[LOG] In the Dry River (Tandu & Coryth)

[Jikde Bonyac]

AIM Roleplay
Users : Zingling (Tandu) & Jikde Bonyac (Coryth)

 

[Jikde Bonyac]

Her paws were aching, her toes bleeding, her muscles straining, and her mouth dry, but these were the farthest thing from Coryth's mind. She brushed at the rain-starved claybank with a single-minded focus that erased the rest of the world. Careful, experienced claws picked out clumps and small rocks and flicked them away, huffing breaths blew away stray sand.

She had been working this barren riverbank for days. Bit by bit, she exposed the rock layer that hid underneath, searching for the answers to the questions in her head. Every unusual shape or distorted coloring got her adrenaline pumping, but so far it had been only small finds. The usual shell-stones and strange looking blobs. Nothing unusual.  

[Jikde Bonyac]

His body ached, wind blowing with a sudden burst of energy to what seemed like a barren place. Why did it want him to follow it there, to some dry deserted area where not even the snakes could live well? His mind was in a state of confusion, questioning whether to stop following it all together at the moment, but the burst came again, quicker this time, willing him to move faster.

Eyes darted about the wasteland, for that is what it reminded him of. Some dry, uninhabitable land that lacked even water to quench the thirst of any creature, it was like Eden had been tainted by hell. Of course, that was before he noticed the green streak of a lioness in the dried river bed, digging around the riverbed as though looking for something. Skidding to a stop, he took a moment to catch his breath, leaving the wind to its blowing to meet the strange female.

“What are you doing?” His voice was light, still slightly out of breath from the run, as he moved forward to meet her. The smell of dust and dirt filling his senses.  

[Jikde Bonyac]

At first the voice didn't register in Coryth's mind, so full as it was with thoughts of rocks. She toiled away at her chore unheedingly, painstakingly lifting the mud one piece at a time, and it was only when she paused to inspect her progress that she realized she had heard something. She rewound her memory to listen to it again, and was quite startled that it had been a voice. In this forgotten place?

Glancing up, she jerked in shock and nearly bolted then and there. Oh hell, a male! This never ended well for her. "I'm not invading your territory!" she yelped with a tone that spoke of repetition. "I'm not hunting on your land, I'm not threatening your authority, I don't carry any diseases, and I'm not going to take any of your rocks, despite what it looks like! I'll mosey on along just as peaceful as you like, so there's no need to go getting all aggressive on me!"

She backed up, looking him over. Ah hell, he was a big fellow. This wouldn't be good.  

[Jikde Bonyac]

As he watched her he began to believe her deaf, her body continuing to work at a painstaking pace. Mud flying in all different directions, some of it even hitting him. What was she doing there? Digging at the ground as if expecting to find something amazing from it, really, he did not get it at all.

Eyes stared at her in disbelief as she jerked, finally realizing he was there watching her. Her fur seemed to stand on end, and her position one that looked ready to bolt at any moment. He wasn’t really that scary looking was he? And then she started talking, almost like a recorded message to anyone she met. Raising a brow he couldn’t help but laugh suddenly before laying himself down in the dirt. Would she calm down if he made himself smaller and less menacing?

“I am not here to harm you. As a matter of fact I am rather intrigued as to what it is you are doing. This place is so barren and yet here you are digging at the dirt. Did you… lose something?” Offering her a small smile he crawled a little closer to the edge to have a look at her work. Strange. Very strange.

“I am Tandu by the way.”  

[Jikde Bonyac]

Tensed and ready to run at the first swing, Coryth startled and skipped a few steps away when the male lay down. She stared at him with a worried expression, not really sure what she was seeing. But the lack of anger in him was obvious, and after a long moment she slowly relaxed. As he continued to not attack, she cautiously wandered closer.

She hesitated when he crept towards the excavation, and felt a split sense of priorities tugging on her. On one paw was self preservation, but on the other was the protective instinct she always developed towards her more promising digs. She'd even fought over rocks in the past, and learned the hard way why not to do that.

"...Lose, no..." she offered. "I... hadn't found it, so I can't lose it just yet." She sighed ruefully. "I know this looks rather abnormal. And if I bothered to explain, you'd probably not believe me." Or call her a liar, like the last male. Boy that was a bad day. "Sometimes I don't even believe myself."

"...Coryth," she added.  

[Jikde Bonyac]

Watching her carefully he let her speak, learning her name but nothing how the reason as to why she had dug a rather large hole in the earth. It seemed she was looking for something, but there was no offer on what or why. Frowning at this fact Tandu’s tail twitched a couple times as he came up with an idea to help her feel less nervous around him… and then the wind blew lightly.

That was it. If anything was odd it was his constant chasing after the wind. If he offered her his story maybe she would offer hers. “Coryth, right?” He smiled down at her, the mud flecks on his face slowly starting to dry leaving clumps of matted fur on his face. “I will believe you. After all I am rather abnormal as well. I chase the wind hoping to one day find home.”

His eyes were distant for a moment as he watched her, a memory touching him. How he wished to hold the hand of that memory, but not now. Letting it flutter away he focused on her again. “…and I believe it might be a gift sent from my mother… can you believe that?”  

[Jikde Bonyac]

Watching his flicking tail skeptically, as if it might detach from its lion and charge on its own, Coryth mulled over his words. A wind chaser? She couldn't quite grasp his idea that the wind could lead somewhere, but she could understand where he was coming from. "I met someone once who thought there were giraffes in the sky," she admitted, "So I'd say following the wind would be a step down from there."

She studied him as he slipped into nostalgia, and she felt a brief spark of kinship with him. Sometimes it was as if the world was separated into two peoples, the ones who stayed in their borders and chased off interlopers, and the ones who hunted strange dreams to strange places. She knew firmly which group she belonged in.

Chuckling ruefully to herself, she gave him a lopsided grin. "Figures, the first time I really managed to get a hang of the 'running for your life' bit of my work, and it's someone I don't have to run from."  

[Jikde Bonyac]

Well that was certainly interested, though he did feel slightly offended for being lumped into the same category as this other strange minded creature. It wasn’t as though have his pride did the same thing he was doing now. Though, she didn’t exactly know that either…
“Thank you… I think?” His brows twitched as he thought about it for a little longer.

And then he laughed. Of course she wouldn’t have to run from him. Hell he wouldn’t ever chase someone, but he wouldn’t ever want to fight someone either. He enjoyed her and her odd little mannerisms. Picking himself up he decided to jump down and join her. After all, he wasn’t going to hurt her, and he hoped by now she would understand that.

“I am still interested though. “ Studying the hole he cocks his head. Rocks had been picked away, laying everywhere save a couple strange ones off to the side of her. What –were- those things.  

[Jikde Bonyac]

Coryth shrugged at his thanks. Anything connected to the sky was weird knowledge to her, so contradictary as it was to her devotion to the earth. She had struggled terribly to understand the little cub who had told her about giraffes and rhinos and other things in the clouds, but no matter how many times he had said "That one is a zebra!", she just couldn't see any animals up amongst the whiteness. Maybe you needed special eyes.

She still backed away when he came down into the excavation, but she got control of her nerves quickly. Here was another showing even a slight interest in her field of passion, she wouldn't pass up the opportunity.

"Okay, this is going to sound very odd, but bear with me," she began, and took a breathe to prepare herself. "So, if you dig into the earth you can sometimes find stones that look like living things, and I call these living-stones. As you see from the ones over in this pile, some of them look like shells, like you might see on a snail. Take a look."  

[Jikde Bonyac]

Watching her as he backed away he kept his ground, deciding it best not to move closer for a little bit longer. She could invite him, but he would not invite himself.

She spoke quickly but passionately. She truly did believe in these living stones that she was digging for, though he was rather intrigued by the idea, why did only she know about them? Wouldn’t anyone else have noticed living stones before she? Twitching his tail lightly he moved closer at her invite, interested in this shell like stone she was talking about. Did it move? Or was it just a stone? Padding closer he stared at the pile she had made.

Lo and behold there actually were shells in those stones. The swirling pattern inviting him to touch it. What had made those stones look like that? Was there really a creature living inside of the rock or something? He poked it lightly, smiling at its groves. “This is amazing Coryth.”  

[Jikde Bonyac]

She bounced on her feet at his comment, pleased that he understood. "Yes it is!" she agreed, and grinned as he touched one of the rocks. "It's the most amazing thing in the world, I don't know why I seem to be the only one who really notices. Maybe because it's hard to find them. I think I was lucky enough to be born in an area with a lot of them." In the dry rocky country of her homeland, it had been an odd month that she hadn't stumbled across a funny looking rock. But such wasn't the case in most places.

"But it gets even more interesting, too." She looked him over weighingly, wondering if he would follow her thinking. She tended to lose people at this part. "It's not just shells. I've found plants and other things. Ferns with every detail, right down to the tiniest leaves, only they were really only shadows in the rock. And bones too, even bones of an entire creature."  

[Jikde Bonyac]

Listening to her talk about the stones that she loved he couldn’t help but grin. This was her passion, her life. He could tell just by listening to her and it was interested. A whole new world was opened up to him by her, one of rocks and stone creatures imprinted in the earth.

“You certainly are lucky. I never would have even notice had you not shown me these wonderful creatures.” Rolling a rock close to look at it he grinned, thinking of the ocean. Did ocean creatures live in the land as well? He wanted to take one with him to show everyone else. “May I have one? To show others?”

Perking at the next bit of info Tandu listened intently, and the more she spoke the more amazed he was. Was there really such things out there, in the ground? Where did they normally live, how did they live and grow…. Did other things eat them? And what about the bones. “That…. That is amazing!!” he exclaimed, tail flicking back and forth excitedly. He wanted to see these stones and bones. See what they were and what they looked like.

“Will you show them to me?”  

[Jikde Bonyac]

Ducking her head shyly, Coryth pawed at the ground from the praise. When he asked for a rock, she gleefully trotted over to the pile and picked out her favorite of the day's finds, a particularly good specimen of what she called 'bigger snail-stones', with fine detail of the spiral pattern in a dark black. She lay it gently at his feet and nudged it towards him with her nose.

"This is a really good one. I've been meaning to get myself a neck satchel to carry some findings around with me, so I don't sound quite so insane, but I haven't met a good crafter just yet. But you can have that one. Actually, you can have all of them if you want. They're on your land, after all. I mean, is this your land?" She looked out at the horizon of the dusty, dry terrain. "It's very pretty. Good digging."

At his request for her to show him some, her face fell a little. "Well, I could, but..." she glanced at the horizon in the east with a glare. "I found some bone-stones in a gulley a while back, but that was at least a week ago. And it was in a pride's territory, and I got chased off." She smiled ruefully. "I mean, I could show you them, but... well, it's a long trip, and we'd have to sneak in to see them."  

[Jikde Bonyac]

Watching her paw at the ground Tandu couldn’t help but find her cute. She was absolutely engulfed in her studies of these creatures, her passion pouring into him like a funnel. As she trotted off toward the pile of stones, plucking the one she seemed most satisfied with he couldn’t help but grin at his luck. Someone else that he would want to see again, after the day was over.

“I know of someone who could possibly make you one, or trade me one. Heck if you took one of these to him he would trade you two for one.” Smirking he couldn’t help but think back to his friend Tuvic. He collected all sorts of strange but useful items. He came in handy many a times because of that. Smiling at the pouch he wore on his wrist he decided to show it to her.

“A model he gave to me. I carry a few useful things in it.” Pulling it open he dumped the contents onto the ground, shuffling them about before finally finding his gift for her. “Here, a leather cord. Make yourself a bracelet with it and one of your stones.”

Registering the question next Tandu shook his head. “Not my land, no man’s land. Anyone may take what they wish so long as it isn’t with greed.” Eyes glided across the lands, it was beautiful for sure… but not his. No, the wind would find his lands.

Then her face fell. Had he said something upsetting to her? Moving a little closer her offered a smile and waited for her to speak. Readying himself to be of service if she needed. “I could help you. We could move them somewhere safe, how about that? Then you can study them and tell me all about them?”'