...she goes to talk to an Ascended

The light above her was much brighter than Teysa had expected. She normally slept for only a few hours a night, and awoke before the fungus reached peak luminescence. The rest of the time she spent lying in quiet contemplation.

Now, though, the light was bright and full, and Aliara was nowhere to be seen. Teysa scrambled to her feet and looked around the cave. Empty. Where had--

"Morning, sleepy!" Aliara sauntered in through the cave mouth. She was already dressed in in a cotton tunic and sturdy leather trousers. She wore her traveling boots, too, and she had put her hair up in a bun. "Rise and shine! You slept late today. Any good dreams?"

"I--" Teysa hesitated. There had been something, hadn't there? She had a fleeting memory of a stern, sad face, but it escaped her. She shrugged. "I don't think so. Why are you all dressed up?"

"You'll see," Aliara said cryptically. "I have some... work I have to take care of this morning. Want to meet for lunch in, say, four or five hours?"

Judging time was difficult underground, and the driders seemed to have no use for anything as artificial as an "hour." They marked time by their tasks, and operated in a strange synchronized rhythm that seemed to require no communication. Teysa and Aliara had noticed, however, that a certain breed of cave-snail that dwelled in the warren moved constantly, leaving a slime trail behind it; they had arbitrarily decided that an arm's length of trail indicated one hour. It was a crude way of marking time, but it seemed to work for them.

"Back here, then?" Teysa asked.

Aliara nodded. "What are you going to do today?" she asked. Teysa considered this. She recalled their conversation from yesterday.

"I think I'll try to talk to one of the other ascended, like you said. Perhaps they'll have some idea of... of how to adjust."

Aliara's smile remained where it was, but her eyes went glassy. "That's a good idea, Tey," she said, a little vaguely. She seemed to sag for a moment, then brightened up. "Well... see you for lunch! Don't be late!" With that, she turned on her heel and practically skipped out of the room.

Teysa dressed herself in a strophium and silk shirt. In truth, she was uncertain about clothes; she had grown used to wearing armor nearly all the time, but there was no blacksmith to alter her plate, and she had grown too large for most of it. Clothes were another marker of humanity, though, like sleep. She felt strange whenever she saw another drider walking around nude, breasts swaying. They were people, she could hold conversations with them; why wouldn't they dress themselves? Didn't they know they were naked? She wanted to grab and shake them, to shout, but she knew that they wouldn't understand. And was that to be her fate, too? To slip away, day by day, bit by bit, until she forgot what clothes were for? Until she was little more than a vaguely human beast? It was all too easy to imagine.

In truth, a shirt was about the extent of her clothing options. Even if she had something below the waist to cover, pants were out of the question. Occasionally El'keth wore a shallow skirt which covered her legs to the second joint, but those looked frankly ridiculous to Teysa. She stuck to a shirt and was happy for it. It felt like such a thin and fragile thing to be her lifeline, but she clung to it with the desperation of the drowning. She didn't have many lifelines left.

The question remained-- who to talk to? She knew for a fact that two of the other driders were former humanoids: Jez'ria and the former elf Luneth, a taciturn huntress who spent much of her time out of the warren. There may have been others, but it seemed a bizarrely inappropriate question to ask. "What were you before you were a drider?" The Matron would know, of course, but the mere thought of approaching her made Teysa's blood run cold.