deercountry | A Merry Jaunt Upon The Sea

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A Merry Jaunt Upon The Sea

Who: Delilah Dirk, Luz, and Varian
What: Charting and exploration using Delilah's flying boat.
When: Early afternoon, start of October.
Where: Darcmouth, Pthumerian Ocean

She spent her nights in her small bunk on her boat. It had all she needed, really. A tiny little kitchen, somewhere to sleep. A few books of poetry, from the old world. Mostly in Greek. In times past, she'd sail her little ship from port to port - the entire Mediterranean Sea had been her playground, and she'd known every inch of it.

This was new territory, and while she missed the sun-kissed days and the bluest waters - there was new adventure to be found here. Though the vast ocean beyond was...different. There were things about it that she couldn't quite put her finger on, couldn't quite put words to. Things were different. It was far more than the different, starry sky she looked up at some nights, when laying back on the deck.

But today, well, today was going to be an adventure. She'd received word she'd be having guests aboard. She hadn't cleaned up - there was little enough on the boat that it hardly made much difference, really - but she had worked on breakfast. Pan-made biscuits, breakfast meat, and some fruit - and juice, of course. Because the Turkish coffee - or the closest ersatz she could make, anyway - she was brewing was...potent.

She would be easy enough to find, and hadn't bothered with directions - after all, how many sailboats tied up at the dock were there? And how many would smell of breakfast?

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She isn't jealous, she isn't jealous, she isn't jealous, she isn't jealous...

She's jealous.

"She's a bird," she says, turning to Varian and pointing at Luz. "She turned into a bird."

Can just turn into a bird is just the sort of magical bullshit Varian tolerates rather than actively enjoys. He actively rolls his eyes as Luz turns into a bird, flying off.

"Show off," someone had to say it, and then to Delilah. "Yeah. She has...uh. A magical hat? I try not to think about it too much honestly, it hurts my head."

Luz the bird seemed to hear that, and while the thought of flying into Varian's head briefly crossed her mind, she knew better than to do it, and truthfully, half of what she'd done was show off. The other bit of it was to see how differently both feelings were, being up in the sky and being this high.

Nonetheless, she shook her head, and a moment later Luz reappeared, taking the hat in her hand, a sheepish look on her face but her cheeks blazing.

"Ok, I think it would have taken away longer to get this high as a bird, but it still feels great! Also, jealousy doesn't suit you, Varian."

Her hands are on Varian's lapels in a moment.

"This place has magic hats?! Someone needs to give me a magic hat."

She lets him go as Luz returns, gesturing at that.

"I mean, we might be able to turn into all sorts of things!" She gets a look of distant, far-off hope.

"I could be a dragon! Or a ruddy great horse, charging across the plains! Or..."

Her vision seemed to focus a bit further out, and downwards.

"Or an enormous, ugly fish-thing. Apparently."

RUDE, LUZ, SUPER RUDE. He chuckles awkwardly at Delilah, pointing in Luz's direction.

"Hey, if you're after magic, she's the person you wanna speak to. I'm all about the science, definitely not the magic."

Luz lives in her magic attic, Varian lives in his science basement and the rest of the house between Switzerland. But he does have to laugh at Delilah's enthusiasm.

"Wow, it...uh. Sounds like you've given this kind of thing a lot of thought."

WELL THAT'S WHAT HE GETS FOR CALLING HER OUT LIKE THAT.

"Wish I could tell you how to get your own magic hat, but the truth is, like the staff, it was given to me by my mentor. I was just lucky enough to receive it. Varian is right though: I'm the one that's dabbling with magic, before and currently here."

Luz had never honestly thought of things that way, but if Varian brought that up she'd be pleasantly amused.

"Uh. That was pretty specific. Does that happen a lot in your travels?"

"Oh, not much," she replies, lifting a hand to point. "But apparently the number is above zero."

Behind them, and below, something enormous was breaking the waves.

"Even if she was still here, I doubt Eda would have shared her secrets. If nothing because it would be more amusing to watch us struggle with it."

Because that's just how Eda is. He's about to comment on what Delilah has to say when he's distracted by the huge monster coming up out of the water. He yelps, stumbling backwards and helpfully pointing at it in case anyone missed it.

"UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH what's that?"

"That sounds right and very accurate. Eda had things she definitely kept to herself about."

And there was no time to think about that, because suddenly, hey, here comes a new challenger!

"Augh!" Luz yelped, already reaching for her glyph. "Sea monster is a good enough banner! Delilah, you can see better than I can! How big is it?"

She looked down at the thing, peering over the side - just in time to see the length of it slide into view through the waves - and see a baleful eye take a very good look at them.

"Umm," she began. "It's a fish...whale...thing."

As for how big it was...

"We're going to want to go higher."

Varian really doesn't want to add being eaten by a giant fish-whale to his list of things he's done this week. He looks over at Delilah, very much worried.

"Okay, cool, great! All for that plan! How do we make this thing go higher?"

"Does it need more heat? I can do that! Do we need to fight it? Because...I mean, I can probably cause some damage, although a fish whale would definitely be one of the biggest things I fought."

Aside from the Deerington monsters, but she'd been mostly fleeing from them.

"Well we'd need more wind than we've got, for a start," she begins, then turns her head at Luz's suggestion.

"Well, warm air under the sails, that always helps and..."

And then the thing breaches.

"Bloody hell."

"Okay, well, Luz can probably deal with the heat," he stares at the thing and wow okay that's big. "...Yeah I think there's a reason no one goes out all that far here."

He's rummaging in his bag, pulling out a few alchemy bombs.

"It's pretty big," understatement of the century. "So I doubt it'll do much. But I might be able to keep it at bay? Until we can get out of the way?"

"I can do that! Man, I wish we had Korra though, she's an airbender. I really am going to have to learn how to start combining glyphs!"

How she'd be able to change the air though? That was anyone's guess.

"I can lob some ice chunks at it, but we'd probably have to get in lower for them to do damage."

Or she might have to, specifically.

She jumps to the ship's wheel, starting a heavy turn, which will tilt the boat more than it really ought to be tilted for such a manoeuvre, so everybody had best hold on.

She looked back.

"Hang on, it won't be following us, surely."

"Nmmmmope," that's on the getting lower thing, not allowed. "You just focus on the wind, please and thank you."

Varian holds on as the ship moves, before shuffling back peering through the clouds.

"Uhhhh it's still tailing us, gimmie a sec."

He lobs one of his bombs at it- a green one full of Flynnolium. Gravity sure helps here and it explodes against the creature in a haze of green fire. It roars and sinks below the clouds.

"Okay, so I either scared it off or made it super mad. One way or the other."

"Got it," Luz said, sure she was glad that she didn't have to try and go down toward the beast just yet. She did use her for glyph to feed the ship's sails though, and wished she could help with the currents. The fire would at least kept them steady though.

Luz watched Varian throw down his bombs and watched as it sunk down lower.

"I'll have my staff ready, just in case."

"Just don't set the sails on fire, or else we're going to be outrunning this under the worst circumstances ever!" she calls, wheeling things back over as the boat moves unpredictably on the new air currents.

"How high do you think that thing can breach?"

"Okay, but let's avoid flying out to it if we can?"

That's the Luz, the talk about the staff is worrying, please don't get eaten mid-air, Luz. He keeps his eyes on the clouds, he can hear it rumbling under there.

"It's pretty big, unless it can actually fly, there has to be a limit, right? But WE can't get high, Luz had that problem. "

"Wouldn't we have to fly down lower if we were actually trying to put ourselves in danger?"

Which, for right now, they weren't, right? Luz was just using her fire glyphs to try and direct the air flow.

"So we're basically going to have to ride steady, and keep away from that thing as much as we can. But if it gets too close, Varian and I may have to incapacitate it. But maybe we'll get lucky and it won't give us any trouble!"

The sound from below them is...not good, really.

"We'd have to to gain speed if it's catching up for us anyways," she replies to Luz, spinning the wheel. "Right, heading back towards the coast. Maybe it only likes deep water."

There is another sound from below, and the thing launches itself up out of the water, and it's...far closer below them than she'd like. She gets a sense of the thing - big, greyish-black...are those scales?

"Someone get a good look at it, tell me what the hell it is! And if you can set it on fire, I'd really appreciate it!"

"Okay, that works, definitely closer to the shore please."

Because something that big surely needs deep water to stop from beaching itself, right? Right? Except it's breaching way, way too close and Varian's grabbing a flask of his Flynnolium again, reaching his hand out to Luz.

"Okay, slap a glyph on it and I'll...huck it and see what happens?"

Luz had not known it was going to leap out like that, but at the very least, the leap to try and grab them was enough time for the girl to react. She slid down toward the staff and jumped on, kicking herself toward the leviathan and slapping a glyph on it.

A big spark of flame ignited and the beast roared loud, knocking just about everyone off balance. It hit the water with a big splash, and it looked like they were going to have to brace for the ensuing splashback they'd get now.

"Toss it Varian, quick!"

"Stop trying to eat my boat!" she yells over the side, swinging the craft around again. She's definitely going to have to find a way to fly higher on average. It's a bit of a problem, really - she could dive to gain speed and push away from it, but that brings its own problems.

She tries to steer in a zig-zag back towards the shore - and hopefully the other two can at least deter the big-ugly-thing.

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