Kisses was awake, but she let the girl think she was still sleeping, for her own sanity. Then again, when she came back to sit with her, Synthesis could see the wolf was smiling.
"You know… Decency is of little concern after you just spent the last five or so hours firmly pressed against another without clothing, yes?" She asked, opening one eye to look at the girl.
Synthesis blushed and nodded. It was true. However, she couldn't help feeling awkward. Now that she was (mostly) dressed, though, she felt much more happy about wrapping herself around Kisses like a little monkey and closing her eyes again. She could sense that any minute now she would be told to get up because they had to work again, but she was just so comfy.
"I hope you aren't going to be going back to sleep little one. I take it your pants are not yet dried, which is why you are not wearing any?" She asked, sitting up to look at the girl. She seemed well awake and alert, though the gold and jewels were gone.
Synthesis shook her head and mumbled. She denied avidly that she had been going back to sleep. She had only been resting her eyes! But now Kisses was up and she was having to answer questions. The spell of tranquility was shattered and the young girl found herself much more ready to get up and get to work.
"Yeah, my trousers are still damp," She sighed forlornly, "I'll just have to wait a bit longer. But that isn't really the pressing issue here. What we need to know now is what we are doing next. Are we going to look around for other areas to purify." As she spoke, she began packing some of their things away, though she didn't touch some of the elder druid's herbs and equiptment. Heaven forbid she ruined any of it or got it muddled up.
Looking around, she spotted a couple more humanoids were entering the Foyer from one of the many maze passage ways. They looked a little dangerous with intense holtility in their eyes making her look away almost immediatly upon eye contact. It didn't take a genius to recognise that they weren't good news. However, they moved quickly off in another direction and Synthesis almost forgot about them as she listened to her mentor's reply.
"I am unsure. Strangely, I can already feel this place growing less and less corrupt. There must be others in the vault doing similar processes. Or perhaps there s a group slowly picking away at the Dragon the resides deep inside these caves. I can hear him growling every so often. We may have purified a very large portion. No, right now I would like to simply talk with you. You seem to take much pride in your clothes. I could hear you mumbling when you were going trasure hunting about getting nice clothes and jewelery. Care to explain?" She asked, looking more the teacher now than anything else.
"Oh," Synthesis said simply and frowned, "I wasn't completely myself back there. Usualy clothes and jewels don't excite me too much. I prefer to be comfortable than anything else. I guess I often want to look nicer in the hopes that - I don't know - people will notice. I was supposed to be so much prettier than I am but the mix of my two parent's biology ruined the charm I was supposed to have inherited from my mother." Synthesis lowered her voice a little for her next statement, "She was a Lilim." Then back to normal, "And I guess all that manifested itself in a desire for pretty clothes. I promise I'm ashamed of my vanity… But mostly I can be pretty greedy with money because it us so difficult to make money in the cities and I seldom have enough to get a room in an Inn or even a hot meal. It's frustrating because I work so hard!"
Kisses listened, her face calm and understanding. "You have your cloak, correct? It is warm?" She asked, looking around for the lage garment.
Synthesis looked around. Her cloak was on the floor by her bag. Thankfully she hadn't been wearing it when she had fallen in the water, else it would still be sopping wet for sure because of the heavy nature of the material. She picked it up and pulled it around herself despite not really needing to. She loved her coak. It was good for so many things. "Yes, it is warm. Why?" She asked.
"Good," She said, pulling what looked to be a needle and thread out of her pouch, walking over to her pants. "You are my student yes? You trust me to give you effective, fulfilling lessons that may not make sense too you right now, right?" She asked, looking over her shoulder.
"Your words aren't exactly enspiring my confidence," Synthesis joked with mild concern, "But sure. I trust you so go for it. Whatever this thing is that you plan to do."
"Again, good. Then your first major lesson, will be in appreciating yourself as you are," She said, picking up her pants and tearing them in half at the groin. It was quick, not drawn out in the slightest, and the wolf immediately went to removing the legs from the main body. Then she tore the legs in half lengthwise, making two long, wide strips of cloth out of each leg.
The younger druid screeched at the sight of her clothes suddenly in tatters but refrained herself from lunging to snatch them back. There would be no point to that now. The damage was already done. What's more, she supposed she at least had to try to understand Kisses lesson, even if she didn't like it one bit.
The wolfess started to sew two of the lengths together, the stitching tight and quick. Well practicied, and soon she was done with that, moving onto the other pair, making something of a belt out of it.
"Now, strip down to only your chest wrap. Drop your clothes to the floor, and then you will put this on. Do you understand?" She asked, offering the cloth.
Synthesis didn't understand at all. She couldn't fathom how this was at all productive or helpful. Was this a punishment for being tempted earlier? Was not being dunked into the river enough nor forced to strip and forfeit her modesty? Suddenly Synthesis had the slightly disturbing thought that that might actually be the goal here. This was the second time Kisses Wounds had seemed awfully keen for her to berid of her clothes. Still, she sighed and tried to do as she was told without saying anything. She didn't want to make a fuss. She would just have to buy more trousers when she got back to civilisation.
"Happy now?" She said with the slightest tinge of sarcasm and defience, "Would you care to explain why this was neccessary?" She gestured to her new garment.
"Because you do not realize the value of you. You hide yourself with clothing, and your modesty is nothing more than a more socially accepted way of saying shame. I only wear this because being approached by a nude woman is often something that puts people off. So I wear this, but I would rather wear nothing at all, as I am not ashamed of my form," She explained simply, helping the girl put it on so she understood how to wear it.
Synthesis accepted the help as gracefully as she could under the circumstances, holding onto Kisses shoulder for balance. Soon she was wearing the thing and thinking what a good fit it was. The antropomorph had sewn this up really quickly with strong neat stitches and apparently made it in the correct size just by eye with some lucky guesswork thown in. Synthesis still felt a little like sulking but she had to give credit where it was due; Kisses had a real talent there. The girl also knew the words of the elder druid made sense. Societies standards of decency were entirely man-made and held little useful purpose other than to restrict people. But Synthesis had always rather enjoyed keeping within the bounds of the particular limitation and morned its loss.
Kisses finished tying her belt together, taking a step back. "There. Now you won't need to worry about clothing. That is all you need. Anything more, is only worth being used when it is too cold to safely move about without something heavier, which is why you have that cloak. I don't want to see you wearing more then that. Am I understood?" She asked, her tone taking that of a teacher.
Synthesis nodded because she understood the order and because she was beginning to understand the reasoning behind it. She agreed that her clothes were kind of unnessesary. They were a show of vanity, even if i was just being proud of her modesty. However, that didn't mean she intended to obey this rule. She wanted her clothes and despite knowing it was wrong, she found herself just itching to disregard this particular teaching. She liked wearing her normal clothes and being very plain sometimes. It meant she could blend into the background. She knew this was the opposite to the tendancy towards extravagant and eye catching things earlier but, again, that was the fault of magic, not her. She felt that she had learned her lesson by now and, going even further, she didn't think this was ever really a lesson that she needed to learn, seeing as normally her vanity never normally manifested itself like it had today.
So she decided it wouldn't hurt to go along with this for now. Then she would get herself some new clothes some time in the furture. She certainly wasn't going to be limited to this for the rest of her life. So much for her being a good student. She still held the highest intentions and motives towards becoming a druid. But her demonic side had decided that now was a good time to manifest itself and that this was the prefect 'unnessesary' rule to break.
Kisses watching the confirmation of the girl, but her face didn't scream that she was too convinced or anything. "Alright… Though, if I find out you are breaking my rules… There will be consiquences. Like all actions, yours will have them. I just need to decide what they will be…" She warned, sitting back down.
"Right, so now we need to figure out where next we are going. Every moment this place seems less and less problematic, so I no longer need to worry about the idea of this place never being cured. We can explore, maybe grab some of the treasure for the expressed purpose of giving to a village in need," She said, being very sure to press the point she made. "Or we can go home…"
"I think we should make the most of this place while we are here. We probably won't ever be coming back. And there probably won't ever be this much silver up for easy picking before us… that we can use for other people, of course." The girl hoped she didn't seem too money obsessed. After all, she did want to help people. The only trouble was perhaps she liked helping herself a little too much as well. But she had that under control now and she thought she had gotten away with that little slip up of speech.
She made sure she was ready with her new clothing and cloak on nd her bag retied to her hip, before she turned to Kisses and gestured for her to lead them onto their next area or task.
"Then grab what you can, but do not let yourself become clouded. For to the greedy, all of nature will never be enough," She said, picking up a gem and looking it over. "Just remind yourself of who you will be helping with the gems and coin you pick up. The poor children you may feed with your generosity. The family you may help keep their homes. These little things go a long way Synthesis," She said, starting to walk, placing the gem into her pouch. She never went out of her way, but if something was within arms reach she would gently pick it up.
Synthesis began to follow, doing the same as her mentor with careful effort not to judge whether what she was picking up was pretty or tarnished. It wasn't about what she would like. Everything in here was most likely valuable so everything in here was good enough for selling. They would buy food, clothes and aid and all sorts for the less fortunate, the girl thought, and this seemed to curb any aravice she might have felt.
Soon they were walking through the maze, getting lost just as before and avoiding traps through their joint vigilance. They encountered more Salamanders this time too but together they just walked quickly past and continued on. Soon they were at the exit and the doors opened for them, revealing the fresh snow outside. Synthesis felt relieved almost immediatly. The place felt better than it did than before they had arrived but leaving it's felt as thouh a tonne of emotional baggage was suddenly being lifted. Everything felt lighter and so much easier to deal with. She grinned inanely and looked up at Kisses to see if she felt the same.
Now all that was left to do was go home to the forest, something she would definitly look forward too. The thought of all the green plants and sweet earth was like a balm on her sore mind. There is no place like home for sure.
