Submission (#3364) Approved

Wordcount: 1215
Characters: Lunarity, and unnamed guide.
AP Region: Zevija!
Feature for food: Sure, if you guys want. I think there should be a mysterious piemaker in a cliff in an area frequented by lightning storms. Would be a fun quest setting later on I'm cool with that.

                If Lunarity had learned anything from the first few months in Eyre, it was that he liked seeing the sights. It was a good thing, too: maybe the sights would prompt his memory slightly more, and something else might do the trick other than ‘abject fear of water any deeper than a stream’. But even he had to admit, the hot springs of Zevija were pretty neat to look at from a distance.

But his guide had seen the look of adventure flickering through his eyes. They’d smiled, given him a map and pamphlet of some local flora and fauna, and told him they’d look for him if he wasn’t back in two hours. Message received: don’t fall face-first into a lava stream, see some sights, and maybe come back with a trinket or two.

He could read the pamphlet as he walked the main trail leading out from the travelers’ lodge, and if he was reading it right, there would be a pie stall forty-five minutes’ walk out. No one had ever seen the piemaker, but there were a few cupboards carved into a cliff and the pies restocked a few times a day. You left some money, took a pie, and never questioned this. He did overhear his guide mentioning to one of the pretty waitresses at the lodge that it would be good to have some that evening, for the dinner crowd.

He scanned the map one more time, committing the walk to memory, before stuffing it back into his pocket and bounding on ahead. The ground was ashy below his feet, well-trodden but with enough give that he’d have to be careful. He wouldn’t want to try and stop unexpectedly, he’d end up somersaulting. The air tasted almost like it was about to rain, and it wasn’t: that was the smoke from the volcanoes all around, combined with the steam of the hot springs and the dry grit in the back of his throat from the wind over the nearby deserts.

At least he didn’t need a compass to know where he was, the pretty Eldertree was red-on-silver behind him, like crystallized maple syrup set in a sterling-silver necklace. It reached up into the heavens, its canopy and peak shrouded by the combination of smoke and steam, like salt and pepper turned to mist in the sky.

Okay, maybe he was a little hungry. The pamphlet hadn’t said how many pies anyone was allowed to buy, and it was a lengthy walk. For all he knew, it was limited by how much one could carry. He had a backpack that he’d bought in Strynhalde, and it was holding up well, but there was no way he was getting more than a couple pies into it.

He scampered past an open cave entrance, eyeing the tour currently entering it. He’d have to ask his guide later about tours through the crystal mines.

– The world turns cold, the sweet scent of salt freezing, for a moment, on the tongue. The door, incandescent with its blue-abalone shimmer, slowly swings open. It moves like a glacier, slow and unforgiving. Darkness lingers within past its threshold, with nothing inside to betray the secrets it guards. –

Lunarity slammed his front paws into the ashy soil, dropping his tail in an instinctual hope the counterweight would allow him to stay upright. A door, opening slowly, the scent of salt, and warm, still air. He had pies to get, first. He turned to scan the Eldertree to his south, studying exactly how big it was on the horizon, before turning a slow three-sixty. He’d have to return here with his guide for that tour, later. Pies first, and then memories.

The walk for pies for his guide actually didn’t take as long as he expected it to. His ascent took him atop the cliffs that he’d been weaving his way around before, and here there was less ‘hope the lava doesn’t decide to change course towards you’ and more ‘don’t fall directly into a lava pool’. Maybe he allowed himself a little risk, taking a running start before jumping over some of the smaller ones that he knew he could clear. But there were more cliffs in the distance, ascending the mountains that protected the region from the seeping miasma to the east.

And after a little while, he could smell pies on the wind. He hadn’t been running for most of his journey, carrying the pies back would take much more energy, but he burst into a sprint across the ashy, less-trodden road with renewed energy. Sure enough, ten minutes down the road, tucked into an alcove carved out of the black-rock cliff, was a small room and a sign posted ‘PIES’ hanging just outside.

True to his traveler’s pamphlet, there was nobody else around, and no lingering thread of mana that implied anyone had been there in at least an hour. The cupboards were carved directly into the rock, their doors set on hinges and built of thin glass, protecting the pies from being covered in ash.

He sat up on his hind legs, studying the selection. With the size of his backpack and the size of the pies, he would be able to carry two back to the lodge for his guide, in thanks for letting him wander. Caramel apple, lavaberry and rhubarb, pumpkin spice and roseapple, and a few with fillings he’d never heard of. Only one way to find out which he would choose: well, technically two, but sampling seemed rude.

He opened a cupboard and breathed in, sniffing the lavaberry and rhubarb pie. Sweet, but sharp, almost like aged cheddar if cheddar was a fruit. Interesting.

If he was glad about one thing, it was that he’d learned in Kyendi how the currency worked and what coins matched to what symbols of posted prices. But he’d chosen a pie of earl gray, lavender, and cyan-pear that smelled like it might go very well with iced tea; and after considering his options, grabbed the pumpkin spice and roseapple that was priced higher than any other pie despite not being any bigger.

Tucking them both safely into his backpack, he zipped it back up and slung it carefully over his back. He stepped outside the ash-swept tile of the piemaker’s shop, breathing in the gritty, musty air of open volcanoes. The sky, salt-and-pepper with steam and smoke when he’d stepped into the shop, now seemed significantly more on the ‘pepper’ side, with a dash of lightning forking silently across the pyroclastic clouds. The ground rattled soundlessly for a moment, the sky lighting up briefly white, before an almost ear-splittingly-loud lightning bolt cracked in his ears. He had been warned about storms frequent in this area. Considering the miasmic snowstorm in Strynhalde that had kept him inside a lodge for a good week, he had all but disregarded the warning entirely.

“I can’t wait until I can find a mage who will teach me to teleport,” he muttered. He breathed in deeply, gathering his courage, and turned back towards the Eldertree. Maybe if he was quick and didn’t get struck by lightning, he’d be back before his guide declared him missing. And if he was equally lucky, he would have guessed their favourite pie flavour, too.