soft flutter of bats' wings, the plinking of water dripping through rock, and occasionally, the unexplained groans and knocks of the immense weight of the mountains above. His goal, on the other side, is invisible to them from here, and feels miles distant though he knows it is only minutes away.
"You wanna go first? Or last?
"Come on! I'll show you!" He grins, washing away the concern that fills him when he thinks too much about the kelpies and turns towards the ridges that mark the start of Ischia's low and lush mountains.
"There are no mountains like ours anywhere else in Beqanna," he adds, matter-of-factly. The continent has many wonders, but all her mountains are bare things, naked, cold, and high. Ischia's are green nearly to their tops, thick with trees and vegetation and colorful birds, and he ducks through two cashew trees, their boughs so heavy with fruit that he is forced to slouch and press his long ears flat to his poll. The branches rap audibly at his slick armor as he squeezes beneath them and, straightening slightly (for the canopy is still a bit low for him,) steps aside to show Maurtia a cavern entrance at the mountain's foot.
"There." His whiskers gesture for him in the cramped space. The mouth of the cave is black and the distant light of its other end is far enough to lend no helpful light. It is full of the sounds of the spaces between, of the soft flutter of bats' wings, the plinking of water dripping through rock, and occasionally, the unexplained groans and knocks of the immense weight of the mountains above. His goal, on the other side, is invisible to them from here, and feels miles distant though he knows it is only minutes away.
"You wanna go first? Or last?
@Maurtia