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 Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:23 pm
Calder had been dumped. It was simple as that. The Festival was over without a visit, a note, or even a message given to a stranger to be sent to Calder with deepest sincerity and apology. Cade had left him. He had been dumped by a kelpie. Not even one in his own clan that even KNEW anything about him to have reason to not see him. Calder had gone over and over and over in his head why the boil would do such a thing. To have been so deeply in love with him one day, and vanish the next. He tried to excuse it. Romanticize his disappearance, but his heartache was not to be easily dismissed with fantasies about Cade fighting off sea serpents of being kidnapped by masked men with some cried out vow that he had to see his beloved one last time.
No. Calder was miserable.
So, being alone and in all states of deep heartache, he did what he felt was necessary. He walked into the woods, using all the expertise of his kind and knowledge of plants, and found some fermented berries. He took a bag and picked and and every one he could find, speaking to the bush in sad little utterances. "Why? Why me? Wasn't I good enough? Did I not kiss him right?" Sad little thoughts as he stripped the bushes bare of their fruit, and then ate them.
Handfuls upon handfuls to get the job that he needed done, making due with what crude methods he had for the task. He ate till he was full and the world dimmed into a fuzz swirl. Oh, he was sure to be sick as a dog in the morning, but what did he care now.
With a bag still rather heavy and another now empty, he trotted sluggishly to someone who he could voice his sorrows to. Hammering on Christof's door at the un-Jacken hour of night, he cried out."It not like I didn't give em the moon and stars. I would have. Just PLUCKED them from the sky." The kelpie reached out to objects that weren't there and grabbed the constellations and planets in his hand, opening them to see nothing, before frowning and knocking on Christof's door.
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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:30 pm
Christof, meanwhile, had been trying to keep himself so busy he couldn't even remember that he had problems to begin with. It was so much easier to quietly pick away at his project, concentrating on nuts and bolts and hand-tools, the body parts that had come to litter his room tidied up to make room for.... what looked like collectings from a junkyard.
Which is mostly what they were.
The sudden shouts and hammering at the door cost him a perfectly working headlight when his hands spasmed in in surprise.
Oh. It was Calder. Blathering about.... something? The Floresctival was all a bit of blur, really, but overall he thought it had gone pretty well. Surely Mistress would win Student Council and rule the entire school. It would be brilliant. He frowned at the kelpie through his cracked door, glancing him up and down curiously. There seemed to be something... off about him, but the hunchback couldn't quite put his finger on it.
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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:39 pm
The cracked door was enough for Calder, who moved his face to look right back at the rather confused Igor. Slender hands reached out and smushed the Igor's face between both hands as Calder pulled his friend just inches to Calder's own. "And the thing is...the thing.... I'll never know. He could have at LEAST sent me a...um...ah..note. just a one.. Just one. Two words to say why. Was it my hair or face? Is it my face, Christof? Am I that ugly? I bet that was it, wasn't it? Or did he not like a clan man? I could have CHANGED Christof." He whined and pressed his friends face to his chest. "I would have been anything to make him happyyyyy!!!"
The heavy scent of ripe fruit was think in the air around him as the kelpie clutched his friend, the boil's eyes long since red rimmed from crying beforehand. "WHY AM I NOT GOOD ENOUGH FUR HIM?!!"
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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:56 pm
Somewhere between the thick Scottish accent and blubbering, Christof was able to get the inkling that his friend was upset about something.
Someone? Apparently? Despite the sudden intrusion of personal space, his brows lifted. Had Insidious- Invidicus- lost interest in him? That would be a relief, at least. With a rather disturbed noise in his throat, he blinked in confusion at the face suddenly millimeters from his own. "Hrnnn?"
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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:06 pm
Calder came in closer, brushing his fingers through Christof's long hair. "Our children, Christof. Just yeeeaaayyyy big. Beautiful. We'll never have em." He measured the space by his side as if the little tikes were beside him, ghosts of what would never be.
He took the hand that was measuring, the one that had a thick leather bag in his grip, and rose it up to bite his knuckle as he held in a sob. "Gone."
He turned to his friend, before noticing the hair he was petting. "Your hair is horrible. Like straw. Dead straw." He patted it down and walked past the boil into his room before noticing Scruff.
Kneeling, he looked at the scareon. "I'll die alone. A. L. O...." He paused. "Alone with minis in ugly little sweaters. Childless." He reached out for the mutt and started to cradle it.
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Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:18 am
Ch-ch-children?? What... what was...? Christof gave a strangled noise as his hair was suddenly pet, jerking out of the way just as Calder shambled into the room. He hoped beyond all the Fear in Halloween he was talking about someone else.
Still baffled, he gingerly closed the door behind him before watching in horror as the Kelpie tripped through his room.
Scruff, meanwhile, was more than happy to be babied, like an obese puggle, giving Calder a consoling lick.
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Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:29 am
Setting his bag of fruit aside, he continued to cradle the "child" in his hands, gazing at it with a half-open gaze and queasy smile. "You'd be named Ageba and love to throw rocks at birds. You'd be a naughty colt. Yesh uw wub. You Wittle Wascale." Calder made a face and rubbed noses with the mutt before picking up his bag and moving over to Christof's desk.
Humming, he nearly tripped over his own legs before stumbling to the desk space, laughing. "Wow. Your floor is like.........." Calder tilted his arm to demonstrate and went back to looking at the desk. It was cluttered. "Messy." He shoved all of the papers, blueprints, and projects to the side to clear a nice, big space and plopped Scruff down.
Looking about, he looked for a bowl...or something that looked like one. It seemed a lid for some contraption was yanked right off it's screw and turned upside down, and taking a handle end of a hammer, Calder pours some of the berries in and started to mash them. "But would I have HIS ungrateful scarlings with a boil like that?! OH nnnnnooooo. Mean. Vile. Heart-tearing slug-puss-filled emotion-butchering.." Calder beat the berries with the handle, splattering them about. "...I hope wild dogs tear him limb form limb and get constipated trying to digest him." He glared at the bowl, mashing and bashing the berries before smiling at Scruff. "This isn't for you, Ageba. Bad scarwing. It's past your bedtime." Calder looked happy with his work and tried to find a syringe.
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Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 2:21 am
Christof could only gape, lifting a hand momentarily in protest as the part was torn off of his contraption before lowering it again and hurrying towards his friend, wrought with concern. Had... had he gone mad?? Perhaps he should take him to Malodore, get him fixed properly. Master Malodore would know what to do... gingerly, he tried to take the hammer from the Kelpie before anyone was hurt, and carefully set Scruff back on the floor.
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Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:37 am
Calder was distracted and was lost in his own project. When the hammer was taken, he was already moving on to find a syringe. It took some moving things about before he located a few in a box on a higher shelf and, reaching up, took two.
His eyes only darted to Chrsitof when he started to take Scruff and then set him on the floor. "Tuck him in goodnight." He ordered, before continuing on with his work. Taking one syringe, he submerged the tip into the dark red liquid and started to fill it. Once done, he did the same for the other, and tapped the end before inspecting it.
"What happened to my youth, Christof? These are the years - my prime - that I should be on someone's arm." He moved over, gripping the boil's hair tenderly, before he cradled the back of the Igor's head and them jammed the syringe needle between his lips, as kindly as a drunkard could, and squeezed the entire contents inside.
"Cheers!" He smiled, emptying the syringe and popping it out from between the Igor's lips. He licked the tip once and went back to the desk, giving Christof a pat on the head before stumbling back to the workbench.
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Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:57 pm
The hunchback jumped with a yelp that soon became a gurgle and a series of muffled retching noises as the foreign liquid was suddenly squirted into his mouth. He couldn't exactly SPIT and it wasn't as though he were afraid of being poisoned, and so he did what he could do to keep it from being sucked into his lungs.
That didn't mean he was happy about it one bit. With a snarl, the Igor lurched forward, hand up as though ready to strike the Kelpie until he sat still, but froze. His eyes widened, and he gave a burp.
Uggg... what... what had he just shoved into him??
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 7:45 am
Calder lifted the makeshift bowl lid he had and tipped the rest of it's contents into his greedy mouth, licking the juice from his lips after as he tossed the tray over his shoulder without any care. When he spotted Christof running at him, he jerked back, stumbled over his own legs, and fell onto the boil's bed. That alone got him laughing, and he looked up to see Christof looking very confused. Ah, there it was.
"It may not be alfalfa wine, but at least I grew up knowing what plants at least do the trick. Got a kick to em. Bet they were out there for some time. No sane creature would eat em either. Not with all them thorns I had ta work through." Calder sat back up, still laughing a bit before he heaved himself back to his hooves and walked back to the desk. "Takes a lotta em to get ya going." He picked up the other syringe and went to move ...or stumble...back in Christof's direction. "Make ya right as rain and tipsy as a table with 3 legs." And once again, without waiting, he placed his hand against the back of the Igor's head and injected another syringe's worth of the concoction into his friend's mouth.
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 6:35 pm
The Igor sputtered as much as he could with a stitched mouth, eyes wide as another dose was forcible shoved down his throat, and he hacked and gagged, staggering away from the kelpie with a look of horrified rage. When he tried to surge forward to deliver mighty vengeance by way of fist to the horse-boil's face, though, the ground became oddly wobbly, as though suddenly made of hell-o.
He flopped forward with a groan like a beached whale. Oh Fear Alive it was like that boat trip all over again he brought purple cruel-aid didn't he??
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 6:47 pm
While Christof's tolerance for anything was very low, Calder's was exceedingly high. "Enough to down a horse" was not such a silly phrase, and Calder had had to eat a great portion of the berries beforehand to even get light-headed. After another portion, he was more than past that, and was happily swaying back and forth, hips moving as if hearing some song in his head. Reaching back, he plucked the syringe from the Igor as he stumbled away, and Calder made sure it was all gone. "I'm like a nurse!" He said, smiling. "I'd look good in that outfit. Dontcha think? Probaba.bab...babably the only doctory thing I could do. Wouldnt ta think it but me Mum is good with plants. Learned a good thing or two on that with all those chores, but what do ya know about me and my dinky past." He waved it off and trotted back to his bag, hopping up on the desk and eating a few berries as he swung his legs.
"Puts the right fire in ya. Wish I had somma that there wine we make. Strong stuff. Make you spout hairs on your tongue. No lie." He watched the Igor as he hummed to himself. It was nice to have a drinking buddy.
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 6:51 pm
Poisoned, he was poisoned, he was poisoned, he bet anything, Calder had poisoned him, poisoned himself and now him and and....
The thought of going to Nurse Cricket made the world spin again and he gave a whimper.
NO. THAT'S RIGHT. MALODORE. Yes. Yes, they would just have to get to Malodore. With a determined grunt, the Igor attempted to push himself to his feet.
When that failed, he tried again, this time more slowly, grabbing his desk chair to help ease him up.
Scruff was yipping, dancing around Calder's feet merrily, stumpy tail wagging as the stupid animal attempted to comprehend whatever game was being played.
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 7:04 pm
Calder laughter rang out as he watched his friend flop on the ground. "Ya look la a floresce on land. I'd string ya up and cook ya if you weren't already rotten." He continued to laugh as his friend forced himself up, with slow success, before Calder hopped down and heaved his buddy up on his unsteady feet. "You fighten the waves. Move with em. Get your drinkin legs. Like me!" He said, stepping back to show. "Could do the Sword Dance here without a probl-" He was cut off as he staggered and reached out for his friend's hunch for balance. "Maybe next time."
He got back upright again before patting Christof' hunch before watching Scruff. "Come on. We should go walkin. Do ya know the Old Dun Cow? We should sign it. No. Noo. Wait. I'll sing, cause you got your lips all done up, and you grunt the chorus." He pointed to his friend....well, in his direction, and nodded. "Right? Good. I'll start."
Calder went over to grab his bag and then moved to the door, throwing it up. "Ohhhh Some friends and I
in a public house
Was playin a game of chance one night!!" He continued to sing, stumbling into the hallway.
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