CS: Artifacts and Answers

Yes, excellent. Post it on the last day of the extension. This is brilliant!
Haha, well actually I meant to post it yesterday, but I got sidetracked by my family tree and the possibility that we come from a bastard line of Sir Henry Townsend. There was research that needed to be done, and I just had to do it right then and there. (and Anne Boelyn's niece on the other side and some guy who signed some important US document and... we have one of those family trees)

For
KOSMOS-ver3's Volans point of view is over here.

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Is it a date if you ask her out and don't actually mention the word 'date' anywhere in the question?

There is a not insignificant part of Barus that wants to shout 'yes! yes it is! She totally has to know this is a date! What else could it be??', but Barus has been smacked upside the head by his mom enough times since "discovering" girls to know better. Knowing that does make him any less excited that she said 'yes'. It's enough to leave him jacked up better than any sugar high; he's all but vibrating in excitement when they arrive on the Moon.

He's expecting a fun time; the kind of adventures in ruins he's never been allowed to do at home or in Athens, with someone he likes as the cherry to top it off.

He's not expecting the punch to the gut that the sight of those ruins gives him. There's little that can kill a mood better than the echo of Aramus in the back of his mind, and this is more than just an echo.  This is an overlay: the way the walls once stood tall and beautiful, gleaming in the light of sun and stars and magic. It's heartache and confusion and despair all tangled up in a ball in his mind that doesn't feel quite right. It's not his, but it is.

He has to draw a breath and move on. His feet know a path, but there are rocks and rubble in the way, and he's making noise before he's really aware of it: talking bright and cheerful and distracting both himself and Iolana. There's a look on her face that he doesn't like. He hopes he doesn't have the same one, and he grins at her to make sure he doesn't.

It's not as easy as he would like it to be to slip back into teasing and cajoling, but somehow he manages it.  Somehow he even manages to convince Iolana to join him in 'disrespecting' the ruins by climbing on them; and then it's a challenge. Who can get higher (she can, she has wings B, don't be dumb), who can go farthest and who, apparently, can destroy what's already been destroyed.  He's not entirely sure of the sequence of events that results in him on his back and her on top, but he's really not going to complain.

"Barus! Are you okay? I'm so sorry, I tried to hang on! Are you hurt? That looked like it hurt. Can you say anything? How many fingers am I holding up? Oh my god I am so, so, so sorry!"

There's an ache in his shoulders where he landed on a piece of rubble, but honestly it's not bad. Lower gravity plus magic armor equals awesome it would seem, and he can offer her an honest laugh and a grin as she waves her hand in front of his face "Nah, I'm fine. It's all good."

"Are you sure?"

"I've had worse wipe-outs than this," it's not even a lie, "And three fingers." 

"You sure you're okay? You want to go back and have Cloak look you over? I think you should." 

"Lana, relax, I'm all right. I barely fell ten feet. This is nothing compared to that time I was roller-blading and..." his tongue seems to freeze in his mouth as he pulls himself upright and finds that it wasn't just his inadvertent destruction that had changed the scenery.  A pile of rubble glinted and gleamed oddly, and another rock tumbled away from it's perch at the top; suddenly there was a flicker of light and then a steady pulse of it breaking through the holes. "What's that?"

There is something there; a little stash of items, tucked away and hidden since who knows when.  Were they hidden at the fall or sometime well before? Maybe if he hadn't wreaked everything there would be some way to tell but... well. It turns out that spilled milk and broken pillars are the same thing when it comes to big dumb dogs. Iolana had reached in to grab something before he fully recognized the objects they had uncovered, but that was just one of the items inside.  The other was a small box, that made a funny little sound when he picked it up-- was there something in it?

A twist of the ball on the side of the box made a sickly noise that he would have called a screech if it had been loud in any way, but it was soft and muffled; his attempt to open the box creaked the creak of a rusted hinge, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to go any further with it. He'd already broken part of the palace, he really didn't want to get in (more) trouble for breaking one of the items they had been sent to find. 

"It won't let me open it." 

Barus looked up from what he could only assume was a music box, "Same with mine. I don't think it's budging."

"We should take these back to the Lady. I'm sure she knows what they are."

The star on top of the box glinted oddly, and not for the first time Barus wished he had pockets. "Yeah..."

Probably for the best that he didn't ask her out on this little adventure as a real date.  He didn't think destruction of an ancient ruin really counted as a fun time in anyone's books. As she leads the way to a better area to return to the Cloaked World and the Lady, he makes a resolution to himself.

Next time he'll ask her out properly.
(And make sure it's not something he's going to get in trouble for.)

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The dialogue was written by KOSMOS-ver3
Original situation plotted out between the two of us, based off this sketch: