Room for Rent: Spacious, Good View [IC]

[Electra]

Stesha looked around, impressed by what she could feel moving under the surface. Gaian Knight did not do in small steps what could be done in giant bounds, she knew that from previous experiences watching him build. Bay-bee obviously sensed something as well, she abandoned her pursuit of nectar and made a beeline for Stesha, all but trying to fly into the plant-controller's lap for reassurance. "It's all right," she told the big beeling, simultaneously patting her head and trying to push her away a few inches. "Gaian Knight is building his house. Just watch!"

[Fox]

The earth-linked elemental grinned, ear to ear, and reached up to pull down his goggles. "Yeah, sorry for the theatrics. Some things are better built in one big go, so that they're a solid chunk. Trying to build piecemeal works okay for things like buildings, but foundations...."

All at once the earth moved, softly rumbling open in a number of different places to eject a wild and flowing stream of earth into the sky. Long, broad trails of dirt and stone reached through the air like massive coiling serpents, most of them grouping off into larger masses that in turn started to flatten out and shape themselves into a series of islands that looked like they'd been ripped out of the earth by the roots, flat-topped and tapering off to a blunt point underneath. "....foundations are better done all at once," he finished as the last bits arranged themselves, little chunks of dirt and rocks that didn't quite make it into the islands trickling down for a minute. "There's a pretty good cave system around here, now, by the way. You shouldn't end up with any sinkholes, but I can fill it in later if you like."

[Electra]

"Oooh," Bay-bee warbled, looking up at the new island in the sky. Stesha could only echo the sentiment. The little bee flew up for a closer look and Stesha let her, figuring there probably wasn't anything terribly dangerous to get into on a sky-island made of soil. "That's very impressive," she told Tarrant, once the ground had stopped shaking. "And who knows when we might need a network of subterranean caves for some reason? You never know who's going to want to move in next." She laughed. "Now will that just stay up there until you tell it not to? What's holding it there?"

[Fox]

Tarrant took a moment to pull away from the earth for a moment, lifting his goggles back up to give his new islands a critical eye. "Who knows? Maybe you'll find a colony of giant badgers with lightning eyes." He chuckled, watching Bay-bee explore. "I made sure the caves were pretty reinforced, and I'll be taking another look later, just to make sure the water isn't eating at them too badly. It'd be an awful shame to put a giant pit in a planet this nice, and all."

"As for that," he continued, pointing up at the free-floating earth, "it should last until I tell it not to, yeah. Though I guess if someone broke it apart into too many pieces it might fall down...and once in a while I've run into a villain who can wipe out magic, and that seems to do the trick too. It's held up by...ah...." He gestured, futilely, like he was trying to put words to something there weren't quite words for. "....I tell it that that's where it's supposed to be, and it believes me? It's like...changing the nature of the rock. It used to be rock-stays-on-the-ground, and now it's rock-is-supposed-to-float-right-there. But I've put it to the test before, and it'll stay that way until I tell it something else, or someone stronger than me tells it something else, or it gets so broken up that it...loses its sense of identity. Or local magic gets cut off, which kind of sucks the life out of the earth and makes it...forget what I told it."

[Electra]

"As far as I know, there isn't much magic around here," Stesha told Tarrant. "Talking to the refugees, they don't know any stories of superheroes or modern-era magicians, just the same sort of ancient legends we have on Prime. I would be surprised if there's anything here that could crash your castle, and we're pretty out of the way as far as dimension hoppers go. Even so, I think we'll avoid building anything important underneath it." Even after just a few minutes of quiet sitting, Stesha's throne was developing new decorations, small flowers, vines and mushrooms springing up randomly, seemingly without any input on her part. "So now the castle goes on?"

[Fox]

Laughing, Tarrant set his feet again, eyes going brownish gold as he started gathering more material...but with far less dramatic tension. Nearby rocks, above and below ground, started splitting apart and rearranging themselves as a few stacks of large blocks and bricks. Curiously, the number of prepared items seemed to be outweighing the material that was going into them, but their creator either didn't notice or didn't think it was remarkable. "There's magic everywhere! Most places, anyway. I can...feel it, in the earth, like a warm glow. I get your point, though: no one's likely to crash my little home-away-from-home, and a good thing, too. Building it once is fun, but having to rebuild it a few times would probably get kind of annoying."

"Yeah, though. The castle's next - it'll go on the big, central island there, one piece at a time. I have a pretty good idea of what I'll be doing, but it probably won't be as fun to watch. At least you have the best seat in the-" He turned to glance at the chair, and blinked, the earth around him lurching for a moment in his distraction. "....huh. Is that you, or is that just something that happens when you're around?"

[Electra]

Stesha followed his glance to the fairy ring she was sitting in and laughed, a little ruefully. "It's sort of a new thing that's cropped up since I've been pregnant, and it's only gotten worse with the spring. Wherever I spend a lot of time, plants start growing and flowering, sometimes existing ones, sometimes new ones that pop up. It's not so bad here, but it gets a little bit strange when I'm at work, or in the car, or sitting at a restaurant. I don't know if it's just a sort of magical reaction to fecundity or if the baby is flexing her muscles. I just remind myself that there are worse side-effects to superpowers."

[Fox]

Tarrant laughed, hard, his gathering stone stopping outright while he was distracted by thoughts of cars with tulips sprouting out the air vents. "I can - hah! - yes, I can see how that might be a little inconvenient!" He managed to get his sense of humor back in line, the earth going back to reshaping itself. "Sorry. I shouldn't find it so funny - I'm sure it gets annoying sometimes. It's just really hard to imagine peoples' reactions to finding out their flower box has grown wild, or that there's been an outbreak of exotic ivy in the kitchens."

[Electra]

Stesha slanted a look in his direction. "It's worse than you think," she told him dryly. "I work in a florist shop! The last time I worked an outdoor wedding I stayed to clean up after the ceremony. After a half hour, I had more flowers around me than the happy couple, and it was just lucky I was sitting in the back!"

All the talk of flowers did not go unnoticed. Bay-bee came spiraling lazily down out of the sky, her translucent wings beating like mad as she studied the offerings around Stesha. They were, of course, much too small. "Flowerzz!" she told Stesha sulkily.

"You already ate," Stesha pointed out. "Gaian Knight is going to show us how he builds the castle now."

[Fox]

Tarrant rubbed his hands together, eyeing his piles of shaped rocks. "Yeah, I think this'll be good for a start. I can make more as I go, and know what I need. Tell you what, Bay-bee - do you want to help?" He couldn't help but smile as he stepped back up onto his rock, carefully lifting himself and Stesha back up into the air, floating them up to rest on a piece of the main island where he knew nothing would be built. "I'm not as fast or as clever as a young bee," he explained, nodding as sagely as he could and bowing in Stesha's direction. "Miss Fleur will be keeping an eye out, but I could use an extra-big, extra-fast set of eyes to make sure everything's putting together right."

[Electra]

Bay-bee waggled her antennae at Tarrant with great interest, flying around him in a complete circle, perhaps to show how well she could observe things. "Cazzle!" she proclaimed, alighting for a moment on top of the bricks, then taking off again. "Helpzzz!"

Nearby, Stesha watched the show and struggled not to laugh. Bay-bee loved attention and new things, so Tarrant's visit was quite an event for the young insect. "Just be careful," she called to Bay-bee, "and don't get in the way!" It was strange to think they were so high up, the island in the sky was big enough to give the illusion of ground. To busy herself, and channel her powers away from random acts of floristry, she began filling in the edges of the dirt islands with grass.

[Fox]

"Right then," Tarrant nodded, sitting himself down cross-legged on his rock and moving himself more toward the center of the island. "This should be fun." He pulled his goggles down over his eyes, put his hands in his lap, took a deep breath, and exhaled. Very softly his whole body began to glow, the light leaking out in broad streams as it ran from him to the earth around him like the roots of some mountain or tree.

The bricks down below picked themselves up, joined by more that were forming by the minute from somewhere down below the island as they swept up in streams, a veritable river of bricks and blocks that spun up above the horizon of the floating land mass in a lazy spiral before turning inward to arrange themselves in the rapidly-forming castle grounds. Some - notably, in areas Bay-bee was not - hovered above the ground for a moment before plunging down with force to form a solid foundation; most, however, started to arrange themselves into walls, floors, towers, ceilings...loosely at first, then rearranging and cementing together as the castle shaped up from a rough and abstract castle 'sketch' to a far more refined, proper structure.

It must have taken a while - Tarrant was a little too busy to check his watch, and he always lost track of time while building anyway - but in time he and Stesha were sitting in the open-air courtyard at the front of a large, several-story building that could have been mistaken for a sculpture of a more 'realistic' fantasy castle if it hadn't been so detailed and, well, life-sized. The earth-linked hero couldn't see it, yet, as he put the last bricks into place somewhere in the basement...but he could feel it, every brick and slab. It felt like home, in the same way his sword felt like 'his' and the solid earth felt like an old friend.

[Electra]

During the time that Tarrant had been distracted with building his castle, Stesha hadn't been idle herself. Bay-bee's fascination with flying rock had lasted perhaps ten minutes, after which she had begged Stesha into another giant flower, this one a lily-of-the-valley with blossoms the size of church bells. She hoped that would keep the little bee occupied longer than one big flower. Stesha had also had to pop home once to use the restroom, which happened all the time these days, especially when it was soccer-practice time in babyland. By the time the castle was built, she was back in her seat, and quite impressed. She gave Tarrant an enthusiastic round of applause. "It's amazing!" she told him sincerely.

[Fox]

Tarrant grinned, opening his eyes to take a look at it himself; he pulled his goggles up to his forehead and stood up, wincing as his joints protested from sitting cross-legged on such a hard surface for so long. "Oof. I need to build myself a chair next time. I hope you two weren't - ah - too bored." He glanced at the lily, raising his eyebrows. "...she'll be buzzing for days, I expect. Hah!"

He stuck his hands in his pockets, glancing around at his handiwork. "It's not bad," he agreed, looking satisfied. "I put a reservoir in the back, but I'll have to see about setting up the power system you suggested. Some ironwork too, maybe - it should be a fun project in-between other stuff: teaching, grading, patrols...helping you out here, of course." He chuckled. "Somehow I think you could find a way to evict me if I wasn't paying my rent. Not that I wouldn't pay it anyway!"

[Electra]

"You've done enough good here already to earn you lifetime tenancy," Stesha assured him, gesturing back in the direction of his other architectural accomplishments. "Not that I won't come calling next time I need a hand," she admitted with a laugh. "But being able to control the plants only goes so far. It's easy enough to keep my own little plant house alive and well, but the survivors are happier and warmer in their sod houses. To say nothing of what you built for the bees! If they manage to overcome their difficult start and build a sustainable society, and I hope they will, I'm sure you will rapidly become a figure of legend to them.

"Beez?" Sensing she was being talked about, Bay-bee disengaged her round head from within one of the bell-shaped flowers and flew over. She smelled rather overpoweringly of lily-of-the-valley, as though she'd been rolled in perfume. Which wasn't entirely inaccurate. Flying right up to Tarrant, she came almost nose to nose with him, her giant multifaceted eyes staring into his human ones. "Bee room?" she asked.

[Fox]

Tarrant chuckled. "I know the feeling. That's the terrible thing about...specialized domains, if you will." He rolled a shoulder, still a little stiff. "You and I can be really good at something - you, ah, a little bit more than me, I think - but all we have is the one thing. Some practice lets you get good mileage out of it, but everything has limi-"

Flying right up to Tarrant, she came almost nose to nose with him, her giant multifaceted eyes staring into his human ones. "Bee room?" she asked.

He blinked. "Ah. Er." He blinked, and his nose twitched. "Bee room. Far side, Miss Bay-bee," he offered, pointing. "They're the ones with the really big doorways - and there's a little cubbyhole just for you."

He somehow managed to wait until Bay-bee was gone before sneezing, ruefully rubbing his nose. He couldn't help but smile, though. "Well - 'little'," he said, glancing at Stesha. "As giant, pollen-covered bees would measure it."

[Electra]

Stesha laughed and sneezed at the same time as Bay-bee darted away, then rubbed her face ruefully. "I used to think I was immune to pollen allergies, but I'm starting to learn it's all a matter of scale. For the pollen, and the bees! The way she and the other juveniles are growing, any cubbyhole you make now isn't going to fit her for long. Beeatrizz says that the typical growth to maturity for a giant fire-breathing bee is about a year. Bay-bee's a month old now, so by the end of summer, she could be the size of a pickup truck or bigger."

Rising from her seat, she walked towards the castle, looking it over. "Can we take a look inside?"

[Fox]

Tarrant chuckled. "Absolutely - the stonework's about finished, unless I decide to change something later. Like, ah, bigger cubbyholes - I left some room in the wall to expand it just in case, but...a year, you said? That kind of makes me wonder what their, ah, life span is like. Though it seems like it'd be a little crass to ask them."

He led her up and through the front doors - huge and stone, not wood, and he'd almost certainly cheated to keep them from breaking their own hinges when they moved. "Not," he explained, chuckling, "that I intend to keep them closed much. Probably only in the winter...if it gets too cold I can shut them and use the smaller entrances, with the much lighter doors."

[Electra]

"That's a good idea," Stesha agreed. "Less cooling strain on the generator, and you'll get some amazing breezes from up here. You may have to raise the castle or lower it on certain days though. When the wind starts blowing off the ocean too hard, it's all I can do to keep the air clear to a dozen yards above the treetops. It's so polluted all around us still." She shook her head a little bit. "I imagine that once you get high enough, the heavy particulates won't bother you."

The conversation was suddenly interrupted by a loud thudding noise and a high-pitched, alarmed buzzing noise from the back of the castle! Stesha, looking alarmed, asked "What's the best way to the bee alcove?"

[Fox]

Tarrant's head shot up and turned toward the noise, instantly serious. That's a very good question. Most of the hallways aren't really designed for bees, so they don't head directly back that way from here - the central courtyard might work but that's still too round-about of a way to--no, screw it. I can fix it up later.

He simply turned toward where the noise had come from, and quickly walked forward...with complete disregard for the walls in his way. Not that they, natural stone to the last, could stop him any more than a thick forest could stop Stesha: every time he reached a wall it pulled out of his way, blocks rearranging, reshaping, or just dissolving as he came close. Behind the pair of them the humans left a long, almost perfectly round tunnel as if some giant worm had eaten away the shortest path between where they'd stood to the bees' rooms.

[Electra]

Stesha hustled down the passageway with Tarrant, a distinct waddle in her step as she gained speed. "Bay-bee!" she called, "Where are you?" The buzzing noise increased in volume and agitation as they got closer, though the echoing of the earthen chamber made pinpointing an exact location more difficult. After a minute's rapid searching, they finally found the baby giant bee. wedged headfirst into what was obviously supposed to be an access alcove for the wiring. Her little wings were beating up a storm, but bees just didn't fly backwards very well. "BZZZZZZZ!" Bay-bee called, apparently forgetting English for the moment.

[Fox]

Snorting a little, Tarrant was caught between pent-up concern and the very strong urge to laugh. He settled for shaking his head and trying to keep a straight face. "Hey! Hey, hold still, Bay-bee. I don't know how in the world you even...."

He placed a hand on the young bee's back, placing the other against the wall and having it flow outward and away from the poor insect's neck. Head. I really have no idea how bee anatomy works. The process was a lot like making the tunnel here had been, but clearly a lot more careful - a young giant bee was still a giant bee, and he didn't really want to experience a pony-sized sting.

[Electra]

"It's all right, Bay-bee," Stesha told the beeling soothingly, coming around on Bay-bee's other side while Tarrant worked. "We'll get you right out of there." With the geokinetic there, it was a trivial matter to free the trapped insect from confinement, though she was so worked up that as soon as her head was free Bay-bee shot backwards halfway across the room.

"Bad!" Bay-bee chided the offending wall, waggling her little antennae with rage. "Zzztuck!" It did not look as though any actual harm had been done, either to Bay-bee or to the new castle.

"You have to be more careful!" Stesha warned the bee, "you're growing so quickly, places you might have fit when you were a larva are too little for you now. You don't want to get stuck again!"

[Fox]

Tarrant nodded, his amusement back under control as his worry faded (and as there was no more giant bee bottom sticking out from one of his new walls). "Miss Fleur's right. If you were unlucky you might end up stuck when she and I aren't here, and then you might get seriously hurt, or trapped until one of us happened to stop by. We'd be very sad if something bad happened to you just because you wanted to explore!" He shook his head, but smiled. "You're a lot of fun to have around, Bay-bee, and I enjoy watching you look around...but you've gotta be more careful."

[Electra]

"Careful," Bay-bee agreed ruefully, seeming chagrined by her frightening experience as she hovered close to the ground and waved her antennae as though to double-check that they were still working.

Stesha patted the bee reassuringly on her fuzzy black head, releasing another cloud of pollen into the air. "Why don't we take you home for now, Bay-bee," she suggested, "and you can tell the Queen all about what you saw? And then you and I can pop over to my place and have some lunch," she suggested to Tarrant. "You must be famished after all that work."

"Mama!" Bay-bee exclaimed, apparently pleased with the idea of getting to report on what she'd seen and done.