Luna was already in flight before Speaker finished, uh, speaking. She’d probably need to adjust a few more times on the way down the gargantuan tree, as the atmosphere became thicker, but for now, she’d be able to breathe - and fly - without<i>too</i>much difficulty. As long as she didn’t run into any strange toxins or overexert herself, at least.<br/><br/>She got the feeling that not everyone agreed with Speaker’s assignments, but she and Trix flew off long before anyone could make any objection. Surprisingly, neither of the two dryadi were out of sight for very long, even though they fluttered from discovery to discovery seemingly at random. At one moment, Luna would be peering at a part of the tree; the next, she’d be pointing out one weird insect or another.<br/><br/>“Hey, Luna,” Trix called from below, “Have you heard about the honey these trees produce? I bet it's pretty tasty!”<br/><br/>Luna paused for a second to sniff at the tree bark. It didn’t seem right for trees to<i>sweat</i>like these ones did, even if made them smell sweet. She’d found trees on Earth you had to coax the sap out of, and<i>that</i>was delicious. But tree sweat? It smelled sweet, but there was an odd afterscent to it as well, like…what was it called?<i>Dionaea muscipula?</i>Or… the Venus flytrap, which had been named after a dryadi in the first place.<br/><br/>It wasn’t long before she found the first insect struggling in that thick sap. It was almost half her size, which meant she probably wouldn’t have a much better time of it. She glared tiny daggers up at Trix.<span style="color: #006666">“I bet <i>you’re</i> pretty tasty,”</span>she called, pretending to be angry at first but soon laughing at the ridiculousness of her own threat.<br/><br/>But Trix had already discovered something new. Large-breasted snake moths, apparently. They were definitely snake moths, but she wasn’t sure about the whole “large-breasted” part. Issy was “large-breasted.” The moths were... thorax-breasted. Luna made a face at the bugs and continued down. The thorax-breasted snake moths were giving her the creeps anyway, with their thorax-breastedness, and their bladey-blades.<br/><br/>They reached the top layer of clouds before too long.<i>Clouds below the canopy,</i>Luna thought. It was strange to be up so high, but to still have everything be so<i>green</i>. She waited a while for the party to catch up, then dove headfirst into the fog. It had been hard to breathe up top, the air heavy and alien, combined with the lack of oxygen at such a high altitude, but the A’virila was something else entirely. She could barely see, and she had to practically<i>swim</i>through the thick clouds. She did her best to avoid to strange, deep green foliage; if any of it was a trap like the tree bark, she wasn’t ready to deal with it just yet… not while she was still adjusting to the stifling humidity, anyway.<br/><br/>Finally - with the rest of the group lagging behind a bit as they fought through rich vegetation and thick branches - she found stairs. Tree stairs. They circled round the tree, letting the poor walking ones make a slow, slightly easier descent. She couldn’t imagine all the work that had gone into ruining the natural beauty of the tree like that, but by the looks of it, that hard work was already being reversed by the wilds. A tree-elevator - treelevator? - would have been less work, probably. Then again, that would probably need a lot of maintenance, especially seeing how quickly the steps had been overgrown. If only they had wings like cool people, they wouldn’t need stairs.<br/><br/>By the time she made it out of the A’virala, Luna was happy but exhausted. Far below her, she could just make out the glow of the bioluminescent plantlife, little green lights piercing the yawning darkness. She returned their lightborne hello, glowing brightly for a little while before slowly ebbing away. She wanted so badly to just dive down into the depths of the forest after so long in space, but she was getting kind of numb and dripping wet besides, and not in a good way.<br/><br/>The tree-cave was something of a godsend to the tired fairy. It was a cozy, and, more importantly, fairly dry little cave. Old supply crates lay around in various states of disuse - it looked like they’d been there for awhile. A set of old emergency lights helped brighten the place up. Luna did a bit of cursory scouting around the cave and didn’t find anything dangerous, though she wasn’t sure how far back the cavern went, exactly.<br/><br/>Satisfied that she wouldn’t be attacked right away, at least, Luna slipped out of her soaked slip and put it up on a light to dry a little. She wasn’t sure if the lights generated much heat, or how much power they had, but they were high up, at least. Next, she pulled a blanket that was<i>way</i>too big for her out of one of the crates, but her size wasn’t a problem for long. It wasn’t long before she was a human-sized fairy bundled up in warm blankets, her bright eyes watching the others stumble into the cave after her.<span style="color: #006666">“I found blankets,”</span>she said, like it wasn’t obvious.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>