>Take THAT, aether storm! Not gonna get the better of THIS mouse.
>Yum, tight pants....
>Hunker down and enjoy the ride!
>You allow yourself a moment's triumph over the storm and steal another glance at Chisato's rear.
>Then you hunker down, getting a firm grip of the strut with your hands and wrapping your tail around another segment for good measure, and attempt to enjoy the ride. In this, you are less successful than you would like to let on. Or rather, your enjoyment of the actual
ride is abysmal, while the sights remain quite spectacular.
>Your current vantage leaves you well-equipped to resist being flung around by the sharper jolts, but this still takes some effort, and there's not much at all you can do to mute the perpetual rattling of the deck beneath your feet. You were deeply fatigued when you went to sleep and woke before getting much rest. Now that the immediate sense of impending crisis has passed, every effort you expend here leaves you feeling wearier still. You think you might actually be nodding off now, if not for all the jostling making real sleep implausible. You've never been particularly prone to motion sickness, but perhaps because of your exhaustion, you're finding this a bit much even for you. You keep a good poker face, and try to think about things other than your stomach; you're certainly not about to let it embarrass you in front of these people.
>And, to be fair, it really
is a sight to behold. The most you'd seen of the aether from Braston was a faint iridescent shimmer across the sky, and even then only on good days. This is in quite another league altogether; all around you, scintillating curtains of ephemeral light dance and play across each other, their languid movement punctuated by dramatic shifts in color and form that ripple out across the sky, reshaping the aether in their wake. Sometimes you can even hear a faint resonant hum in the air, like a glass harmonica, shifting in pitch as the aether swells and undulates; it adds a strangely ethereal quality to the scene. Now if only the ship would stop battering you long enough to properly enjoy it...
>After a while, you learn to associate some of the shifts in the aether with what the deckhands are shouting out and also when to anticipate some of the worst lurching and brace yourself for it ahead of time. It helps a little. Unfortunately, the more time passes, the more fatigue and nausea start to overshadow the wonder of the scene. As strangely bewitching as it is to watch, you think you would rather be sleeping peacefully right now....
