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 Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:44 pm
 Possibly, he had really finally done himself in. Too much worrying, and now his brain was crippled, or whatever other bad omen these headaches signified. Nimbus blinked, trying to feel which way this spell would go - probably he would have this headache as a constant distraction for the rest of the day, but in the past few months he had twice experienced a pain so intense it brought him to his belly; that was the sort of thing you never stopped half-expecting.
Today, though, he probably didn't have to be up for so much vigilance. This was just an ache, a nagging pressure behind his eyes. No reason to reschedule his furtive lope through the disused grounds of his home. The pup was at that awkward place between childhood and early adolescence -- fur too soft, eyes too innocent, legs too long. She also, at that precise moment, wore an expression of complete blankness, staring off into nothingness with a slight gentle curve of a smile touching at the corners of her maw, eyes wide and unblinking. She was standing on all four paws, but a bit unsteadily, and swayed a bit from side to side as though at any moment she would keel over entirely.
Also, she was standing directly in the middle of the pathway, not exactly stealthily, and seemed completely oblivious to the approach of another.
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:51 pm
That kind of color, it caught your eye - laid against the dust-browns of summer, she stood out like some stemless blossom, a bright butter yellow that drew the eye. Nimbus saw her silhouette, broken and obscured by a hundred yards of trees, and felt his heart jump in fear before he had a chance to parse what he saw. Huddling imperceptibly down, he worked out the size of the other creature - too small for a wolf; a bobcat, perhaps? - and began a cautious slink through the underbrush to investigate further.
His earlier fear pricked shamefully at the back of his throat as he cleared a stand of birch and saw her: a girl, her coat as radiant as morning sunshine, wobbling disconcertingly and staring into the middle distance to his left. What on earth...? He peered anxiously from just a little ways away, his neck craning and ears forward. What was going to happen?
Aislin stood, long-legged and a little thin, clearly the product of a growth spurt, and stared at nothing. Her ears didn't flick. Her eyes didn't blink. Her nose didn't twitch. For a long while, she remained there, gently swaying but otherwise as motionless as a statue.
Then she turned, and moving in the halting movements of one moving through water -- or daught in a dream -- she wandered toward the other wolf, eyes still gently unfocused.
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:53 pm
Upon reflection, Cue would probably be quite thankful that he didn't shriek aloud. He'd found himself inexplicably transfixed, helpless to do anything beyond gawp at this fragile apparition, and her senseless, inevitable veer towards him caused a potent shock of terror to roll down his back, ruffling his ruddy hackles into an undignified sort of porcupine above his shoulders. He scrambled back, and let out a nervous bark, and then another, sounding very much like a pup who has gotten over his head in a game.
"No, Fitz, I don't agree. The butterflies ARE quite lovely tonight."
She said it with a gentle earnestness, her voice quite clear if just a little misty. She was staring at a patch of nothing a few feet to the left of his shoulder, and her ears flicked only slightly at the sound of his yelp. "...What is that? Brahms, did you call for a party?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:54 pm
Nimbus's face slackened, and then burst with expression again in the course of Aislin's monologue. She was dreaming! And not some kind of wood-sprite, either, just a very intently sleeping pup. He sprung out of her projected path, bony ankles knocking together, and followed along near to her side, wondering and trying to listen in on her dream.
"No?" She asked, and then smiled -- a funny, lopsided smile. "Well, fine then. But I still really think the butterflies..."
She trailed off, then, and her brow furrowed, an odd twitching expression crossing over her maw, flickering over her eyes and ears. She let out a little snuffling noise, and swayed, and looked for a moment that she would awaken...and then she didn't. "Did you hear someone, Snitter?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:55 pm
He ducked his head, in the back of his mind doing a very swift calculation of the ethics of this scenario. Tentatively, he responded - she probably wouldn't hear him anyway, right? "I'm not Snitter," he called.
"Oh." She tilted her head then, and blinked, for the first time -- a long, slow, contemplative closing of the eyes. Then she jerked, jolting awake, and the force of it nearly knocked her over. But then she regained her composure, at the last minute, and smiled softly at the other wolf. "....Oh. Hi. Who are you?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:56 pm
So, that was a little disappointing, but...well, at least he was on more familiar ground again. Nimbus took a step back, one stripe-hocked foreleg bobbing nervously up off the ground. "I'm Cumulonimbus," he replied in deadpan, as if his name wasn't overlong to the point of ludicrousness. "Do you know where you are?"
"...On the ground," she responded back, just as dead-pan, and with a quizzical sort of expression -- as though not sure why he'd even bother to ask. She gave a tremendous yawn, hear ears drooping to the sides of her head. When awake, the eyes that had been so clear -- if vacant -- were now half-lidded and, for lack of a better word, sleepy. "Do -you- know?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:57 pm
He felt a pang behind his eyelid and looked away, put off by the girl's attitude. "I meant where on the ground," he replied, sounding injured, his tail cricking downward behind him. "And I do know, we're within Agua Azul's lands." The lean young wolf was holding himself not unlike a deposed king, discomfort and pride curling his lip. She had just seemed...different, when she wasn't awake. "What were you dreaming about?"
Agua Azul...right. Reality. How droll. "Butterflies," she said, and rolled back to her haunches, regarding him with a long, appraising gaze that seemed to look through more than look -at-. "I go there, at night, and sometimes during the day. The place with the butterflies. There are trees there, too, much better than the trees here. And sometimes when I go there I'm a princess." She smiled. Had she been just a shade younger, this proclamation would have been innocently adorable. Now, just over that cusp of adolesence, it was...unnerving, perhaps. Pitiable. "I'm Aislin."
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Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 7:59 pm
Cue tilted his head, unsure of just what to do with this girl - not really a puppy, but not his age. Not dreaming, but really not quite here, either. Listening made him feel sad, and strangely protective, even with the flat look she was leveling him. He sifted through the array of obvious questions left to ask, searching for something not so awkward. "Where were you when you fell asleep?"
She perked up a bit at the question. No one had ever asked her that, precisely -- or even really shown any interest at all in her 'ability', which she personally had always thought quite uncanny -- and it made her opinion of the other wolf immediately rise. "I don't know what it's called," she said, after a moment of consideration. "There's not always butterflies there, either. Once I went there and there was a tremendous ocean made out of sky, and I swum through stars without even getting wet."
If Aislin comprehended the idea that she was, in fact, dreaming, she never showed it. She was peripherally aware that other wolves perhaps had visions of things while they slept, but she was very much convinced that her dreams were of a different sort. Maybe because she had never had a nightmare, and had thus never had to recieve the counsel 'it was only a dream'...
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Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 9:01 pm
An orange ear flicked: Nimbus had not been told many stories as a pup, and so had very little tolerance built up for the kind of magical realism Aislin was so often submerged in. He felt a sudden, stiff pressure along the left side of his head, and attributed it as a reaction to the poignant beauty of an ocean made of sky. "Was the ocean up, or down?" His brow furrowed, and his yellow-green eyes grew dark, but the intent gleaming behind them remained sincere. "What do stars look like up close?"
She shook her head, her dreamy grey eyes misted over with memory, soft smile playing upon her maw. Oh, it felt so good to be taken seriously! All her life all she'd ever heard was 'wake up, sleepyhead!' and 'come back to earth' and 'get your head out of the clouds' and not once had anyone ever stopped to think that maybe she just liked it better in the other place and maybe they should take that into consideration. "No...the ocean was everywhere." She tried to think of how to explain it and found that she had no words to encapsulate the bowl of sky and sea. "You know when the tide is quiet, and the stars are out, and it's dark with the new moon, and the sky and the ocean are exactly the same and it's like the earth just stops, right there on the beach, and everything else is just darkness and little shimmers of light?"
Maybe he didn't know what that felt like. She wasn't sure if he ever went down to the water front the way she did, and especially not at night -- but she found herself there often enough, usually when a particularly vivid dream had caused her to sleepwalk away from her den. Miracle she hadn't drowned, honestly. But the thought had never concerned her, because in those dreams she could swim effortlessly through sky and stars and sea, and waking up on the sand of the beach, staring across the water felt like the most natural thing in the world.
Thinking about it now her smile widened and she wished it were later in the day so she could show him because it was all so very beautiful and she could see it so clearly in her mind. "Stars," she said, then, drawing herself back to reality. "Well...they're like...they're like fireflies, sort of, but they're also a bit like dandelions."
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Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 9:02 pm
Cue felt a little bitter tickle in his throat; a sweet itch of envy he would no doubt become well acquainted with in the coming months. "That sounds beautiful," he responded shyly, shifting his weight from paw to paw. He could almost feel a star buzzing softly against his cheek.
"Oh, it really is!" She said, and then snapped her maw shut as she caught a glimmer of something in his voice or demeanor that suggested perhaps to continue gushing would be insensitive. "But, well...I'm sure you've seen plenty of great things, too." She tried to keep the dubiousness out of her voice when she said this. There was probably something of interest in his life. Wasn't there in everyone's?
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Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 9:05 pm
A muscle in his cheek twitched; he hadn't heard the little thread of doubt in her voice, but he knew very well how flat his whole existance looked and felt. He took in a breath as if to speak, thinking he might try to conjure up some brag, but no - his head fell, his ears drooped, and he looked genuinely disheartened. "I haven't seen anything great. My life is so dull I can barely see colors anymore." His eyes sparked, and he pulled his mouth back into an unhappy smile. "I wish I could go with you."
"Oh, no! Don't be sad.....Mr. Nimbus." A nickname, not because she thought it would be endearing, but because she'd quite forgotten half of his name, or at least wasn't sure she could pronounce it. The mister made up for the dubious shortening, she thought. And he was older, after all. "Maybe you can come."
Well, maybe. But she didn't want to promise him something that she couldn't deliver and then have him be even sadder. Oh my. This was a conundrum! She darted forward and gave him a puppyish nuzzle to the cheek, wagging her tail. "There's lots of fun stuff to do, here, I think. I haven't been here that long." Her brow furrowed. She mustn't lose momentum now! it wouldn't do to have the only wolf on the whole world who thought she was interesting get sad and then stop caring about her stories! "....we could discover it together. and maybe I can figure out how to bring you with me, too."
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Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 7:15 pm
The young wolf looked troubled; even for someone as good at suspending disbelief as him, the idea of accompanying someone else in their dreams seemed a little...impossible. Impossible, but no less resonant; he smiled, his eyes still sad, and wagged his tail back at her reassuring nuzzle. She was so nice, and so...real. So present! "I'm sorry," he admitted, waving off his jealousy, "and maybe we can find something to do here, too." Thinking on it, his face tensed somewhat (he still remembered vividly Schizophrenia calmly telling her hungry children that voices don't eat), but he soldiered on. "You haven't been here long?"
She shook her head. "Nope. My daddy's from here -- his name is Peregrine -- but he got my mommy pregnant and didn't want her to come live with him, so she lives a long, long ways away in another pack with my brother." She said this calmly and obviously, as though this were the most normal thing in the world -- and the sort of thing that a pup should know about her family dynamics.
She stretched, giving her tail a wag. "There's an ocean nearby. I think there's a tidepool we could go play in, if you want. I bet there's jellyfish in there. I've never seen a jellyfish before, but I've dreamt about them so I think they must be real."
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Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 7:17 pm
Cue found himself unable to help himself. "Why didn't your dad want your mom to come with you?"
She shrugged. "They don't really know each other that well, I don't think. And I guess with the war going on, he didn't think it would be safe." Her brow furrowed, as though this point had just now occurred to her. "...But I guess it's safe now, or else he wouldn't have let me stay. My sister's here, too, someplace."
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Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 7:18 pm
He watched her face closely, but she really didn't seem upset by the apparent dispersal of her family. Another way her life is better than mine, he thought darkly, but he kept his mouth shut on the topic. "My mom doesn't live here, either," he said instead, his eyes blank. "And I haven't spent much time at the ocean...I'm kind of scared of drowning."
"Drowning?" She tilted her head. "Oh, you'll be fine." She gave him a shrewd, narrow-eyed look. "You're one of those types who worries so much you never get out and do anything, aren't you?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 7:19 pm
Nimbus squirmed a little under her gaze, not really relishing being called out on his fretfulness by a wolf so much younger than he. "Your dreams are real," he countered, "so maybe my fears are, too." Damn, that was a good retort! And true, too - he could feel all too clearly the undertow sucking at his paws, the burn of salt water in his sinuses...it was enough to make his skin crawl.
"...Maybe," she admitted, nipping playfully at his ear. "But you'll really be fine, I promise. Come on!" She nipped at him again, then ducked down to crawl under his belly and took off toward the sound of the ocean.
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