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Tangled Puppet Vice Captain
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 Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 4:59 pm
Kara stumbled as she climbed over some rocks, only barely managing to keep herself upright instead of tumbling head first over the other edge. She grunted as she clung to the egg. She’d made it this far, she wouldn’t stop now. Her legs ached and the slashes on her arm pulsed, sending tiny spikes of pain traveling up her arm. She kept pushing herself, though, and was relieved when the lake finally came into view. She forced her body forward, determined to at least make it to the edge of the lake before she let go of the egg. At least there, she could hide it in the brush and go after Ataya.
After what seemed like ages, Kara had made it to the lake. She let the egg down gently, being sure to hide it as best as she could. Even then, the pink of the egg could be seen through all the vegetation. Something she would have to deal with later, when she could hide the egg more properly. For now, though, she moved to the water’s edge, carefully cleaning the wounds on her arm the best she could before moving back and glancing around. Now that she was home, her mind rested more easily and she found herself not on guard as much.
As she moved to follow the trail back to their home, she wondered where Ataya might be at the moment. Despite being worn out, she was excited to show him just what she had found. When she rounded the lake and came up on the other side she called out for her brother, hoping he might be out and about somewhere near. The stables, maybe? She moved in their direction, deciding that she would check in there first.
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Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2014 5:25 pm
Warm, desert wind teased between the leaves of the large rokka tree overhanging their housefront lake. Before Ataya and his sister were born, he was told, Vallarah — mate to his great uncle, Kilian — had planted its seed and grown it herself from ysali magic. Now, nearly fourteen years later, it loomed, great and proud over the water, dropping its leaves on the lake’s surface in autumn and providing a diving platform in summer.
Or, in this case, a seat.
Ataya sat in the nook of one of the lower hanging branches, tucked into a dip with a book propped in his lap, the shade of the leaves making the warm wind pleasant and the atmosphere perfect for concentration and intellectual discovery. At least, until movement on the far side of the lake for some reason caught his eye. Generally, texts absorbed him all but completely, making him virtually immune and wholly ignorant to the comings and goings of his immediate surroundings — nevermind more distant ones — but for once, the case broke the pattern, and his eyes flicked up over the edge of his text to eye the source of the disturbance.
His sister. Carrying…
His brow pinched. What was she carrying? An egg? Large as her torso, it must have been heavy, but she seemed to be managing, tucking it into the grasses at the lakeside as though that might — what? — hide it? Ataya raised his eyebrows, thumbing over the next page of his text in debate. Then, she called out to him, and his indecision vanished. Huffing to himself, he tucked a marker into his book, closed it, and made his way down the tree.
“Kara — Kara,” he called out, debated a moment, and then gave a push of magic, shoving himself into the shadow of the tree and then skipping through the shadows at the bottom of the lake until he was inside Kara’s shadow and emerging again. “What,” he said, “…in the name of all the gods are you trying to hide beside the lake?” He paused, frowning as he took in her state more thoroughly. “You’re hurt — what have you been doing?”
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Tangled Puppet Vice Captain
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Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2014 5:39 pm
Kara yelped at the sudden voice and spun around in surprise. Had she not stumbled back, falling over her own feet, she may have very well had attacked her brother. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her heartbeat to slow. “Abronaxus Ataya. You scared me.” She straightened up, eyes opening as he pointed out she was hurt. “Yes, yes. Dragons. Five of them. I’m fine. Just need to let my energy come back and I can heal myself.”
Despite her words, she winced at the pain in her arm as she moved to take hold of Ataya’s wrist. She didn’t have time to worry about the pain. “C’mon...hurry,” Kara said as she tugged Ata along behind her. “I went exploring. To practice with my bow. Before I knew it, I was much farther than planned and I came across this clearing — burnt trees, blood everywhere and a dead khehora.” She frowned as she crouched down by where she’d hidden the egg. “There were ysali there, scrounging around.”
Kara touched her cheek. “I killed one of them but got caught in the vines of another before killing it too. They were after this.” She pulled back the grasses, revealing the rest of the khehora egg to her brother. “It’d been hidden in vines and flowers. I might not have even noticed it had it not been for the ysali nosying around.” Her brows pinched together as she remembered what happened next. “Then three ayrala dragons came and I tried to get away but I had to fight them.” Her gaze flit to her brother. “I’m fine though. I just used a lot of my magic on the way down the mountain side. I healed my arm some and fought off the ayralas.”
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Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2014 9:42 pm
“A khehora egg,” Ataya murmured aloud, half musing, half fascinated. Despite having interactions with some khehora — both bonded and feral — neither he nor his sister had ever been so close to a live egg. Though he had known they were large, it somehow looked larger still than he might have imagined, and warm to the touch when he laid a palm on it. “With those colors, it’s no surprise it remained hidden for some time,” he said. “It would blend right in…”
He glanced to his sister as a thought occurred to him, abruptly curious.
“You know Father would want it taken to one of the mountain tribes, to be raised by its…‘brethren’ so to speak. But…you’re hiding it. Do you not intend to tell him?”
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Tangled Puppet Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2014 9:50 pm
Kara chewed on her lip as she stared at the egg, mulling Ata’s question over in her head. The moment she’d decided to take the egg, she had known exactly what father would do, should he find out about it. “I...I don’t know.” Her gaze flicked to her brother, eyes widening. “You won’t tell him, will you?”
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Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 11:21 am
Ataya blinked and then shrugged. “If you don’t wish me to, of course not. You’ll have to find a more…thorough location within which to hide it, though. Father is, if nothing else, thorough and attentive to detail.” Ataya’s eyes flicked out over the lake and then past the house, up the mountainside. “Storing it further away would decrease the likelihood that he located it, if you were of a mind to keep it from him, but also make it more difficult to access inconspicuously…I don’t suppose you have the first idea when it will hatch.” He glanced to her, holding his gaze to her face assessingly. “Will you bond to it?”
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Tangled Puppet Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 11:36 am
Kara reached out, laying a hand gently against the egg and frowning. “I’ve no clue when it’ll hatch. How do you tell such things?” She tilted her head as she ran her hand over the egg, almost as if she were petting it. Her hand froze at Ata’s question and she rose, dusting herself off and glancing towards her brother. “I’d be lying if I said hadn’t thought about it.” She chewed on her lip for a moment as her gaze flit back to the egg. “Father would not be happy but…” She shrugged.
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Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 11:56 am
Ataya shrugged. “A khehora would know, likely. Though I couldn’t begin to say, myself…” He eyed her, the corner of his lips edging up with some combination of mischief and amusement. “It would empower you…you’d have another creature at your side, always. It’s magic at your beck and call…and, under the bond, it would always do your bidding. If it were peisio, or ysali, it could make you all the more powerful as a healer…or you could use it to poison people.”
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Tangled Puppet Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 12:04 pm
“It could be a friend, too…” Kara’s brows pinched together as she mulled over everything Ataya had said. She knew the benefits of having a bonded and knew, thanks to Father, how that very bond could be abused. It was why he disliked it so much. She also knew of at least one person who had never, as long as she had known him, that had not abused his bond. Casseth’s father, the few times Kara had met him, had never once demanded anything of his bonded, Amadia. Their relationship was that akin to friendship. Something that had been built over time and not forced. The last thing Akara wished to do was enslave another creature. “I’ll think about it,” she said at length. “For now...where can we hide it?” Her gaze flit up the mountainside, where Ataya had indicated just a few minutes ago.
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Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 10:51 pm
“Mm…”
Though thoroughly amused — and curious — that his sister was willing to potentially step so far out of their father’s wishes, intentionally, he let the subject drop. Together, they discussed options, searched the mountainside, weighed benefits and detriments to a variety of locations before tucking it away in the safety of a nook some ways further up the mountain, out of the immediate area surrounding their house, while still being close enough that the egg could be checked on with relative frequency without raising the suspicions of their parents.
Less than a week later, after finally having finished up his set of chores alongside his sister, Ataya was on ‘egg duty’ with his book, sitting with his back propped to warm rock and a book tucked into his lap. There, the egg began to twitch. Absorbed in his reading, Ataya barely noticed at first — until one tap shook the egg enough to half tip it over — and his attention darted away from the book.
‘Hatching,’ he thought. It was hatching. And, if all he did was wait right here, exactly as he was…he could have a bonded of his own. He eyed it, contemplating the warm thrill of anticipation that coursed through him at the thought. Father wouldn’t approve. But then, Father rarely approved of the things Ataya enjoyed most, and it would make him powerful. Open new areas of magic. Allow him to experiment with another element through another without the aid of an orb. Connect live with and tap into an entirely separate energy source on hand constantly.
He reached a hand out, touching the pads of his fingers lightly to the shell. Warm, and blossoming with potential.
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Tangled Puppet Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 11:12 pm
Kara sighed as she curled her toes into the grass and stared out over the lake. She’d been thinking about the egg a lot lately and what it might mean to have a bonded. She knew, right off, that Father wouldn’t approve — had known this before she’d even decided to actually take the egg down the mountainside with her, but she had done so anyway. What's more, she had hid the egg away, with the help of Ataya, so that Father would not discover it and make her take it away to another khehora clan.
She rubbed at her arm, her fingers moving over a small bump of a scar left from her previous dragon fight just a few days ago. Once her energy had been restored, she’d worked on healing her various wounds. However, the gouge in her arm had been deep, and because she had had to wait so long to heal it, it had left a tiny scar behind. She’d protected the egg, had even been willing to give up her life for it. Maybe she should have told Father. Then they could have found it a home. Her brows pinched together at that thought as she shook her head and turned, heading past the house and up onto the mountain, where they’d hid the egg.
Despite knowing it was wrong, despite knowing Father would be angry — Kara wanted that bond. She would wrestle with the reasons later, for now, she just wanted to see her brother and the egg they’d both been taking care of for almost a week now. “Ataya…” Her voice trailed off as the hiding spot came into view. Her head tilted as she watched Ata places his fingers lightly against the egg.
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Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 11:16 pm
Ataya glanced up at his sister’s voice. On spotting her, he took his hand away — not hastily, or guiltily, though perhaps that might have been in order he didn’t think so — and eyed her as he notched his head towards it. “It just started twitching. From the amount it’s moved,” he said, “it might well hatch soon…have you decided if you intend to bond with it?”
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Tangled Puppet Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 12:04 am
“I…” She hesitated in her words, wondering what her brother expected her to answer. Most likely Atay expected obedience out of her — for her to take what Father said and follow it. She nodded her head lightly as she moved forward, kneeling on the ground before the egg. Kara reached out slowly, hand jerking back a fraction when the egg twitched. She tilted her head as she watched it move, wondering if it would hatch at that moment. When it stilled, and nothing else happened, she rested the palm of her hand against the egg. “I think...I want to bond with it.”
She turned back to her brother, a small smile set to her lips as she settled back against the rock, close to the egg. “I wonder how long it’ll take to hatch.” It was more of a statement, than a question. Neither of them could be for sure — they had not seen a khehora hatching before. Though, with the amount of books Ataya read, Akara wouldn’t be surprised if the answer did lie somewhere deep within her brother’s mind.
An hour passed with nothing more than a few twitches happening every fifteen minutes or so and so they had both busied themselves — at first, Kara brought up the ice sculptures they used to make, frequently, when Ata had first picked his clan. After a few of those, they had settled back to do their own thing — Ata’s nose was back in his book and Kara’s eyes were glued to the egg, hoping that it would hatch soon.
As the hour passed, the twitches became more frequent — frequent enough to warrant Kara getting Ataya’s attention. Just as Ata’s name left her lips, the first crack began to appear and soon it was spider webbing into other, smaller cracks, until a good portion of the egg had cracks all over it. She chewed on her lip, anticipation causing her stomach to flip flop. She heard a small chirrup as some of the egg shell fell away and she saw scales. Kara’s heart jumped into throat as she stood to get a better view. Before long, more of the shell fell away and more and more of the khehora was revealed.
Kara stepped back as the egg tipped over and the loosened portions of the egg fell away. Her breath caught in her throat as the khehora clawed at the rest of the egg and made all kinds of small chirping sounds. Had her brother and her been this noisy when they’d been born? She watched and listened as the khehora worked its way out of the egg the rest of the way. While doing so, she felt something reaching out, as if grasping for something — was it the khehora’s magic? Was this what the bond felt like?. She tilted her head as the khehora blinked its eyes open and caught hold of her own gaze. She smiled at it as she felt the magic rippled through the air and start to surround her. She felt her own magic reach out, straining to grab hold of and latch onto the khehora’s. Kara fought it at first, second guesses inching into her mind at the last moment. It was too late, though, as the khehora’s magic had reached just far enough to get snagged. The khehora chirruped at her as their magic intertwined and forever locked themselves together. For better or for worse, Kara was now bonded to a khehora.
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