In seeking out the deity that she had presumably angered into homicidal wrath, Kiah had expected certain events to occur. Sneaking, or threatening, apologising, and probably some running away. Sitting on a ploofy purple couch sipping hot tea over a chessboard patterned table, though, with Zeke and a strange woman across from her and Ilari slurping happily on her right, she had not seen coming. It was horribly confusing, and her tactical sense had yet to catch up beyond noticing that if things did turn hostile, she had no chance.
"So are you a... goddess?" Kiah tentatively asked the woman, Lady Misfortune, who sat on the other side of the checkerboard-table and nursed a steaming cup of tea.
"Some people have called me that. I prefer concept, or construct, or spirit, if you will."
"And you... er... represent...."
"Bad luck incarnate. You won't have heard of me. Though my sister you probably know." Misfortune scowled at the mention and took a harsh gulp from her cup. Kiah tactfully decided not to ask-
*Your sister?*
-but tact was not something Ilari had had much time to cultivate.
"Lady Luck. She's very popular." The acid disapproval was clearly audible in her voice, though her expression was making a haughty but nonetheless valiant attempt at 'not sinking to the level of being upset over it'. "People the universe over are constantly falling all over themselves, wearing all kinds of trinkets and begging her day and night just to get her to look their way. Feh. Slu- I mean, floozy," she quickly altered her comment, seeing Ilari watching her with wide and impressionable eyes. "May she live a long, prosperous life with countless faithful followers."
"M'lady!" Zeke yelped, looking at her with surprise as if she'd just said something horribly wicked.
"Calm down. It's not like anything I say can do anything to her. Have you seen what a fickle monster of an ice queen she is? I'm amazed she can move with her veins as frozen solid as they must be."
Frustration and uncertainty collided over Kiah's brain like a confused tide. "Excuse me, but look, I wandered around alone for days, dodging either an angry god or really bad luck or both, looking for you Zeke, and Rais, and then I find you here, without Rais or Shiva, and you tell me that I'm not welcome and then serve me tea-" Kiah interrupted herself with another gulp from her cup before she could say more and make things any worse.
Zeke stood and walked over to Kiah's seat to give the confused woman a hug, concern etching deep lines in his face. "I'm sorry, Kiah, you're right. You're still new here and we've been taking very poor care of you."
"Um. Thanks," she muffled awkwardly through Zeke's shoulder.
"Rais isn't here, actually. We lost track of him too. But don't worry," Zeke added, sitting back down and having another sip of tea. "We'll find him again. Sometimes party members need to split up and do their own subquests, it's the way of the world."
"And I apologise for wishing you discomfort, dear, because I'm inclined to dislike anyone this little thorn in my side Zeke likes, but my being bad luck incarnate makes such things necessary."
"...I'm sorry, I... I don't quite follow you, ma'am...."
"Her blessings are curses and her curses are blessings," Zeke cut to the chase.
Kiah blinked as her brain tried to parse that out. "So when you say that I'm not welcome and you hope I'm uncomfortable....
"She's really inviting you in and wishing you well. Ghack!" Zeke flailed and held his cup up in the air, as the black housecat from before had hopped up on the table and started walking around in front of everyone, miaowing demandingly.
"Excuse the little angel, please," Misfortune sighed as she shooed the cat off of the table. "She always did have a habit of pacing around in front of people, but ever since she started getting over the hill it's been ridiculous. I'm tripping over her at every turn."
The cogs in Kiah's mind turned more quickly as she caught on to the logic of the place. "Pacing in front of people- you mean crossing people's paths."
"You've got it."
"And the crow outside?"
"Oh that my Messanger. Flawless at delivering news, but only the bad kind, and completely immune to being hit by projectiles. I see you're catching on," she added with a sharkish grin.
*What about the tiger?* Ilari whispered, breaking his wide-eyed awed silence.
"Ah. That was Adversity."
*He was nice to us,* he chirped.
"...Was he." Misfortune gave the tiger a sidelong look- it now lounged on it's side on the floor of the dais next to the throne, but continued to eye the visitors skeptically. "Huh. Good boy." She waited until Ilari bent down to slurp loudly (for lack of hands) to lean in and cup a hand around Kiah's ear and whisper that "Actually, he wanted to eat you both. I keep telling him to stop that. You'd think he was raised in a jungle or something."
"...Um. Thank you for stopping him?"
"You're most unwelcome." Was that a wink?
"...Right. And what about Shiva?"
"She's taking a bubble bath upstairs."
"She's what!?"
"In fact...." Zeke suddenly looked like the parent of a toddler who has just realized that things have been too quiet and peaceful for too long and that chaos could be going on out of their sight. "Maybe I should go check on her. She's been up there too long."
"Ah ah ah." Lady Misfortune wagged her teaspoon at Zeke like an accusing finger. "If you leave the room your chess game is void."
"That's alright. I was winning anyway."
She grinned. "I know that, and you know that, but we also know that if you just give up on it you'll wonder if you could possibly have made it."
Kiah cut in. "Let me guess. It's impossible to win against you in games?"
"No, hun, it's almost impossible to loose against me. The almost being because it's a game of strategy, not luck."
Ilari's eyes grew giant and his mind voice somehow 'breathless'. *I want to learn a game of strategy.*
Zeke was now visibly hemming and hawing back and forth between his options. Kiah smirked at him and gave him a playful joking swat on the forehead. "Go play your game, I'll check on Shiva for you if you'll watch Ilari for me while I'm up. And I call, er, looser, I guess."
Zeke beamed. "You're an angel."
Misfortune was already leading the way back up to the chess table next to her throne, though rather slowly, with Ilari declining to be carried and wiggling his way over on his own. "Thank you Kiah. I'll have Adversity show you the way, shal I?"
Adversity perked, looking expectantly at Misfortune and licking it's chops once.
"No! No! For crying out loud how many more times do I have to tell you! If we have this argument once more I swear I'll bless you bald you old sack of-"
"Uuhhn." Kiah set her backpack on her chair and tried to sidle out of the room. "That's okay, I'm sure I can find her on my own-"
"Oh don't be silly, my dear pest. He won't give you any trouble. He'll take you straight up to Shiva's room and and come straight back, won't you, my little pumpkin." The tiger grumbled displeasedly at the implied threat, gave Kiah a sad look, and led the way out another seemingly random door.
"...If he eats me, is there any way you can wiggle your fingers and resurrect me or something?"
"You sound like Zeke asking that. No, I can't. But don't be silly, you'll be fine."
"...Right." Kiah hesitated a minute, surprised that Ilari was too absorbed already into the chess game to offer to come with her, shrugged, and followed the big cat. Heck with it. Maybe in a place as backwards as this the tiger was secretly a sissy that'd run away in terror if she flashed her knife at it.
Kiah had imagined possible only a certain degree of cleanliness or luxury in a broken down and haphazard place as the dimension she was in. As she and her disinterested feline guide neared another very large, round stone door after some climbing of stairs, Kiah could hear splashes and sloshes of water echoing out into the hallway. What kind of bath could something as large and thundering as Shiva possibly be taking, she wondered? How could they get a tub big enough for her, or even enough water? She imagined something akin to a giant rusty tin bowl full of cold lake water and shivered as she pushed open the door.
Inside, a bath the size of a swimming pool, steaming warm and covered over with so many pinkish soap bubbles that the water could hardly be seen. There was also no Shiva to be seen, and the sloshing had very suspiciously stopped the minute Kiah had opened the door. The Jaws music cued up in Kiah's brain, and she had never even seen or heard of the existence of the movie. Possibly the dimension just dumped the theme there in her brain as a quirk of humor.
"Uhh.... Shiva...?" No answer. Kiah sighed. Well, she resigned herself, I might as well get it over with. Like a doomed woman she went and sat next to the water and waited to be sneak-attack-booped-on-the-nose.
So it was that being squirted in the face caught her quite by sputtering surprise and she fell over backwards. The giggling that followed, however, was just as she'd expected. She sat herself back up and mopped at her face with a sleeve, muttering mentally as her water blurred eyesight showed a giant blue and gold (and pink from the bubbles) smudge swimming over to the side of the tub to greet her.
"Hey, what was that for, Shiva?"
*Trying to outguess me? Tisk tisk! Trickytricky.* Shiva smiled at the girl and then did gently 'boop' Kiah on the nose with a sarcastic grin, wetting her all over again as the bunnydragon's wet and bubbly ankle fetlocks mopped across her face. *Sorry Kiah. The soap burn your eyes?*
"No, no, I'm fine." Vision clear again, she stared bogglingly at the dragon. "You... you've grown so big! You're bigger than a horse!"
Shiva gave a happy murble somewhere between proud and humble, and then let herself sink back under the water, turning the murbling into bubbling.
"Hey, hey wait!" Kiah flailed, and when that failed, splashed at the water a little with one hand. "Hey, come back! I think it's time for you to come back down. Zeke is starting to worry about you."
Shiva's head popped back up in entirely a different place with a sly look. *You just don'twant to go back down alone with bigspooky kitties and birdies about.*
Kiah hrmped, not looking sheepish or busted at all, no, not at all. "I can get back down just fine. But Zeke is worried, and I think Ilari'd love to really see you. He hatched, you know. Remember the eggy?"
Shiva wordlessly climbed out of the bath at that, shaking each foot in the air one at a time as she did, spread her wings out, and then smirked back over a shoulder at Kiah as if she were about to set off a bomb. *Might want to get behind something.*
"Why-AH!" Kiah scrambled out of the room as the bunnydragon began to shake off and listened to the water hitting the walls like a rainstorm from the hall. She considered just leaving her in there and heading back on down to the common room, but the tiger had left, and she didn't trust herself to find the way on her own. Looked like she was stuck waiting.
Some minutes later Shiva emerged, shiny and dry, and quite happy looking. Too happy in fact to give Kiah a hard time, for the moment. *I'll lead?*
"Yes, please."
She only chirped in answer and led on, highstepping and stomping back down happily.
------------------
"Kiah! You're back just in time, check this out!", Zeke stage-whispered excitedly from his seat down on the floor, waving Kiah's attention up to the dais. Ilari now sat (with a pile of books as a booster) in what had been Zeke's chair, staring with intense focus at the chessboard. Lady Misfortune in her throne looked serious for the first time, actually sitting up straight and watching Ilari as if trying to read his mind.
Kiah flopped onto a couch next to Zeke, surprised at the tension, and copied his whispering. "What, Ilari learned how to play already?"
"He's got the basics down. He's won a few games already."
"Won in a good way or uh, a bad way?"
"As in a bad way. You try to loose against Misfortune, remember. Woah, hey, Shiva, sweetie. Have a nice bath?" His tone instantly rose from interested tension into happy welcome. Apparently deciding they'd paid enough attention to the others, Shiva had come right up and butted her head against Zeke's side, almost knocking him onto the floor, and only smiled to answer his question as he scratched her ears adoringly. He was obviously still sickeningly lovestruck.
Kiah rolled her eyes inwardly and swore to herself never to spoil Ilari so badly. First sign of an attitude like that and she'd flick him on the snout, she resolved.
But Ilari only seemed interested in this new game, now. He 'won' against Misfortune two more times, though each game took longer than the last, but then the Lady of the temple claimed a tired brain and bowed out, leaving Zeke to step back in and play the wyrm. The games dragged on and on, leaving the three girls blatantly bored. Kiah, lounging on a clean soft surface with the luxury of a pillow for the first time in forever, was both glad to finally be comfortable enough to be bored and worried about what that implied about her mental state.
"What's on your mind, girl?" Misfortune finally asked over their small meal of fruit, vegetables, bread, and tea. "You look like you're going to fidget yourself to death without actually fidgeting."
Kiah blushed and looked down into her cup, stirring it over and over and over to mindlessly watch the loose tea leaves swirl in the center. "I'm sorry, m'Lady. I don't mean to be ungrateful. This is the best place I've been since I got here, and I really appreciate your letting us rest and feeding us-"
"-And putting you up with room and board for as long as you'd like."
Kiah blinked and stopped stirring. "What?"
"As long as you'd like. Friends of Zeke's are enemies of mine, if you can follow my talking as such."
"Wh- thank you, that's very kind of you."
Misfortune just waved a hand in the air as if shooing the idea. "Don't mention it; I almost never get such bad company. Nobody likes bad luck, and my having to speak backwardsly drives people crazy. Now you are not answering my question. What's bothering you?"
"Well, ma'am, I'm supposed to be trying to discover a way to get back home."
"Ah, yes. Zeke has been here for a while, he told me about your mission and what you've been up to."
"Right. But I'm... I don't know what to do next. We were trying to find someone that can read Nicol's notes, but nobody can. And I came here to see what was hexing me into having such bad luck, expecting a fight and then a conclusion to it or something, but you're not the one after me- are you?"
"Heavens no. But what makes you so sure you are being hexed on?"
So Kiah recanted her stories of seemingly too-bad-to-be-natural luck, while Ilari and Zeke played on and Shiva napped on a blanket at her bondmate's side. Kiah went over the earthquake, the random raincloud, the snow, the dozens of things that saw fit to be teleported in right over her head. She even got carried away a bit and named her being teleported here at all and her poor archery despite all her practice, although those things had technically happened before she arrived. By the time she finished talking, they had also finished their food and tea.
"Oh, look. The leaves are still at the bottom of the cup-"
"Nah!" Misfortune, who had been quietly attentive the whole time, snatched the cup out of Kiah's hand. "You don't want to look at those, not around me, really trust me that you don't."
"Now. That all sounds very convincing. I must definitely do a reading on your fortunes. Adversity!" She clapped her hands, and out came the black tiger again, this time dragging a small wheeled cart by a string in it's mouth and looking most undignified as Misfortune loaded their used dishes onto it. "Punishment duty for his earlier behavior, you see," the woman smirked at Kiah as the cat rolled it's eyes and left, dishes and cart and all.
"...It has to do the dishes?"
"Yes."
"Can it do dishes? It has no hands."
"Oh, you'd be very surprised. None of my cats are quite what they seem. Now. Up you go." Suddenly determined, the woman hopped right up, grabbed Kiah by the wrist, and started tugging her along towards another door.
"What? Where are we going?" She tried not to sound too flustered, but she was, so that didn't go over horribly well.
"I'm going to have a look at your fortune, child, like I said I should."
"Can you do that?"
"Oh please. Don't insult me." Misfortune winked to let Kiah know that no actual insult was taken. "I can keep those insane cats of mine under control, I have never been so taken in as to win a game of chess, and I can keep this place hexed enough that nothing Falls in or on it. I can see your fortunes clearly as a neon sign. You just have to come in to the other room where I keep all the things that make this much more accurate."
"But- but-" she tried her best to think of a coherent excuse out of this, came up with none, and was gently dragged the rest of the way to the new room.