The ceremonial awe evaporated as quickly as it had formed, replaced by the vibrant, shoving chaos of a festival migration. The Ruru-Gin streamed like a river of shaggy hair and clattering tools towards a vast, open amphitheater carved into the side of a toppled black spire. As the crowd jostled around them, Glinty-Hoshly moved against the current. Her patchwork poncho a banner f her status as she navigated with silent, stone-sure steps directly towards Aurélie.
Tori-Rick, Gin-Becy, and Nito-Dunc were trying to herd their tall guests like unruly moss-goats. "This way! The best viewing is near the manure pile—it's got the best vibration for cheering!" Nito-Dunc insisted, pulling on Charlie's sleeve.
Glinty-Hoshly cleared her throat—a sound like two rocks grinding together.
The three young Ruru-Gin froze. They turned slowly, their expressions shifting from enthusiasm to the guilty dread of children caught sneaking extra helpings of stew.
"And who," Glinty-Hoshly asked, her dry voice slicing through the din, "are these tall ones who walk in our deep-dark? Their steps are… unfamiliar to the mountain's song."
Tori-Rick looked up at Aurélie, his face a blank page of confusion. The 'friend' and 'rodeo' concepts had once again fled his mind, leaving only the primal alarm of 'stranger in the vault.'
Aurélie, sensing the fragile thread of their welcome fraying, interjected with smooth, practiced calm. "We are friends. We are here as guests for the rodeo." Her tone left no room for debate.
Charlie, however, had already wandered. Spellbound by a partially buried console of the ancient wreckage that now served as a drinks stall, he had his camera-snail out. The snail's bulb flashed with frantic, stuttering bursts, illuminating the stunned faces of nearby Ruru-Gin with each pop. A toddler covered its eyes and wailed.
"Aurélie—" Charlie called, oblivious, "the corrosion patterns on this ferrous alloy suggest a sustained energy overload, not natural decay! This was a controlled scuttling!"
Aurélie closed her eyes for a brief second, a muscle in her jaw ticking. "He is… enthusiastic."
Glinty-Hoshly raised one woolly eyebrow, her large nose twitching as if smelling a lie. "Friends," she repeated, the word flat.
Gin-Becy, desperate to please the elder, nodded so vigorously her scroll-buns wobbled. "Oh yes! We are all friends here for the rodeo! That was a such a lovely speech, Glinty-Hoshly! And a beautiful ceremony! The lights were very… glimmery!"
Glinty-Hoshly blinked, utterly unimpressed. She opened her mouth to speak, but a new, sharper voice cut through the air like a shard of crystal. "What is that dreadful strobe effect? It's ruining the ambiance! It clashes with the gentle glow of the hearth-moss!"
Lyra-Belle materialized from the crowd as if conjured by a complaint about aesthetics. Her towering butterfly-wing hairdo, lacquered to a stiff shine, defied the cavern's gravity. Her eyes, heavily lined with crushed coal, were fixed on Charlie with theatrical horror. She wielded her heavy iron parasol like a scepter.
"You, tall person! You are disrupting the People's Beauty with your… your flashing! Cease at once or be exiled to a very plain, undecorated cave!"
Charlie, finally noticing the commotion he'd caused, straightened up. "Ahem! Madam, this is for historical preservation! The photoluminescent reaction of your local fungi to sudden light is itself worthy of—"
"I want to hear nothing of 'photorhythms' or 'fungi'!" Lyra-Belle shrieked, fanning herself with her free hand. "It is ugly! It is noise! Stop it or I shall have the guards make you into a new statue for my grotto!"
Charlie looked helplessly at Aurélie, the camera-snail trembling in his hand.
"I have no desire to stage a rescue operation on your behalf, Charlie," Aurélie stated, her voice cold. "Put it away. For now."
Charlie's shoulders slumped in defeat. He gave the camera-snail a mournful pat and tucked it into his satchel. "But… the data…"
"Take really good notes," Aurélie said, her tone leaving no room for appeal.
Charlie perked up instantly. "Notes! Of course! The qualitative observations of a living culture!" He scrambled for his notebook and lead pencil, already muttering about 'socio-ritualistic performance metrics.'
Lyra-Belle's judgmental gaze swept from Charlie to Aurélie. Her eyes traveled up and down Aurélie's black tactical leathers with a disdain that could curdle milk. "And what, exactly, are you supposed to be? You are dressed like a shadow that forgot to fade. Where is your… texture? Your glimmer?"
"We are friends from the surface," Aurélie repeated, her patience a thin, taut wire. She turned slightly to include Ember in the introduction, to use the girl's disarming presence as a buffer.
Ember was gone.
Aurélie's silver eyes swept the crowd. No trace of the pink hair or tattered crimson dress. The wire of her patience snapped. Her jaw flexed, a minute tell of sheer, simmering frustration. She was left standing alone, the center of unwanted attention.
She returned her attention to Lyra-Belle and Glinty-Hoshly, ready to offer some placating lie about Ember admiring the local geology.
They were already gone.
In the span of a heartbeat, the two most important elders of the tribe had simply forgotten the conversation, their minds caught by the distant roar of the crowd from the rodeo grounds. Lyra-Belle was fussing over a stallholder's arrangement of polished geodes. Glinty-Hoshly was listening to the cavern wall, her head cocked.
Aurélie released a groan that came from the depths of her soul, a sound swallowed by the rising cacophony of the rodeo. With the grim determination of a soldier advancing on a fortified position, she let the crowd carry her towards the amphitheater.
The Great Moss-Goat Vertical Rodeo was not a sport. It was controlled, bleating pandemonium. The 'arena' was the sheer, ninety-degree face of the broken black spire, pockmarked with hoof-holds and glistening with damp moss. Massive, shaggy Gora-Gora Rams, their horns painted with bright mineral dyes, were released at the base. A single Ruru-Gin rider, strapped to the beast's back with thick leather belts, would then attempt to spur the ram straight up the wall.
The goal was not to stay on the longest, but to climb the highest before either rider or ram lost their nerve or their grip. The air was thick with the smell of wet wool, fear-sweat, and the yeasty tang of spilled Black-Lung Stout. The crowd's roar was a physical force, a tidal wave of "RU-RU-RU!" that shook dust from the ancient rafters.
Aurélie, towering over the sea of three-foot-tall spectators, spotted Charlie first. He had secured a prime viewing spot on a chunk of fallen machinery, his notebook a blur of motion, yelling observations to no one in particular. "Fascinating! The ram's hooves exhibit a magnetic adhesion properties, likely due to ferrous deposits in their diet! The rider uses rhythmic stomping to communicate direction! A primitive but effective symbiotic—"
His commentary was drowned out as a ram, its rider shrieking with glee, shot up the wall like a fuzzy cannonball, only to peel off at a dizzying height and tumble backwards in a bleating, spinning arc. A team of waiting Ruru-Gin with oversized nets rushed to catch them. The crowd erupted in a mix of cheers and good-natured boos.
"BAH! He let go too early! No backbone!" bellowed a miner next to Aurélie, spraying her with stale stout.
"His hat fell off! Automatic disqualification!" screamed another.
Then, Aurélie saw Ember. She was right at the barrier, her hands gripping the rough stone, her mismatched eyes wide with a kind of hungry wonder. She wasn't smiling, but a light Aurélie had never seen there was glowing in her gaze. She flinched with every crash, leaned forward with every ascent, utterly absorbed in the simple, violent poetry of the event. For a moment, she looked like what she was: a young woman at a fair, forgetting the fire she carried inside.
The ominous undercurrent hummed beneath the fun. These joyous, forgetful people lived in a tomb of a war they didn't remember, guarding a weapon they called a 'metal fish,' their lives dictated by a ritual that ticked like a dead clock. As Aurélie watched a victorious rider being carried on the shoulders of the crowd, his ram bleating proudly beside him, she felt it. The laughter was real, the cheers were sincere, but they were echoes in a buried cathedral. The rodeo was a brilliant, cheerful distraction from the crushing, forgotten weight of the ceiling above them—a ceiling that wasn't stone, but history, and it was pressing down every second.
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