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 Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 8:36 am
 Ru was not as comfortable now that his viking party had left the woods and moved into the open savannah. Although he had grown up in the savannah, that did not mean it would be his preference for places to be, particularly not as part of a group of warriors searching for plunder. He knew from experience that it was all too easy to be seen in such a setting, and from a distance. Anyone with even the slightest elevation was at an advantage, and it was only mitigated by the dubious activity of slinking through tall grasses, if such were available. Presently, the ground was flat, dry, and largely unmarked by flora or foliage of any kind.
And Ru had been sent out to scout ahead. It seemed like a pointless exercise at this point, given how far anyone with eyes could see in any direction, but he didn't argue with the order. He was the least senior member of the crew and in no position to criticise. Besides, he had proven to be the best scout in the group already and it spared him having to take sentry duty, which was dull, quite frankly. Few were foolish enough to approach a slumbering group of Stormborn. Even if they didn't recognize them for Stormborn, few were foolish enough to approach a group of seven lions who were all larger than average and bore many battle scars among them.
Darkness was falling, which meant he ought to turn back and report on what he had observed, but Ru lingered to watch the sunset. It might not have been a very Stormborn sentiment, but he appreciated the wild beauty of nature in many of its forms, especially sunsets.
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Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:44 pm
 A blood-red sunset... it fit the goddess' mood. Dark wings cut through the air powerfully, cupping and pushing it beneath her, lifting her muscled body. A stray thought flitted through Kiuma's mnd at how weightless she was... how strange it was to have these dark appendages, though she could not remember a time when she didn't have them. She had no basis for why she found them strange, but...
A stab of pain, formless and viscious, put a hitch into the smooth stroking of her wings and the goddess snarled, her face twisting in a horrible expression. Damn this pain... like the wings, she could not remember a time when it did not nag at her, gnaw at her concentration and control. Anger bubbled up her throat and burst from her mouth in a roar of frustration, hate and pain, feathers clawing at the air as Kiuma circled down to the ground, her goal a circle of water she had seen passing below her. She had to distract herself, had to find a release... it was as much a need as breathing, though she had a suspicion she didn't even need to do that anymore... if she ever had.
Swift and sleek as a hawk, she back-winged to land beside the water, immediately plunging her face into it to suck it up greedily into her perpetually raw throat.
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Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 7:09 am
Ru's view of the sunset was, well, not ruined but certainly interrupted by the descent of what had to be the strangest bird he had ever laid eyes on. For one thing, it was entirely too large, and possessed no obvious aerodynamic qualities at all, despite having wings. He imagined it must take a great deal of effort for the four-limbed creature to remain aloft. His curiosity demanded that he investigate as the silhouetted shape came to land.
Of course, it took him considerably longer to figure out just where it was she had landed, and then get to that point, than it had taken the flier, but he didn't doubt that she would still be there. It seemed impossible to him that anything in that shape would be able to get into the sky without jumping off some bluff or cliff or out of the limbs of a high tree, and there weren't really any of those around to facilitate such a take-off.
So he reached the water after she had plunged her face into it, though before it was too dark to see any sort of details. Thus, it was both easy and startling for him to realize that he was looking at a winged lioness. A goddess, he corrected himself, remembering his mother's stories and the stories told of the Stormborn's ancestors. Gods and goddesses had wings. And they also were larger than mortal lions, generally.
He wondered what the goddess's domain was, and then it occurred to him that sneaking up on a goddess, no matter what domain she represented, would probably be a very bad idea. There were scores of stories to support that notion, in fact.
He sneezed deliberately to make her aware of his presence.
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Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2011 10:51 am
The red goddess had been large even in her past life, taking after her earthly father. As a goddess with a domain such as hers... she beat out most males for size and heft. Well muscled, but sleek, she twitched as the sneeze sounded far too close for her comfort and she jerked her head up from the water, drops dripping from the snarl that curled her mouth.
Red eyes glowed in the dusk as she straightened up, her black wings mantled threatening on either side of her body. "Stand forth, Mortal! Or earn a swift death." She barked, her voice rougher than it had been in life, and deeper. Perhaps she had found the avenue to release that she had craved in this poor creature, foolish enough to approach her... She could not have explain why she was so angry or why she wished so much to strike out at the world around her, she had no memory of what had caused it, but she couldn't deny it.
A rattle of bone beads accompanied her movements from the necklace around her neck, the quills bumping against her chest.
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Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 9:29 am
Dear gods, she was large. It hadn't really registered at first since Ru had been distracted by the wings, but now that he had adjusted to them he then had to come to terms with the size of her. She was easily larger than all of the Stormborn females he'd met, and probably all of the Reavers, too. Ru felt smaller than usual, but it didn't bother him. He knew that he was only small because of the company he kept, and that if he wasn't constantly surrounded by Stormborn he would be on the larger side of average for his age.
Aaand she was snarling. That, Ru decided, could not herald good things for him. A large part of his brain told him that this would be an excellent time to beat a hasty retreat, discretion being the better part of valour and all that. However, that wasn't a message his brain usually sent him and so the rest of Ru's mind decided to ignore the odd directions. Besides, she had just commanded him not to do that, on pain of death. Given his choices, it seemed prudent to do as the goddess wished. He didn't think he'd get far even if he tried to flee. She had wings for goodness sake.
"As you will, lady," he said, falling back on the good manners his mother had instilled in him. They didn't see a lot of usage in his life with the Stormborn, and perhaps they were a little rusty, but they were deeply ingrained in his mind.
He stepped forward so that there could be no way she would fail to see him. Then he gave the bow his mother had taught him, Subject Before Sovereign. It seemed appropriate, and if it wasn't, well, there wasn't a whole lot he could do, now was there? His green eyes were wide though, despite his attempts to remain outwardly calm, and his pupils threatened to swallow the color of his irid, though he would blame that on the gathering dark.
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Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2012 6:01 pm
Some of the anger in the goddess fizzled as a youth stepped from the bushes. There was something about him that just spoke 'child' to her and it made it hard to sustain the burning wrath that had so consumed her. An adult, she might have attacked straight out, but a child... something in her fought against the rage and forced it down. It emerged as an irritated snort, her face in a fierce scowl.
"Why are you here, child?" She snapped, her wings mantling on her back before settling again. "You take your life in your own paws." Her black-tipped tail lashed as she moved away from the water, her head lowered dangerously.
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Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2012 6:30 am
Ru stood his ground, but he also did not completely rise from his bow, so perhaps it would not be entirely accurate to say that he stood his ground. He held his ground. Snorts were less indicative of danger than snarls, in his experience, and so he decided to take it as a good sign that the goddess had moved from one to the other.
Despite the fact that he was very impressed by the goddess, a part of him couldn't help being distracted by the avian nature of her wings' behavior and he wondered if mantling was something she had learned to do consciously, or whether it was just something she came into existence doing. That is, was there a divide between the part of her that was leonine and the part that was avian? Probably he would not find out, but he wondered anyway.
It did not occur to Ru to attempt to lie to her. He didn't like lying and he didn't think it was wise to lie to deities. The stories spoke of the idiocy of doing that, too. So he answered her truthfully and hoped that his reply wouldn't provoke her to anger. He was, after all, just doing his job.
"I take my life in my own paws always, lady," he said. "I am one of the Stormborn, a pride of warrior lions descended from the gods. A band of us has left our stronghold to patrol and I have been sent ahead to scout for potential dangers before we make camp for the evening."
The closest he came to lying was that he omitted a complete description of what he and the others were doing in the rogue lands. Hunting for thralls and herdbeasts probably wouldn't go over too well with her, as these lands, for all he knew, belonged to her.
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Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2012 8:35 am
The way his eyes kept sliding to her wings made Kiuma suddenly and bizarrely uncomfortable. Without thinking, she dissolved them away, layering them under illusion so she appeared as any other lioness, albeit a large one. It had made her strangely self-conscious to have him take notice of her wings, but she could not think of a single reason why it should have done so, and that irritated her. As if she wasn't irritated enough, of course... She was a goddess, her wings were a part of her and a symbol of her status. What did she have to be embarrassed about? And yet, she couldn't deny that she was, or that she had hid her wings before she even realized she was doing it.
Her scowl turned grumpier, if that was possible and she jerked her gaze away from him, stalking to a nearby tree to start shredding it with her claws. They ripped deep gouges into the trunk in a satisfying way, relieving some of her frustration and anger, though the movement sent a lance of pain down her side. Her domain... ever her strength and her weakness.
She left off her clawing abruptly when he mentioned his pride, a flash of anger making her sneer at him. "Being descended from a god is nothing to be proud of, boy. A mortal can roll in the grass with another just as easily as a god can, its nothing miraculous." The tone seemingly came from someone jaded with divinity, sounding slightly odd from one who was a goddess herself. "You should claim instead the strength of your own paws and have pride in your own deeds. Do you think this 'god' parent cares even the slightest about lowly mortals like you? Mortals are toys, to be used and dropped when finished... nothing more."
Memories seemed to tease at her, hinting at some great pain that she couldn't quite put her paw on, an event that changed the very fabric of her being... but her existence only went back so far before hitting a great grey wall of nothingness. There was nothing beyond that wall, but sometimes.... sometimes she thought she heard voices from behind it, whispering things she didn't wish to hear...
Kiuma slammed her paw into the ground and dragged her claws along it, letting out some of her seemingly ever-present anger. She seemed to have given up any hint of threat towards the youngster, at least for now.
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 7:19 am
When the goddess's wings suddenly vanished Ru blinked, but did not doubt having seen them in the first place. They had definitely been there, large and black against her red coat. Actually, their vanishing only made Ru wonder more about them. Like whether they had really vanished, or if they had only been made invisible. Either way, he decided to take it as a surprisingly pleasant hint that he was not to stare at them anymore. He could do that.
All in all, Ru was not sure what to make of the goddess's display of temper, tearing deep rents into a tree trunk and then sneering at the Stormborn ancestry. Not having been born into the pride himself, Ru felt somewhat less offended by her remarks than someone not outlander born might have. He was a b*****d-born lion who had only seen his father once, though that one glimpse had been sufficient to prove that his father was no deity.
"As you say," he agreed. "Within the pride it is a lion's deeds that earn him whatever respect - or disrespect - he may be afforded."
As for what she said about mortals being toys, he didn't doubt that was how most gods felt about them. The stories his mother told him spoke of that, as did the stories of the Stormborn. They may be claim divine ancestry, but that didn't mean their ancestors chose to involve themselves in their descendants' lives all that often. And it was probably for the best, given his mother's stories. Gods complicated things.
"Most still consider it an honor to be noticed by a god," he ventured. "Even if the attention is fleeting. Such stories are told for generations."
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 9:08 am
This youngster had a rather amazing ability to turn the goddess' ire away from himself by redirecting it at something she felt more strongly about than she did about him at the moment. Clever, clever boy. She wouldn't even realize what had happened until after he was long gone, if ever.
"Gods are fickle creatures, no better than mortals, but with power that could destroy this world if the Goddess allowed it." There was a heavy emphasis on the capital in that word. Kiuma had never met Mkodi, but it was built into her very nature to bow to the Creator as some mortals did to the gods. "They don't deserve to be the focus of such honor..."
Her voice trailed off as snatches of memories teased at her, seen like flickers in the corner of her eye. Kiuma fell to brooding at them, wondering if she really even wanted to remember what they hinted at. It didn't involve anything pleasant, that was for sure... she could feel the pain radiating from them as a physical ache that intensified the farther she reached for them.
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 6:14 pm
"Likely you are correct, Lady," Ru said diplomatically. He couldn't believe that his mother's tutelage was proving to be more useful to him in this instance than anything he'd learned under Voldemaras' instruction. That hadn't happened in quite some time.
"The power gods wield certainly makes them dangerous companions for mortals. It might be better if the two did not mix outside their bound duties to one another. Supplicant to superior, deity to domain."
That was actually a pretty nice turn of phrase. It was a pity, Ru reflected, none of his band would really be interested in hearing it, even if he was able to remember it that long. Words were often slippery in his mind, which tended to scramble them at inopportune times. He didn't have the word for it, but he was a dyslexic lion. It could be very frustrating.
He bowed again as the goddess's voice trailed off and her attention seemed to turn inward. This seemed like a good time to leave and return to his party. They should probably know that this was not a good direction to come in. He didn't have any illusions about the chances the band would have if they caught her in a worse mood than she was. He doubted her mood would be improved by being happened upon by a band of warrior lions.
"If you don't mind, I'll be returning to my own kind."
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Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:47 am
Kiuma's gaze darted to the young lion as he mentioned leaving, pulling her out of her revere. She started at him for a moment with a rather sharp look before she visibly dismissed him, turning away with a flick of her tail.
"Go. It is as you say, the two sides should not mix. It give people ideas that can lead to grave misunderstandings. I hope you take your own words to heart, child..." She said over her shoulder as she ruffled her wings, the dark appendages appearing over her back once again. "It would be to the good for you to not meet me again in this lifetime."
There was no farewell, no preparation to leave... she was simply there one moment and gone the next, nothing to mark her but some scuffs on the ground and a savaged tree.
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