othellovonryan

[There is a knock like ten minutes later.]

[Tryse's eyes snap open. Really? She'd just settled in for the night and gotten comfortable. With a long-suffering sigh, she yanks off the covers and slips out of the pile of fabrics and pillows she calls a bed, nudging her clothes aside with a foot on her way to the door.

She opens it up, peers about in the hallway, then glances down.

Ah.]

That was faster than expected.

[She steps back and waves him in, stifling a yawn.]

Momentum is helping.

[He holds out a intricately carved wooden chest for her.]

[She mutters something and a small, blue orb lights up next to her, dimly lighting the pair, and the chest. A lot easier on tired eyes than lighting up the room properly would be, at least.

She glides her hand over the chest, admiring the reliefs carved into it for a moment, then takes it with something of a chuckle. It's not really necessary, she's got one already, but one doesn't poo-poo a gift. Besides, it's a lot more aesthetically pleasing, and, knowing Donatello, it'll suit her needs quite a bit more than the other. Assuming he didn't go above and beyond to make it multi-functional somehow.

Besides, you never know when you'll need an extra chest.]

I didn't call you here just to make you bring me gifts. But thank you. It looks like you've spent quite a bit of time on this.

[He shrugs as he steps into the room.]

[And of course its multfunctional. Its got a heavy duty lock and key, key currently inside the unlocked box, with a hidden bottom and foldable trays for organizational purposes.]

Making things helps me process.

There's also this.

[He opens the chest and pulls out the leather strappy sort of thing.] A holster to carry your book on your person, but make it easier to hide it under clothes.

[....listen, he's real good at eyeballing measurements.]

[Whereas her current chest is... a box she brought in from the ruins. Not very fancy, that.

She takes the harness and guides the orb a little closer to it so that she can examine it better. It's pretty easy to see how it'd go on. And it won't be bad on the skin, there's a nice lining on there. Probably best not to ask where he got that.

She considers trying it on, but she's not sure how he'd take that. Would it be an insult to his craft? ...Either way, they'd need to know if it fit, so Tryse just slips it on, makes some minor adjustments for immediate fit, then flexes and twists a little.]

It's comfortable now. I'll wear it when I'm doing things tomorrow, I'll let you know if there's an issue with it afterwards. Again, thank you.

[She's gonna need to adjust her wardrobe just slightly if she's going to try to sneak her book under her clothes, but if she can wear the harness over her dress, that'll make carrying it on long journeys much more bearable.]

You certainly are multi-talented, aren't you?

[Shame he doesn't have an objective for receiving praise.]

[There are many ways to get nice feeling materials from the ruins, really.]

Please do. I can make adjustments as need be.

[He shrugs.] My family couldn't exactly buy most things to wear unless it was already a tent. Leo's better at it, he can even do embroidery.

[She'll just. Slip out of it and lay it on top of her clothes so she'll remember to deal with it tomorrow.]

I've got a spell that stitches things the way I like, but I'm no seamstress and there's only so much trial and error you can do before you've ruined the fabric, so I just find someone willing to do the work for me most of the time.

[She sets the chest down next to her 'bed' and gives it a pat. She'll worry about optimal placement tomorrow, when it's not eating into her sleeping time. Then she'll just bend over and drag at her other chest, popping it open to pull out a little cloth-wrapped package. This gets held out to Donnie.]

This was more the reason I called you over, though.

[He looks down at the package.]

[Frowns and tentatively takes it.]

....why?

Because gifts are one thing, but you do too much legitimate work without getting anything in return.

I considered a few options, but I figured you'd appreciate that the most. Everything else I could think of was either a brief pleasantry or so easily replicated that it had no real meaning.

Edited 2023-03-16 14:09 (UTC)

[He opens mouth and closes it.]

I....I didn't need payment?

[He will unwrap it though???]

You undervalue your work.

[Firm, but polite.

It's a thick book, made with materials from the paper ruins! It's bound with panels of wood wrapped in purple silk, stitched in a turtle-shell pattern. There's no spine to speak of, just a lot of thread, slathered with dried glue, running through the edges of the pages. Apparently book binding is not one of Tryse's talents, but it should be easy to keep together. The book comes with a ribbon so that Donatello can mark his place.

There's no title page, just a brief table of contents breaking the book down into chapters on alchemical theory, suggested fields of study, plant identifications, 'practical herbology', ingredients, and finally 'practical alchemy and mundane potioncraft.' Tryse's handwriting takes on a very formal form here, and, if one had to choose a computer font for it, one could do worse than Carolingian minuscule.

Seems like the hours she spends cooped up in her room aren't entirely spent on reading.]

I do not. [Extremely firm.]

....

[He pulls down his goggles because he's used to reading computer text, not writing.]

A good on...plants and potions?

Mm.

[She disagrees, but she's too tired to have an argument about it.

A little gesture and the small ball of light moves closer to the book, helpfully illuminating it with a soft blue glow.

Her penmanship, at least, is excellent. There's no 'dipping' in her writing, each line is as steady as it would if she'd been working on ruled paper.]

Among other things. Not the most useful here, too much guesswork involved, but in a sphere where you're not dealing with mutated plant and wildlife, it should be much more valuable.

I value my work. I wouldn't use it as a way to express affection if I did not.

[Consistency is very good for his program to pick up the right letters to make it easier for him to read. Really, its just what text he's used to reading over anything wrong with her writing.]

It could have more value then you think. I can break down plants to their compounds and having a reference for patterns in flora make up could help a great deal.

I'm not saying you don't value it at all. I'm saying you give much, to people you barely even know sometimes, and ask little.

[If she knew that's what he was doing, she might be just a bit offended. Tryse takes pride in her handiwork and wouldn't understand the need to do that. But, as far as she knows, it's just him trying to see better in the darkness of the room.]

I've included no magical mixtures in there. I know a few recipes already, but I don't have the skill to do it myself, and I'm not going to put down something I haven't tested for a friend to try. Besides, turtles are long-lived enough that you probably won't be needing to borrow an elf's bone marrow for a potion of longevity or anything like that, anyway.

I charge for the big things. Not necessarily the little things, but I give things to you because you're my teammate and I value you.

[Sometimes is very used to text over handwriting, sorry Tryse.]

We actually have little idea of how long we'll live. We know Leo can live to be forty and remain physically fit in less than ideal circumstances. If we live proportional to our turtle years, Leo would probably live until eighty, Raph ninety, me a hundred, and Mikey two hundred. Or we could simply age like a human, then we would simply be around a century. Or with the introduction of the Empyrean from the Ooze may have given us a yokai lifespan, in which case we would age to be around prime years and hit a plateau for some time.

Of course, we also know trying to push beyond the limits of our ninpo could shorten that lifetime because Mikey looked older than Leo, but he was also using his mystic energy in excess, so we could also die early just from our line of work.

[Said all very matter of fact as he looks over the pages. Someone can always ramble about science facts.]

I wish I could help on the lifespan question. You're different enough from anything else I know that I could even begin to make an educated guess. If I had the right chemicals and equipment... But even that would be a ballpark guess, not accounting for the ninpo that flows through you.

[She doesn't yet know, at least, that they're part human. That part will come later, with Raphael.]

Still, you'll live longer than most humans. I don't know if I've ever met someone over sixty that wasn't enhancing their lifespan somehow.

[Some of the writings may come across as startlingly advanced, considering Tryse's usual tech level. Others will come across as out of date and backwards, or even shockingly superstitious. If this were a chemistry text, there might be displays of molecules and atoms, but Tryse seems wholly unaware of them. Or, if she is, she either doesn't see them as important enough to mention or they're buried in the sometimes pages long tangents that sometimes drift from Qhyone's taught language to two or three different languages before ending up in a tangle of formulations that are nearly impossible to read without the ability to read magical writing of the sort that fills her spellbook. A close eye might note that the ink's different on those sections, and the pages behind them have gaps where they are.

The sketches of various materials are good. Nothing amazing but very good. There's several points where she fills space with arcane, twisted geometries that must align with some sort of math, they're just so precise, but there's little context for them. The marginalia is filled with images of snakes, knights jousting with snails, giant rabbits, and other such absurdities, apparently sketched whenever she got bored or needed a little break to consider where to go next.

There's only two or three scribbled out words in the entire work.

The Herbology section contains information, among other things, on using simple plants, sometimes processed in various ways, to create healing balms, painkillers, weak anti-toxins, burn salves, insect repellents, soothing teas or wine additives to encourage recovery, styptics to stop bleeding, a brew she notes as "violently" breaking enchantments one might be under, and even wound dressings. (It does warn, in one case, that elves should not consume juniper berries. The margin illustration involves a rabbit and a knight apparently having a gentlemanly duel.)

She also describes a great number of all-natural poisons that, by her descriptions, are alarmingly effective in a variety of different ways, and methods by which they can be weakened or made even more effective "depending on one's goals." They range from hallucinogins to something she describes as an "involuntary warp spasm."]

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