Essentia Animus

21-Evasive Diplomacy

The afternoon began to run late before any of the three girls would begin to awaken, leaving Riyxia a lot of time to tend to her thoughts. The room supplied for their rest remained silent throughout the entire duration, which also proved beneficial for Riyxia's reflection.

Riyxia was also successful in her goal in being first to awaken, although this came with some additional painful reflections of their circumstances. Having occupied themselves through lunch in such conflict, they had in fact neglected to eat at all, and now it was basically dinner time. Even her own body emulated the same hunger process effectively, probably to also ensure it had the same nutritional resources in order to stay healthy. Even with the considerable injuries she had sustained being repaired, she had also lost a lot of blood in the process, and she expected her strange body probably had some additional work it needed to make sure she recovered appropriately. It was in that moment of almost organic reflection that she felt she was authentically her own kind of person.

Still, while she had to rest due to her own injuries, she knew the others had spent excessive energy and collapsed from that. Such would mean that the other two girls would awaken probably even more hungry than she was. This gave her an additional goal, not only to deal with the aftermath of the conflict, but to also ensure food was available as soon as possible. Riyxia quietly left her provided bed and made her way outside, getting a chance to look around with her physical eyes. However, she wasn't able to walk far from the room before she was quickly confronted by a human woman, one who was visibly herself analyzing Riyxia's condition from her distance.

"Perfect, someone is finally up. You won't believe how annoying it can be to sit there waiting for something to finally happen." The irony of the woman's statement was lost to her, but very obvious to Riyxia, herself having also been waiting the whole time too. "Well, if you're prepared to answer some of the questions we're certain to have, given all of the circumstances, I would ask first for you to consider the time of day. Through everything that happened, we had also missed lunch, and I for one am absolutely famished. I'm certain my friends are likewise starving, and would greatly appreciate anything you could provide to help us in these circumstances." "Ah, food, right. Not an unreasonable request, all things considered. Just be aware, we're not exactly in a position to supply a feast. The food we have around here is much more intent on function than flavour, it will cut down on the stomach rumbling but I can't promise anything about it tasting good.. fair.. okay.. like anything at all. Really, no promises." Riyxia realized she couldn't expect anything more than the offer the woman was providing her, and nodded her acceptance. Keeping irrational resistance down would only help keep the situation under control.

Riyxia felt like she had hardly blinked before she had found herself seated at a rudimentary table nearby, with some simple foods sorted around it. A stew she couldn't even identify, a broth of some kind in a cup clearly intended for drinking. A sample of the stuff proved to be something between mostly tasteless and partly disgusting, like chewing on tree bark and gravel. Not that she had any memories of such, nor did she hope she had actually lost any such memories, but the taste experience was nothing more than was promised. However, she was starving enough to simply keep going, draining the serving before her despite the protests of her taste buds. When she had finished, she felt actually refreshed and energized. Function over flavour, it certainly was that, was probably excessively healthy from a nutritional perspective too. However, she generally hoped she would never need to suffer such a feat again.

"Got some color back in your face, I see. Good good, there is still more for your friends, and even an extra helping for dinner, as that's right around the corner. So now to the formalities. My name is Ayzherie, one of the Hunters here, of course. While I'm probably not someone you would find interesting, we've suddenly found a lot of reasons to be interested in you and the other two girls." Ayzherie.. It was a name Riyxia found familiar somehow, but she couldn't figure out where she had heard that name before. "Nice to meet you, Ayzherie. My name is Riyxia, and like my friends we're also actually not people of much interest in reality, at least by our background. Having led boring lives with high hopes, we've recently been inspired to set about finding a way to improve the quality of our lives, to seek true purpose in our futures. After failures followed by countless failures, we've found ourselves almost faced with the inevitability of needing to give up on our aspirations, simply because of how normal we really are. There wasn't anything proving we could achieve anything more than that." Riyxia had very obviously captivated her audience, both in confusion and in sympathy. Riyxia took the opportunity to make the truth of the matter work to her advantage.