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 Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:27 pm
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Breathing hurt. Moving hurt.
Everything ******** hurt, actually and there was no going around that fact. Ever since the king of the Dhati had fought against him, Jani had known it'd only be a matter of time. Had Sakata not arrived there on time, he wouldn't even have been able to be present to watch the punishment the false pride had received, but now... now he knew it was time. Any moment now; his breathing was heavy, and his chest almost refused to heave as he lay on the ground.
He'd gone through the trouble of leaving his cave and the Minder that had been taking care of him in order to seek out the solace of nightly solitude. The darkness of the night had provided cover and he'd been able to slink away under it's mantle, but after merely a small distance (so small that the lion felt privately ashamed), he'd collapsed on the ground, utterly unable to move a step further.
The spot fate had apparently chosen was secluded enough; guarded by a rock formation on one side, and some shrubs on the other, but still open enough that Jani was able to redirect his gaze up to the sky to watch the stars up above. Then, after a particularly harsh breath, he closed his eyes, feeling the life slowly drain out of him. He'd done well, and he had no regrets, or at least... that's what he told himself.
Everything went just as he'd imagined it'd go.
At least, that is, until Jani opened his eyes, the scenery utterly unchanged, and he suddenly realized that being dead was a lot like being alive. Minus the pain that had been ripping through his very core only moments ago; that was gone. Frowning, he turned to look down at his paws, now a starch white, with strange blue stripes crossing over his wrists. These were not the paws and markings he recalled from only moments ago, so the lion stiffened, startled and turning to try look at himself, almost managing to stumble over the large wooden staff he'd been unconsciously gripping , not to mention the pair of large wings he now sported on his back.
Upon realizing he had wings, and a really strange tail, not to mention the fact he'd changed color completely, Jani'duu contemplated the only logical things to have; a mental break down, or a panic attack. |
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Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 4:10 pm
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It was really annoying to be chained down to one spot, but Na'ira had to admit that watching a war had at least been entertaining if nothing else. She couldn't leave because of two gods whining incessantly in her ears and her duties to them and these mortals that she just couldn't escape. It had always been rare that she had to deal with mortals but it seemed to be growing more and more common these days..
"It'll be over in just a few moments," Na'ira was saying to someone off to the side, her flaming red fur bright in the darkness of the night. Before her the dark mortal Jani was staggering from deadly wounds, collapsing into the earth. She just watched in silence, waiting for that last breath when everything would change..
And then it happened, that familiar feeling of the world turning upside down and lives tearing apart to mend themselves in different ways. In the span of time it took for it all to happen, while she was the silent guardian of things unseen, she had stepped away from where she'd only just been speaking to some unseen figure in the darkness. A figure that was now absent, lost. Instead, she took a seat near Jani, the ghostly figure of a newborn god. She was sitting there as his fiery eyes opened to inspect himself for the first time, his guardian in the first moments of his unexpected rebirth.
"Will you calm down, you silly git?" She sighed aloud, spread her wings out in a fan and trying to draw his attention. "Take a deep breath, look at me, looook aaaat meee." She drew her words out and stared at him with slightly widened eyes, trying to force his attention onto her. Why did they always have to bloody react this way? |
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Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 4:25 pm
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Even before Na'ira spoke, (and way before he'd even noticed she was even there to begin with), Jani had swiftly decided that panic attack seemed like the plausible answer to such an ordeal. Thus so, he when her voice ordered him to calm down, he startled, and this time did, in fact, manage to trip over the staff he still had no idea why he was carrying. The stumble was anything but gracious, and he looked up at her, utterly bewildered, "Holy s**t! What the hell?!" he snapped as he tried to make heads or tails of the situation.
His mind then reminded him that she had ordered him to calm down, and that as a greater spirit that she was... it was probably a good idea to listen to her. Of course, then the other more logical side of him chose that moment to point out between some sort of insane, maniacal laughter... that he too was a higher spirit and thus did not need to listen to anything she said.
So there.
That meant he could have his panic attack in relative peace. It looked like he was going to ignore her order, his mouth hanging open as he began to hyperventilate, having still not pushed himself off the ground when he'd stumbled. Her slow, dragged out words seemed to have some sort of positive effect on him though, because his wide eyes snapped over to her as she spread her wings, and he found himself subconsciously taking slow, deep breaths. The hyperventilating stopped, and after a few moments, Jani finally dared to pick himself off the ground, taking care not to stumble over the stupid staff this time.
"Okay," he said, though there was a panicked edge to his voice, "Okay. Okay, what the hell is this?" he pointed over at the staff, and then at the wings and then wildly at himself before he had to stop and resume taking slow deep breaths less he revert back into the panic attack, "What's this?! ALL of this! What in the spirits' name?!" he had no idea why he thought she knew - maybe he didn't and he was just asking her because she happened to be there.
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Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 4:59 pm
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Fortunately, this was kind of Na'ira's whole reason for being here. At least she hadn't forgotten and wandered away in the middle of his panic attack like she did some times.
"That," she pointed at the staff with a paw as if she were about to impart something wise, "I have no idea. Some sticky thingy your dad had right before he poofed." She smiled as if that were the most helpful thing in the world and then glanced at the rest of the stuff he had gestured to, taking it all in. "As for the rest of it, well - those are wings, that's a tail, that bit there looks like fur.. anything else?" Oh, yes, she thought she was being terribly helpful.
Then he had to go and say that terribly irritating word. She just sighed and fluffed out her plume behind her a bit, narrowing her eyes on him. By now he probably expected her to say something else with her smart a** attitude (though really she was just telling him exactly what he asked). Instead, what came out of her mouth was, "we are not spirits, we are gods." Then, she quite suddenly stopped her tail fluffing, furrowed her brows, and sat in silence for a moment as if she were considering what she had just said. "Okay, well, you're the god of spirits," and before she had even finished that line she was beginning to giggle at the irony of it all.
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Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 5:39 pm
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He was pressing the paw he was using to hold up the staff, against his chest, mostly in an attempt to stop the heaving. He was also trying very, very hard not to devolve into another panic attack, and it was proving rather difficult, given the answers he was getting from her, "Yes, I know it's a stick! And I know those are wings! I want to know why I have wings! And why I have this stick and why I changed color! And most importantly; why am I not dead?!"
The more religious side of him was wincing at the way he was talking to the higher spirit, but his mind was currently running around his skull like some sort of beheaded chicken, and Jani just couldn't bring himself to care abut manners. He was probably very fortunate Na'ira was laid back, "What did you do to me?!" because obviously... she was the one responsible for this,right? Right? After all she waitaminute--
The lion backtracked to the start of the conversation, realizing that in his panic he had almost missed a rather crucial bit of information, "My father? Wait, what? My-- WHAT?" he was most definitively, the king of eloquence that night. In his defense, he was pretty sure he'd been told as a child that his father had been a passing higher spirit (okay, fine) god, "What do yo mean he poofed? Where is he?" he looked around comically, wildly, as if expecting the other god to be there somewhere, but found nothing but empty savannah staring right back at him.
He wasn't even allowed to recover from that blow when she pointed out he was the God of... "Spirits?" there was some strangely disbelieving tone to his voice, which must have sounded ironic to the goddess, "I'm.... what?" a pause, and he soon enough decided this wasn't the question he should be asking, "Why?" another pause, "Stop laughing! It's ******** rude!"
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Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 10:00 pm
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Na'ira raised her brows at him as he started shouting and cursing and just generally rushing a hurricane of questions at her that she couldn't possibly understand all at once, let alone answer. So with a little sigh, she slowly pushed herself up to her feet and walked forward so she could stand right in his little personal bubble. She didn't stop just inside his personal space though, oh no, she walked right up to him and pressed her nose firmly against his own (which was a little comical given that she was shorter than him) so she could stare him directly in the eye.
"I told you to calm down, bud." She unfurled one wing and poked it accusingly at his chest, the fiery-toned feathers a stark contrast against the ghostly pale tone of his fur. Then, just as boldly as she had moved into his space, she pulled her nose away and withdrew her wing. She was still standing what he would probably call uncomfortably close, but at least she wasn't touching him anymore.
"I'm going to tell you a little story about my job, and if you interrupt me even one little time I'm just going to leave and let you figure this all out by yourself." She leaned in a little and narrowed her eyes on him pointedly, even adding a quick jab of her wing for emphasis. Once she was sure that he'd be a god little boy and sit still for her story, she relaxed and took a seat in front of him, then replaced that serious look with a smile - she did love story time.
"I was called out to this wonderful little pride a couple of months ago by a dear old friend of mine because his life was falling to pieces and he wanted to give up his domain to a lovely young lioness. Then, while I was here waiting miserably for him to choose the perfect moment, your little war broke out." Her tone changed from one of boredom to something denoting interest - the war seemed to be a highlight for her during her stay in the pride. "I like wars, they're interesting, and often rather silly. In any case, you," she pointed at him just in case he forgot who he was, she knew some people did after all, "went and got yourself injured. Fortunately, you didn't die right away so your father could come riding in to rescue you."
She paused here to glance down at her tail plume, fluffing it out and spreading the feathers a few times. She seemed distracted for a few moments, almost as if she'd forgotten entirely that she was telling a story, until she looked up and saw him sitting there. A moment of confusion passed over her features, then clarity dawned and she apparently remembered what she was doing.
"Right, so your father decided he didn't want to be among the great and powerful anymore and passed his domain onto you so that you wouldn't die and have your soul be lost forever. Mkodi isn't very fond of letting mortals come back from the playground beyond the gate, you know." She added a sage nod here for good measure. "In any case, I have no idea where your father is now. Once he's a mortal he's really not my concern - I just guard the process, I don't make it happen. He probably appeared around here somewhere in all his mortal glory." Then again, 'somewhere' to a god probably covered a much greater distance than it did to a mortal.
After she'd said her piece she just stared at him, brows raised a little and her face unchanging. She'd answered his questions, in a round-about way, and she was feeling pretty darn helpful right about now - even if she really hadn't told him much of why or how.
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Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 6:24 am
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He blinked almost stupidly as she breached his personal bubble, and had he not been so utterly surprised by the invasion, Jani might have stumbled back. As it was though, he barely managed a gasp before her nose was pressed firmly against his, her wing unfurling to poke against his chest, causing him to grimace slightly. Amusingly enough, all he could think of was if this right here... was normal God behavior, or if this one girl was unique. Something about the whole situation seemed utterly surreal (well, something beside the fact he should have been dead and yet he wasn't).
At her order though (as rude as it had been), he clamped his mouth shut with an awkward sound of teeth clashing together. If anything, invading his space had once more stopped the panic attack and had managed to focus his entire attention on her red hued body, which was quite a feat seeing as how his mind was still on overdrive.
She withdrew, an the male exhaled a breath of air he hadn't even known he'd been holding in. However, no sooner had he relaxed a notch that she was back to leaning into him, forcing him to comically lean away as he balanced part of his weight on the staff he barely knew how to hold without stumbling. His mouth opened, as if to answer her, but for some reason it snapped shut again and he just nodded his head vigorously to indicated he'd understood her 'threat' and had no intention of interrupting her further. After all, his need to figure what the ******** hell had just happened seemed to outweigh his need to panic and be a general nuisance.
The wing touching him forced his gaze down at it, and then back up at her eyes before he repeated the process several times, as if to indicate he did not appreciate being touched. Specially not in such.... such really odd ways. He was pretty sure wings were not meant to be used like that, and yet even as she did that, he noticed his own wing, almost as if having a mind of it's own, unfurling from their resting position, eager to move.
As she spoke of the war, he felt himself frown, his mouth opening to no doubt interrupt, but he stopped himself, closed it, and just scowled thunderously at her, no doubt horribly upset over the way she was describing things. The war had been anything but little, and many lions had lost their lives; she had no right to talk about it in such ways and waitaminute--
What was that about giving up a domain? To a lioness?
Wait what?
Also, what was that about his father? He'd turned mortal in his wake or something? Just what the hell?
It was clear that her story had probably had formed many more questions than it had answered, but he was swiftly learning (if the way she'd suddenly become distracted by... something or other was any indication) that she really wasn't the goddess he should be asking anything to, "Uuuuhhhhh..." a long pause followed then, and then slowly, very, very slowly, "Okaaaaaaay..." it didn't really sound as if he were very 'okay' at all with the situation at hand though, "Okay," he repeated again, as if needing to voice that again in hopes of actually convincing himself, "What... the ******** hell am I supposed to do now?" he could not deny a strange pull that seemed to tug at him, towards the pride he'd only just left. Hell, if he were sincere, he could feel many a tugs, a million of them, all at once, as if calling out to him, and he had no idea what it was, or where to even start, "And why, exactly, do I feel a million voices calling out to me - what exactly am I?"
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Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 10:18 am
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"Tugs?" Na'ira questioned, folding her wings in to her body and ruffling them against her sides. She seemed confused for a moment as she pondered over that question, trying to decide what he meant. She knew what her tugs meant - she had to go deal with her duties somewhere. Did he have duties?
Then, her eyes widened a little and her mouth formed into a perfect little 'oh' of realization. "Riiiiiiight," she said slowly, glancing behind her as if she expected his father to be standing there with a disapproving look on his face. "Your dad told me to tell you something about that, it was uh," she scrunched her face up into a frown, her brows furrowing as she tried to remember. She turned back to face him with that expression clearly etched on. "Well, it was something about guiding the dead, I think? Maybe that's what your stick thing is for."
She fluffed out her tail plume again and glanced away to stare at the ground with pursed lips, probably to avoid showing that she felt a little guilty for forgetting. Normally, forgetting was just another part of life, but she did realize this was important to him. But at least she could answer the second question!
"You're a god, I already told you that. The god of spirits - you know, souls? Life spark, inner fire, so on? I think your kind of like a reaper." She nodded solemnly at this and gave him her best sympathetic smile. She thought her own duty was annoying enough, she figured having to deal with every death ever was probably a pain in the rear end.
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Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 3:26 pm
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"Tugs, yes. Or pulls. There's lots of them all at once, like... I should be somewhere other than here right now. A lot of places at once - how the hell am I supposed to do that?" he was more talking to himself than her at that moment, because he didn't honestly think she knew the answer to that. He sort of wished that this... body came with a set of instructions for how to use it, because something told him he wasn't doing things right. Needless to say, that thought was more than vaguely frustrating, and Jani released a grumpy little 'mrftttt' of a noise as he flattened his ears against his mane.
After blocking out the million little voices that kept calling inside his skull, the female's words caught his attention again, "Wait, what?" a pause followed; a really long, dragged out pause as his features contorted into what looked like sheer and utter horror, "Guiding the dead?!" his mouth hung open in that horrified expression as he tried to digest that information, "Guide them where?! And how exactly am I supposed to do that?"he pressed his paw to his chest again to keep from going into hyperventilation once more since he'd just realized that... not only did this whole ordeal mean that he wasn't dead and was thus not resting after a full life of service, but that he'd been saddled with a full-time job that he had no idea how to perform.
Oh God. He was going to die.
Couldn't he just... drop dead? And rest? He did not deserve this, damnit!
After a few deep, long breaths, Jani managed to calm down, "My father is a ******** jerk!" granted, he had no idea what the former god's intentions had been but from his point of view at the current moment, they couldn't have possibly been good, "He just saddled me with a job that's going to keep me occupied for every single day of my afterlife with no hope for rest! Who does he think he is?! If I find the b*****d, I'll not reap him; I'm going to kill him, slowly, and then somehow bring him back to life so I can repeat the process over and over!"
No, Jani'duu was not a particularly happy God at that moment, "Where is he?" he turned his head, snapping at the goddess, "Where the hell is he?" it was amusing to note that he wasn't, in fact, blaming her for this, for some odd reason. In a way, he was in her shoes since instinctively he knew that she just overlooked the process, very much like he was expected to do.
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Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2010 12:09 am
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"How am I supposed to know that?" she asked in response to the flurry of questions that preceded his second panic attack of the night. "If I knew all of those things, I'd be the god of spirits and not you, don't you think?" She snorted at the thought and shook her head a little as if to say 'better you than me' because honestly.. just dealing with dying immortals was enough. If she had to bother with every dying creature everywhere she'd probably go crazy.
Especially if they were all insufferably annoying like this guy, she added to her thoughts.
"Oh, I dunno, he was pretty nice when I was talking to him just now?" she pursed her lips and pushed them out sideways, making a rather comical face as she sat before him. She obviously wasn't taking much of what he was saying seriously, especially not the parts about being hysterical and overwhelmed. At this point she unfurled a wing and at first it seemed like she might thrust it at him to make him calm down again, but then she began to speak and instead she was using it to emphasize each of her points - waving it dramatically from one side to the next. "And even if I knew where your father was, which I don't and have already told you so, you couldn't reap him or bring him back to life to kill him again anyway."
She paused then and leaned in closer to him once more, though it was quite a bit less dramatic than the first time since she was sitting down and actually couldn't shove her face into his. "You're not the soul goddess, you don't have the power to take his soul away. Plus, only Mkodi can bring things back to life." She turned her wing up at the end of her sentence, exposing the under-feathers to the sky. Her lips were pursed in that odd sideways fashion again and it looked like she was two seconds away from simply saying 'duh' and settling matters that way. She did manage to resist, for all that it was worth at this point.
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Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2010 6:10 am
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Jani'duu had swiftly come to several realizations as he spoke with the female goddess; the most prominent of them being that id he wanted to avoid going insane, he was going to have to go to the god heavens and seek someone that might know what the bloody hell he was supposed to do. It was strange to know that he instinctively knew this 'heaven' existed. Not only that, but he was sure that once he figured out how to use those damned wings of his, he would be able to get there instantly.
He offered Na'ira a deadpan look that seemed to voice his general dislike of her and her horribly cheery attitude, "Yes well, you are horribly unhelpful, of course you wouldn't know. I was more wondering if you could direct me to someone that might know!" but then, this goddess of souls that she spoke of seemed to be like someone he should be talking to. Maybe he should try to seek her out and see if she could at least point him in the right direction, because the voices that he could barely even begin to block out by ignoring them... were only increasing in volume and he was well aware he was going to have to deal with them sooner or later.
Possibly sooner.
"I... just need to rest," he said, finally releasing the paw he'd been pressing to his chest so he could hold his head and rub his temple, "And you are not helping," he repeated, "You're most unhelpful. Rather cheeky, and very childish. Also, obnoxious and annoying," in his general defense, he'd had a really foul day and she wasn't making matters any better, "And my father is still a b*****d," that said, he moved one of his large wings, taking the stick instinctively with it, cupping it against his side so that his forepaws were free to allow him to walk.
First off, Jani felt he really, really needed to have a talk with Sakata, if only because he felt the lion deserved to know a bit of what was going on. Then he would take his leave and go tend to the damned, <********> duties that his caring, loving father had saddled him with. So thus, without even a glance at the goddess, he stood and padded away from her, only stopping to send a scowl her away, "I hope we never cross paths again," and that said, he padded away in the direction he'd come from, looking very much like a thunder cloud was perched over his starch white body.
Of course, he'd probably just jinxed himself, because he had no idea just how tied up his and Rebirth's fates and paths really were.
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