Re: Chapter #4c: PSI-Pisca's Sandpoint Investigation (P,L)
It was a pleasant day for a walk across town. From the salt tang of the seaward side to the soft mummer of the Turandorok, on the banks of which lay the lumber mill.
"Or, Kathrine might be seeing a man so horribly disfigured that he dare not show his face in the light of day," replied the gnome, entering the game of what-if with all apparent gusto. "His face is horrible to look at, but he has a kind and gentle soul. Other parts of him are quite large as well. He lives in secret, hiding in the upper lofts of the lumber mill where he often spies on the goings on in Sandpoint by posing as a gargoyle, and ... No. That wouldn't work."
"Maybe Katrine Vinder doesn't have a boyfriend at all," Pisca speculates. "Maybe she's working part time at the lumber mill in secret. Hewing boards to earn enough money for a special present for her father. I don't know." Marching along past the homes and buildings of Sandpoint, Pisca turned her head up to smile at the sun. "But I want to. To know, that is. Don't you, Lys?"
"As to me and boyfriends ... I ... I don't think we pair up in the same way you humans do, Lysa. I mean, to gnomes, humans seem ... obsessed with mating. Maybe ... " Pisca took the next few steps buried in thought, mulling the question, the answer and all the diverging pathways that questions and answers inevitably break into. "Maybe it's from having such short lives," she said at last. "You do a good job at it. Look how many of you there are compared to, say, gnomes."
"To gnomes, having children just isn't that important. First of all, once you have them you have to do something with them. Some gnomes just aren't preoccupied with things that allow them to bring baby gnomes along with. So you have to find someone to raise your child, and that's not always easy. I think I was lucky to end up with Aunt Hattie," Pisca said, and simply left it at that.
"We have love, like you do. And we have sex too, you know. Mostly when we're babies. Boy sex. Girl sex. Groups. Other things. Most gnomes grow out of it, though, after around thirty years. It never seems to be the thing to stave off The Bleach."
"Here we are." The gnome looked up into the cavernous hummie space of the lumber mill. "Hullo!" she called out. "Hullo!" the gnome called. A year with the Sczarni teaches one how to talk with people. So, when someone answered her call, Pisca went into her routine.
"Hi, I'm Pisca Neep Freemish and we're looking for Katrine Vinder. I owe some money, you see. We checked at the General Store and she wasn't there. We've asked all over town, and someone said to check here. Nice lumber mill, by the way. How many people work here?"
Bluff check, please. And Sense Motive.