And sure enough, he's waiting, with his sleek yet very stupid new haircut. Instead of his usual chunky sweaters or Jedao Shu's scarfs and blazers, trying to look both professional and approachable, he's wearing an Aloha shirt - mostly buttoned, at least - khaki shorts, and is fully barefoot.
Astarion, for his part, is dressed like it's his first day on the ship -
white poet's shirt, black leathers. The unusual look Jedao is sporting is
noted but not remarked upon, except to ask:
He opens the door and walks down into - well, it's not really a biome type that exists on earth. Part shallow sea, part hot springs, part mangrove swamp, part upside-down rafting kelp forest, part alluvial delta, part volcanic tower karst.
The distant blue-white sun is smaller than Earth's sun is in the sky, but noticeably brighter; the sky is a rich almost-violet blue, except where it's slashed by vivid daytime auroras of green and gold. A few minutes is enough to catch a silver-white meteor streak blaze for a few seconds. The gravity is lighter, too, only around three quarters Earth gravity. The whole place isn't really a planet, but a heavy water moon of a hot gas giant around a blue-white giant star. The gas giant's magnetic field flings constant ionized particles off toward its moons, and this one has a magnetic field of its own to convert them into auroras, while the constant debris of the loose ring system and ejecta from the other major moons supply the shooting stars.
A few hundred feat away, a geyser shoots up from one of the volcanic outcroppings, the plume of steam painting temporary rainbows onto the scene before dissolving and drifting away. Around them, the churning water and occasional obsidian formations reflect the bright light in every direction.
The life is aggressively amphibious, jewel-bright crustaceans, sleek scampering otters, chattering shorebirds diving just as frequently, strange plants half-draped over the intermittent fingers of stone, half curling wavy tendrils out into the water. There's a boat tied to a spur of stone at the bottom of the stairs, with plenty of space for both of them to sit uncrowded, and one pole to navigate with.
It's a lot to take in. If there's any place like it in Faerun, he wouldn't
be able to name it. Astarion meanders slowly down towards the boat, much
more focused on taking in the scenery.
"Thanks for giving me an excuse to come," Jedao replies, as a swell of water nearby crashes over the edge and connects to a tide pool; a little hand-sized octopus, turquoise and translucent, heaves itself over the lip of rock and then pulls itself leisurely around the tide pool, tentacles wrapping around iridescent barnacles and slowly prying them open.
"There might be spots with more breeze, if you want to take the boat out. Although, neither of us need to breathe. We could just walk on the seabed, I suppose."
Although perhaps not in those pants. And it would not solve the humidity problem.
"Of course." Jedao gives him a little bow - half playful, half thoughtless politeness, and steps into the boat after him, either in front or behind, depending on where Astarion left the space for him, and takes the pole to start scooting them slowly around the jagged little islets.
"Some, eventually. We've got to have a way to go cross-world, for Hakkai's friends. But I've promised to go meet all forty of my step-brothers, and...I think we want to make a home to come back to, before we go roaming around. I'd never come back here, though. This whole universe isn't worth the risk."
The barge's puppet-shows of the strangest wonders are just fine for him.
"I simply cannot express how much of a baby-crazy over-energized hyperacheiving weirdo my soul clone father-prototype-thing is," Jedao explains with a deep sigh.
"Most of them were adopted in batches of five after he liberated a million squads of child soldiers from slavery and at least managed to give most of them away. But then also there were war orphans, I think? Plus someone he adopted here while he was an inmate. And maybe one of his husbands had biokids too, I don't even know."
"Gods below. I've never really understood the trend for...acquiring
families, here," Astarion remarks, looking away into the flora and aquatic
life around them. "So complicated."
"The acquisitive type?" Astarion suggests, half-smiling.
(Not acquisitive in the way his own breach self had been, he dearly fucking
hopes. His gut twists. He believes Jedao when he says he's moving on from
all that, but fuck-)
"Ah...not exactly, I guess. More the ambitious type. Anything he did was going to be ten times bigger and more than anybody else had ever done it, but it was more about the doing than the having. If he was going to be an assassin, he was going to be the personal assassin of the Heptarch. If he was going to be a soldier, he was going to be the most famous tactical genius in history who got sent to dozens of impossible battles and never lost one. If he was going to be a traitor, he was going to kill a million of his own troops in one massive catastrophe and shoot his own bridge crew in the face. If he was going to be an inmate, he was going to take five years, four permanent wardens, and then graduate with two husbands six lovers and a plan to rescue a million slaves and save a galaxy. And if he was going to be allowed to have a family at all, of course it would have to the biggest, craziest, most boisterous family anyone's ever heard of. He's just so much."
It's the kind of utterly unafraid, put-upon and yet deeply sincere grumble of someone who doesn't actually hate that guy, but has been so deeply inconvenienced by that guy's fuckups that for his own mental health, he has to take the time to be uncharitable about it every so often. It's - well. It's a lot to live up to.
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Today, then.
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I'll meet you at the Enclosure entrance. 3 is fine.
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And sure enough, he's waiting, with his sleek yet very stupid new haircut. Instead of his usual chunky sweaters or Jedao Shu's scarfs and blazers, trying to look both professional and approachable, he's wearing an Aloha shirt - mostly buttoned, at least - khaki shorts, and is fully barefoot.
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Astarion, for his part, is dressed like it's his first day on the ship - white poet's shirt, black leathers. The unusual look Jedao is sporting is noted but not remarked upon, except to ask:
"Should I have worn something else?"
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It's going to be a bit balmy.
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Astarion looks down at himself, then shrugs.
"Lead on, darling."
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The distant blue-white sun is smaller than Earth's sun is in the sky, but noticeably brighter; the sky is a rich almost-violet blue, except where it's slashed by vivid daytime auroras of green and gold. A few minutes is enough to catch a silver-white meteor streak blaze for a few seconds. The gravity is lighter, too, only around three quarters Earth gravity. The whole place isn't really a planet, but a heavy water moon of a hot gas giant around a blue-white giant star. The gas giant's magnetic field flings constant ionized particles off toward its moons, and this one has a magnetic field of its own to convert them into auroras, while the constant debris of the loose ring system and ejecta from the other major moons supply the shooting stars.
A few hundred feat away, a geyser shoots up from one of the volcanic outcroppings, the plume of steam painting temporary rainbows onto the scene before dissolving and drifting away. Around them, the churning water and occasional obsidian formations reflect the bright light in every direction.
The life is aggressively amphibious, jewel-bright crustaceans, sleek scampering otters, chattering shorebirds diving just as frequently, strange plants half-draped over the intermittent fingers of stone, half curling wavy tendrils out into the water. There's a boat tied to a spur of stone at the bottom of the stairs, with plenty of space for both of them to sit uncrowded, and one pole to navigate with.
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"Well, this is - quite something."
It's a lot to take in. If there's any place like it in Faerun, he wouldn't be able to name it. Astarion meanders slowly down towards the boat, much more focused on taking in the scenery.
"Somewhere from your plane, I assume?"
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But there was some old footage he saw in a documentary, one time. And it seemed like a good choice.
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"Well, it's...unpleasantly humid, but certainly nice to look at," Astarion murmurs. "Thank you for bringing me here."
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"There might be spots with more breeze, if you want to take the boat out. Although, neither of us need to breathe. We could just walk on the seabed, I suppose."
Although perhaps not in those pants. And it would not solve the humidity problem.
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Astarion stares at the tentacles for a moment, grimacing, then tears his gaze away.
"I'd much prefer the boat, darling, if it's all the same."
He's already making his way over to step aboard.
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Astarion sits at the back of the boat, facing forward, looking ahead as the boat draws away from the water's edge.
"Do you intend to travel when you're done here?" he wonders, idly.
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The barge's puppet-shows of the strangest wonders are just fine for him.
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He's silent for a few moments, reassuring himself he didn't mishear.
"...how did you acquire forty step-brothers?"
Not that fourteen would have been much more believable.
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"Most of them were adopted in batches of five after he liberated a million squads of child soldiers from slavery and at least managed to give most of them away. But then also there were war orphans, I think? Plus someone he adopted here while he was an inmate. And maybe one of his husbands had biokids too, I don't even know."
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"Gods below. I've never really understood the trend for...acquiring families, here," Astarion remarks, looking away into the flora and aquatic life around them. "So complicated."
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"A few people make sense to me. I didn't...set out to acquire anybody. But sometimes you fit with someone. Jedao One, on the other hand..."
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"The acquisitive type?" Astarion suggests, half-smiling.
(Not acquisitive in the way his own breach self had been, he dearly fucking hopes. His gut twists. He believes Jedao when he says he's moving on from all that, but fuck-)
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It's the kind of utterly unafraid, put-upon and yet deeply sincere grumble of someone who doesn't actually hate that guy, but has been so deeply inconvenienced by that guy's fuckups that for his own mental health, he has to take the time to be uncharitable about it every so often. It's - well. It's a lot to live up to.
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Only if you're trying to. To whit:
"He sounds exhausting, darling. I'm glad to have never met him."
(Five years and four wardens? Now he feels very slightly better about himself, to one narrow degree.)
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When he thinks of it in a certain light.
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"Does this mean that when you're finished here, you and he and his vast extended family will be - what, forming some sort of commune?"
Sounds utterly hellish.
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