Pantheon

Temple

Auricant's Thesselaine is perched on the edge.

The little tunnel they're squatting in (for ventilation or something?) opens up directly onto the massive lattice of girders and pipes and poles that weaves together under the market's domed ceiling. They were expecting a platform of some sort, but no, of course not, goddess, why would any logic ever factor into the design of the temple where they live, the temple of Auricant the chaos goddess, the Into the Unknown? Goddess forbid anything ever make sense. So now, naturally, there's nothing except a wide curved pipe and their own bare feet to hold them above oh no oh goddess Thesselaine don't look down there oh goddess –

Auricant's Thesselaine is regretting their life choices.

At least they have their pole, thick and mostly vertical and close enough to the tunnel that they can wrap their arms around it and cling like a baby. The hook devices are in one of their hands, which they didn't plan for, and their hair is being blown around their face in long black snakes, which they also didn't plan for, but dropping the hooks and just letting their hair blow would be preferable to letting go, or moving, ever again.

The Rriu boy sitting on the pipe they're supposed to walk across, where the string of festival flags is tied, not even the length of a person away, smiles at them patiently. He's sturdily built, with the deep brown skin and sunny white-yellow hair distinctive to his home Realm, and also just a little bit of an asshole sometimes.

Thess glares at him. "Iolie? Tell me this is a bad idea. Tell me that I had a bad idea right now, so I can back out and we can go home and never come back here ever again."

Iolie laughs his high, clear laugh, and Thess wants to smack him, except they wouldn't, and they can't move anyway. "Listen," he says, a comfortable edge of teasing in his voice. "It's not like I actually think this is a good idea. You very rarely have actual good ideas. That's the fun of doing all of them, though, right? And you made me promise not to let you freak out and change your mind once we were up here, so, no! This is easily the best idea I've ever heard! Really one for the myths. Come on, throw me the hooks."

Thess makes a strangled, embarrassing squeak of rage. With a shrug and a smirk, Iolie pops up and positively scampers over to them, snatching the hooks from their mostly unresisting hands. "See? It's okay. You can do it, it's only like fo – "

"I know it's only like four feet!!!"

"Exactly, and I'm right here. I could definitely catch you if I needed to. Just don't look down."

"Don't look down," mumbles Thess, in a deliberately awful Rriu accent.

"Did you say something?" Iolie chirps, knowing full well what they said.

"I said go back to that end if you actually want to be helpful."

Iolie does, and Thess shuts their eyes, and follows the impulse of sprinting over the pipe without letting them open, and crashes into Iolie, and shockingly doesn't send them both to their dooms.

"That was badass!" Iolie yells, into the top of their head. "We practically died!!"

"Save both those sentences for in about five minutes," Thess responds, still riding the absurd adrenaline high of doing that. "You haven't seen anything yet."

"I know!! Man, I love being friends with you. Want me to put your hair up?"

"Oh, goddess, yeah, please. Give me the hooks." He does, and starts untying the blue cloth from around Thess's neck, while Thess fits the locking part of the hooks around the flag rope. It's thicker and sturdier up close than they thought it would be, which is a relief. They click the hinge into place securely around it, tugging on the device and rolling it back and forth experimentally. Everything looks to be in order.