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 Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2015 3:53 pm
Frost!
Charlbury Chase had awoken with this most unappreciated discovery. She'd known that fall was drawing to a close, of course. Her coat had already gone all bushy and the nights were growing longer. Still, the weather had been warmer than usual that autumn. It was easy to ignore the falling leaves and migrating birds when the sun still shone so brightly and sweat still gathered on her coat. Now, she woke up to the dismal reality. The first frost had come.
This already had put her in a bad mood, but her mood only grew worse. She'd left her kill from yesterday out. It was a raccoon, a lovely and plump creature that she'd surprised on the way to his den the last evening. She'd hung it in a tree, thinking to eat it for breakfast in the morning. Now she looked at it and let out a mournful whimper. It was frozen solid. She gave it an experimental nibble, but this only confirmed her suspicions. It would take a morning of gnawing to get any sort of decent meal out of the animal now.
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Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 10:11 am
 This was not Black Rose’s first cold season. As soon as the plant life had started dying off she had started taking precautionary measures. The area surrounding her home often got an excessive amount of snow accumulation and even though the first storms hadn’t yet hit she knew it would only be a matter of time. She had taken advantage of the unusually warm autumn to go throughout the forest marking up the trees with her claws. Horizontal scratches would lead the way between her home and the open field, and vertical scratches would lead the way between home and the lake. No more would she have to worry about her mother, or herself, getting lost in the snowy change of scenery. After she had finished marking the last tree she had decided to take some time to herself exploring the unknown regions before the winter weather set in. The nice weather had scarcely lasted a week and as the sun rose Black Rose awoke to find a coating of frost on all the plants around her. Rose muttered a few curses before deciding to head back to her home. She could take a windy way back but it wouldn’t do to stay out and get caught in the snow that would surely follow. As she wove her way down unfamiliar paths she caught a scent of something unmistakably feline but also somehow still soquili. Rose’s blood ran cold. A skinwalker? This close to her home? She swallowed and slowly crept towards the smell keeping herself as small as possible. If there was a walker in these parts she needed to go get her mother and run but a small part of her was still hoping that her nose was just confusing smells as it was known to do. As she came closer she spotted something very, very green gnawing at what appeared to be a frozen raccoon carcass. Rose wrinkled her nose. This was not a skinwalker, it was something far more unusual and it seemed to be only half visible in parts. “Do your teeth hurt?” She asked suddenly before clamping her mouth shut. Rose hadn’t known that she was about to speak because if she had she would have bitten her tongue to silence herself.
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Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 11:57 am
As focused she was on getting meat from the frozen lump of raccoon, Charlbury didn't notice the other mare until she spoke. She dropped the raccoon as she whirled around, fur on her tail standing on end. It was another cat soquili! Instead of making Charl more friendly, she grew hostile at the intrusion.
"You can't have it!" she spat, glaring through green eyes. "Find your own food!" It didn't matter that she'd never had her food stollen by a feline stranger before. It still jumped into her mind as the probably reason for the other cat's presence.
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Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 12:03 pm
Rose’s fur puffed out in alarm at the other soquili’s reaction. Maybe this wasn’t a skinwalker but she certainly wasn’t friendly. For a split second she considered bolting but decided that it was likely a bad idea. Running would probably only lead to trouble. After all, cats tended to chase things that moved. Instead she would try to defuse the situation as best as she could.
“I don’t want it!” Rose protested trying to will her fur back down. “I prefer fish. Raccoon’s gross!” It probably wasn’t the most effective way to calm the other mare but Rose couldn’t help it, it was true. She’s always found the texture and smell of raccoon to be entirely off putting. Her personal diet was mostly fish, grasses, and berries, she was more bird than cat at least as far as her ancestry was concerned and more horse than anything else.
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2015 3:58 pm
Rose's tactics worked. Charlbury's fury calmed, though her suspicion remained. Her stance grew less combative, but she still stood over her food, just in case. She looked at the other cat with a wary scrutiny. Her pink and black colors would have been at home in her family, the yellow eyes and feline ears as well. It was her feet that drew Charl's attention. One set were hooves, and the front set were a pair of taloned claws.
"Fish aren't as good," she said stubbornly, though in truth she quite liked them. She was rattled enough by her initial surprise that she hung tenaciously onto her hostility.
She glanced once more at those claws with a jealous twinkle in her eye. They looked really good for catching fish.
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Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2015 10:29 am
Rose was relieved that whatever she was doing was working. She could tell because she wasn’t running for her life from a pissed off cat. Instead they were having a discussion about whether or not fish were better than raccoon. All in all it was a rather surreal moment for Rose who had never encountered another creature that so closely resembled her in her entire life and instead of yammering on about how cool it was they were having an admittedly pointless conversation. Still, she went along with afraid that doing otherwise would leave her at the wrong side of several sharp, actual points.
“Well fish don’t just taste good, they’re also easier to find fresh in the winter. Raccoons tend to hide from the cold but fish stay active even under the ice.” It was a good point if she did say so herself. She never suffered from a shortage of fish in the winter months even when plant life was scarce. She did feel bad for her mother who couldn’t stomach anything other than plants but at least Rose could get the fish and save whatever she could scrounge up for her mother.
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Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2015 7:54 pm
Charl's hostility diminished even further. Her inner workings were starting to classify this as a conversation rather than a fight. She accidentally was intrigued by what the other cat was saying, and wanted to continue speaking rather than scratching.
"... How do you get them if they're under the ice?" She asked grudgingly. She still didn't want to admit to being sociable. If she did, she'd have to also accept that she had massively and embarrassingly overreacted. That was something her feline pride couldn't accept. Instead, like any good cat, she'd convince herself that all was going exactly the way she wanted to.
She'd never even thought of catching fish in the dead of winter. She'd always somewhat assumed that the fish all froze, though she didn't have an explanation for where they came from again in the spring.
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Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 11:16 am
“You have to break the ice open.” Rose answered plainly. Things had had a weird start between the two of them but this was starting to feel like an actual conversation, even to Rose who had started very much on the defensive. “You can either stomp on it, which I don’t recommend unless you’re standing on the shore, or you can cut it or you can drop a rock. It’s pretty easy to break open once you get used to it. Then you just reach in and snatch up the fish in your mouth or claws!” Rose made a snatching motion with her talons to demonstrate. It likely wouldn’t work the same way for the other cat but she would still find it easier than a hooved horse would.
“I think they get used to being safe under the ice because I’ve never had a problem grabbing any of them before.” Rose continued, pondering aloud. “They’re definitely easier to catch in the winter than they are in the summer. Maybe it’s the cold?” She was beginning to forget that she wasn’t alone and that she also might not actually be safe.
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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2016 6:05 pm
"Hmmmmm." Charl's green eyes narrowed in concentration as she listened. She did want to be able to catch fish, the process was just mystifying to her. "You carry a rock," she muttered under her breath as the other cat spoke. That was the part that got her the most. "How do you carry a rock?" She still whispered to herself, though it was obvious that she was muttering.
"Rock in mouth, teeth hurt." She hated the thought of what a massive rock would do to her beautiful canines. "Rock in paws, can't walk." Some creatures had these body parts called "thumbs." Charl didn't know much about thumbs but knew enough to know she didn't have one. Thumbs made carrying things with paws easier, supposedly. She wasn't so sure.
"Rock in tail?" She whispered this one and then lit up with comprehension. "Rock in tail!" she repeated louder, letting out a raucous laugh at the realization. "You carry the rock in your tail, don't you?" She grinned as wide as any satisfied cat... and then noticed the other mare's feet.
"... Is that a thumb?" She stared at Black Rose's clawed feet, astonished.
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Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2016 6:18 pm
Rose hadn’t realized how much difficulty the green cat would have in just securing a rock for long enough to get it to the water. For Rose, it was easy. Select rock. Wrap talons around rock. Clunk way over to the water stepping on the rock while walking. Lift rock. Drop rock. Success. She had just assumed the other would carry it in her mouth like most of their kind did when moving something. If that hurt her teeth then that really was a problem. The solution she came up with was as worrying as her trouble with it.
“Rock… in your tail?” She asked hesitantly. Rose had heard of some species having tails with the flexibility and strength to be able to grab and lift things. Some were even capable of asphyxiating other creatures with them but her tail didn’t look like it was capable of such a feat. Really Rose wasn’t even sure the other’s tail was solid. It didn’t seem to be entirely… there. She was busy staring at the gaps and fades in her tail when the question about Rose’s feet hit the air.
“A thumb?” She blinked a few times to make sense of the question. “What… what’s a thumb?” Rose suddenly found her own feet far more interesting than she ever had before. She had claws, or talons depending on who she spoke to, but she’d never heard of a thumb before. Perhaps she had had thumbs the entire time and never known it.
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Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2016 7:36 pm
Now Charl was just confused. She squinted at the clawed feet, blinked, and then squinted again. "That's a thumb, isn't it? Is that not a thumb?" She skittered forwards a few steps, head low to the ground and looking intently at Black Rose's feet.
"What is that thing on the back of your foot?" She wasn't exactly a biologist herself. She didn't know why bird feet were different than paws, and why some soquili might have one or the other. Normally she thought that paws were naturally superior, but now she was feeling a little less sure.
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