[PRP] Journey Home (Stalker + King)

[Toshihiko Two]

Quote:

You are able mingle for a while, enjoying the sights of the plains, but the crowd has thinned immensely - where has everyone gone? Eventually you are overcome by the need to sleep.

No one dreams in the shadow of the obelisk on the plains. Their sleep is so deep and so peaceful that nothing can wake them until they are ready.

If you have previously set foot in the swamp, when you wake, you Ache - physically and mentally, and Lull in Sunlight is not there to help you. All you can think about is returning home, to the swamp. Your travel is tired, painful, and slow, but you will not die--though that does not seem a mercy at the time. You've never traveled this far while feeling the effects of the Ache. It takes several days before you reach the swamp again, and when you do, you learn that the rest of the expedition has already arrived. If you attempt to travel out of the swamp again, you are again beset by the Ache, as usual.

If you are a kiokote who has never left the plains, you wake up and feel fine - but it looks like the expedition from the swamp has just vanished overnight. The obelisk is dormant again and all you are left with is a mystery.

 

[Toshihiko Two]

Stalker woke to a mostly empty field.

"S-sire," he said weakly, and suddenly more awake as panic shot through him, "Sire!" But felt the panic edging down seeing King still behind him.

"I'm...I must have fallen asleep." he said, gently touching a hoof to King's shoulder. There was another dread that was creeping through him, however. Along with a deep, horrible, and painful ache.

"The Legendaries are gone," he reported.  

[Baneful]

King stirred. He hadn't dreamed, because you didn't dream under the shadow of the obelisk. He felt awful, absolutely awful, worse than the times as a buck that he'd decided that pretty mushrooms were probably as tasty as they looked. He could think of nothing but the swamp and he knew that he was under the sway of the Ache.

It was something he resented and hated, a pull which was beyond choice and reason, pulling him back to the close, dense forest and wet. Far from the deserts, far from the plains, pulled like a string at the whim of the motherfather.

He let out a long, drawn groan.

"Oh Stalker, my Stalker." he said and rose, twisting his tail around Stalker's and leaning his slender frame against him, head seeming laden by his antlers, as if the energy was drawn from his body. "They are, and we must go too, without them."

 

[Toshihiko Two]

"Y...yes, Sire," he said, and the dread worsened. He did not doubt King. He also did not know anyone who had survived venturing this far, for this long. The Unseelie were more familiar with grim certainties than their Tribal counterparts.

Stalker shouldered King's weight.

"My King," he returned, very softly.

He was proportionally on the larger side, as a kimeti, but King was stronger and larger than a typical acha.

"She...forgive me sire, but she should have sent one of her damnable offspring to these infernal plains. We'll...you'll...well, I won't dictate what you should do, sire, but I would be very tempted to say what was on my mind when we got back."

They must get back. He knew that more than anything. He longed to back. And besides being back, he'd like nothing better than to give Fair an earful, although he doubted she'd pay it any mind whatsoever.

"Not that I would. But I would be -eurgh, tempted." He mustn't be sick. He felt watched, too, but he wasn't sure if the unsettling feeling was a result of the ache or not.
 

[Baneful]

"It is fine." he said heavily. "She sent me because she knew I could find my way, and I can. We will make it back to the tribe. I have wandered farther than this, for longer." He'd been carrying an ache of his own in those days but not one beholden to the swamp.

He lifted his head, defiant and proud in the face of the wracking mental pain that assaulted his bones. "The only thing I will say to her when I return is that we did not find what we were looking for and that there will be other times." And he stepped forward, surefooted as he was able to be, in the direction of the swamp because it was impossible not to know where the swamp was when one felt like this.

"We will be fine." Because he refused to lose Stalker the way he had lost the others on his long wanderings to the north.

 

[Toshihiko Two]

This was just the beginning, Stalker reminded himself. They had the entire length of the journey ahead. Every gruelling step was a droplet into a lake.

Their lake, oh how he suddenly longed to see it.

"I'll be at your side, Sire," he said, meaning it more than he had ever meant anything. And this was how it should be...and should have been the first time. Instead of staying behind to ensure the tribe was intact, although he knew the Tribe was of paramount importance to both of them, it was only...

Well for Stalker, it was all for Him.

Even the Ache couldn't compete with that.  

[Baneful]

"Good." he said, and though it wasn't a very affectionate statement on its own it was with all the softness of a kin who was naturally deeply lonely and to whom the idea of having Stalker at his side was a bolstering force that kept him walking.

"I prefer it this way." he said, and every step was horrendous, alleviated only by the fact that they were going back and that each hoof fall alleviated just a fraction of the wracking distraction.

"With you." And he looped his tail up to gently stroke under the kimeti's chin.