His paws were the night. Silence and darkness in the lack of light, touching a ground with lingering warmth, feeling it slowly cool as the blackness overtook the world. An ant crawled over his toes, its world so vast and yet the same one as his. What was life but the toil of ants upon the world? Were there jungles in the sky where giants prowled between the stars?
Lost as always in his daydreaming thoughts, green Nimhglas listened to the breath of the grassland as it slept and woke and dreamed halfway between the two. The manic spirit rose in him, as it sometimes did. He felt his fur glimmer with the vibrancy of the universe, as if he could fall between its cracks and lurk in the hidden places beyond sight. Pleased with his thoughts, he strolled silently, investigating the world as according to his skewed eyes.
Muttering to himself, Eiszapfen paced along with little attention paid to his surroundings. His paws were bleeding and caked in dirt from nonstop travel for months, but they bothered him less than the idea of staying still when there was so much to do, so much to plan and so little time to do it. Worse, he didn't have the slightest idea of how to go about it. Where does one get a fern of eternal temperance, anyway?
Shaking his head, he snapped a branch underfoot with a loud crack without hearing it, too busy with his own voice. "...No knowing when it will hit, but have to be there on time, have to or else everything will go wrong. Stupid zebras never want to breed anyway, what am I supposed to do, get a monkey to tie them together? Monkeys won't listen to me anyway, not since that one knocked me out of the tree. S'madness, I tell you."
Laying down to bask in the sounds around him, Nimhglas soon heard a voice low and rumbling, as if chanting some incantation. Fascinated, he admired the harmonics of the voice for some time, before it occurred to him that it was coming in his direction. Exactly towards him, in fact. Was it a pilgrimage by a seer? What did the fullblooded want with a half-there such as himself? Mayhaps secrets would be shared this night.
He lay still and willed the world still, waiting for the meeting of two. The shape came closer, and became a lion, large and pale in the dimness. A ghost, then? Not fullblood, but noblood? That was a different matter entirely. One had to be firm with ghosts. Barking suddenly, he leapt out of the creature's path and circled in the tallgrass. "You come too close, noblood! This is not the way to your hunting ground!" he called.
It usually took a great deal to snap him out of his plans, but a voice shouting directly in front of him, not a few feet away, brought him fully awake immediately. Startled, he jumped away and backed up warily. But when he stared at the place where the sound had come from, there wasn't anything there. What? Was he hearing things again? Was it a sign or just the addled delusions of a tired brain?
Replaying the words in his mind, he groaned. Nonsensical gibberish, that sounded like a real sign then. Why did the fates toy with him so? But no, he had to face the truth. Pulling himself up stiffly, he addressed the empty air. "Where then, is my hunting ground?" he asked, measuring out his words carefully. You never knew with the fates, you had to speak clearly if you wanted a halfway understandable answer.
Lurking in the darkness, Nimhglas was glad of his coloring. So like the plants, mottled and striped, he could blend in until he faded from sight. It seemed even ghosts had difficulty tracking him, and he felt a hint of glee at that. Perhaps his halfway nature confused them? Hopefully he could lose the ghost again, then, if he needed to. It was never good to let a ghost track you, they could latch onto you for years.
"Your hunting ground is gone to the afterthoughts!" he replied. "You hunt alone in a dry place. Your path is the place between the horizon, but no longer here. Retrace your footsteps, pale one." He kept moving as he spoke, hoping to remain undetected. He'd never fought a ghost before, and didn't know if they could attack the blooded, but he was surely at risk more than fullbloods. It paid to be cautious in times of mysticism.
Eiszapfen could almost make out a movement in the night, shifting around him, but he couldn't make out an exact shape. Everytime he thought he'd marked it for a creature, the shape and patterns would change, and now he wasn't certain what he was looking at. He kept angling to face the voice as it moved though. Sign from the fates or not, he wasn't exposing his back to it.
The nonsensical words confirmed it for him. Yep, it was a sign. They never did make sense. He tried to puzzle out a meaning. Something about the horizon, and retracing his steps. He was going in the wrong direction, then? Or did it mean metaphorically? Retrace his life, back to his homeland maybe? "What about the zebras and the wildebeest?" he asked in frustration. "They just won't listen to me, no matter what I do. They refuse to interbreed!"
Keeping on the move, Nimhglas mused over the unusual comments. Zebras? Interbreeding? What a strange concept. He had heard of lions and other cats interbreeding, perhaps it could be done further. He tried to imagine a cross between the two prey species, and chuckled at the image. Considering how ornery both types of herd animals could be, he wouldn't want to see what sort of hostile, aggressive foals they might have.
"Whatfor you need horns and stripes together, pale one?" He asked. "In the mixing of two is there more wisdom than in one?" But he shook himself. What was he doing, playing in to the concerns of the unliving? "Do not concern yourself with the wholetruths, they are not meant for you. You must be as mist. Embrace the ethereal, and reach for the shadowed places. There lies your continuance."
Wonderful, it made just as much sense as normal. Eiszapfen rubbed his forehead with a paw, trying to massage some understanding into his head. Wholetruths. What were wholetruths? Be as mist. Embrace the ethereal. Shadowed places. He didn't know the meaning, but he filed it all down carefully in his memory. Surely it was important, and would make more sense later on. He just had to be patient.
"The great sign told me, when I was enlightened," he explained, trying to sound formal, "To embark on the steps that would culminate in the Apocalypse. Along the way I must create the interbreeding of zebras and wildebeest. Only, I don't know why." He cocked his head sideways. "Do I need to be as mist to get them to breed, is that it? I need to be sneaky about it?" That made a little sense.
This was one stubborn ghost, it was fixed to some sort of goal, and would not leave the earth until it had been fulfilled. That was the nature with many ghosts, but it seemed that the stronger the goal, the stronger the ghost, and this one was well muscled. And now it had seemed to fix on him. This wouldn't do; he hated being haunted. It had been fun the first time, but it paled with experience, especially when all the haunting kept you from sleep.
He tried to dissuade it once more, and assumed an aggressive stance, and growled menacingly. It wasn't in his nature to be violent, even when necessary, but he could bluff well enough. "Sneak as you like, but sneak not here! Retrace your steps, pale one! Fear this one of the wetlands, where the hanging trees grow, tarry not or your empty bones will be emptier!" That was about as clear cut a threat as he could form.
Eiszapfen became nervous at the stance of the hyena, and wondered if it might attack him. It wouldn't, right? It was a sign afterall, signs didn't attack. Maybe it was just trying to press the importance with physical demonstration. Yeah, that was it, it was acting vicious to get across its message. That made much more sense. He tried to convince his body of that, but the hackles were still standing on end despite him.
"Fear the wetlands where the hanging trees grow, got it." He nodded firmly. That part was clear enough. He'd avoid wetlands. He didn't know what tarry meant, he'd have to ask someone. And it had repeated tracing his steps, so that surely meant turn around. And it had confirmed that he needed to sneak. "What about the high mountains? The snow, I'm supposed to turn it blue, or at least I think I am. How do I do that?"
There was just no spooking this spook! Blue snow? That didn't mean anything even to him, and he had to admit he was known for nonsense. He just wasn't going to get through to this ghost, its mind was too far gone. If he wanted to get out of being haunted, he was going to have to think fast. Violence was out of the question, it would be ineffective. He'd have to employ cunning, then, and luck.
He broke into a spontaneous dance, flailing and cackling, and crooning disjointedly in his favorite off-key manner. He leapt about the ghost, gnashing his teeth ferociously, putting on as dramatic a display as he'd ever attempted. Then he paused, made as if to say something, and instead turned and fled with all the strength in his uneven legs. If you couldn't talk to a ghost, maybe you could confuse it!
Startled and fighting down his instinct to respond defensively, Eiszapfen watched the spectacle unsure of what was occuring. A dancing green hyena that nearly blended in with the terrain made for an unusual sight, make no mistake. Was this another message, or was the sign just posing for effect? They did that sometimes, afterall. Paused the message to put on a pretty lightshow merely for flair.
But when the hyena bolted, he yelped with indignation, feeling cheated. Damned capricious signs! Coming and going so fleetingly. Why did they mess with his head, why not someone else's, someone who was wise enough to figure out the clues! "Oh no you don't, get back here!" he called, and took to the chase. He'd drag as many answers out of the spirit as he could before it vanished, so help him!
Weaving his way through the underbrush in a sporadic fashion, Nimhglas employed his escape skills to throw off his tail. Serves him right for conversing with the dead, he thought bitterly. He'd learned that the hard way as a child, and yet the lesson hadn't stuck, had it? Leaping over branches and scrambling up a rock, he tried to put as many obstacles in the other's path as possible, and made sure to kick some of those branches in hopes they'd smack that ghost in the face. Assuming an incorporeal spirit could be hit with branches.
He spotted a glimpse of light off to one side, and instincts reared up and he made for it. As he'd thought, there was a marshy spring wide enough to drown in, glinting in the moonlight. He wriggled down into it with years of practice, leaving barely a ripple and no sounds of splashing. He paddled his way for a reed thicket and tried to blend in, praying there weren't crocodiles about.
Cursing, Eiszapfen batted away the branches that came flying at him, and heaved his way up over the boulder, though it took some doing. "Darnit, come back here and help me," he grumbled as his claws scratched against stone. "I can't save the world on my own, darn it." He toppled down the other side and searched for his target, spotted a movement off to the side, and pursued it.
He came up short against the river. The movement he'd seen was the water shimmering. As for his strange hyena sign, it was gone without a trace. He listened for a while, but there was only silence and the chirp of insects. Just like a sign to disappear into thin air, he grumbled. But remembering the warning about wetlands, he backed away warily, and reluctantly left to follow his own footsteps back to the east, hoping they led somewhere.
Nimhglas was one with the plants, serene and motionless, the squish of mud beneath his feet a comfort. Watching the ghost leave, he breathed easy again. He wanted to rejoice at his success, but he kept his emotions carefully neutral and empty, in case the ghost could hear thoughts and might return. He thought like reeds for a long while after the pale lion had left, and stillness fell over the surroundings.
Satisfied, he levered himself up out onto the bank and shook out his dripping fur, and scraped off the mud against the grass. He dipped his paws back into the water to let more mud wash away, and waggled his toes playfully. Satisfied, he stretched luxuriously, and wandered off in the opposite direction from his haunter. That was quite enough excitement for one night, he felt. Time to settle in and ponder higher meanings of life.
