[ This place, the continent — it's so much more beautiful than he'd ever imagined. Parts of it are lush and green, filled with trees reaching high toward the cracked sky, and then there's Falling Waters: impossible, magical.
Also an incredible headache to try and navigate.
He and Lune had gotten lost more times than he'd ever care to admit those first days in Spring Meadows, finding themselves going down the same winding valleys over and over again, finding the same remnants of Nevrons and expeditions past, so turned around he'd been starting to despair of ever finding their way out. Stubbornly sticking to north hadn't helped: a wall of stone with no handholds would rise up abruptly before them, or a ravine with no way across, and they'd have to start moving east or west instead, and then inevitably south once more. Late nights at the campfire grew tense with frustration.
The man changes everything.
He moves through this place like a native, sure in every step, the sharp and humming brain beneath the white hair that Gustave hasn't seen in so long an instrument of incredible power. Even with his cane, he manages the path as well as or better than either him or Lune, and he offers a wealth of knowledge neither of them would ever have found in a lifetime's worth of research. For the first time since the beach, Gustave begins to feel that maybe, maybe, a little bit of fortune is finally smiling on them.
(He wasn't the one who left the message, he claims; he wasn't the one who brought Maelle to safety. But he can help them find her.)
He sits now, near the fire, the warm light and soft shadows sinking into the lines of his face as Gustave watches him from under his brows, his head still bent as he carefully scribes the happenings of the day into his journal. We have met someone, he writes to his apprentices. A man who lived through the Gommage. His name is Renoir... ]
We know so little about Expedition Zero, [ he says, finally, voice quiet so as to keep from disturbing Lune. He glances at her, a quiet figure on her side, and looks back to the older man as he closes his journal. ]
Lune worked out where you landed, but so much information from that time was lost long ago.
RENOIR —𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒊𝒓
Also an incredible headache to try and navigate.
He and Lune had gotten lost more times than he'd ever care to admit those first days in Spring Meadows, finding themselves going down the same winding valleys over and over again, finding the same remnants of Nevrons and expeditions past, so turned around he'd been starting to despair of ever finding their way out. Stubbornly sticking to north hadn't helped: a wall of stone with no handholds would rise up abruptly before them, or a ravine with no way across, and they'd have to start moving east or west instead, and then inevitably south once more. Late nights at the campfire grew tense with frustration.
The man changes everything.
He moves through this place like a native, sure in every step, the sharp and humming brain beneath the white hair that Gustave hasn't seen in so long an instrument of incredible power. Even with his cane, he manages the path as well as or better than either him or Lune, and he offers a wealth of knowledge neither of them would ever have found in a lifetime's worth of research. For the first time since the beach, Gustave begins to feel that maybe, maybe, a little bit of fortune is finally smiling on them.
(He wasn't the one who left the message, he claims; he wasn't the one who brought Maelle to safety. But he can help them find her.)
He sits now, near the fire, the warm light and soft shadows sinking into the lines of his face as Gustave watches him from under his brows, his head still bent as he carefully scribes the happenings of the day into his journal. We have met someone, he writes to his apprentices. A man who lived through the Gommage. His name is Renoir... ]
We know so little about Expedition Zero, [ he says, finally, voice quiet so as to keep from disturbing Lune. He glances at her, a quiet figure on her side, and looks back to the older man as he closes his journal. ]
Lune worked out where you landed, but so much information from that time was lost long ago.