two kinds of mysterious floating rock

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Nick is minding his own business, collecting floatgrass and onions from a random island a fair bit south of the equator and wondering when it'll rain again, when someone rather rudely appears directly above him.

Comments

[greatestgift]

"No. If I didn't have to be awake to use them, I could keep flying forever."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"How do the wings... Wing? Are they part of you, or more like my glider? If I had a pair and could take them on and off whenever I wanted they'd make my ship almost completely redundant."

[greatestgift]

"I can take them on and off," she says. "I usually don't, but I can. You can try a pair, if you want—" and she digs in her many-pocketed jacket and comes up with a handful of pairs of wings, each with a span of only a few inches. One is pale blue and translucent, with a filmy goldfish-tails sort of look; one is feathered, brown and blue; one seems mechanical in nature, with long silver-accented black vanes fixed to a black-accented silver armature. The silver colouring is probably some kind of paint, but it does seem plausibly made of metal.

"Most everything in Terraria can be miniaturized for storage."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Does shrinking things reduce its weight as well? That will have interesting navigational uses. Not that making land from little cubes and flying around with magic wings isn't interesting enough already."

He picks the mechanical ones. They remind him of his glider, which he already more or less trusts. He looks confusedly at them for a moment, shrugs his jacket, and sort of... Holds them in vaguely the right orientation near his back.

[greatestgift]

She puts the other wings away after she expands the mechanical ones for him.

When held in the appropriate orientation near his back, they tug themselves into place and then attach, perfectly comfortably. And now he has wings, as fully under his control as any other limb. Somehow the metal vanes can feel the air around them and transmit this sensation, and somehow the wings just know how to move, and communicate the knowledge to him through unobtrusive intuitive hints.

"Convenient, aren't they?"

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Very."

He spends a few moments moving the wings experimentally, 'flies' in place for a bit, then says, "I've always wanted to do this. Be back in a minute!" Grinning, he leaps from the island.

[greatestgift]

...She giggles.

The wings are extremely convenient! Their hinting will carry him through any possible maneuver he cares to try. (Impossible maneuvers may be another story.)

[rockeye_stonetoe]

He mostly just goes straight down as fast as possible. When the air pressure has changed noticably, straight back up, past the island. A few loops, a barrel roll, and an Immelmann turn. For style. Then, landing.

[greatestgift]

"I guess you like them."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Yes, that is a reasonable guess. My magic is not nearly as impressive as these. All I got on my own is a weird sort of intuitive magic-sense."

[greatestgift]

"Hmm?"

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Oh, uh, everyone in Cloudbank gets a little magic, usually when they're fourteen or fifteen. What sort of thing depends on the person, but they're always little things. I had a friend who could make light from his hand, and another who could move things around with her mind, as long as they were close and not heavy. Mine tells me how large and how heavy nearby objects are in a vague sort of way, so I always know when something starts going wrong with my airship."

[greatestgift]

"That does sound useful," she says. "I have something kind of like that, but it tells me different things."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Useful magic powers are the best kind of magic powers in my opinion. People who get, like, colorful illusion powers or an aura of happiness usually seem satisfied with theirs anyway, though. What's your thing like?"

[greatestgift]

"It's called groundsense, it's from my original world, and it lets me see... what things are, sort of. Aliveness in living things, and former aliveness in dead things, and being-rocks-ness in rocks. It's part of how I can tell that the creepy mindless person-shaped things don't have minds. I could've guessed anyway, but I can see it in their ground."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"That's a lot more detailed than mine. And more obviously magical. I don't see things being heavy, I just... Know they're heavy or not-so-heavy. It sounds like there's actually lot of kinds of magic out there. Yours and Cloudbank's and whatever nonsense powers Terraria."

[greatestgift]

"Whatever powers Terraria is definitely nonsense."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Well, if it can be useful nonsense I don't really care. Do you want to fly south with me so you can safely try to put down some blocks? My name is Nick, by the way, nice to meet you."

[greatestgift]

"Sable. Sable Arrowsmith. And sure."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Do you mind if I bring my airship? It's definitely a lot slower than wings-" he flaps them for emphasis "-but I don't particularly want to just leave it here."

[greatestgift]

"Reasonable. I don't mind."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

So Nick spends a few minutes collecting floatgrass, skips the onions and berries, and starts untying the ropes holding his ship to the island.

"If you want, you could learn a bit about the ship and help me get it running more quickly. It's not that hard, just a bit finicky."

[greatestgift]

"Sounds interesting."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

He explains how to get a ship like this moving, with lots of information about how air and solid objects interact, how ropes and cables are used to control the little canvas flaps all over the ship, how to start the engines - "I'd explain how they work but it'd take a while."

Among the explanations are a fair number of warnings about things she shouldn't do, and a few things she extra definitely cannot do under any cicrumstances, like cause sparks or fire.

[greatestgift]

"No fire. Got it."