have we put these childish things away? have we lost the magic that we once had?

(Quasi-RP entry, or...it's a roleplay entry, but it deals with things beyond the 'Verse, as well.)

So, Haven's an interesting place. We're still settling in, and up until the happenings I'm going to relate, I had managed to avoid most of the dangers (though I was bitten by a cave spider, and that...was not fun.)



No one told me the electrified snakes on Haven had a winter form.



I mean, look at that thing. The fact that the eyes glow doesn't even register in their normal, desert-hide appearance. But patterned with slow gloss and dapple? Those eyes really stand out.



Thankfully, a friend tipped me to a Blue Sun product, the "Anti-Arc". You can just make it out strapped to my ankle. It gives off a low, not precisely pleasant subsonic hum, but it keeps the snakes away, and I'm perfectly happy with that.

In the meantime, the Duke had an interesting idea I wanted to test out. Considering we're pretty much limited by what we can ship past the UAP, legally, and what's on Haven itself, we're doing a lot of reconsideration on what we can offer the population that they'd want or need. And he suggested it might be possible to harvest Haven's toxic mushrooms and distill them into alcohol. First, it would clear patches of the fungus from places where people need to go, namely the mines, and second, we've done it before with toxic substances, subsuming the toxic elements in alcohol and aging the results.

I figured I'd be the perfect person to check on the toxicity levels, because I was still very comfortable with toxic mushrooms from the pregnancy potion. So off I traipsed to the mines to check. This...was not my best idea.



As it happens, the mushrooms are very toxic, even to a demifae, even to someone who spent the larger part of several weeks inhaling vapors from aconite, death caps, destroying angels and cloud agarics. And here's how it goes: stand too close, and your health drops by half (green to yellow). Stay in place, and it drops by half again. Still stand there, the health bar divides by yet another half and goes red...and that's when I started walking away, but I wasn't fast enough.

Dropped like a rock.



Now, thankfully, I'm still fairly durable, but it unnerved me a bit. I'll have to report back to the Duke that they're too toxic to brew, I think.

One more thing, though...and this one could get tricky.

Lady Justine is trying to teach me to mine asteroids (and I'm horrid at it, is anyone surprised?), but in order to stay completely within the force shield on the little rock hoppers Port Hope provides, she recommended I change out of Haven winter gear into something a little more close-fitting? Well, I happened to have a skinsuit, so changed quickly, but when I caught my reflection...



...I am definitely looking pregnant at this point. Which, to be fair, isn't that surprising--gestation for most leopards is 90 days, so if the Duke's genetics hold, it'll be the first week or two of January when I give birth. (Though if mine hold, as said, everything's out the window.) And that wouldn't be a problem, per se, except...

We're playing human on Haven. Because they have no place in their perceptions for a demifae ex-Phouka and a magically shapeshifting synthesized intelligence and occasional demigod. There's not even vocabulary that exists to explain.

So now, the big decision becomes--do I prop up my illusion spells again, as I've been doing at work, and proceed on as if nothing's changing? Do I just go with it but gently deflect questions? Because the one thing I do know, is the kittens cannot visit Haven. Not the least of which is that they will be kittens, at least until we figure out if they've inherited my natural shapeshifting, or not, and that will take some time for them to grow into whatever they'll become. And I do not want to field questions on why the human CSO of a shipping company has given birth to two leopard cubs. Thanks, but no.

think it comes from somewhere up in the sky, or from some far off lovely place

How did we all survive without this for so long?

Wait, I know how. Never mind. Carry on.

Think of the look of your favorite superheroes. (Well, Marvel superheroes.) Now think of what they'd look like if they had spawned in TRON.

Actually, you don't have to--just look on io9, for a mini-rundown.

Amusingly, Thor? Still pretty much looks like Thor.

So, I've fallen into Minecraft, hard. I admit this; it's gotten bad enough that I started making skins for the game in my spare time (which is ever-diminishing, these days).

I've been working on a tunnel project, but that's not the main thing. This is:



I call her Monolithia.



This is the top of the fourth floor, starting work on the fifth. It all started when I was trying to tunnel from the beach house (inexplicably the source of ALL monsters) to the cliff house (pretty, mostly safe, but far from resources). Being me, I essentially sunk a diagonal set of stairs deep into the earth and got lost in making additional little rooms for crafting and smelting and storage.

But I had to have something to do with all that stone I was carving out.

Fawkes suggested I build something. Something very big.



So I started building. I didn't take any shots of the initial laying out of the main platform, or the rising through the first three floors. It's largely glass and stone, which is both good and bad--it gave me an excellent way to use all the stone I was carving out, but it sent me on farther and farther forays to get more sand, to smelt into glass.



On the plus side, especially once I'd started work on the fifth floor, you can practically see Monolithia from space. I didn't have any particular style of design in mind, which is why it's a meandering cube, but I wanted it large, with significant glasswork, and lots of torches.



Anyone who knows what the red torches are? Don't be so baffled. I just have no use--yet--for redstone's electrical wiring properties. But I do have use for pretty things that glow and give off light, next to the things on fire that glow and give off lots of light.



Monolithia is very nearly done. But it saw me through surface sand and soil, clear down to lava, gold and diamond, and the tunnel is not done yet.

Mayhap I'll need to build Monolithia II. Yeep.

if you need me, me and Neil'll be hanging out with the Dream King

Sometimes I feel like a wraith, drifting in and out of lives, giving all I have to those I love for a season, for a handful of weeks, for a handful of years...only until the alchemical processes I bring have brought them up, those I care for, healed them, made them better, brighter, stronger...

Strong enough to leave me.

It's a pattern I've lived out over and over, and it never seems to change. Love; passion; devotion; discarded.

Over and over. Only recently has this ever changed for me, and the only drawback to being sure of love, love that will not leave, is my heart is still used to being left. Some part of me waits for leaving, is sure it's coming.

This time out...the rest of me doesn't think it's that likely. And this is new territory indeed.

New territory of a different direction, now: back under the Caledon Moors.



(Anyone speak Alien Stone Creature in Caledon? And what happened to Dr. Cavor, anyway?)

The caverns in the Moors are becoming more dangerous. Several times this night we noticed smaller stone creatures, seemingly also fueled by, or powered by, cavorite's green-glowing ore, follow and surround us, sometimes floating, sometimes hopping forward on their stumps of limbs. On the ground they seem like stone, but the curved pointed protrusions on the featureless fronts seem quite capable of doing some unwary explorer a deep injury.



(My first glimpse of Anansite. To date, only found in Winterfell Mithras. We know nothing about this glowing lilac ore, but the supposition is that it may be good in strengthening love potions. Also, librarians might be especially sensitive to its radiance.)

There are rumors of a lost Twelfth Mineral, but we do not know who or what yet. We band together in small groups, or hunt alone, pooling our knowledge with our findings. Under trees and by rivers and underground and surrounded by the glow of pink, blue and green fungi, green, lilac and white stone. We are diligent, and curious.

This is both good and bad.



(Cavorite is tricksky, tricksy stuph--it seems the less of it there is, the higher it floats. So the small chunks we arduously mine from the Moors we've had to find creative ways to pry off the ceilings.)

I remain eternally thankful to the fellow "mycoCaledonians" who've provided digging tools, collection baskets, cavorite-catching nets, and support, in our mutual journey towards understanding. I can always rely on their advice, helpful tips, and sense of humor as we journey together towards understanding.



(Sometimes, entirely by accident, we get a glimpse of the Wizard and his bellows, working behind the curtain. Or, in our case, get taken to see the forthcoming bits of Caledon SouthEnd. It looks lovely, but taken as a capture in time [click for the larger image], it looks very odd indeed.)

Miss Tanarian Davies, upon a chance meeting in the caverns below the Moors, wished to show us Saint Kitt's, and fever-dreams of SouthEnd to come. I count it well worth the time it took to journey to that distant isle, to see the odd waterfowl and airborne fish...and the Ferris Wheel, currently high above the land.

Higher than the air-walking geese, even.



(Somehow, I don't think this is what was meant by the phrase 'flying fish'.)

Miss Davies, Mr. Allen and I watched in baffled bemusement as school after school of fish, sides still slick from seawater, left from their wat'ry home and flew through the night air. Gentle breezes redolent with plumeria and the salted sea wafted by, now also bringing us the smell of straining live fish, close enough to touch--and we do mean that literally, as they flew by!



(Even with the oddity of fish that avoid water and geese that want to swim, is it just me that perceives something strange about the Moai head on the rim of the caldera?)

Why it took me so long to realize that Saint Kitt's bore traces of a previous civilization...I can only blame it on inattention, and on realizing that the geese, for all their strange water-seeking and levitating prowess, are not in the least threatened by me.

Good?

I think it's good...after all, Mr. Allen and Miss Davies were attacked! I just had hovering geese peering over my shoulder at me.



(Ah, it's a deck chair...Well, of course--what else would you put on a giant Moai head on a kitten-shaped island, but a deck chair? Makes...err...perfect sense.)

Soon, though, our night of wandering came to a frightening end. We had retired to the new studio space, Mr. Allen and I, to work idly on several developing projects, when suddenly, with no warning, I was hurled into limbo!

I spent the next nigh two hours attempting to regain contact with the world, to no avail. It was sharp and sudden and quite disorienting!

My only fear is that the same thing will happen, as has happened before in such situations--that the Lindens, 'pon my return, will feel the strong desire to fling me somewhere I've never been prior to this. Most likely, standing on my lonesome on a prim box.

And me wearing only a new white one-piece bathing suit I was testing out for possible use on Saint Kitt's.

Shocking, I tell you. Shocking!

but under his cloak he is nothing but smoke and a finger that points at your grave

The night wore on, and I was getting quite tired of climbing mountain after mountain, through Caledon's fair lands, cataloguing the new mineral deposits. I thought my oddest experience as the night advanced to early morning hours would be climbing to the base of Wellsian's abandoned mine shaft, carefully sifting the ocean sands, breathing slowly through new gills, digging up odd chunks of coal and silver.

Coal and silver, tin and copper, gold, sulfur, iron, uranium...and cavorite, now and again, floating away into the slowly lightening sky if I didn't grab it soon enough.

Then...I heard tell that Mr. Allen had discovered a new mushroom ring...and minerals were found nearby.

I came in at his behest to look around, just as he had to leave to attend a business matter. And thus, I was alone in the odd, cavernous space.



At first, I tried to puzzle out the odd markings on the walls. They seemed to be everywhere--walls, ceiling, floor...



Including an odd circular raised portion of the floor, that held a pedestal with an oddly flickering, greenish light.



(Miss Acker, who arrived later, and I, staring at the platform.)

I found out, completely by accident, some of these...odd structures...were still active.



It took a bit before I figured out how to escape from the odd, pulsating enclosure. But it took Miss Acker getting captured before we discovered one of the odd dome's secrets:



(Miss Acker trapped under the dome, searching for the button, finding something else instead...)

Wind whistled through the space, odd chiming tones were heard, clickings and activations along the edges; I began to get somewhat nervous.



I watched as odd structures I'd taken as carved stone activated, began to glow. I began to move to the back of the cavern, looking for a good, defensible place to hide.



(Control panel? Abandoned machinery from beyond space and time?)



(And what are those odd spiderlike things beginning to glow on the back cavern wall?)

Miss Acker found out one more thing, entirely by accident. Searching for another button at the base of the platform, she looked up, just as old machinery activated, and she was drawn up:



Note to self: touch nothing in the cavern, but the endless profusion of Horgidae mushrooms, and the odd bits of copper, tin and uranium ore that seem to be scattered about quite liberally.

But no cavorite. In a space that has cavorite ore fragments decorating the very walls, there's no cavorite ore to be found, with the rest of the minerals. I find that odd. I find that very odd.

We'll keep researching.