Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)
”Oh, good” Catherine replied mentally to the siren’s response, her face softening into a smile over the mischievous grin she had been wearing. The golden woman had quite the mental voice, a tone that spoke of a pride that probably befit her caste without being quite as overbearing and hostile as the sort that oozed from the nightcrawlers. She had a name to match as well. ”Oooh, that’s a nice name. It seems to fit you, too. It’s good to meet with you as well.” Her next question seemed to surprise Korene, the siren looking around as if stalling for an answer. Finally she decided on saying that they were there to inspect the cave systems, and to “reprimand” the pixies. ”Pixies? The small ones?” the human asked, her free hand moving beside her hips to indicate the height of the small humanoids. ”They’re friendly folk. A little too friendly, maybe. I’ve spent a lot of time with them since coming here, haha.” A little frown crept across her face then, though, and she continued ”there’s worse in the caves though. Much more troublesome for me, at least.” She shook her head though, shaking the thought of the nightcrawlers out before smiling once more, asking ”do you do lots of work with Meda?”
When Meda had returned and given Catherine the speargun she gave the human two options for getting rid of the weapon once she was done; she could either wait for the two sirens at this same cavern entrance, or go to the supply depot they had passed in her tour and drop it off there if she took longer to gather the red coral. The priestess also produced an old sack with a shoulder-strap, the cloth battered and waterlogged, but it would serve its purpose wonderfully. ”Ah, thank you. I was actually sort of worried about how I would carry all this coral” the archer replied, slinging the strap over her shoulder. The golden siren reiterated again that what she was doing was a secret, and that Catherine definitely shouldn’t tell anyone that it was happening. ” Well, before you go, could you give me the boon again? I’m a little nervous about being out for too long. And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Have lots of fun with your ‘duties’ together” she replied with another grin. When all was said and done, she pulled away and winked at the priestess, waving her goodbyes. She turned to swim off well before the two sirens began to hold hands and move into the system of caverns, which was probably a good thing for Meda, because the human would probably have teased her mercilessly for it later if she had seen it.
Like many of the other boring bits that would be strung throughout any day to day experience, the EGG sped up Catherine’s trip to the part of the ocean floor where the red coral grew. It also made it much easier on her, allowing the relatively inexperienced swimmer to get to her destination with only a minimum of effort and sweat in what felt like mere minutes. The ocean floor was covered in various bits of algae and coral, but that wasn’t where her eyes went. There was a tremendous ravine stretched out before her, going farther than the eye could see and quite deep too. Above it were a few large schools of the most colorful, exotic fish she had ever seen or heard of before, and she took a moment to enjoy watching them swim about. This game really was incredible. In any case, there were a number of outcroppings of red coral she could see. It was all over the ocean floor, but in relatively small quantities, and it would probably take a while to collect enough that she would feel comfortable heading back if she chose only to use that source. There were a ton of caverns, and they probably had a lot, but Meda had warned her against going near any of those. Although… one of them was bathed in light much like the kind that lit the city, which was definitely intriguing. There was also a very large amount of the coral sitting on the edge of the chasm, which would probably be much quicker and easier to gather than the other sources, but was also probably dangerous… Ultimately she decided to stay away from the more dangerous areas, picking the red coral where she could until either her bag was filled or she judged that she needed to start heading back to the city, lest she be stranded without the boon, though she definitely wouldn’t try to cut that close.