A New Home

She caught it and turned it over in her hands. "Thanks!" She smiled at him then started rubbing the lotion into her small feet. She hissed when she applied pressure to the blisters. She capped the container and handed it back to him.

She blushed a little, "yeah, company is nice. I, uh, I don't exactly see other trolls often." She yawned again, then took her water bottle from her sylladex. She splashed some water on her gills, which were drying to the point where it was becoming painful. The gills along her ribs were fine for now, her tight shirt stopping them from opening.

"Ugh, don't get me started on lusus's giving their wards a hard time. Mine is incredibly overprotective. I wasn't allowed above water until I was 4 sweeps old." Eisire was not looking forward to returning home, knowing DragonMum would be furious. She'd probably be trapped inside of her hive for a week or two, her lusus sealing the exits by sitting her giant scaly arse in-front of them. Hopefully, she had stayed put and not gone searching for her.

"Still, seeing different places must be exciting. This cluster of hivestems is the farthest I've ever wandered from the ocean. What kind of places have you been?" She was curious, desperate to see the rest of Alternia but tied to the ocean by her lusus and her inherited duty to the empire- creating monsters for the army. Many times she had toyed with the idea of running away. But her insecurities often shut down those thoughts.

Theiyw wondered what she meant exactly by saying she didn't have company that often. Things like that could mean all manner of things. Given that she was a seadweller, she might very well have been a shut-in due to the fact that not doing so could put her in a great deal of danger. The fact that her lusus had kept her so sheltered probably explained her excited behavior when he greeted her the first time. It also was probably why she had been so exhilarated upon entering the market. Although he'd been excited to see the shops and things as well, he hadn't really been as amazed as she seemed to have been. "Your lusus should be grateful, you risking your life to go and get her medicine. I hope she's not too angry when you get back." Theiyw couldn't remember the last time his lusus had scolded him for running away, although he was always praised for catching up to his scaly custodian.

At her question, he perked up, picking up the journal from the floor and leafing through it. Although his writing was difficult to read, he frequently made sketches of things that he wanted to remember and show others. Around the quickly scrawled words were images of a desert wasteland, there was one sketch of a crumbling city left in ruins sweeps ago. He'd spent a great deal of time exploring that area and picking up artifacts, some of which he still held on to. "I've been all kinds of places, really. Deserts, ruins, cities...there was this one place I went that was lawnrings as far as one could see. It was ridiculous and terrifying." He shuddered. "I can't imagine living in a lawnring would be any fun at all. In fact, it sounds quite miserable." He thought a life without traveling could be fun and interesting in some cases, and envied trolls with permanent homes. But he had never been very drawn to the lawnring way of life.

"There's got to be all sorts of places to go in the ocean, though, right? I hear of underwater cities and all sorts of things that sound more like fiction than truth." Admittedly, he'd mostly heard of those things in his adventure novels, but he had always believed that stories had to be somewhat based on fact. Plus, underwater cities were too good of an idea to just pass off as myth.

Eisire thought to herself, wondering how her Lusus would react. She would most definitely be incredibly angry,especially after not returning before daytime. She seemed to be continually grumpy, especially when she was injured. "I... I'm not so sure about that. After her wound is healed up, she might calm down." She smiled a little, and hugged her new pillow to her chest. "She's a huge pain in the butt, but she keeps me safe and sometimes will bring me meat from the nearby shores. I would also much rather have her as a lusus than b'glob. Then I would really have something to complain about." She laughed a tad.

She watched Theiyw flip through a journal, curious to its contents. Deserts, ruins, and cities she knew of, mainly from a few journal entries by her Ancestor. Lawnrings, however, were a foreign concept to her. "What kinds of ruins have you found? And what was the desert like, I heard its unbearably hot even without the sun beating down on it. And... Um..." She blushed, gog she was such a shut in. He was going to think her an idiot. "Uh... whats.... whats a lawnring?"

She thought on his question for a moment. "Where I live, there is miles upon miles of nothing. There is a few places of beds of plantlife where some fish live, and a trench that I don't go to. I've never explored past the trench, but from my Ancestors writings there is an underwater city somewhere in the ocean I live. She, uh. She ruled it, and built it from the ground up. I'm guessing its somewhere past the trench." That stupid trench, again she was feeling nervous. The one time she had mustered the courage to peer into its blackness, she had burst into tears. Knowing her luck, there was probably amazing things to see on the other side.

By now her hair was completely unraveled, curling in every which way. It brushed against the ground and fell over her shoulders. She tucked it behind her finned ears, the pink streaks too short and hanging in little ringlets on the sides of her face. She trimmed the ends once a sweep, but other than that she had never cut it. She pulled out a barrette from her pocket and clipped the shorter pieces out of her face. She hadn't seen any landwellers with hair as long as hers, then again she hadn't seen many landwellers at all. It was probably a seadweller thing, to have massive amounts of hair.

He wondered if she'd ever known her ancestor. Seadwellers could live for quite a long time, so it wasn't entirely impossible for her to have done so. Still, he couldn't imagine what it would be like having to live up to such an important figure. Hearing about those he might possibly be descended from was difficult enough, he really didn't think having some idea of his future set in stone was a very good way to live. He'd heard that many seadweller's lusii were incredibly large, but at least it didn't seem like her lusus was anything similar to the Empress' horrorterror of a custodian.

At her question he raised an eyebrow. Lawnrings were pretty popular as far as habitation went, it was surprising that she hadn't heard of them. "Well trolls who live in hives tend to have lawns, in a circular shape. There's not really a better way to describe it, that's just the way they are. You aren't missing out on much." Lawnrings were so dull, not to mention dangerous. He didn't understand how anyone could live there for any long amount of time. At least there weren't enough trolls as there were in the hivestems, but that also made them boring enough to not be worth it. He was much more interested in talking about the fun things he'd found. "There was this once city, where a hivestem had collapsed, and it had fallen onto another hivestem, and so all the stems looked like they were leaning one way, all while they were decomposing and falling apart. IT was dangerous to walk around, but I think it was worth it..." He picked up one of the rings that he'd taken off of his horn. "I carved the material for this one off of a support of one of the hivestems." Setting it down, he shrugged. "I'd walk outside in the desert, and even though it was night, the sand would have absorbed so much sunlight that it would still be hot to walk on." Although adventuring was sometimes a hassle, he had to admit it had its better parts.

"I'm sure you'll be able to get across the trench somehow. Don't worry too much about it. There's gotta be a way for you to do it. Maybe you can just take a ship, if you don't want to swim." There must be something about the trench that had kept her away, but from her attitude, he didn't really want to question why she avoided it. Perhaps there was something unspeakable living down there, or even across it.

Eisire hugged her pillow a little tighter. In the last journal entry from her ancestor, it had said she was going to lead a small fleet of starships for the empress. After a massive seaquake, her city was left in ruins. So, she set out to colonize water-filled planets.

Eisire's face grew hotter, embarrassment clear on her cheeks. If he didn't think her a shut in, he must do now. It should have been easy to guess- a lawn in the shape of a ring. "I've, uh, I've not seen one before... I don't really venture near other hives. When I do come to mainland, I typically stay close to sure or under tree cover." It was plainly too dangerous to wander, the longer she was out of water the more chance she had of being discovered and quite possibly killed. It was by sheer luck that she had run into another highblood.

She perked up as Theiyw spoke of the ruins and desert. The fins on her ears widened slightly, making sure she heard every word. Her eyes were wide, trying to picture the collapsed hivestems. "That sounds incredible. I wish I could explore ruins... I've read so much about lost cities, abandoned temples and shrines, and some areas so cut off from the rest of society that they have no idea of the technological advancements of modern day. I dunno... maybe one day when I'm older I can go exploring but..." You shrug. "For now, I am tied to my hive." You look at the rings, tilting your head. "Did you make all of those?"

That stupid trench, even hearing the word made Eisire flinch. It was just a massive crevasse where her lusus dragged the ships she sunk so she didn't have to see the dead waterlogged bodies. Although, whenever she got worked up about the trench, her lusus would always know and comfort her. She rarely comforted Eisire, and it made her wonder if something bad happened there.

"Most of the ships that pass by my hive are pirate ships, and there is no way I can trust them, even for a little while. And even if I took a ship... I'd know I was crossing over it... its a really stupid mental block." Eisire's face burned again. It was stupid, really, that she couldn't even bare to think about crossing it.

Her excitement about her travels made him pretty satisfied with all the things he'd done. It sometimes felt as if it wasn't the places he was that made traveling bearable, but the trolls he met. Eis was certainly one of these cases. Her worry  about running into trolls who were dangerous to her seemed strange to him, he had always been open to defending himself should be be attacked, but he never really had too many obligations aside from those he had to himself and his lusus.

Reaching down to the rings, Theiyw nodded. "Yeah. I make them in a way that's a little reminiscent of wherever I've been usually from things I got from wherever that place is. It helps me remember.." He trailed off. There were many things that he wanted to remember about the places he'd been. The wind always seemed to blow in a different way, there were different scents on the air, different ways of speaking and different things that drew his interest. No place was the same. "I guess there's some places that I'll never go, though, like that trench you were talking about, or anything in the ocean at all." He regretted his inability to see the wonders of the ocean, especially when there were so many things that were different from how he lived now. "Still, anytime you want to go and see some of the world, just ask me where I am...which reminds me, here." He pulled out his palmhusk, bringing up Trollian. "We should probably trade tags before we forget. I'm tumultuousFacade, talk whenever you want, although sometimes I'm not too available." He would sometimes be traveling so far off the grid that his service was completely gone. He'd gotten used to it over the sweeps, though, and found it was better sometimes not having to worry about keeping in contact with trolls so frequently.

When she talked about the trench, he only shrugged. "It's not really a big deal. You don't have to go over the trench to fulfill your destiny or anything. It's just something that you can do if you want to. If you really wanted to, I guess you could travel to it around the other side of the planet, that might be a lot of trouble, though." Even he had not traveled around the planet, there was too much water to be able to do things like that, and his lusus had never brought him anywhere where he had thought it needed.

Yawning, he lay back on the cushions. "Sounds like you've got a ways to go tomorrow night. I'd get some sleep, Eisire." Despite how much he enjoyed talking to her, he was quite tired, what with the way he'd traveled to get to this cluster of hivestem, and all the fighting.

Eisire admired the rings from a distance, "They're amazing, its pretty cool you can make stuff like that." For her, jewelry was a rarity, since she rarely visited markets and couldn't hang around long. She typically wore all the jewelry she owned, which wasn't much. There was her sign-shaped pendant, the silver studs near the bottom bases of her fins, a little gold hoop at the top of her left fin, and a black-metal barbell on her right eyebrow.

"Maybe one day you'll get to go in a submarine and explore the ocean. And aren't there breathing thingies that help landdwellers breathe underwater? I saw a pair of sailors using them once. They had these huge cans on their backs." She giggled, remembering how ridiculous they looked. They had these weird shoes on that sort of looked like flippers and massive glasses that wrapped around their face.

Eisire's jaw dropped, "Really?! You would take me with you? That would be incredible!" she pulled out her mini huskpad, quickly typing in his handle. "I'm aquaticAssassin. I usually don't take my huskpad into my lab, since it can be a huge distraction. Oh, and I'll message you once the creature is ready to go with you!" She could see ruins, vast deserts, jungles, all sorts of things, just as she'd dreamed of.

She smiled a little as he talked about the trench. She didn't want to say that she probably never would cross it.

Eisire curled up around her pillow and pulled her blanket over her. "Goodday, Theiyw. Sleep well." She tried not to toss and turn as she settled down, for fear she might disturb his sleep. She had never slept out of water before, or out of her recoupracoon really. It took her a while, but she managed to drift off. But it wasn't long before the daymares started.

She was falling, or sinking to be more specific. The light above was quickly fading as she was sucked down into the darkness. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't escape the current. A ship was also trapped, broken into pieces as it fell into the abyss. The broken helm of the ship was moving quickly, heading straight for her. There was no escaping it, and she was soon trapped by the exposed captain's quarters. She hit the wall with a sickening crack, and Eisire snapped awake, after two hours of sleep.

She sat, her entire body shaking. She clamped her hands to her mouth, not wanting to wake her host. Now she knew why her lusus insisted on her sleeping in the recoupracoon.

Eisire's enthusiasm was well received, and Theiyw only smiled and nodded at her amazement at her response to his offer. He rolled his eyes a little bit when he was introduced to the idea of swimming underwater. It wasn't really a secure thought. "I don't know much about swimming, but it really isn't my forte. I quite like doing things the landweller way, without the fear of meeting agressive seadwellers in their natural habitat." Eis seemed fine, but he'd heard stories of armed seadwellers ready to cull a landweller for their inadequacies, whatever those inadequacies might have been. In some cases, the claimed inadequacy was simply the fact that whoever the cullbait was wasn't hatched with fins and fills. "I'm not planning on wearing a giant can on my back anytime soon." He didn't see how that would work anyways. Crafting something like that would only cause him trouble if seadwellers were to learn about him trying to imitate a water-breather.

"Goodday, Eisire." He said, drifting off to sleep. The tub of sopor salve went unused as he slept, but the mirrored pieces glued to the side of the can made it reflect some of the light that filtered through the meetings in the fabric of his tenthive.

His dreams were mainly uneventful. Uneventful, or simply something he'd gotten used to sweeps ago. If he was dealing with horrorterrors in his dreams, he certainly didn't show it. However, he'd bought the seaglass so that he could make something, and with her friendliness he had decided that he wanted to make something for Eis. He had quite a good internal clock, which he'd needed quite a few times before. Traveling meant that he had to be awake for certain things, such as rising tides and even times during the day his lusus would decide to leave, although that was usually unannounced anyways. Due to this, he managed to wake up a little while after Eis did. He didn't notice her at first, as she was incredibly good at being quiet. Once he reached over for the bag of seaglass and the roll of golden wire he'd kept stored in his bag, he realized that she was no longer laying down. Not wanting to startle her, he set down the bag that he'd picked up, leaning back so that he wouldn't look too imposing. "Eisire? Are you alright?" From the way that she was shaking, it certainly didn't appear as if she was alright. Daymares were frequent, especially the first few times without sopor.

Eisire's mind was in shambles as she tired to work out what she had seen. It felt too real, coated with a sickening sense of deja vu. She could even hear the sound of a bone breaking, despite never have broken a bone in her life... she didn't remember ever breaking a bone... was it possible she broke something when she was little? She felt so small in the daymare. She was even wearing the little gold bracelet that her wrists had become to wide for sweeps ago. Tears fought their way to her eyes when the realization dawned on her.

She jumped when she heard Theiyw's voice, scrambling to compose herself. "Oh, um, s-sorry for waking you! Uh, I'm f-fine. J-just a daym-mare." She kept her back to him, trying to calm down. Hearing the shaking of her voice, the little hitches, somehow it worked her up more. She quickly wiped her eyes. Maybe there was a reason she remembered little of her childhood, as she had gotten older she had accidentally dragged out repressed memories. Maybe there was a reason she couldn't bear to think of the trench.

Theiyw tried to appear calm, so that he wouldn't worry her any more. Things were difficult, as he had never really dealt with a troll who'd just been tortured by a difficult daymare only minutes before. He hadn't ever seen someone this vulnerable, at least not willingly. He'd, of course, seen many trolls before their deaths, but he hadn't intended to experience someone plagued by daymares pretending that they were alright directly in front of him. Sighing, he stood up and walked over to her, his blanket draped around his shoulders like a cape as he knelt down beside her. "Daymares are awful, I would know. I haven't slept in a coon in goodness knows how long..." He didn't really know the protocol for dealing with someone like this, but he also didn't know how if he even wanted to help Eis deal with it. Of course, he wasn't just going to let her sit there and suffer, but being unknowingly compassionate about things such as this meant that he would have to expose himself as well, something that he wasn't altogether comfortable about doing. "

Reaching out to her, he put a hand on her shoulder tentatively. "I wouldn't be the best at telling, but it certainly doesn't seem like you're okay. Unless sobbing is significant of some other emotion than fear or sadness.." He wondered if this was related or prompted by something that they had talked about previously, and if so what that thing was. It was entirely possible that it could have been the trench, which she had seemed afraid of for some reason which she would not disclose, but she had also just been in a dangerous fight, so there were more than one potential causes to the daymare.

This had been her first daymare in sweeps, how on earth Theiyw had delt with them for so long was beyond her. She rubbed her eyes again, hiccuping. God she was a mess, her hair even more insane than usual from moving around in her sleep and snot running from her nose. The fear was slowly leaving her, the shock remaining strong.

She glanced up at him before rubbing her eyes again. What she wouldn't do for a tissue. She felt his hand on her shoulder, calming her somewhat. "Y-yeah... Um I'm not okay..." she hiccuped again. "It was a r-r-really scary daymare... A very realistic one as w-well... I could even hear my arm breaking..." She paused for a moment, not sure how she had known it was her arm. She'd heard a crack and then woken up.

She buried her face in her hands, muttering. "That stupid fucking trench..." She hiccuped again. She was becoming more and more sure that the daymare was a memory, that she had been sucked down in the maelstrom she had heard about.

You finally figured it out? And it only took you eight sweeps. Hm, I thought you smarter than that. You were so scared when you woke up in the dark, hurt and surrounded by the dead. You just couldn't handle it. So, I had to step up and get us the hell out of there!

Eisire felt like she couldn't breathe, and pushed her other half out of her mind, which was easier than she had expected.

Theiyw looked down to her arm to make sure that it was doing alright, and wasn't in fact broken. It seemed alright, and so he continued to try and comfort her, although he was admittedly not doing a very good job. His efforts were honest, though, and he hoped that might offer some consoloation, although it might not be the best of consolations anyways. "Your arm's not broken. Your arm's fine, look, you're not in a trench, or whatever the hell you were dreaming about. Okay?"

Hadn't she said that she had never even been near the trench? That made absolutely no sense, if she was so terrified of it, and had a vivid dream about it, she must have either an incredibly good imagination, or she must have been there without remembering it. "Tell me more about the trench. Were you there? Really there?" He wondered if something had happened to make her forget things like that, if the memory was too traumatic to even think about reliving, even if it would help her continue onwards.

He had experienced difficult things, of course. He'd once thought his lusus had left him for good, and he'd also nearly died once when captured by some landwellers who were only barely above his caste. They'd worn facepaint, and he had been charged with trespassing on their land. He'd only been saved because of the 'wicked bedazzlements' he had been wearing on his horns. For some reason, his captors had found them incredibly interesting, and he'd been let go.

In front of him, it seemed like Eis was having a battle with herself, and he wondered what exactly it was she was thinking about. He couldn't know about her other half, of course, but it did seem like she was experiencing a great deal of inner turmoil. Deciding to try and bring her back to the present moment, he said her name again. "Eisire?"

She'd stopped crying, that was a good start. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. She took a deep breath, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth. "I... I think I was. I can sort of remember the storm, and the ships sailing overhead. I was playing close to the trench, I... I can remember the corals that were along the edge." It was so clear, the memories coming back so easily. "And the maelstrom... it started so quickly... and before my lusus could reach me I was being sucked down with the ships... and I got trapped under some wreckage, I passed out, I guess I broke my arm when it hit me... And I woke up at the bottom..." She paused, trying to sort out the scrambled memories.

"It was dark... and... I took out my flashlight and turned it on... and... oh glob..." She clutched her head, reliving the splitting migraine of her personality being ripped in two. The waterlogged faces of the dead surrounded her. After a minute the pain was gone. "And... then... I woke up in my hive..." She leaned back, eyes shut and trying to compose herself. Her head pounded from crying, and her nose was stuffed from the tears.

He didn't know how to answer that. In fact, he really didn't know much of what she was talking about at all. Theiyw had no idea what coral even was, and he wasn't particularly good at picturing the events that she had been describing. "Uh..." Deciding to leave her to finish the memory with her own reflection to guide her, he quickly went to the makeshift first aid kit that he kept lying around in his backpack. It was a relatively good kit, and had all the essentials. Right now, he just thought that she needed something to dry her tears, and so he ripped a bit of bandage off its roll and handed it to her. "Take this and..uh.." He reached down for her blanket and wrapped her around her shoulders. Perhaps that would stand in for the hug that he didn't really think himself capable of giving.

Sighing, he sat down a little ways away from her, mostly so that he wouldn't feel so awkward resting his hand on her shoulder or arm with nothing else to do. "Do you want to talk about it? You don't have to talk about it, if it's hard to talk about..." He decided right then and there that he was probably the worst possible troll in situations such as this, if he couldn't even decide whether he wanted her talking about what she was thinking about or not. Why the hell was he even doing this? He had no idea, and he only tugged his own blanket a little tighter around himself, at a loss for words for the most part and involved in an internal debate for whatever part was left.

She thanked him and dried her eyes, then wiped her nose. She kept it balled in her hand, just in case her nose started running again. Having the blanket around her shoulders felt nice, sort of like how she felt when she got into her recoupracoon. After taking another minute to control her breathing, she ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it from her face. "It's.... It's very complicated... And hard to explain..."

It wasn't exactly hard to explain; she had two personalities inside of her, one which would kill everything in sight if allowed to obtain control. It wasn't exactly something she shared, and she was pretty sure that as soon as anyone found out about her problem that they would never speak to her again. She wiped her nose on the bandage again. She had regained most of her composure by now, but still quietly hiccuping every so often. Glob, she must look like such an idiot, crying her heart out to someone she had met the dawn before.

She stared at her feet, mostly concealed by the blanket, only her webbed toes sticking out. "I'm sorry... this must be much more than you bargained for when you offered to let me stay here. I'll... I'll leave as soon as it gets dark enough. I'm sorry for being a bother." After her breakdown she had surely ended any hopes of a friendship. She could also say goodbye to exploring with him. After all, who was insane enough to be friends with an unstable seadweller?

It sounded like she didn't exactly want to explain what was actually going on. He understood that to an extent. Not only was it a personal matter, but speaking about things that were so emotionally effecting could start pushing on more sensitive territory that he didn't think either of them had agreed to going into. Therefore, he just decided to sit there and try to come up with something that would help. Once she began to apologize he simply shook his head. She really didn't have to do that. "It's okay. I don't mind.." He wasn't really sure whether he minded or not. Things like this certainly were new, he hadn't seen a troll cry in front of him in a really long time. "Plus, I've still got to show you out of this maze of a city, right?" He reminded her, not wanting her to simply get lost and run into another group of hostile lowbloods.

Sighing, he decided to not just sit there in a useless manner, and ended up moving over to her, resting a hand on her back in an attempt to comfort Eisire. "Really, you'll be fine, it's not a bother." He smiled a little, trying to be cordial. "Maybe it is a bit unexpected, I don't really do this kind of thing. But it's alright, I think." He was becoming more and more unsure by the second - how did one deal with a sobbing seadweller, anyways? How did one deal with any troll sobbing? This was not his territory, not at all. Patting her back hesitantly, he looked around the tent, avoiding eye contact if she ended up looking back at him.

"I have some sopor..stuff that might help." He glanced at the small container of soporific lotion, wondering if she would trust him enough to use it. "Once you're ready to try sleeping again, you just dab some of it on your face, it should work alright."  He shrugged. "I have to admit, it's rather uncomfortable going to sleep with sopor stuck to your face, but at least it's got to be better than daymares. Plus, you must be used to it." He realized that was what trolls did anyways, and therefore it probably wouldn't be as much of a bother to her as it had been to him in the past.

She was calm now, still bunged up and puffy eyed from crying, but calm none the less. She blew her nose again and glanced up at him, surprised. The trolls she had met, especially the highbloods, were aggressive and quick to shun you, and only thought about themselves. But Theiyw had defended her, a complete stranger at the time, from a group of enraged lowbloods, then offered her a place to stay. And now, instead of rolling over and going back to sleep he had comforted her.

"Thank you, Theiyw." She smiled shyly at him. Eisire could tell he was uncomfortable, but wasn't sure how to lessen his unease. She was still exhausted, and her eyes were beginning to grow heavy when he patted her back. Unaware, she purred, low and quiet, remembering how her lusus would rub her back with the side of one of her talons when she was very young. She blushed the second she realized she had started purring, and quieted herself instantly. She hoped that Theiyw hadn't heard, sure that it would increase his discomfort.

Her face still burning, she nodded. "Oh, um, yes, thank you." She yawned, her gills flaring again. She felt physically uncomfortable- She hadn't showered or changed her clothes since the previous evening and felt stiff from sleeping outside of her coon. From the tossing and turning, she could almost feel the mats forming in her hair. And her gills, they were almost unbearably itchy. She couldn't wait to jump back into the water. "Yeah, I'm pretty used to having sopor stuck to me by now. It takes me nearly an hour every evening to get it all out of my hair." She laughed a little, trying to lighten the mood.

"Yeah, no problem." Taking his hand off of her, more out of discomfort for the close contact than anything else, he reached over to the little tub of soporifics and handed it to her. Briefly, he realized that he'd had no issue with being in contact with Eisire before this. He'd held her hand whilst they'd been in the market, this certainly wasn't more contact than that had been. If anything, it was less physical contact than that had been. Biting his lower lip, he managed a glance back over at her. A few minutes ago, he could have sworn she had been purring. But of course, that was something trolls did only when they were incredibly comfortable, so it didn't make sense for her to be doing that in the tent of a complete stranger, unless  he'd successfully comforted her, which he thought was pretty unlikely given how awkward he'd been acting around her.

He decided that it would seem rude for him to stay in the center of the tent without a reason, especially when she still seemed so uncomfortable. So he moved back over to her when he handed it to her, shoulders slumping a little bit. "I can't remember the last time I slept in sopor. probably why I can't stand that stuff." He hadn't stayed in someone's hive in quite a while, mostly out of distrust, but also because of fear of getting to attached to any troll in particular. That always made leaving more difficult.

Looking at her hair, he nodded in agreement. "I can't imagine that's easy to deal with." He ran a hand through his own hair, which was pretty disheveled now that he'd been sleeping for a while. Appreciating her attempt to bring the mood of the tent to a little bit of a cheerier level, he leaned back, yawning a bit himself as he reached over for the seaglass and wire. He didn't know when she'd be going to sleep, but he figured that he might as well do something while he was waiting. He began twisting the wire around a few pieces of seaglass, making it so that they stayed together whilst the wire made an interesting pattern. "You going to sleep?" He asked, focusing more on the comforting pieces of metal and glass in front of him than he was on Eis, not out of disrespect, but merely because he had no idea what he should do. Part of him was telling him to continue to try and comfort her, whereas the other more wary side of him was reminding him that she was going to leave in a few hours, and that would only result in more hurt later on.

She yawned a thank you when he handed her tub. She unscrewed it, the smell instantly making her feel drowsy. "I can't remember the last time I slept out of water. To be honest, my biggest worry before falling asleep is that habitual instinct would kick in and I would wake up spluttering because I had tried to breathe with my gills." Eisire snickered a little. With one of her elbows she rubbed at her gills, hating how dry they felt. At least the gills on her neck had been allowed to stretch a little while she yawned.

"I've gotten used to methodically washing my hair every morning. Its worse when I wake up and its all in my gills. Now that takes forever to wash out, and the entire time I feel high as a kite." Once, out of curiosity, she had swallowed a spoonful of sopor. When her lusus found her higher than a featherbeast, she had been sent to her respite block. The hangover was not enjoyable in the slightest.

She watched him work for a moment, admiring the ease at which he manipulated the wire. She rubbed a little of the sopor on her cheeks, then on the underside of her jaw, careful not to get it in her gills. "Yeah, I have a long walk tomorrow." She curled up around her pillow, still wrapped up in the blanket. "Can I ask what you're making?"

He looked curiously at her gills, as he'd done when the pair had first entered the tent. He'd always been curious about how seadwellers worked, but he'd never been close enough to any seadwellers that he'd found to be friendly enough to not kill him for looking at them for too long. "Can't say I've had any of those problems. No long hair, no gills. I do still get blisters, though, and I still get tired..." He wondered if the sopor in her gills could be prevented by putting some kind of gill covers on. It couldn't be safe to wake up unable to defend ones self.

"Hm?" He looked over at her once she'd asked the question before realizing that it had been addressed to him. Holding it up, he showed it to her. It certainly looked better than any of the necklaces that had been sold back at the stand at which he'd bought the seaglass. "It's a pendant, probably. Not completely sure yet, though. I can't be sure until it's finished." He had been planning on putting loops on it so that it could be attached to some strings and used as a necklace. It would look nice like that, and it would reflect light in a pretty brilliant manner, if the troll wearing it happened to be near sunlight. The piece of jewelry was far too fragile for him, though, and he knew that it wouldn't look nearly as good if he were to take it journeying with him.

Leaning back, he reached across the tent for his pillow, laying back on it. It might take her some time to actually fall asleep. It had been so long since he'd used the lotion that he'd forgotten whether it worked quickly or not. "What do you think it should be? I'm up to suggestions." He frequently crafted things upon request for trolls he'd meet, although he would do that for a fee to keep himself fed. If she gave him a suggestion, he'd probably just complete it how she'd told him to and give it to her.

Her eyes were growing heavy as she watched him. She had only managed to get a few hours of sleep before her daymare, and now that she was lying down it was becoming noticeable. Although the pillow was quite comfortable, she did miss her recopracoon. Her eyes widened a little when he showed her the pendant he was making. It was quite lovely, nothing like the pendants found in the markets.

"Where did you learn how to do that? Or did you figure it out by yourself?" Eisire reflected on her own work, and how her brain seemed to be able to memorize vast codes of DNA with ease. But she wouldn't have been able to do any of it without the journals left by her ancestor. The sea glass alone was quite beautiful, but the wire casing made it even more so. She found herself smiling when he settled down where he was, instead of returning to his sleeping spot.

"Hm... What if you had one large pendant at the center of the necklace, then smaller and simpler ones on each side. Or you could make several small pendants and string them on a bracelet." She yawned about half way through, feeling sleep's grip on her consciousness. Her eyes closed, and the tightness in her limbs holding her in a little ball relaxed. "That would be pretty..." And she was asleep, her mouth open slightly and her hair hanging over part of her face.

Theiyw thought a bit about her first question. He was sure that there were craftspeople just as capable as him, but he didn't exactly know whether or not they would've been open to sharing their talent. He'd found that most of the trolls in his trade were secretive, as having something that set one business apart from the next typically meant that the more individual merchant would end up doing better. "I taught myself. It took practice, sure, but that's about it." He wasn't sure if his abilities came just as easily to him as they did to others, but he liked to think that everyone was capable in their own way.

He contemplated both of her suggestions, and decided upon the addition of more fragments to make a larger pendant. It was a good idea, something that went out of his more simpler design, but as a seadweller he figured that she was probably more used to decadent things such as that. Picking up another piece of glass, he began to work on the new idea. Theiyw didn't even notice that Eisire had fallen asleep until he reached down for a third piece of seaglass and noticed that her eyes were closed.

Sighing, he grabbed his blanket and wrapped it around himself as he finished working with the pendant. It was perfectly prepared to be strung up around a string or a chain, and he was sure that it would fetch a good price, if he didn't just decide to give it to Eis, since it had been her idea anyways. Putting it to the side, he moved away from her a little bit so that he wouldn't end up crowding her. He was worried that getting up and moving back to his earlier spot would cause a disturbance enough to wake her, besides, he was already comfortable. Closing his eyes, he drifted off to sleep shortly after he'd resolved on giving her the pendant when they woke up.

Eisire slept soundly throughout the rest of the day, the sopor taking the edge off of the daymares. She was pleasantly surprised that when she woke that it was nighttime. She could hear trolls outside going about their day, reminding her of the mewling cries her dragons would make outside of her respiteblock door in the evening. They were probably rather hungry by now, but the older ones were smart enough to hunt for their own food. They just preferred to be babied and fed by hand.

She must have moved around a lot in her sleep, for the blanket was tangled around her legs and arms. She was on her stomach and her legs were no longer tucked up against her. Eisire pushed herself up with her arms and sat, stretching her back and arms before yawning. With no brush or comb to use, she de-tangled her hair as best she could with her fingers before braiding it and tying it off. She rubbed her face, the dried sopor coming off in little flecks. It was better than waking up with sopor soaking her hair though.

She saw Theiyw beside her, and hoped that she didn't accidentally smack or kick him in her sleep. She'd woken up quite a few times in the middle of the day because her dragons were fighting, sparked by someone hitting another in their sleep.

Theiyw had slept relatively well, although he could've sworn that he'd been kicked a few times during the night. Oh well, it was better than sleeping on a root or rock. He'd woken up feeling as if he'd broken multiple bones when sleeping on hard objects quite a few times. He woke up slowly, looking around when he realized that he wasn't in his regular sleeping spot. Things came back to him just in time for him to jump at realizing that there was another troll in his tent.

After he'd calmed down, he stood up, stretching before dragging his blanket and pillow back to their proper places. He was quite tired, all things considered, especially with the ordeal he'd had to go through with Eis having trouble in the middle of the night. Pushing that thought of his mind, he looked over at her, nodding once in greeting. "Evening. Sleep well?" He asked curtly, thinking that it was probably best for a variety of reasons for him to be as cold as possible. After all, he'd just have to say goodbye to her in an hour or so.

Wondering how long she'd been up, he picked up one of the fruits he'd purchased last  night at the market. Biting into it, he was incredibly glad she'd taken him there - it was one of the best things he'd tasted in quite a while. Once he'd finished chewing, he turned back to her. "Do you have everything? You should go sooner, rather than later. I don't want you having to stay here for another day, for both our sakes." He didn't exactly want to pretend that he'd forgotten her issues, but he didn't really think it appropriate to bring it up again, either.

Eisire smiled warmly at her host when she noticed his awakening. She kept it plastered on, despite the coolness to his voice. It felt like a punch in the gut, she had hoped she had made a friend. But now, she just felt like she was an intruder. Of course, after her performance last night she didn't blame him for not wanting anything to do with her. She had learned that it was best to stay smiling when she was pushed away. It was easier. This time, her smile had only flickered for a second before she had forced it back into place.

"Oh, um, yeah I slept fine." She pulled on her shoes, quickly tying them up, and moved her necklace from her wrist to her neck. She put her pillow and blanket into her sylladex. "I think that's everything. Thanks for letting me stay here, and, um, sorry about last night." She unfolded her jacket, annoyed that she had neatly buttoned it after taking it off. She fumbled with the buttons, keeping her eyes down.