A Mend Forever Voyaging

Uta scans her surrounding as she walks around the encampment. She lifts the collars of her coat to help shield herself from the wind blows in her face and ruffles her hair. She inhales, and proceeds with renewed determination; wach time the staff she's clutching touches the ground, her head swings in a different direction. She appears to be looking for someone.

A stranfe sight is seen Gwen's in a tent she's not in armour she's in commonrs clothing some sort of simple green dres and she's snoring lightly in thge tent. It seems she'd got up early to cook for the camp. So she'd gone back to sleep after she's served the meal to those lurking about the camp. She's not hard to fine and still even a sleep she does lool big...

Uta stops and considers. Gwen looks so tired, and it feels wrong to wake her up after she's worked so hard for everyone. She hesitates for some time, and in the end, she flicks her menu upen. A quill and some paper materialize in a shimmer of light, and, Tongue sticking out, she writes a note.

"Dear Gwen -- I did not want to wake you up. Please chim me when you are ready to discuss some personal matters. Yours,

Uta"

She folds the piece of paper, and places it next to her sleeping friend. She turns, and tiptoes away, turning one last time to look at the sleeping Sylph before-

The clangor of a whole tower of pots and pans being demolished causes the few Adventurers still around to turn their head. What they see is a Spriggan sitting in the middle of them, head stuck into a piece of cookware, one leg sticking up with a frying pan spinning there.

Gwen mutters in her sleep something about her mother conspiring with uta, Shir and Jaz but mubles off. Just what is she dreaming about? She rolls over grabing a bundle of clothing afterward runbbing into it as Uta leaves the note? All seem well but then the items fall. Gwen wakes up bu she's groggy, no thinking much as she grabs something to try to get up. That thing just happens to be uta.

"ugg... what's going on?"

"Sorry, Gwen!", Uta blurts out with a deep blush, as she scrambles to steady herself (which is not easy with pots collapsing all around you every time you move -- and your tall friend thinking you're some sort of piece of furniture). "I came here to apologize, but now I can't apologize before I apologize." She blinks and shakes her head, while waving a hand. "For... waking you up, I mean. So, now is where I would apologize for waking you up, but before I do that, I must say, I'm really curious as to what you were just dreaming about." She repeatedly taps her lips with her index finger while she waits for a reply.

Gwen mumble an he eyes widen a bit as she fully wakes upa nd lets go.

"UTA!"
% Uta will end up hugged if she doesn't dodg the giant woman before her. She will get control of herself.

"It's all right it was an accient its not like you were yelling in my ears!" She says she look sto her.

"Dream I don't remeber wait my mother was ... wiuth the help of osme other people trying to put me ...."

SHe looks to uta.

"Oh clothing related what's up?"

Uta does not fight the hug. She more like does her best to survive it. Her defense being based entierely on Evasion, once she's caught, well, there's not much left to do but squeak and endure.

"Oh, right! Clothing related!" She looks down and away, and mutters something that sounds like, "...I'm sorry I destroyed those two dresses of yours while I was in a Strange Mood. I didn't mean to, it just..." She turns to glance at Gwen, "...you know, I just wasn't aware of what I was doing. You've been through a Strange Mood yourself, I... I hope you'll understand?"

Gwen lets go an pauses. "Yeah I should have clicked to it sooner but we learn something imporant it's best to just give someone in a mood like that menu crafted clothing." She looks sheepish at this. "Do don't worry about it but help at some point to replace the materials for first one. The second one was all on me! Though idf it left scraps I would say feed those to a slime and see what happens."

She notes grinning a bit. "Yerah those moods...it was a relgious experiance in a way."

"That's a good question. Feeding them cleaning rags produces scrubber slimes. I wonder what happens by feeding dress scraps to the slimes... hey, we could cooperate on that project, if you want?"

Uta blinks and taps her chin. "...now that you mention it... yes... yes..." she trails off, and taps her mouth again. "It's an accurate way of putting it. Especially since the Goddesses seem to be involved in some way or other." She looks at Gwen. "Did you get a quest too, at the end? One worded so vaguely it's impossible to tell, exactly, what it means?"

Gwen says "ohh though if we feed dresse to slime we're using menu based one and I wonder if we'll get FASHION SLIMES" Someone seems to recall the Gwen and uta slimes. "Pretty much happen to me I'm thinking about pushing deeper I just want to make sure I have things in place in the event you know? I forget to eat and the like again. I may have to use the terror my mother causes me to not forget. Every meal missed I have ot wear an outfit my mother picks...."

"Morri is trying her best, I'm sure," Uta comments. "But- hm. If it has to come to that, feel free to contact me first. I may not be of much help with meals, but I'll see that your health is properly monitored and taken care of." She nods and, hands behind her back, glances up, way up at Gwen. "We don't know whom, or when, a Strange Mood will strike next. We must always be ready to help each other."

She looks down, and taps her chin. "Hmmm. Maybe, at some point, I should create a Center for the Care and Feeding of Beings in a Strange Mood...", she mentions, tapping her lips again. "Point is, I'm kind of afraid of falling in a Strange Mood myself if I do..."

Gwen looks to uta now for a moment grinning at this. "Or at least have a respose force I was thinking of making up a standarize ration pack for thatr and other long term opoerations. Hahha wouldn't that be the case but i'll be honest...I never felt so alive before II came ot this world. I was honestly just wasting away."

Uta nods at Gwen. "I have already drawn up an optimal dietary regime for that kind of emergency based on sound medical principles," she says. "And- hm."

Uta taps her chin, and goes deep, deep in thought. "I had ended up in a dead-end rut myself, to be honest. And, well, for all its... strangeness, one has to admit that one does, indeed, feel alive in this world. Despite my... ah... shortcomings, I have accomplished far more in the year I've been here than I have in the rest of my pre-Apocalypse existence."

She sighs, and using her staff as a pivot, she spins to sit cross-leged on the ground and look in the distance. "But is all of this real?" She turns to look at Gwen. "Remember, it's a videogame. It's been carefully engineered to provide players with an engaging, stimulating, and rewarding experience. Are we fooling ourselves by chasing meaningless shadows?"

"I'm the kind of person who'll take an inconvenient truth over a reassuring lie. If this is still a videogame, and we're actually lying comatose while hooked to a hemet, well, I wish this all would end, and I could go back out to reality, to being the human I really am. Even if it's far less enticing than the life we're leading here." She looks straight ahead of herself. "But if we've really been transported, or 'reborn', for some definition of that word, in a different world, well... as weird as it is, I honestly wouldn't mind spending the rest of my existence as 'Uta Furore' the Spriggan. I'd even work hard to embrace it better."

She balls up a little, and clutches her staff tighter. "I wish I knew the truth... just the bare facts..."

Gwen looks at uta for a moment an sighs

"I can teach you to cook if you want."

Gwen has just gone mom mome for a moment, good thing Morri isn't here to see that bit.

"I'm the one who woke up the amazon. Too real to be a game honestly. I'll operate as that until proven otherwis because ifd the other way and it is real.... to treat people and a world as a toy like that."

She doesn't dismiss Uta's own words either she's thinking about it.

"To find the truth we'll have to go looking for it...I think."

"I agree with you there," Uta replies. "If there is even the slightest possibility that Landers are alive-" A pause. Some thought."Perhaps 'as alive as us' is a better way to put it. This world might be some sort of construct, and Landers /might/ be some sort of artificial inteligence, after all." She squints sideways at Gwen. "But who says we aren't? Our minds might have been uploaded as some sort of... computer simulation or otherwise, after all. And that would make it even more ironic for people to consider landers as worthless because 'they're just computer programs'."

Uta shakes her head. "No, you have a point. Regardless of what the truth is, until we know, our best bet is to just embrace our Adventurer characters, if not in full, at least to a large extent. Work with what you have. Don't fight the tide, exploit it, and all that."

A pause. "And yes, it feels far, far too real for comfort. I would say- wait."

She blinks at Gwen. "Uh... to be fair, when I'm out there in the wide world, traveling with my cart... campfire cooking at my current skill level is-"

Cut to flashback: night-time, next to Uta's barrel-shaped traveler's cart. She is holding an empty pan over a camp-fire. She carefully, carefully, VERY carefully holds a meat drop over it. She lowers the item with the highest amount of care one can muster, until, just one split second after Uta winces in anticipation, it touches the pan's surface-

* * * KABOOM!! * * *

Back in the present, Uta sighs. "...not up to the task. Being able to do it properly would help a lot, really."

Gwen says "Hey if this hand't happend i'd not have ment most of you. Yeah you got the idea and if it real and we got to leave someday? Isn't it better we help the Landers out at least a little bit for all the ruccus we make just by breathing? YEah I know how trhat goes back when i was learning to camp and shoot. Damn near shot my own foot off, Uther didn't hear the end of that for years. It would help and it's also a skill you can trade for things too."

Gwen knows she bribes with food oh does she ever.

Uta keeps silent. Then looks down. "...to be fair, I'm glad I've met everyone, yes. I hadn't had this many good friends in a long while...."

Gwen says "It can be loney in life honestlyu I know how that can be ... the day the net died I lost so many people I knew and never found them all after iot came back up...."

Uta goes dead silent. She glances down, then at Gwen, then down again. She thinks long and hard, as if considering her next move in a complex game of chess, and finally lets out a liberatory sigh. "I lost my whole online college that time," she begins. "Went bankrupt. Oh, and of course, the virus wiped all of my records." She makes a waving motion with her hand. "Bye bye degree I was this close to getting. Bye bye job offer as teaching assistant. Bye bye slot in the PhD program..."

She sighs, and with a lower volume and pitch, and far more somber tone, she adds, "Bye bye b-"

She pauses.

"...no, that's depressing enough already," she says, shaking her head, and perks up. "Let's, as you say, focus on this world and its challenges. And its good things. Yes, I'll be glad to learn how to cook from you, as soon as I get some things sorted out."

Gwen looks to Uta for a moment "I didn'g lose my defgree but I'd been hired for an up and comming VR mmorph art asset deam for desing character costumne and the like. I was to start... a week after the day of Plutos Kiss." She looks crush in a way no one in Elder tale has seen her.

"Seems like you lost more than I did..."

Selfish that what she's being people lost a whole lot more than she did.

Uta pffffts at Gwen's last comment. "This is not a competition. And even if it were, which it is not, we have both lost our life's dream, so we are kind of even there." She gets up, and smiles, looking away. "A lot of people I have met have lost far more than I. Loved ones, physical fitness..." She turns and smiles at Gwen. "And hey, you get to be a household name in fashion design now, hm? How's that? And who knows..." She drums her fingers on her lips as she looks away from Gwen to de-focus towards the horizon. "...one day I might even start my own university in this world..."

A short pause.

"...I'd probably still not give myself a degree, though. That'd feel a little bit like cheating."

Gwen says "I got it back here more or less i'm running my own business and it's a success no red tape none of 2000 years of garbage pile down on us." She nods for a moment she looks to Uta nodding for a moment.

"Ha fair enough be the lady who wrote how you get the degree!"

Uta smirks at Gwen. "Or inspire someone to start their own University to compete with mine. So I can sign up with them and earn a degree without any fear of being accused of a conflict of interests."

Gwen says "Oh I see always the ambtion with you isn't it Uta?" She grins and set a hand on her frined's shoulder. "Hopefully you can make that happen."