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Room 5: The Giftshop - A large room that looks as much like an exhibit of miscellaneous treasures as it does a well-organized giftshop. There are no prices, and while there doesn't seem to be any true organization system, the room doesn't appear the least bit cluttered. Shelves climb toward the ceiling, each crowded with objects ranging from beautiful to baffling. There is no shortage of curiosities--trinkets, jewelry, instruments, tools, books, stones, toys--just about anything can be found here in some form. Nothing here was meant to stay for long, and visitors who came early in the evening might find a very different stock by the end of the evening. At the front of the room, and within perfect sight of both the door and every aisle, Almadel stands watch behind a gorgeous desk. The room is well lit and has a large window along the back wall, allowing an extensive view of deep space. Unlike the other exhibits, there doesn't seem to be a ban on snacks, as Almadel has a bowl of strange candy, and a tray of individually wrapped pastries that look oddly similar to Cosmic Brownies.
Aberdonia had watched as his little sister scampered off to speak with a Jupiter knight she clearly knew, and then as they started wandering off into the museum together. On the one hand, he wanted to call her back, to keep her safe, and away from any possibility of stranger danger. But, at the same time, he knew he needed to let go, and let Aquitania grow on her own as a senshi. Yes, she was his little sister, and a chibi, possessed of unstable magic at an unreasonably young age. At the same time, she seemed to be growing capable of handling herself on patrols. Plus, Almadel wouldn't permit misbehavior in his halls, on pain of ejection. Aquitania would be safe.
The remaining four started wandering through the museum, exploring the rooms as they went, and they were...certainly eclectic. Clearly devoted to life throughout the universe, no matter how mighty, or how humble, but some of the artifacts were...just a bit concerning. And saddening, to consider how much had been lost during the collapse a thousand years ago. It clearly wasn't just whole worlds, but also all the living creatures on those worlds that wasn't a senshi.
But...Aberdonia...the asteroid, with its slow blossoming of invertebrate life and the continued flowering of vegetal life, wasn't really like that anymore, now was it? He'd seen insects on the last two visits, and plant life didn't seem to have ever really vanished, though maybe there were some lost plant species he didn't know about. The papyrus and water lilies and marsh mallow had clearly survived, so not all was lost. Maybe more could recover. He just needed to figure out how to make that happen, he promised himself as they gazed at the various fossils. He wasn't sure there was anything from Aberdonia--Aberdonia hadn't really suffered crystallization, and he didn't see any paintings of biomes that looked like Aberdonia, so maybe that was good, in its own way, maybe the animal life on Aberdonia hadn't been particularly dramatic, or appealing to Almadel. Though it would kinda make his trade item of Aberdonian marshmallows a little pointless if he couldn't find anything Aberdonian. Oh, well. At least he could confirm that they were delicious enough that he was tempted to practice making more things that might've been made on Aberdonia.
At long last, the group's footsteps drifted toward the famed gift shop. Books, trinkets, jewelry, instruments, tools, stones, toys, and more filled shelves that rose heavenward. He didn't see any price tags, but, if the whole thing was achieved by bartering, then maybe there was no real point to putting up a price tag on anything. Then again, it didn't sound like people knew Almadel's home planet, so who knew what his world's proper currency even was. The odds that anyone could pay in coin that Almadel would recognize was probably quite low, and, besides, given the nature of this museum...and Almadel's seeming predilection for food, particularly difficult-to-acquire sweets...maybe it wasn't worth wondering how Almadel ascribed value to anything.
He looked around, trying to see what kinds of things were here.
Green Chapel noticed her younger cousin sprinting off to hang with a Jupiter knight. While she was just as worried as Aberdonia, it was fair to state that she had her own share of people she knew that her cousins didn't know, as both she and Fontainebleau both knew Blarney, but Aberdonia obviously did not. The announcement came that the museum was now open, and Aquitania vanished into the depths of the museum with the Jupiter knight, and the rest of their rather sizeable little knot of people were breaking off on their own journeys. Blarney headed off on his own, Edam headed off with Winters, and she soon lost sight of Aruna, too. She shook her head. Time to worry about those things later.
She found Fontainebleau linking arms with her, and turned to face her...well, she increasingly hoped she could fairly call the Venusian page a friend. Both as pages, and as soon to be fellow students of the same university.
Fontainebleau was less worried about the chibi, who seemed like she might be way more capable, or, at least, more able to hold her own, than Aberdonia and Green Chapel gave her credit for. She made a mental note to ask Aquitania who she trained with, as that person was probably worth getting advice from. Not that the chancla method wasn't viable, or that having a bow wasn't good, it was more that having a diverse toolkit was a good thing for a knight in her opinion, particularly one who was as green as she and her friend, Green Chapel, were.
There. She'd said it, even if only in the confines of her head. As far as Fontainebleau was concerned, she and Green Chapel were friends and battle buddies. They'd just have to figure out how to extend that into civilian life as well.
Linking arms with Green Chapel, she grinned. "Looks like the gang's all splitting up. Why don't we explore, too? We might learn a lot about the universe in a very short time by wandering around the museum. We can always double back to the gift shop later," she added, thinking of the trade goods the five of them had brought.
Green Chapel blinked, and nodded. That made a lot of sense. Out of the five of them, Aberdonia was easily the closest to having a fully restored Homeworld or Wonder, but there were still a lot of gaps in his knowledge that nobody had yet been able to adequately fill, which also meant that the rest of them were in the dark, too. Well. Not quite. Green Chapel did have her ancestor, Sylvain, to pump for questions. But Sylvain didn't always seem to be the most stable individual, and there seemed to be questions he might not be really interested in answering, as he did jump subjects a bit.
So maybe a jaunt around the museum might answer some questions Sylvain either couldn't, or wouldn't, answer, and maybe she might walk away with far more questions to try to get more specific answers on.
Also, maybe if they found an artifact from the Green Chapel in the gift shop, maybe Sylvain would be excited enough to be cooperative and be a bit more direct in his answers to questions. It was worth a shot. "Lead the way," she told the Venusian page.
Fontainbleau started to steer the Earth page deeper into the museum, as Aberdonia and his pretty alien kitty followed along, eyes trying to be everywhere at once. However long it had taken Almadel to assemble this museum must have been a very long time indeed...or Almadel was capable of traveling extremely far distances at the drop of a hat. It was honestly impressive. Life throughout the universe seemed to have some kind of representation here, both mundane and magical, as well as joyful and tragic. It was an interesting array of dichotomies, really. Sure, probably everything here had been taken without consent from worlds where the inhabitants could no longer tell him to kindly naff off and keep his sticky academic sugar-fanatic fingers to himself, but if he'd been trading a long time, maybe not everything here was the result of theft in the dual names of archaeology and paleontology. Questions could be saved for a later date, and compliments could be paid at that time, too.
They saw mighty fossils of ancient life, seemingly mostly marine or aquatic life, some of it heavily crystallized. Either that was the result of corruption, or the universe had some utterly fascinating and funky fresh ideas vis a vis biology. Maybe magic had a lot to do with it. Apparently Aberdonia had been spending a lot of time on his Homeworld, and it was starting to come back to life. Maybe she ought to try taking a papyrus scroll from his library, see if hanging around Fontainebleau, doing stuff as simple as cleaning up, or maybe even just sitting and doing her reading somewhere with a minimum of distractions would help. It was something to consider.
They also saw artifacts of ancient wars and great battles, of armies and heroes and villains and dreadful monsters. Monsters...Green Chapel said Aberdonia and Aquitania had fought some kind of monster from the depths of outer space, something that wasn't a youma, alongside countless friends and foes. Fontainebleau shivered a little. Were there other monsters out there like that? Monsters so big that factions ceased to matter?
That was probably one of the single biggest incentives to grow and to get better at fighting, so that she could do her bit when the chips were down.
But, now, they were heading into the gift shop, and whatever wonders Almadel had placed here in hopes of a good trade. The Venusian page peered around. It was awfully big, and awfully strange. But not cluttered. Full to bursting of the strangest things, but never, ever cluttered. She smiled as she looked around and drifted to Almadel's little table. "Beautiful museum you got here. You seem to like life in all its shapes and forms, and kinda hard not to respect that, even if I can't tell what's barter and what's a matter of...ahem...other methods of procurement," she admitted, trying not to offend Almadel. Given that not everything had probably been archaeological or paleontological theft, it wasn't entirely fair to tar everything with the same brush stroke.
The museum was strange and eclectic, and, while it was as thoughtfully laid out as any of the Smithsonian museums, it was just as clearly more eclectic than even the Smithsonian Folklife Festival could ever dream of being. Green Chapel was reminded of something she'd once heard, that archaeology's true meaning and value was "in small things forgotten." Looking around, much as she had her misgivings about how Almadel had gone about collecting everything, it seemed clear that Almadel did ascribe to that belief in the idea of "in small things forgotten." A child's shoe held the same value as a weapon, both held the same value as a fossil of some impossibly vast alien sea creature, and all three held the same value as inscrutable magical artifacts that perhaps no one alive understood anymore.
And, yet, it wasn't just life here. War and conflict and monsters were present in displays, making her wonder just what kind of knowledge had been lost to the ages.
Eventually, they came to the gift shop, and Green Chapel stepped away to start perusing the full--but not cluttered--shelves of the gift shop for any signs of anything associated with the Green Chapel, even as Fontainebleau struck up a friendly conversation with their enigmatic host.
Neit stayed on Aberdonia's shoulder a bit longer, until they started drifting through the museum in a predictable pattern, at which point, she hopped off and began to keep pace with the three humans. The Mauvian would be lying if she said she wasn't worried about the youngest human in their party, but, given Almadel's rules, and that the chibi wasn't hanging around with anyone more chaotic than a Jupiter knight, Aquitania might just be fine. She hoped, anyway.
Almadel seemed to have put a lot of thought into this museum, Neit had to admit to herself as she gazed upon the exhibits with a mixture of suspicion and wonder. She'd been reading about museums while waiting for this evening to come, and the Mauvian wondered if this was what many people in fields that touched on museum studies meant when they said they had a love-hate relationship with the British Museum in London. It would indeed take a special kind of person or institution to collect and curate such a wide-ranging assortment of exhibits that seemed to touch on life in all of its myriad forms across the universe. It was no small feat, and it would've taken true dedication, maybe love...or maybe a magpie's kleptomaniacal eye...to gather everything. The room with the reflecting pool seemed to imply a magpie's kleptomania, though the other rooms seemed to imply a true scholar's thoughtful arrangement based on topic. And the museum, whether Neit liked it or not, was clearly one-of-a-kind, a place where seemingly anyone who could cultivate a social connection with Almadel had the opportunity to come and study and learn and truly admire such an eclectic slice of the universe's natural and cultural history. Maybe also its magical history, but, then again, it was difficult to ascertain what was going on with that strange magical device in the room with the star charts.
The star charts...she'd seen star charts sort of like that in Thuraya's--Aberdonia's and Aquitania's mother's--room. But not quite like these. The stars and the constellations looked wrong. Though, so had those in Aberdonia's royal palace. Maybe these star charts had been assembled from other worlds, where the night sky might look very, very different from each other, as well as from Earth.
Aberdonia...her senshi seemed to watch the room with the fossils, as though looking for Aberdonian species, but it seemed like he hadn't seen any. It made Neit wonder just a little bit, did Almadel even have anything from Aberdonia? She hoped he did. Otherwise, he wasn't getting that fancy usekh she'd made, and she was saving it for a special occasion.
At long last, they came into the gift shop, and her eyes filled at the sight. Seemingly no category of thing was impossible to not find in Almadel's gift shop. And it was so full. Not cluttered, no, Almadel did seem to have the grace to not just cram everything onto the shelves willy-nilly, but it did merit hopping back onto her senshi's shoulder for a better look around.
(All four of my kids have hit WC for this one, feel free to take your time!)
The Space Cauldron
