From a pouch attached to her belt, the Lady took a few coins - they golden and spider-shaped - and slid them on the table toward Citrine. "There you go," she said. She looked around. "Anyway, I'll go first."
She stood up, and, crossing her hands behind her back, began to recite: "What is the thing that has a concept both finite and infinite, yet could be held in the palm of your hand?"
Toph picked up some of the coins from her bag and left them in the middle of the table, crossing her arms and listening to the riddle that Lady was telling them. Once she finished, she started laughing out loud:
"T-that's too easy! I know that one! It's... It's..."
The blind girl opened her mouth to speak, but soon closed it, tapping her chin. Every few seconds she would repeat this procedure:
"H-hold on, I know this one. I know this one!"
"Time? Or would it be a watch? Watches can measure time in finite bits but time itself is endless and you can hold them. I had a watch once; it told me the time of day on the asteroid I came from. It was always lunchtime," Citrine rambled, rolling the coins around in front of her and naming the first likely-looking thing that came to mind. It was much more fun to play with the coins than think hard, though.
Ezio had once again fallen silent, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the riddle. He wasn't sure what a watch was, but judging by what others were saying it was a clock of some sort that was small enough to fit into one hand. If anyone could create such a thing, it would be Leonardo. But right now there was a more pressing issue: the simple fact that he wasn't sure what the answer was. He decided not to say anything, feeling that it would be best not to reveal his woeful lack of ideas.
Locking you up on radar since '09The Lady twirled a coin around on the table. She looked around. "Well," she said, "You're wrong... I didn't get your name? And it seems that neither Ezio nor Toph know the answer. Shall I reveal it?"
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home."Well, no, you're both wrong, so sorry," said the Lady. "The correct answer is a ball. You see, a sphere's concept contains both the infinite - for it has an infinite number of facets - and the finite, because it is numerable and measurable. Of course, you can also hold a ball in your hand."
She threw the coin she was playing with into the air, let it spin, and caught it. "Well... The closest answer we had, I think, is Toph's. Here." She slid the coin toward the blind girl. "Who's going to ask the next one?"
edited 16th Mar '12 6:24:12 PM by desdendelle
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.Toph raised an eyebrow as the Lady began to speak about infinite sides and something that sounded like acrobatics. The blind girl never cared about mathmatics, even if the teachers her parents got for her hammered the concept into her head every five seconds. Picking up the gold coin, she gazed at Lady:
"I didn't understand or care about a single thing you just said, but... Squishy, how about you give us a riddle? A fun one that doesn't involve boring math."
"Huh? Riddle? Umm..." Citrine wondered. She could only think of one riddle... and when she started speaking, it became clear that she wasn't using the same language as before. Of course, this sort of thing didn't ruin comprehension... but it was still somewhat weird. "I'm the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space; the beginning of every end and the end of every place. What am I?"
edited 17th Mar '12 4:23:52 PM by RainehDaze
Ah, now this sounded more like something Ezio could handle. Folding his arms, Ezio said, "Death."
There was every possibility it was wrong, considering the rather scatterbrained behaviour of Citrine, but in all honesty he could not think of anything else that it could possibly be. Perhaps that reflected poorly upon him, but at his age he had learnt not to care too much about such things except where they posed a danger to his objectives.
Locking you up on radar since '09"I think that the answer to that is reality itself, the great 'is' that all things are part of," said the Lady, a contemplative look on her face. She took another coin out of her pocket — this one was oblong and red — and twirled it between her fingers, staring at Citrine.
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home."The blind girl guessed right! Though she didn't specify the letter..." Citrine said, producing a piece of paper from a pocket and growing the message onto it, with the letter E highlighted by being in red moss for the benefit of those two that could see. "The only other riddle I could think of was 'eggs'..."
The Lady took a few more coins from her pocket — they were all weirdly-shaped; it was obvious that they came from a multitude of places — and slid them all toward Toph.
"Well," she said, "I'll tell you some of the story. The part I know. I've met Ezio a while back on the Voidship Andvaranaut; his looks.... interested me, for he has the air of a trained warrior. I started a conversation, but the Voidship was attacked by the Riders' soldiers; we escaped the ship shortly before the Rider of Death arrived." She shuddered, remembering the feeling the artefact gave off. "Now, as to what I want from you... Well, as I said, you smell of powerful magic. And powerful magic interests me, as well as worrying me."
Ezio silently kicked himself, though he didn't dwell on his failure to make a correct guess. The Lady's plans became much clearer as she began her explanation, and once she finished speaking the Assassin murmured, "Speak for yourself. I don't think I've met such unusual individuals in my life."
Locking you up on radar since '09Toph sniggered as the Lady finished her explanation, and soon, the snigger morphed into a laugh. The blind girl rested her arms behind her head and her legs on the table:
"I still can't believe this whole "smell magic" thing. Besides, I'm not a magician. Magicians do magic tricks and illusions and things like that. I'm an earthbender."
"Magic is magic; stage magicians are the ones who do tricks. Maybe that's why most magic users call themselves wizards or mages?" the slime wondered, playing with the coins she'd been given. They all looked so strange... what was wrong with blank discs with numbers on them? Why did people like silly ornamentation? It was easy to tell that Citrine had no idea about forgery.
"You can believe what you like, Toph," said the Lady. "It's too philosophically awkward (and believe me, even I had enough of that a long time ago) to explain it. Anyway, 'magic' is a blanket name for a rather large number of effects... For example, I know a universe in which magic is, basically, the manipulation of energy through complex equations — most magi there need help with that; in another, magic is the art of summoning Jinn from another dimension; a third one's magic is mostly related to the dead, with most magi raising them and one each generation laying them back to rest... So most of the frequent dimensional travellers don't bother with individual names and just categorise all of those things under magic."
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home."I cannot smell any magic on him," said the Lady, "but I'm not perfect; he might have magical abilities that I cannot smell for some reason, or abilities that are like magic but not magical in nature... Truth to be told" — she bowed in Ezio's direction — "I do not know him very well yet."
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.The dimensions the Lady mentioned seemed rather fanciful, if not wholesale falsehoods. Ezio, however, knew that he could not discount them, much less deny their existence - his companion had travelled the multiverse far more than he had, so it was entirely possible that there were such places out there in the void.
Toph's question caused him to perk up as he mentally calculated how much would be safe to say. For now, he decided, he would be vague. No sense in blurting out his capabilities to one and all, especially for someone who relied on surprise as much as his skills. "I... have an ability that some might consider unusual, but more than that I will not say."
Locking you up on radar since '09Recette was prepared! This 'Celestial Quay' place had so many different people, surely they would want to buy what she sold. Just like the people back home! She had a lot of money, and the accepted different currencies, so she went ahead and bought a small storefront with some pix earned back in the first Recettear at home, and then bought two of those 'teleporter' thingies so she could easily travel between one shop to the other. The teleporter was situated in the room behind her, a blue gash in the air among the crates of supplies that led home. She actually still worked there, both shops were open for shorter amounts of time then only one shop would've been but that was okay. It meant that she could still sell things at home.
Currently, she stood at the blue metal counter with her arms resting on it and a cheerful expression displayed to all, her wares arranged on the shelf behind her. Food, clothes, books, even weapons.
"Oh, dear. The toad, the monkey, and the dog have all screwed up."

Toph looked at Citrine- or at least, where she believed Citrine was, since the other girl was the only being she couldn't sense- and asked:
"What about you, Squishy?"