Post by yunyuq on May 21, 2023 5:56:59 GMT -6
The only reason Yunuukseyuq of Tunnels Newly Dug lived in Sonora was a dearth of present alternatives. Sonora was a remarkably human city, massive and cold and full of metal and glass, and of a rocky kind of tar that covered nearly each and every road and laid siege to the few cobblestones that still paved a handful of defiant streets and squares towards the heart of the city or rose like the slowest of tides, depending on the opinion one formed about that curious substance.
Truth to be told, Yunyuq did not actually hate the tar – or asphalt, as it was called. It was smooth and walking on it was easy enough that she could do just that for miles and miles on end with next-to-no stress for her feet and her boots barely worse for wear. It was everything else she could have done without. For example, she could have done without the cold – she hated it, hated it – and she could have also done without roughly ninety percent of the crowd. At times, she thought, Sonora didn't look like a community so much as no more than a vast number of individuals packed into the same tight space out of necessity or even habit.
Even so, that was the people's choice, and Yunyuq could respect that, if not quite understand it. Her biggest problem is that she had yet to find a way out. Or better yet, she still had to figure out where in the world Sonora was, before she could venture out of it and resume her journey back home.
On some nights she would still try to understand how it was that she got there. All that she remembered before she got there was that, not long after parting ways from the others, a crystal appeared to sprout from her feet and worked its way up until it encased her completely. When she regained consciousness, the crystal was falling apart in chunks in the middle of a snowy tundra. Then, for some reason, the chunks inevitably and irreversibly crumbled further and turned into fine gravel whenever Yunyuq tried to pick them up for further examination. After a while, Yunyuq's intervention became completely irrelevant, and all that was left of the crystal was a mound of pebbles.
She would then close her eyes and not think of what happened afterwards. Only about a week after her arrival did she learn that her crystal had landed a scarce half a mile away from Fort Brisbel, an infamous military garrison not far from Sonora itself. If anything, she had been present of mind enough to realise that the men coming out of its gates riding on terrible machinery and wielding even more terrible machinery were not approaching her with the intention of offering her a warm welcome and a bowl of soup – which was a shame, because she would have really liked one.
Instead, she was forced to run for the closest settlement she could find, which just happened to be Sonora, and disappear in there. Sonora didn't have much in the way of a goblin population – as far as she was concerned, she might as well have been the only one – but even a goblin could vanish in a crowd of several millions if she made sure to conceal her face as much as possible, and walk fast when she couldn't.
It was truly humans as far as the eye could see. Only the humans, to her knowledge, liked to have their dwellings rise up to the sky as much as their abilities allowed. At least Sonora didn't float, unlike Ronka. Yunyuq, on the other hand, liked to be as close to the surface as possible, preferably beneath it. At some point she even considered moving into the sewers, but her kind dug dwellings that were warm and dry and safe, while Sonora's sewers were cold and wet and dangerous, and the only creatures that she heard were able to live there on a permanent basis were the Tonberries.
Consequently, it had to be above the ground. And among the humans. She was lucky enough to find an odd job flipping burgers at a diner for a few nights per week, which was enough to put some food in her plate whenever she wasn't able to catch a rat or two to roast on the spit. However, it wasn't enough to put a roof on her head. Affordable options were scarce, and people who owned affordable options and who were willing to rent out a room to her no questions asked were even rarer.
Soon enough, Yunyuq confirmed to herself that even there, goblins were akin to the finest of sands in the sieve of employability, and that beneath the sieve society's bottom feeders would always lie in wait. A hulking man known as the Diamond King, but né Carlo Graf (his subordinates would call him Mr. Graf) was the one who offered her the closest thing to an integration to her income that she could find, all in exchange for running some errands for him. Most of these errands involved relaying messages from or to him, or facilitating trades – usually involving weapons, information, and a few odd items that fit in neither category. It was never anything too big, which was perfectly okay with her, because she didn't want big.
Yunyuq didn't enjoy that job all too much, but even she had to recognise that it was not without its perks, though it really was just one perk: contacts. For starters, she was soon introduced to somebody who agreed to rent out to her a room in a comfortable enough basement. But more importantly, soon she heard rumours about somebody who might have been able to help her find her way back home. Rumours, and that was it. But rumours were better than nothing at all. It was worth a shot.
And this was why she chose to stay in Sonora even after meeting with the nameless Tonberry – Digger, as she chose to call them, or Grudge, as was the name they gave to other people for the sake of simplicity, but that they had never truly chosen for themselves. She promised to them that she would stay there, waiting for them and the others, if they also ended up on Zephon – and why wouldn't they, if she and Digger were there already? Perhaps, she hoped, she would manage to bring them all back.
For this reason, she hoped that the person she was supposed to meet at the Scrapyard in front of Henpecked Ho's workshop would not disappoint her. Yunyuq's task – it was really too trivial to call it a mission – was simply to make sure that her contact got the money and she got the hyper-charged magicite while making sure nobody saw what they were doing and then, as Mr. Graf put it, fuck off and go back to her supervisor.
Her contact had been described to her as such: a petite woman, though “not nearly as much of a pipsqueak as you”, with short hair and young. A twenty-something, Mr. Graf told her, certainly not older than thirty or so. As if Yunyuq could tell a human's age.
Truth to be told, Yunyuq did not actually hate the tar – or asphalt, as it was called. It was smooth and walking on it was easy enough that she could do just that for miles and miles on end with next-to-no stress for her feet and her boots barely worse for wear. It was everything else she could have done without. For example, she could have done without the cold – she hated it, hated it – and she could have also done without roughly ninety percent of the crowd. At times, she thought, Sonora didn't look like a community so much as no more than a vast number of individuals packed into the same tight space out of necessity or even habit.
Even so, that was the people's choice, and Yunyuq could respect that, if not quite understand it. Her biggest problem is that she had yet to find a way out. Or better yet, she still had to figure out where in the world Sonora was, before she could venture out of it and resume her journey back home.
On some nights she would still try to understand how it was that she got there. All that she remembered before she got there was that, not long after parting ways from the others, a crystal appeared to sprout from her feet and worked its way up until it encased her completely. When she regained consciousness, the crystal was falling apart in chunks in the middle of a snowy tundra. Then, for some reason, the chunks inevitably and irreversibly crumbled further and turned into fine gravel whenever Yunyuq tried to pick them up for further examination. After a while, Yunyuq's intervention became completely irrelevant, and all that was left of the crystal was a mound of pebbles.
She would then close her eyes and not think of what happened afterwards. Only about a week after her arrival did she learn that her crystal had landed a scarce half a mile away from Fort Brisbel, an infamous military garrison not far from Sonora itself. If anything, she had been present of mind enough to realise that the men coming out of its gates riding on terrible machinery and wielding even more terrible machinery were not approaching her with the intention of offering her a warm welcome and a bowl of soup – which was a shame, because she would have really liked one.
Instead, she was forced to run for the closest settlement she could find, which just happened to be Sonora, and disappear in there. Sonora didn't have much in the way of a goblin population – as far as she was concerned, she might as well have been the only one – but even a goblin could vanish in a crowd of several millions if she made sure to conceal her face as much as possible, and walk fast when she couldn't.
It was truly humans as far as the eye could see. Only the humans, to her knowledge, liked to have their dwellings rise up to the sky as much as their abilities allowed. At least Sonora didn't float, unlike Ronka. Yunyuq, on the other hand, liked to be as close to the surface as possible, preferably beneath it. At some point she even considered moving into the sewers, but her kind dug dwellings that were warm and dry and safe, while Sonora's sewers were cold and wet and dangerous, and the only creatures that she heard were able to live there on a permanent basis were the Tonberries.
Consequently, it had to be above the ground. And among the humans. She was lucky enough to find an odd job flipping burgers at a diner for a few nights per week, which was enough to put some food in her plate whenever she wasn't able to catch a rat or two to roast on the spit. However, it wasn't enough to put a roof on her head. Affordable options were scarce, and people who owned affordable options and who were willing to rent out a room to her no questions asked were even rarer.
Soon enough, Yunyuq confirmed to herself that even there, goblins were akin to the finest of sands in the sieve of employability, and that beneath the sieve society's bottom feeders would always lie in wait. A hulking man known as the Diamond King, but né Carlo Graf (his subordinates would call him Mr. Graf) was the one who offered her the closest thing to an integration to her income that she could find, all in exchange for running some errands for him. Most of these errands involved relaying messages from or to him, or facilitating trades – usually involving weapons, information, and a few odd items that fit in neither category. It was never anything too big, which was perfectly okay with her, because she didn't want big.
Yunyuq didn't enjoy that job all too much, but even she had to recognise that it was not without its perks, though it really was just one perk: contacts. For starters, she was soon introduced to somebody who agreed to rent out to her a room in a comfortable enough basement. But more importantly, soon she heard rumours about somebody who might have been able to help her find her way back home. Rumours, and that was it. But rumours were better than nothing at all. It was worth a shot.
And this was why she chose to stay in Sonora even after meeting with the nameless Tonberry – Digger, as she chose to call them, or Grudge, as was the name they gave to other people for the sake of simplicity, but that they had never truly chosen for themselves. She promised to them that she would stay there, waiting for them and the others, if they also ended up on Zephon – and why wouldn't they, if she and Digger were there already? Perhaps, she hoped, she would manage to bring them all back.
For this reason, she hoped that the person she was supposed to meet at the Scrapyard in front of Henpecked Ho's workshop would not disappoint her. Yunyuq's task – it was really too trivial to call it a mission – was simply to make sure that her contact got the money and she got the hyper-charged magicite while making sure nobody saw what they were doing and then, as Mr. Graf put it, fuck off and go back to her supervisor.
Her contact had been described to her as such: a petite woman, though “not nearly as much of a pipsqueak as you”, with short hair and young. A twenty-something, Mr. Graf told her, certainly not older than thirty or so. As if Yunyuq could tell a human's age.
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