[center][h1][b][color=gold]Lillianna Steiner[/color][/b][/h1][/center]

To say the work had been draining was at least a generally correct fact. All the walking about and trying to get things ready had been draining indeed, but she at least wasn't completely exhausted in the physical sense. She wasn't made of paper, after all! Albeit she wasn't used to doing things like this all the time after a long walk from elsewhere....so, yeah, it was very draining in the end if she took that all into account. But really, what about any of this was familiar to any of them? 

They'd been tossed into another world in stone sarcophagi, she would have to note returning to the village to see if she could study them more at some point in the future perhaps, and the others had fought a battle before she even arrived. Tardy to the party as she was. Dead, pulled from home, whatever the case was it was pulling a bunch of people far from home. And that wasn't just easy for everyone. Hell, she'd barely found a home in the past few years she felt she could call one in the first place. A place that she could call a home for her. None of the pressure or the chores or the getting yanked around to interviews with colleges and professors and talking to researchers and all of that mess. 

...It hadn't been all bad, er, really, but it hadn't been all good. She enjoyed proper discourse and discussion of scholastic topics or subjects she felt an interest in for sure, that wasn't a problem. But a lot hadn't been there either that other kids her age seemed to take in stride.

Field trips? Sleepovers? Finding Love? Going to see places far away? 

She'd been to the beach before with her family on vacation, sure, but it hadn't been until living with her uncle she'd found the fun in it and a lot of other things for once in her life. The real fun in just...doing something, really. Or something like that? It was hard to put into words the sensation she'd felt at the time, even now being hard to really try to fathom. But it had been welcome more than anything in her life in a long time. 

Shopping for a swimsuit with her uncle's girlfriend and daughters, lying on the beach to soak in a nice nap or read a book, talking with people her age without the bar of scholarship between them, all of it! Just things she'd never been able to do for herself had come after that, and then choosing her own path scholastically for the future had come in the wake of those things a time later. 

Now it was all gone. Like a bag of weights she was trying to ignore, strapped to her heart and dragging down on it. 

As a certain girl in an older work of fiction had once said: "We're not in Kansas anymore."

She welcomed the tiredness as the burn of her working muscles began to cool, the beating of her heart began to slow back down as her breathing slowed in turn, and the sweat cooled and evaporated from the surface of her skin and salty droplets sneakily rolled down her cheeks from the corners of her eyes. Even with the tiredness of making a shelter, it couldn't drain everything from her system it seemed. 

But the line between which salty drops rolling over her face and skin were caused by the work, or the metaphorical bag of weight on her heart, didn't seem to much matter in the moment now either. Really it dredged up the crystal-clear image of her uncle smiling like a toothy-grinning idiot, and looking up at the roof of her little shelter and turning her head to look at the sides of it as well she couldn't help but feel the same stupid grin come onto her own face somehow as her stomach rumbled once again. 

The big loveable dunce would have loved making something like this, she figured, then hitting the town for some fresh seafood at his favorite food truck. Heh....ah...

...


It wouldn't be too long before she'd hear someone walking over, however, and would sit up on the floor of her little shelter and wipe her face off on her right sleeve. Her left hand would briefly come to her head, however, as the dizziness from hunger and tiredness from work made her vision slightly spin. Grabbing her water skin as Adam came up to her, Lillianna would slowly drink up the rest of the water in it before putting it with where she set her backpack in the back corner of the shelter. Likewise the cube, in all of its odd shining metal glory, sat there hidden underneath her backpack as well. 

[quote=The Once And Future "Fisher King" (aka: Adam)]"Lillianna, I made some fish. Do you want any? I can set it here if you'd rather eat alone, or you can join us by the fire. Or I can join you in there, whatever you want."[/quote]

She didn't bother to go over to listen to Zell's discussion, which she assumed was strategy from what little she could see going on over there from her position, but Adam's offer was one she really couldn't refuse if her stomach had any say in it. 

[color=gold]"I'll come to join you all, and some cooked fish sounds good to me about now after doing all of this...labor, as it were."[/color]

Lillianna would scoot over and dig underneath her backpack, taking out the cube again to keep it close to her. Just in case. Maybe it would respond or something this tim-

[quote=???][i]When Lillianna ran her fingers over the cubes surface, with magical intent in her mind, the cube shimmered for a split-second. That same Thrum she felt when she first held her staff, she felt again, but this was a very different type of Thrum.

It was a distant vibration, almost imperceptible, as if so very far away.  And yet, in spite of the quietness of it, in her magically-proficient mind, she sensed immense power. But that was the only reaction from the cube she could earn.
[/i][/quote] 

The mage briefly paused as she looked at the cube with a raised eyebrow. A response, or at least a response of some kind. Very interesting-, no, fascinating even! Ultimately, however, she let out a small sigh and looked back to Adam. 

[color=gold]"For now, it would be nice to get something to eat before my body tries to argue further-"[/color]

[i]*Rumble*[/i]

...Food was a good plan, yes.