"Hidden Away"- Jen, Kira, ???
They feel their way into the caves with no small amount of trepidation- despite the joy of discovering they are not truly the last, it still feels as though the survival of the gelfling rests on them, and it would be all too easy to descend too deep into the winding tunnels and never resurface. Kira’s fingers dig into his arm as she clings- odd, Jen thinks to himself. She’s usually the more courageous of the two of them, and it’s dark, but not that dark.
It crosses his mind that perhaps he can simply see better, but there is little time to wonder why that might be.
It strikes Jen that perhaps these caves were once beautiful, before the life had been drained away from them. They are still vast, the stone draped in organic, somehow graceful shapes, echoing the dripping sound of water dripping into underground pools. The walls are scattered with tiny patches of glowing moss, tentatively growing again since the restoration of the crystal, and he thinks that someday, with time and care, they could be beautiful again.
But still, they find no one.
Until the final day, when their food is running low and their spirits lower. Kira sings to pass the time, her strong voice echoing through the hollow chambers- until suddenly Jen shushes her, listening.
“Is that…”
Footsteps.
The gelfling that emerge look like no gelfling Jen has seen before- skin the grey-green of stone and moss, eyes as deep and black as the pools around them. They clearly belong to this place. Kira lets out a gasp beside him.
The eldest of them steps forward, lines etched deep into his face, one eye clouded. He blinks.
“....Rian?”
Any greeting he had planned freezes on Jen’s lips. His father. He knows the name, passed down by other gelfling they have found in their search, but little else. Before he can answer, the Grottan shakes his head, muttering to himself.
“No, no, quite impossible. Been fifty trine since he ran off with my sister, and the Stonewood were wiped out…” He looks up at Jen again, the wariness of many trine spent in hiding mixing with the confusion of age. “Who are you? What has happened on the surface?”
Sister. Something clicks for Jen then, and he suddenly understands why he can see down here, why he has felt an odd sense of comfort underground even as Kira has remained anxious and agitated. And something else, a feeling like the one that had overcome him the first time he’d seen Kira, something he had never quite found amongst the mystics no matter how much he had loved them. Family.
“I’m Jen.” There is much to tell about the surface and about himself- how they healed the crystal, how he spent his entire life feeling so utterly alone, only to find that he wasn’t the only one after all. It can all wait. “I...I think I might be your nephew.”