The City of Light, Wednesday Mid-day
"It's a secret."
"Oh, please, just come on and tell me? You wouldn't before. I'm sure if I guess at it enough, I'll come up with the answer eventually, but it's been ages now, really. I think it's about time you give me an answer, don't you?"
"Nonono, I mean, the answer is a secret. It's been a secret this entire time. And it is going to remain a secret until the end of the world all over again." Valentine was steadily developing a headache.
"And that's why I need to know the answer," the gryphon argued, jumping to his feet and leaning forward anxiously. "If I were to know what the big secret is, then I'd have a riddle that can't be answered with the name of a performing dog."
It sniffed indignantly.
Valentine smacked himself in the forehead in frustration.
The portal flickered into place as though it never had any intention of doing otherwise. The City of Light? Next stop, don't forget your bags.
Naminé stepped through first, tentatively, in case something were to go wrong. She found herself in the same curiously brown world as before. Nearby, a large human-headed cat with strange wings was arguing with ...
"Valentine," she said, closing the distance to wrap her arms around him and squeeze.
Helena could fend for herself, for a few moments.
Helena could indeed fend for herself. In fact, looking around, she was certain that she already knew where they had appeared, and if that was the case...
She didn't bother to interrupt the pair who were being all soppy and huggy to tell them where she was headed. Valentine probably knew by now that she had a pair of Giants Orbiting to check up on.
... Why had she drawn so many stairs, there?
"Naminé," Valentine said, relieved to feel her arms closing around him, wrapping his arms back in turn. This was an odd sort of backdrop with strange sort of company to be holding her to, but Valentine, as far as very important men went, was rather adaptable.
"Naminé?" The gryphon looked confused, now, between Valentine and the blonde girl who was holding him. "If you have it you want to share it, if you share it you haven't got it-- Naminé?"
Valentine sighed. "No, stupid. It's still a secret."
"Are these sphinxes, then?" Naminé asked, stepping out of his arms in order to take a look at the ... unpleasant sort of creature who was dimly arguing with Valentine. No wonder he hadn't taken to cats. "You can't eat him, I shan't allow it."
"Well, then I shall just have to eat you, won't I? Unless you can answer my riddle." The gryphon didn't wait for a reply before taking a breath and spouting it all out. "A gentleman went out for a walk in the rain without a hat or an umbrella. When the walk was over, his clothes were soaked, but not a hair on his head was wet." He leaned forward, putting his face terribly close to Naminé's and grinning smugly. "How?"
Valentine, if he had eyes to roll, would have been doing so.
"That hardly seems fair," Naminé said. "Who created these rules? What if I elect not to play? What if I tell you I've no care for riddles, but I'm willing to play a hand of pinochle to determine my fate? And what consequences follow if you lose? This seems very little reward for such a very high risk."
She had a sneaking suspicion that the answer involved the man being bald.
She also had a sneaking suspicion that the gryphon was not very bright.
The gryphon really, really wasn't.
"I, um. You know, I'd never given it any thought. I haven't exactly had any difficultly eating anyone who couldn't answer a riddle in the past."
Valentine doubted that statement very much.
From somewhere behind them, just past the gate that led to the Giants Orbiting, a loud, deep, slow rumble could be heard.
"Weeeeeeeeee." Very, very slow. "Aaaaaaare...."
"Any difficulty physically, ethically, or emotionally?" Naminé asked. It was an important question. "You've come upon me unannounced and presented me with a scenario where I must guess your mental workings correctly or surrender my life. And what do I receive if I win? Nothing, as far as I can tell. This seems all too slanted to your side. If I do guess correctly, I don't even get to slap you for the affront of it all. Decidedly unfair."
"Slap me?" The gryphon looked terribly affronted, now, shifting his weight onto his back haunches as he recoiled at the thought. "But I haven't even tried to eat you yet. It's a fairly simple riddle? I shouldn't want to be slapped. Did you need a clue?"
The rumbling continued on.
"Noooooooooooooot...."
"I don't think I should like to guess your riddle at all," Naminé said. "I should rather play pinochle for it. Or a simple hand of gin rummy. Or how about this: if I win, I get to hurl a shoe at you and call you a very nasty creature indeed. Under those conditions, I might be tempted to answer. At the moment, you can't entice me to play at all."
It was very hard to keep a straight face, which was why she was very carefully not looking over at Valentine.
The gryphon looked at the bony stumps at the ends of his legs, looking rather at a loss, indeed.
"I wouldn't be able to shuffle the deck," he informed the strange girl. "And I'm not familiar with gin rummy at all. Do you know 'Go Fish?'"
Valentine shook his head and turned his attention to the rumbling voices nearby.
"Suppoooooooooooooooooooooooooseeeeeed..."
"To be," Valentine spat out, crossing his arms impatiently. "We are not supposed to be. It isn't difficult. Just spit it out."
"Tooooooooooooooooooooooo..."
"Be. Be. Be." Impatient? Valentine? "It's simple. Be."
"Do they always talk this slowly?" she murmured to Valentine. She hated to be rude, but they seemed to be taking their very sweet time.
Naminé cleared her throat and looked at the gryphon again. "No, I'm sorry, I'm afraid it's no deal, then. There shall be no riddles today. We'll call it a draw."
"Nono," Valentine assured her, "normally they're far, far worse."
"A draw," the gryphon considered. "Yes, yes, I suppose that a draw will have to do. But next time, I get to choose the card game."
"Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."
"Stupid giants," Valentine mumbled.
Naminé pretended to consider this, and then nodded. "Yes, all right then, next time you may choose the card game. Do make sure you have a deck with you. I should hate for us to agree on the game and have to call it off on account of not having cards."
She slipped her arm through Valentine's and began walking in the direction of the giants. "Scintillating conversationalists all around," she said in a low voice.
"And you haven't even met the crazy old bag who runs the Mask Shop near here," Valentine informed her with a grin.
By the time Valentine and Naminé had reached the top of the giant pointless staircase that led to nearly eye-level with the pair of floating giants, the large stone being that was speaking to Helena (it was presumably the female one, though by the deep, rumbling voice, it was difficult to be sure) was just warming up to finish the very same sentence that it had been working on earlier.
Helena was attempting to be patient.
"Here? Here, yes I know, you're not supposed to be here, he was swallowed by shadow and she drifted away, and I know all of that."
"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."
Helena sighed.
"I re-drew you. The two of you. What happened to you shouldn't have happened at all, and I've been fixing everything, and thank you both for the key and for telling us what the charm was, or we might never have made it as far as we did."
The giants were quiet for a very, very long time.
"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," the presumably-male-one began.
Helena seemed perhaps a little amused as Valentine smacked his face with his hand.
"Shame they never learned telepathy," Naminé frowned. "Has someone told them to skip adjectives? And avoid stating the obvious. We knew they weren't supposed to be here. It would save some time."
There was something ... tragic about the giants. It made her a bit sad, watching them spin, and she couldn't place why.
"It's little use telling them not to bother with adjectives," Valentine noted, crossing his arms and looking rather unimpressed that now they were stuck in a conversation with these things. "I've tried. We can be thankful that nothing is trying to eat us, this time."
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaareeee..."
"And is that Helena? Naminé, did you bring Helena here?" Oh, wonderful. They could spend the entire day standing here waiting for the giants to finish the next three words. Helena never did grasp the concept of not holding conversations with large heads willed with rocks.
Helena wasn't looking, which made this a perfect opportunity to stand up on tiptoes and give Valentine a very quick kiss. Quick, but heartfelt.
"It's nice to see you, too," she said, eyes dancing.
As quickly as it had taken for Naminé to kiss him, a large smile had cut across Valentine's lips. Oh yes, he was paying attention to Naminé almost exclusively, now.
"Yes, yes, very good to see you here," he agreed.
"I brought her," Naminé explained, "so she could see her city again. And so I could tell her to stop dragging you back to it, by accident. You shouldn't be bouncing around any more."
Yes, she was proud of how clever she was, figuring that out. Wasn't he?
He was. Very. He'd have to kiss her again while Helena wasn't looking.
"Thank you," he replied. "I don't know how many more monkeybirds I could have possibly tolerated."
The giants, of course, weren't finished yet.
"Verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyy..."
Ugh. Adjectives.
"I have yet to see any monkeybirds," she said, chewing her lip. "Was that a sphinx, or the other one? Helena's been redrawing your city, she just thought you might want to live here again. She seemed a bit surprised to hear about you going to school, and all of that."
Which suddenly struck Naminé as somewhat less than pleasant. He hadn't mentioned Fandom to her, at all?
"It was a gryphon, actually. The larger, more idiotic cousin to the sphinx. Far easier to not get eaten by a gryphon. Just confuse it to death. You caught on quickly." He smiled proudly, though his smile lapsed faintly when he noticed that she was worrying her lip like that. "Is everything alright, Naminé?"
...
"Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaankfullllllllllllllllllllll..."
"It's nothing," she said, in that way that implied it very much was something. "I hadn't realize she knew nothing of your life, that's all. Your school, or that you even had one, things like that."
She looked over at the giants, restless. "I hope they aren't about to give a speech."
Valentine's smile melted away into something of a frown, now.
"There weren't many chances to have pleasant conversation about myself, what with her flitting away at every opportunity she could find to get us both killed in creative ways," he stated.
And he hadn't much felt like talking about much of anything personal, after Bing had been swallowed alive by tentacles because of her. Ranting seemed so much more fitting.
"Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut..."
Valentine turned his face toward the giants to glare at them.
"No 'buts,' if you please. We're trying to have a conversation over here."
"Youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...."
"It's all right," she said, shaking her head. "Just ... came over a bit strange. It's sort of ... it feels like the colors, here, they all leaked out. It's a bit upsetting, in some strange way. I think I'm not quite myself."
Naminé wandered over to Helena, hoping it wasn't rude to start a side conversation while the giants lumbered on. "Are they all right?"
"I think they are," Helena replied, looking away from the giants to shrug at Naminé. "They used to be in charge of protecting the box that held the key that locked up the mirrormask. They've always been like this, as far as I know. One keeps the other from flying away into oblivion by weighing her down, and she keeps him from disappearing into the ground by holding him up."
She tilted her head, considering.
"They would both stop existing if ever one left the other. I've seen it happen before. I think... I think they remember it, too."
"Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaven't," the giant droned on.
"That's horrible," she said softly. "Does everything here ... remember, what went on before? I suppose it'd be cruel for them to forget, but ... to remember that. I hope they weren't ..."
Trapped, in a formless void, as Valentine had been, but she couldn't bring herself to say that.
"Is this ... mirrormask safe?"
"I don't know," Helena said simply, answering all of those questions at once, then looking back up at the giants. "I didn't know any of this was real until after I found myself here. I thought it was all a dream. I think the White Queen has the mirrormask again... But I'm not sure. Leaving again and going back to real life-- to my life-- it was all so very sudden."
"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet..."
"But you haven't yet," Helena murmured, trying to keep up."
"You could ask her," Naminé suggested. "Make sure it's guarded well, if it's so powerful."
After a moment, she added, "I know what that's like. To draw something and have it be all too real. Terrifying."
She found herself holding her breath, wondering what the giants were leading to.
"Oh, please don't ask them any more questions," Valentine groaned from where he was now occupying himself by trying to balance two of his juggling balls on the back of one hand at the same time. "I would like to leave here sometime this week."
"Finnnnnnnnnnnished..."
"Yes, yes, and neither have you," he grumped.
"The White Queen doesn't speak as slowly as the giants, does she?" Naminé said with a playful smile.
... At least, she could hope she didn't.
"Have patience for once," she murmured, reaching over to squeeze his hand and hoping Helena wasn't looking. "This may be important."
"It may, or it may be more of the same pointless ramblings of two large, somewhat eroded minds," he complained.
"Reeeeeeeeeeeebuildinnnnnnnng..."
"Oh, just spit it out, would you??"
"You yelling isn't helping," she said firmly. "What if they're angry, and going slower on purpose?"
"They're going slower because they are GIANT BLOODY ROCKS!"
"Quiet, Valentine," Helena admonished, narrowing her eyes as though looking more closely at the giants was going to speed them up at all. "What haven't I finished rebuilding?"
"....Everrrrrrrryyyyything."
Naminé waited for a moment, and then lowered her voice.
"I hate to sound disrespectful, but I was expecting something a little less ... self-evident, than that."
Valentine tried very hard not to look smug. He really, really did.
He failed.
"I told you so. Can we leave now?"
Naminé raised an eyebrow to Helena. "Do you think they have anything important to impart?" she asked, carefully. "That they might be getting to in the next hour."
She didn't want to rush Helena, she only had this one chance to come here, but the giants' conversational abilities were a bit ... trying.
Even Helena was trying her best not to smack her forehead against the railing, now.
"No, no, I think that's about it," she decided, then looked back up at the giants. "Thank you for your... Um. Time! I'll see to it that things get finished up again. Take care of yourselves, and try not to... Um. Crumble. In the future."
She then turned and started back down the stairs before they could start on any long and lingering farewells.
(OOC: NFI, NFB for distance. Preplayed with the fabuloso importantman. OOC is love.)