2019-07-19: A Great Animal Called Ze Shoopuff
- Log: A Great Animal Called Ze Shoopuff
- Cast: Dean Stark, Rebecca Streisand, Avril Vent Fleur
- Where: The Moonflow
- Date: July 19, 2019
- Summary: Rebecca, Dean, and Avril have a lighter day out at the Moonflow -- made all the more important by recent events. Shoopuffs, invisible tiny animals, and sunken cities are the conversation of the day.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
The Moonflow is a beautiful place--maybe one of the most beautiful in all of Spira, which is filled with beautiful places. It's also the feature of a great animal called ze shoopuff, which people can ride to cross the Moonflow. These weird amphibious people are in charge of that, as well as of the shoopuff, and of the actual ferrying. And the shoopuff is so big and gentle and the ride just looks so fun!
Which is why Dean is here, with his best friends Avril and Rebecca. Spira--well, Spira experiences hard times all the time. But right now is especially hard, for everyone. Some good cheer is a good idea. At least, Dean thinks so! And so here they are.
"Man, I wonder what it eats? Those fish guys said it doesn't eat anything!" Dean comments to them as they wait to board. "How could an animal that big just eat *nothing*? That's weird!" So says the small boy with the huge appetite.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
"It has to eat something Dean." Rebecca insists, "Maybe we just don't see it eat. But something that big - there's no way it gets by on just... sunlight, air, and water..."
Rebecca is no scientist. She has little background in it other than what one could read up on in small town books. Thus, not much. Capo Bronco doesn't exactly have a library.
Still, it feels like pretty common sense on her that an animal that big has to eat.
In this Rebecca finds herself looking at the Shoopuf as they wait in line to board, then back to Avril. She has no real sense that something is wrong. They were separated for a while - she came back, and that's that. So she's plenty cheerful whenever she speaks to her.
"So Avril - you know they say you can see a sunken city as you ride across the Moonflow." She comments, "Apparently it's still pretty intact. A real sight to see. Oh- that reminds me!"
And then her attention shifts to Dean as she offers a warning based off it, "Dean I'm pretty much completely certain that ancient Spirans didn't have golems-"
Barring Avril working that controller of hers and one somehow emerging...
"...so don't go diving overboard while we're riding across to search for them in the underwater city. For one thing you don't want to give the Hypello here a heart attack. For the second thing - Avril and me don't want to find out that Dean Stark as it turns out is the Shoopuf's favorite food."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
In the end, Avril had been able to return to her friends. She had apologized, of course -- her state had left little confusion about what she had gotten involved in. But what else was there left to say?
...She's known for a long time that there is a split in her. Or to be more precise, a wall. Something breaking her in two. If this is the root of Malevolence...
...But then there is also the presence that lurks beyond the wall. Something she feels like she does not want to invite into this world.
A part of her that doesn't belong here...
Today she's dressed in a simple if blue-green hued shift, in the style of dress more commonly favored by those of this land. Perhaps it's the simple fact that her usual garb is perhaps not the wisest decision if they are today to explore the Moonflow. Or perhaps it's the damage that she is -- still -- repairing from the fight she had gotten into before. A seamstress of renown might be able to fix her old dress...
"Perhaps it eats small animals that live in the water," Avril suggests, walking along the riverside with her friends. On days like this, when the water is still, where the sun is (allegedly, this is the Moonflow) shining down upon them, she can almost forget the ancient thing from the dark corners of her mind. "They may be invisible to the eye, but enough of them can form a good meal to even a great whale in the seas."
She comes to a stop as they get into line, clasping her hands behind her back. Her gaze lingers on the flitting Pyreflies. Souls, or pieces thereof?
"...Is that true? I wonder what became of such a city, if it's now beneath the Moonflow," she wonders aloud, though even as she says it, one certain thing does come to mind.
"Hmmm. I wonder if there were such a thing as Golems even here." There were certainly a few unexpected ones in Meribus and Glenwood, but...
And then she simply giggles. "I think they might find Dean difficult to swallow, don't you? He is rather lively."
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
"That's what I'm saying!" Dean counters to Rebecca. "Maybe it's got mouths in its feet. Maybe it stomps on its feet and eats it that way!" ...He's really enjoying himself, isn't he. He continues to enjoy himself as the three of them are ushered onto the loading device that brings them up and onto the shoopuf's back--though he makes a face at Rebecca. "Geez! Of course the ancient Spirans didn't have Golems. They'd have beaten up Sin ages ago if they did!" So, you know, thanks for that, Rebecca. "And even if I did, even *I* know better than to jump into water I can't swim to look for Golems!"
...Though now that he thinks of it, that sounds like an intriguing idea. Why *shouldn't* there be Golems underwater somewhere? He'd already decided to learn how to swim thanks to how much water there is in and around Spira, but that's just one more very powerful reason to learn.
Avril, meanwhile, has been quieter than usual lately. Dean figures it's because of that battle that struck Luca--he's gotten caught up helping people who were running away, and so never made it to the battle--because Avril was there, and, well, there's plenty in a war to bum a person out, so he doesn't think anything of it. He sure doesn't suspect her of deliberately hiding anything from him or Rebecca... though she might pull one or the other aside and tell a secret to that one for whatever reason. Or tell them great secrets of the world so casually that Dean just has to turn and stare.
"Invisible animals in the water??" he repeats, somewhere between flabbergasted and on the verge of laughter. "Wow, that's a good one! When did you learn to tell jokes like that, Avril?"
Avril raises a good point. A city under the water... "Maybe it flooded or something?" he offers. "You're right, though... How could a whole city just sink underwater like that? We gotta make sure we check it out on the way over." And then, once the Hypello has given its warnings and gotten the Shoopuff, Dean sticks out his tongue at Rebecca. "Nyehhh! I bet *you'd* like it if I was a tiny animal!"
What does that mean? It's possible even Dean doesn't know.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
Rebecca has no retort to Dean saying that's what he's saying. Because he's got her there. So the best thing to do in this situations where Dean Stark gets one up on her is to simply gloss over the part he got right - and get him on something else. "Are you sure you wouldn't forget you can't swim?" Is Rebecca's rejoinder back to Dean. "If you saw something you thought was a golem underwater."
Though - Avril offers a different theory. "Huh. Animals invisible to the eye?" Rebecca says, not skeptically, as in fact she believes Avril is far better at this kind of thing. She's just never thought of anything that small existing. "That's pretty neat Avril... animals that small really feed whales back home?" There's this smile as she thinks it over, "They must eat a lot of 'em to get so big..."
Dean says that she'd like it if he was, with his tongue stuck out, and Rebecca tries not to laugh, but it's hard since Avril was giggling already about finding Dean difficult to swallow, and Rebecca lets out this snort like she's trying to hold back a laugh.
"Yeah sure Dean. My ideal you is one I can keep in an itty bitty jar to protect you from all the Shoopufs of the world."
It's said with the sort of eyeroll kind of way of a joke.
Perhaps she might double take a little though when she thinks about it.
However as Avril and Dean commented on it both earlier, she tries to offer what she's heard, "Well from what I heard from some guy over there - they built it up on bridges over the Moonflow. Then... Sin came. Yevon apparently uses it as a lesson against..."
Rebecca actually struggles to remember the lecture. Her mind though can't really grasp it because to be honest, she listens better to street smart knowledge rather than... academic knowledge, and this guy was droning on and on... so there's a notable pause as she tries to grasp the answer again and...
"...bridge building or something?"
The girl's mouth shuts, and she tries not to look too embarrassed by her answer.
Just play it cool Rebecca Streisand, play it cool.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"Perhaps we should conduct more swimming lessons together," Avril starts to say, before recalling that the place where they had swam before is now cut off from them. Her gaze falters; she looks down. "Oh... that's right."
If there are Golems on the rest of the moon, then perhaps there might be Golems elsewhere, too? It remains no less a longshot -- somewhat -- but nevertheless... it does remain an intriguing concept.
Perhaps Avril ought to see for herself if any are here. It would be a simple matter.
Other than the Guard's Golems, that is...
When Dean busts out laughing at her comment about invisible animals, Avril tilts her head to one side as if she were briefly a confused dog. "Was that a joke?" she wonders aloud. "Did I make an accidental play on words, Rebecca?" she asks her friend, bafflement still the order of the day. "If you bring together the right sorts of lenses, it is possible to see what can live in water. Perhaps you might call it the opposite of a, ah, a spyglass?" She struggles a moment, attempting to bring to mind the word.
It's strange. She can recall the concept with precision, but the names of the devices slip from her mind. But in the same way that a ship far away can be seen, something minute can also be seen...
Though she will have a hard time demonstrating the principle here, perhaps.
"Yes," she says to Rebecca. "It is true. If you were to look inside a whale's mouth, you would see that it has a sieve there," she says, before she creases her brow. "...I suppose this was something that the person I once was had learned. I do not think I have seen a whale 'lately'." She smiles; it is at best a bittersweet smile.
At least when the topic turns to the city under the water, Avril can put a name to the hypothesis. "Actually, I suspect it may have been..."
Rebecca provides the answer, and the context.
"Yes," Avril says, nodding but once. "That is what I suspected. Sin, it is said, destroyed those who rely on technology. Though," she adds on, frowning faintly, "I would not think a 'bridge' to be technology the way that Yevon so typically seems to view it. Then again, a bridge that was able to span this river would require much in the way of planning, materials, and support -- it would be beyond a simple construct of wood or stone crossing a stream, don't you think? To say nothing of the tools that would be required..."
Her gaze shifts off towards the horizon as she, apparently, settles into a rumination on the mechanics of...
...bridgebuilding.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean opens his mouth, shuts it. Would he forget he could swim, if he saw a Golem right there in the water? ...He tugs on his scarf. "Uhhh hey wow it's our turn to board, let's go!"
Rebecca takes Avril seriously about the tiny animals, and Avril doubles down--or rather, explains how invisible animals might actually be a thing, since that was Dean's entire problem in the first place. His jaw drops. "Really?! I thought you were kidding! Since, if something's invisible, how can you see or even eat it... Huh!" His expression clouds. "Wait. But if it's that tiny, how much would this big guy have to eat?" He gets off on the compartment on the shoopuff's back and settles in comfortably. "Are there really animals back home that eat that kinda thing too? Huh!"
Maybe Dean should read more. And not just more of those Nightburn novels.
"Could you make one of those opposite-of-spyglass things?" he asks in interest. "It sounds like it couldn't be too hard." Not that he's any good with fiddly detail work, but Avril's not him, right? Right. He does sober when Avril admits that the whale and microscopic animals are all information picked up from who she used to be. He could ask a few million questions more, but... he doesn't want her to leave any sooner than she absolutely has to.
He shakes his head. "We can always go somewhere else for swimming lessons. Heck, we could have 'em right here, in the river!" Dean points out. "Spira's *full* of water. Wonder how they don't get sick of it, actually."
Rebecca mocks him for saying she'd like him better as a tiny animals. "What, are you saying you wouldn't?" he challenges. He might want to think out that challenge some.
But then Rebecca shows off what *she* learned from the other to-be passengers, and he nods slowly, thoughtfully. He'd largely been joking when he talked about Golems beating up Sin--he remembers Azado and how even flights of ships couldn't take it out, and in his heart of heart, as much as he loves Golems, he's not sure they could take on Sin, certainly not one-on-one--but what Rebecca says makes a lot of sense. When Avril chimes in, ultimately drifting off to imagine all the logicics, he smiles with fondness at her.
At least he didn't make fun of Rebecessa about the bridge-building bit.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
Rebecca finds herself reflecting on what Avril said when she asks on it. "Huh!? I-" And then she pauses to reflect on whether Avril did - there's a lengthy one before, "Nope. Dean just thought you weren't being serious about there being animals that small."
She grins as Dean confirms he was just kidding. "But calling Dean a little hard to swallow was a pretty good one I think. He's pretty hard to swallow on his best day."
Avril does explain more on the tiny animals in a whale's mouth. "Wow. I never would have thought- I just always thought whales ate big fish." She says with a certain honesty there. Before Dean offers a suggestion, "Hey yeah-! Would that be able to see them?"
Upon Dean's mocking challenge, she answers it right away, "Of course not Dean!" She says with an eyeroll, "I'd want you to roam free every now and then! You wouldn't get enough exercise all confined like that!"
Avril though goes on about bridges and Rebecca finds herself holding a hand over her mouth. And it's slowly shifting as she listens her.
"It must have been... one elaborate set of bridges." She says with a kind of muffled lameness there. "To hold up a city on a river. Y-Yeah..."
All the same, she finds herself dropping her hand and looking at Avril quietly with a certain affection all of her own when Avril actually ruminates on it so sincerely.
For a while, there's no shame. Just... this smile at how earnest she is at evaluating what she said.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"Oh." Avril appears to meditate on this reality for a moment. "I see." She shakes her head. "No, there are truly much smaller animals than can be seen with ones eyes, Dean," she explains, before climbing aboard. "Perhaps someday I will be able to show you."
Perched atop the back of this creature is an experience unto itself. Steadying herself against the side, Avril gazes down into the depths, as if already in search of the sunken city.
"Well, I do think it is true. He would put up a fight enough that even a sandworm wouldn't be able to swallow him," Avril opines, though she's unable to keep from smiling.
"Yes. It would be what you would expect, wouldn't it? However, the largest whales instead eat instead a large quantity of small creatures. They might spend most of their day feeding, in fact." She settles back, looking over at her companions aboard the Shoopuf. "Perhaps there is a lesson in that, somewhere. 'Do not forsake the lesser for the greater' perhaps?" she muses, tilting her head to one side. "Or, maybe, 'even large things are dependent on the small'. If it were not for the small creatures, even a great whale would not be able to survive."
It is true. They could do swimming lessons somewhere around here. "We could, that is true. But should we swim here, do take care not to venture too deep, Dean. The water seems particularly deep in several places."
Rebecca might be embarrassed, but Avril only listens, intent, as if this all makes perfect sense.
"Yes. I think I understand now. The river is deep in places, so one would also have to ensure that the supports were secured. Then, if a city were atop it as well, it would need to be capable of bearing such a weight..."
In her mind, is she already working out how such a place might have appeared? How it was designed?
"I believe," she says at length, her gaze returning to the water, "I do see why Sin would have destroyed such a place."
Her gaze siezes on some shape then. "Look! Down there. Is that it?"
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
"Yeah, what Rebecca said," Dean says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. "Sorry I laughed at you, Avril." He brightens when she suggests showing him. "Yeah! That'd be cool!"
Rebecca calls him hard to swallow. Dean sticks his tongue out at her again. Some things you don't need clever words to clap back on. Especially when Rebecca claims she'd want to let him roam free once in a while to get exercise if he were a tiny animal. Dean just makes a face and lets that one go.
Instead, he focuses on Avril. When she phrases the swallowing bit in a more positive way, he finds himself laughing and blushing a little as he scratches his head. "I guess I can't deny that one, huh? I'd fight my way out've its stomach if I had to!" And on whales: "Wow. All *day*? I guess that explains how they get full eating something that tiny." Her subsequent philosophizing gets a series of rapid, confused blinks, though. "Huh. I never thought of it like that."
A nod. "Yeah. I mean, if a whole *city* could sink in here, it's gotta be a really deep river." Rebecca suggests further how bridges might work if there were lots of them, and Dean nods thoughtfully as he pictures it. "Yeah, that could work," he opines. "It'd be like if you set a leaf on a spiderweb across a couple of twigs."
Or. Something like that.
"You think so?" he asks Avril of Sin. "I sure don't. Who knows why Sin destroys anything it destroys? I mean, I get why it might've gotten mad at all the fighting during that war a thousand years ago, but that didn't mean it had to destroy an entire city! And what about all the destroying after? Who gets *so mad* that they're still destroying all that time later?"
Avril spots something. Dean leans over. "Oooh! Yeah, I think I see it!" he says. Sure enough, as the shoopuff passes by, they can see the watery outline of spires and rooftops several yards away, well down into the water.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
"He would - wouldn't he?" Rebecca agrees with Avril on this as she climbs aboard, taking a seat on one of the Shoopuf palanquin's benches, "Probably with that shovel of his."
Avril speaks more on how whales eat and she gives her a look of wonder. "Huh. Who'd have thought you could learn a life lesson from whales... and Shoopuf?" Her smile says it all though on that, "That's a really good lesson for everyone to understand though. It's sorta like the message in the end is that we're all connected or something."
It's an interesting way to think about it in that light. To think about Veruni and Humans. Yet she doesn't want to bring that up right now. It'd hardly be flattering to either Veruni to think of them as big whales or humans to think of them as little bitty invisible animals...
... or to think of them as being consumed by them.
But the general lesson of Veruni being dependant on people in those towns to some extent still stands for her.
"Well I don't mind giving it another go on teaching Dean how to swim. But - you've gotta help me out there Avril. I gave up on that years ago."
Instead she just taught herself how to swim so well that she could rescue Dean if he fell in.
The conversation takes a turn for the somber when Avril mentions she understands why Sin would have destroyed such a place, "Because... of what it represents?"
She asks, probing perhaps what Avril is thinking. She'd like to think it's like Dean thinks - that it's an unfathomable monster. Yet Yevon believes it has... motive in a sense even if it doesn't have reason.
"Doesn't seem fair at all to me that it'd still be rampaging for things that happened a thousand years ago Dean. Even if it's punishment - all the people who did what it's angry about are long since dead." There's an almost rueful smile, "Life isn't fair in a lot of ways to the people here in Spira... or anywhere I guess."
As Avril calls it out though, Rebecca quickly shifts position to eagerly look her way, "Hey - yeah there it is!" Her expression switches from enthusiastic curiosity though, to somberness. "It's more intact than you'd think a city destroyed by Sin should be - don't you think?"
In a way - how intact it is, calls to mind a cemetary - or a mausoleum to Rebecca.
Just one for a whole city.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
'With that shovel of his', Rebecca says, and Avril cannot help but giggle, if briefly.
Avril shakes her head. "It is all right, Dean. I suppose it does sound fantastic when you think about it, that there are living things too small to be seen..."
A soft fond smile plays on her lips at Rebecca's comment. "Yes. I find that it is true, though, that there is much that life and the world around us may teach, if we but only look and listen."
It does ask the question -- the person she was, was her knowing that rare and limited? Or was it commonplace understanding, all those thousands of years ago?
She grips the side more tightly, shifting where she's seated a fraction of an inch. Even if he were swallowed by a great beast, he would fight his way out.
"As you say... you must never give up. Isn't that right?"
Her gaze traces the water as they make their passage.
"Yes. Should we go swimming, we must take care to remain in the shallows. Even I do not think I would venture into the depths." Let alone dive down into the ruins below. Not without a device to retain air. Avril may have a surplus of undefined possibly excessive power, but she still can't breathe water.
"Do not worry. I will be certain to lend you my aid, Rebecca. Remember, what is it that Dean always says?" Perhaps the same is true of teaching a certain young man how to swim.
"It seems that it may destroy whatever place develops too great technology," Avril answers. "At least, that is the story that Yevon tells." She frowns, if faintly. "When I think about Kilika, however... was that a city with great technology? It did not seem such to me."
And Azado.
And why was Luca spared, if it had the technology to create that Blitzball sphere?
What is the real thing that drives Sin, if it isn't just technology?
Her lips move when Rebecca speaks. "...'What it represents'. Yes. Perhaps that may be the missing piece, Rebecca. Not simply the technology required to create a massive bridge, but the union that it has created." She pauses, lapsing into a brief silence.
"I wonder... what is 'Sin'?"
But such things may fall by the wayside when they spot the ruins in the deep.
"It's beautiful, isn't it? It is said that in ruin there is grace... I believe I understand that now."