They wanted water sounds, and there's a river. The day also decided to dump a lot of rain on them for an absolute embarrassment of riches.

It might keep the smell of all the dead animals down too.

And hide them from view.

Maybe clear out some of the bacterial mats.

Mumei peered through the sheeting rain at the road, when she could see it between the wipers.

"OK...lots of water. It's cooler. And this should keep the spore clouds in check, right? Perfect weather." She flashes a grin at her companion quickly before returning her focus to the drive.

"The almanac is in the storage compartment. Should see if there's any particular warning signs to watch out for before things decide to eat us in the rain."

The usually impassive Shion is, not surprisingly, not particularly bothered by the rain - in fact she grins at Mumei's comment. "Perfect weather indeed!", she said, chuckling. Considering the place they were in, she might be right in fact. The smell was... Maybe more bearable in the rain?

At any rate, she was kinda excited about recording the watery sounds and trying to rebuild some of Mumei's experience with water spirits.

"Good idea... I'll take a look", she says. "Hopefully we can keep everything dry as we do. The computer and recording equipment was also in the storage compartment, and it would be wise to keep it there, or somewhere safe, while working.

"So... Let me see", she says, opening the book and heading to the part reserved for creatures found along the river area, keeping it far from the rain.

"Check if any of those nasty snappers actually live in the river, or just the deep waters" She pauses, before opening the door, tugging a borrowed umbrella from the back seat. "I imagine you can't record with an umbrella up, or you'll just get a lot of 'rain hitting the umbrella' sound, right?"

"On it!", she says, flipping through the book searching for the right critters. The book seemed to mention more nasty fungi and bacteria for the river proper, but better safe than sorry.

"Oh", she then says. "Yeah... I mean, those would be sounds of water too, I guess, but we're aiming for more variability, right?", she says, chuckling again. "I wonder.... I could probably leave the equipment on my bag to protect it from the rain, I guess. Might muffle the sound a bit, but if I can keep only the microphone it should be ok."

She takes her eyes off the book for a moment and takes a look around. "So... where to get a good recording? I wonder... we could first just go for a "general sound of the area", then... maybe closer to the river?"

"Yeah, I was thinking it might be moving fast enough for some river sounds. What I'd read made it sound kind of sluggish otherwise." She shrugs out of her jacket. The synth-leather wouldn't dry well if she soaked it and most of her belongings that would be destroyed by rain were in its pockets now. "Well...time to get wet then." She hops out, not bothering to open the umbrella. It's to cover equipment as needed, and her hair is almost instantly plastered to her head.

Splashing around to the other side, she holds the umbrella up but not open. "Want a bit of cover?"

"More for the equipment than myself", she says, similarly taking off her jacket and keeping only trousers and a T-shirt... That's instantly soaked.

She carefully gets the equipment necessary for recording and tries to cover it with the umbrella.

"Right... I think this will do. Now, I hope we do get some more.... 'rivery' sounds. The river does sound like it more drags around than runs... But well, maybe that would represent the local spirits properly?..."

Mumei nods. "It certainly represents these better. I can't imagine the water kami here are actually very happy though with this stagnation and rot. When I am speaking with them and they sound like this river, they are usually in need of some help to be comfortable."

She coughs slightly. "Even with the rain, I'm not sure the air here is great, so...be sure to say something if you feel odd or faint or something I'll, try to talk to them in a bit and see if they're feeling alright."

_____
fluffy commune anyway, since no dice now.

"Oh", she says, looking at the water, the soil and the fungal flora around. "I... didn't consider that. I mean, this is the natural state here, so I figured the spirits would be... ok with it, in a way? But I guess... well maybe there could be something that could be done to help them?"

She focuses on the river again, slowly walking towards it. "Well, yeah, the almanac did mention some of the dangers the bacteria here posed. Do tell me if you feel something odd too!" That said, she keeps walking slowly towards the river, stopping from time to time and placing her hands on her ear to focus on the sounds.

Mumei nods. "I'm not sure if this is its natural state though. The planet's been changed a lot to let people settle here. This could be a cost to that," She tries to speak around the points when Shion was obviously focusing on the ambient this stagnation. Might be interesting to research what it was like before colonization really got going. And on other worlds, stagnant places develop naturally too, but the water kami are not usually happy about that."

She focuses her own senses for a bit, picking out the steady fall of rain on leaves, umbrella, open water, and sodden ground. "They do seem quite pleased with all rain, anyway."

Shion seems thoughtful about what Mumei was saying as she got closer to the river and settled the equipment to try and make some tests recording the rain and the river.

"I suppose you're right... do you think they'll have registers of that? It should be interesting to make the comparison. Maybe we can find some place that's more like... the natural state of things here? But it's funny... so the kami don't particularly care even for natural places with stagnant water then? I wonder... is that like some sort of elemental imbalance, then?"

She starts testing the microphone, and tries to get some samples of the rain patting on the fungal vegetation around.

"Exactly. Elemental imbalances can definitely happen in nature, and they're often not good places. Think of all the fire when a volcano erupts. It's natural, but everything around suffers, and the air and water are very unhappy until things can find a balance once more." She pauses by a palm-sized mushroom with a cuplike cap that has filled with water and now overflows.

"How would this one be? I'm thinking there's the sound of the water hitting that little pool on top, and then the bit dripping down that might sound interesting together. Are you able to isolate that kind of thing from all the general raindrop patter?"

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Also, apologies on some of the typos in that last post...I honestly don't know what I meant by 'ambient this stagnation'. This is why staying conscious for 'one more post' is not always wise.

"Un", she nods. "I guess that makes sense. Whenever one element is too powerful, others might suffer I guess." She looks at the river once again, sniffing and cringing a bit. "Um. I'm not sure which elements would be too powerful here, though? Water itself, maybe, but then you said it's not happy. Earth? Air surely mustn't be too happy here..."

She then turns her attention to the interesting umbrella fungus Mumei mentioned. "Oh, this would be really nice! I'm not sure I can isolate it perfectly, but it's definitely worth a try! I guess even if some of the rain still comes through, getting some more of it in the foreground would be great already. Might even try to cancel some of the rain later with some editing I think"

She carefully gets closer to the mushroom and kneels, fumbling on her things for a particular small microphone, then starts to try and set it on a support while covering it with the umbrella. "Let's see if this little one does the trick...", she says, flipping her computer open, hitting a button and opening a screen showing the recorded waves to see what she's getting.

Mumei watches carefully, interested in the process, completely different from any of the work she does. She remains quiet a while to allow the recording without voices cutting in "You can do a lot with that to screen things out then? I continue to be amazed at what the spirit engineers and programmers can do these days."

"And it's pretty idea space to commune, if you wanted to see if that affects your readings."

_______
Fluffy non-rolling commune, at last.

When the recording is done, she looks at Mumei with a slight smile as she starts looking at the results on the screen in a matter-of-factly way.

"Oh, we can do a number of things... I mean, filters go a long way to emphasise or deemphasise certain frequencies - eh, that'd be higher or lower... 'notes', or 'tones'. Say, we could make your voice sound shriller or deeper. Using other sounds we could try and nullify that part of a sound clip too, to remove background noise and such... we could add reverb, or change the reverb a bit, to change what would be the "environment" in which the sound is played... there's a bit. I'm no expert yet, but it's fun and nice to get different effects."

She puts on a headphone for a moment. "Sounds good enough I guess. Will have to cut out some more of the rain, but the 'moist' sound of the droplets is there! Wanna hear?", she says, extending the headphone to her.

"It's funny though... I guess we sometimes don't think too much about the fact it's spirits we're communicating with while doing this", she says, looking at the computer with amazement in her eyes. "It's something we should be more respectful of, ne?".

Setting the mic in place again, she then says "And... yeah, that would be really interesting. Do you think we'd get anything different?". She seems quite excited about the possibility.