Sometimes Abathur found himself on the border out of pure coincidence, either seeing somebody and realizing how far out he had accidentally gone, or simply wandering out a bit into the neutral territories until he realized his mistake and hurriedly scurried back. This, though, would mark the first time that somebody had managed to yell him to the border.

It was impressive, frankly, how far away Abathur could hear Lemy. Whether a product of the former's supercharged (and almost certainly ridiculously oversensitive) sense of touch combined with the forest that wonderfully transmitted any and all vibrations, or of the latter's very very very loud voice, Abathur managed to get a read on where the loudmouth was from... well, his sense of distance wasn't very good, but it was certainly very far away, and he hadn't even begun to reach what he believed to be the general border area of Tanglewood. So, true to his nature as a curious person and as a spider, he would crawl towards the disturbance on his 'web' with mud on his claws and a question in his heart.

Of course it was Lemy.

He barely knew the other, but it was most certainly in character from what he did know, as long as someone considered "loud" a personality trait. Truly, despite such harsh commentary, the spider wasn't annoyed, simply baffled at how someone could possibly get through life with such reckless disregard for the sanctity of silence. "Why does subject have letter?" He asked, hoping to ignore the attempt at a game and simply get to the point. Though, frankly, he was actually curious as to why he had such a pristine letter. It wasn't dirty or anything, which meant that it likely wasn't just found lying around, and it also wasn't open, which meant that, since Lemy knew the contents of the letter, he had likely written it - but why? To what purpose? Why write and seal a letter only to deliver it in person and loudly make a big deal of that fact? It confused him so, so much, but surely there was a logical explanation. There had to be. He couldn't just believe that people just... did things without considering all the energy and time expended, as well as some other options. There had to be logic in the universe.

tags - "speech"

The sound of Lemy's voice echoing out from the border wasn't exactly surprising, since it seemed as though the male had a strange affection for Tanglewood that Aurum was pretty sure rivaled that of the affection for his own home. In fact, it was more surprising for the source of the noise to be on the other side of the border, rather than within the thick swamp that Tanglewood inhabited. The Captain honestly hadn't been aware that Lemy had decided to leave from his vacation at some point, so when he heard Lemy loudly announcing that he was back, he felt a vague bit of confusion. Moving slowly up alongside Miller and Abathur, the winged lion rumbled as he sat back on his haunches, head tilted to one side, "You were ever gone?" The question may have been vaguely rude to anybody else, but honestly Aurum wasn't sure that Lemy would be able to detect the slightly tired tones of his and Miller's voices. Or, if he did in fact here said tone, if he would actually give a shit. Tail flicking back and forth absentmindedly, Aurum let his gaze find the letter that Lemy was grasping tightly, excitement shining in the Elysite's eyes as he wiggled around the envelope emblazoned with the Elysium mountain logo. He could only assume it was for them, or else Lemy was probably shirking his duty to head to another group just to visit them... that wouldn't have entirely surprised the angel either. Taking a deep breath, the Captain of the Guard suggested softly, adding onto Miller's silly little addition with a more serious one of his own, "I can really only assume you're inviting us to something... unless Rin dropped dead and you're here to tell us that you guys have yet another leader." He really hoped that wasn't the case, since he had enjoyed Rin's company on the couple of times he had met her for ambassador missions. Worse yet, he wasn't even sure who could take over if she did drop dead, and the awful possibility of Lemy stepping up to her position made a wave of worry rush over him. Oh god, Elysium was going to die if he was in charge. Hopefully, Aurum had been right in his first assumption, and it was just an invitation to some fun social event they had come up with. Or at least, that's what he was praying.

To say that Aurum wasn't happy to see Lemy would probably have been a bit too harsh for the lion's sensibilities. It wasn't that he disliked Lemy or anything like that ‐ in fact he was glad for the male in the sense that having a firm connection between Tanglewood and Elysium was nice – but the other certainly did remind him a lot of Feza at certain points, and that made it slightly hard for Aurum to be around him. Although he and Feza had buried the hatchet as of late, both had done a lot to hurt each other, accidentally or not, in the past, and when Aurum found himself looking at Lemy's grinning face, he suddenly felt as though he was going to fuck up everything again. Thankfully, this was not one of those tense times where Aurum had to worry about social interactions, or whether or not he was going to say something wrong that would lead to bad blood between Tanglewood and Elysium. That was the absolute worst case scenario, and Aurum had no desire to upset Lemy in any way. Thankfully, it seemed as though his blunt questioning about Lemy being gone had been ignored, or at least waved off in a wink that made Aurum pause. He mentally noted away that, unless Lemy was patiently waiting at the border as he had been on this occasion, there was really no reason to go asking the male whether or not he was joining or anything. Lemy seemed to like to come and go as he pleased, and as long as he wasn't hurting anyone, Aurum found that he didn't much care if the other disappeared and reappeared often. It wasn't as if some of their actual members didn't do the very same.

When Lemy responded to his questioning about Rin, Aurum felt him relax the slightest bit. He didn't know the female well, but she seemed like a good leader, and the angel really wasn't looking forward to Elysium having to adjust to another new leader so quickly after their last being replaced. Dipping his head to Lemy, Aurum rumbled as he let himself sit, his shoulders relaxing and wings drooping slightly, "Well, I'm glad to hear that Rin is still around. When you see her again be sure to tell her that I said hello..." Lemy did confirm Aurum's suspicion that he would probably be the one to take over in the event of the female's death, and that did cause a faint spark of anxiety, but he wasn't left with much time to grow too worried, since a letter was being enthusiastically shoved into his space. Blinking down at the envelope, the lion wrinkled his nose faintly at the scent of lavender and carefully opened it, being especially slow as not to rip the poor thing to shreds with his massive paws and sharp claws. After all, it was pretty clear Lemy had put a lot of work into it. Once the letter inside was free from its confines, Aurum began to look it over, reading the surprisingly beautiful calligraphy slowly. A market festival...? Well, it sounded rather fun to Aurum, and he was sure that everyone could use a little bit of time off from stress. The Typhoon was obviously one of their allies, and although Aurum had only heard of the Halls in faint whispers, he was fairly sure they weren't hostile. The Pitt was... a stretch, but Aurum saw no reason to refuse the offer because of it. After all, they were under Goldie's control now, and hopefully no more chaos would be caused by them.

Once he was done reading, Aurum's attention was pulled up by Lemy, who enthusiastically repeated the message in simple terms for the others present. The angel glanced back at Kaz and Abathur for a moment before he spoke, figuring he should since he was the only one who really had any power here, "Hmm... well, a market festival sounds rather enjoyable to me, and I see no reason that we shouldn't go. Obviously I can be overridden if Leroy has any objections, but seeing as I'm the only one with the power to accept things here, then I accept your invitation, Lemy. I'll be sure to put this up in town and let everyone know. I'm sure it'll be very fun." The lion dipped his head to Lemy as he carefully picked the letter up, resting it between his wings to take back to town. He could see the others having some issues with the Pitt being in attendance, but... Aurum couldn't fault Elysium for trying to make peace, especially with Goldie in charge. Turning to Kaz and Abathur, Aurum said softly, "Both of you can obviously choose to be in attendance if you want to. I'll be going, but I doubt Tanglewood is going to force anyone... you'll just have to deal with Lemy." After all, he very much doubted having rocks banged together outside your house at 3 in the morning would be very pleasant.