[WP05] Swarm, Winter

[Ruriska]

Quote:

You awaken on the shady side of a towering sand dune, near an oasis. Birds with long, brightly-colored tails fly overhead. If you are a native Acha, you recognize this as your homeland. A strange, smooth-sided tower of red stone rises in the distance. Native Acha may or may not recognize it as a landmark.

Swarm opened her eyes.

She stood rigid, not moving, simply waiting. Time passed slowly, like the sand trickling down the dune. This was new, different but it wasn’t suddenly waking in a strange environment that had Swarm on edge.

She was alone.

So she waited. Her nostrils flared wide and mouth parted to taste the air. Water, she surmised, was close. That was good, considering the heat rolling off the sand even in the shade.

But she was alone.

Brother, Sister, where are you?

Should she wait longer? Should she search for them? They were never truly gone, even when they had left her sight. Here was different. Here she felt their absence like a missing limb.

Chrystali

 

[Chrystali]

Winter opened her eyes and immediately felt the sick pang of disorientation.

She scrambled to her hooves, not having remembered falling asleep to begin with. Winter was never disorientated, she always knew exactly where she was because it was precisely where she meant to be! Yet as she stood there, surrounded by a swamp of gold that was sticky to her hooves and uncomfortable against her fur, she had not the faintest idea where she was or how she got there.

Winter may have had concern of that, but the greater threat was that she was crippled. Frostbite was nowhere near her. It wasn't just that she couldn't see him, but she couldn't smell him -- couldn't feel him. This land was untouched by him, and just like that, she'd been stricken down and made weaker in a strange land--

No. She had to be firm with herself, as her hunter's mind was struggling against the part that was not listening. I will survive this. Whatever this is.

The air was acrid but she could pick up a trade of water and foreign greenery. Above, the flit of colorful avians only taunted the loss of her other half. Turning with eyes burning with all the seething rage of the sun, she set her sights on the nearest living being -- which was an immobile doe -- and immediately felt the need for the answers she could not come up with herself.

The huntress stalked over to the darker pelted femme, grace not on her side in the land of disgusting, slipping texture beneath her black hooves. "You!" she barked the word, though it sounded quiet to her ears in the great expanse of nothing. "Where is this place?"

Ruriska

 

[Ruriska]

Swarm was in a crisis.

She had always been of dual natures; the wasp and the Kimeti. The wasp she knew well. It beat a strong rhythm in her heart that was echoed by Brother and Sister. They were her support, her reassurance when she chose to step into the skin of the Kimeti.

Now, with them gone, the lonely wasp spiraled down and the Kimeti rose to take its place.

She flinched as a voice rang out and shattered her thoughts to pieces. With a sorrowful stare, she studied the green and white doe but she said nothing, because she had no answer.

Chrystali

 

[Chrystali]

Though she'd not voice it out loud, Winter felt vulnerable. It was akin to walking around with a gash in her side and a swamp full of hungry caiman. Indeed, her blotched white and green pelt was no boon here in a sea of gold.

When the doe flinched, Winter curled her lip in derision. Great. A simple one. Slightly more useful than a scared one, but useless in the grand scheme of things. Flicking her tail in agitation, Winter turned on hoof (and almost lost her footing in doing so, one leg buckling slightly) and looked around, trying to make sense of...something.

Sticky, painful grains of gold swamp. Birds of color and shape she'd never seen. Foliage unlike anything in the Swamp. Even the water and surrounding greenery did not seem unique to the land it was in, even if it stood out against it like blood on snow. No, if anything...the enormous spire in the distance...that stood out.

Winter set her jaw and looked back to the quiet doe. Another flick of her tail, and the huntress ambled in the general direction of the distant red tower. Monuments were landmarks. Landmarks meant kin. While kin were generally undesirable, she'd use any measure she needed to get home.

Ruriska

 

[Ruriska]

If she was more kin than wasp now, she was surely weaker. She would die in a strange land, without Brother and Sister. They would not be sad, because wasps did not quite have that emotion, but they would be less without her as she was without them and that si what they would mourn.

Swarm wasn’t even looking at the other kin anymore, her gaze distant and troubled. But when the doe began to move away, it jolted her back into the moment and she instantly moved to follow. Two Kimeti was surely better than one half of one.

Her first step was clumsy, the sand slipping beneath her hooves and nearly sending her sideways. She quickly readjusted her weight and while walking still wasn’t exactly easy, she caught up to the other Kimeti.

Swarm looked at her sideways and hummed softly, before realising the sound would mean nothing to the not-wasp and she sought actual words.

“Be careful.”

Chrystali

 

[Chrystali]

The sand shifted and waned beneath her hooves like some mimicry of water, further agitating the displaced hunter. It was true that Winter did believe herself a huntress and adaptable as such, but this...this was ridiculous! There was no cover, land that moved and quite frankly, she did not want to know what type of life dwelled here, even with the painful reminder of the birds that zipped overhead.

She almost missed the black doe at her side (very un-huntress of her) until the soft words reached her ears, the likes of which prompted her to pin them back. Casting the other a look that was not quite scathing but far from friendly, Winter flicked her tail. "I am--" she slipped, caught her hoofing and managed to get on mostly even ground. Gathering herself, she tried again. "I am the hunter." Half of one, but that was not up for debate. She would not tell a stranger her weakness. "I do what must be done."

It was about as close as she could get to acknowledging she'd be as careful as was kinsmanly possible. She was brash, but she was not reckless. Not yet, anyway.

Ruriska

I am so, so sorry q_q

 

[Ruriska]

Swarm blinked slow and steady in the face of the other doe’s irritation, about as moved as a rock would have been. "We are also hunters," she said flatly, before realising that there was no ‘we’ anymore, just ‘I’.

"Are not all kin hunters?" She mused. Yet she knew, that in those brief times she had met her own kind, it did seem as though some were not designed for the hunt. They laughed and played and were too soft in nature to land a killing blow. How on earth did they even survive? Life required death in order to continue.

She slipped slightly when her hoof touched the ground and found no solid purchase. Again she rebalanced and then paused, taking her time to place her hoof down. Slow and steady.

Chrystali

No worries. <3

 

[Chrystali]

The darker doe's response gave the lighter one a pause, one that showed it the tilt of her head and the movement of her eyes away from the other. We, she said. There was none other. This one, too, was made lame by being where they were.

The next question gave the impression of not truly being meant to be answered, but it was enough to push beyond the briefest flicker of empathy that Winter may have felt (and admitted). "Not even remotely." The words were fairly growled as though the sand had lodged itself in her throat, low and scratchy. She would not expand on it, as undoubtedly, her idea of what it meant to be a hunter far differed from her shadow's.

Despite their weak footing in the unfamiliar territory, the tower was not so far, the horizon more distant than before. Winter's muscles ached for the dance to stay upright on the sand, but she firmly believed she would not die to this place and she would be stronger for it.

"Where were you?" she asked after a time, having no need for small talk, only a better grasp of where her half-companion came from. If their goal was the same. "Before you wakened."

Ruriska

 

[Ruriska]

Swarm made a small sound. Sometimes it occurred to her, like it did in this now, that many of her kin were different. There was not one thing that defined each of them. Some, like her, were stranger than others and it was not necessary for them to change and fit in. Others would take them as they were, or they simply wouldn't. There was no reason to fear one part of yourself when it was simply what you were.

The tower loomed closer, though what they would do once they had reached it, Swarm was uncertain.

"The Swamp," she answered after a long time spent pondering a response. "No place than normal."

Chrystali