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 Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 11:49 pm
The end was finally here, there was no stopping it. The summer heat bore down upon his back and he felt a heaviness in his hooves that made his entire body ache. He gazed mournfully at his familiar, Ulfred, who walked ahead of him. Who would look after the poor pup when Osmond was gone? He let out a long, dramatic sigh and then stopped walking. In one large, ground-shaking tumble, the stallion now lay on his back, hooves straight up in the air, eyes closed.
"Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeed." He whined, his voice high, despite his natural accented base. "I am going to die of boredom. It was nice knowing you. I hope you find happiness.”
A sigh of impatience sounded from ahead of him, accompanied by the sounds of retreating paw steps. Soon, a paw was shoved into one of his nostrils, causing Osmond to jump and roll onto his side."Well, you aren't dead yet, so we'd best get a move on. It'll be dark before we know it and we have to reach some sort of cover. If we keep walking, we should reach those mountains before dusk."Osmond followed the direction that his familiar was nodding towards and squinted. In the far off distance across the plains, stood some mountains, sure enough.
"But they're so faaaaaaar....Hey! Watch it!" Ulfred had jabbed him again, knocking over one of his ears with a paw. It didn't hurt much, but his nails were sharp and scraped when he wanted them to."And they're not going to get any closer if you just sit there. If you want to moan about your distress and get picked off by the condors out here, be my guest, but I will leave you here." Said the wolf, coldly, before he turned away from the stallion and began to trek towards the mountains once more.
Osmond stared after him pouting for a while, before getting to his hooves and trotting after him. This was going to be a long, painful day, but at least he had Ulfred with him.
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Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 12:30 am
"Are we there yet?" "No." "Are we there yet?" "No." "Are we-" "Shut up, Osmond! If you don't keep quiet for five minutes, you're going on a time out!"
There was silence for a few minutes, but three not five. It took Osmond one minute to remain speechless without trying, another minute for him to struggle with it and the last was used to decide whether he really wanted to test his limits with his familiar. He did.
"Are we there yeeeeet?" He said, unable to prevent the smug, taunting tone from his voice. It appeared, that his familiars limits were not meant to be tested with today, for when Ulfred turned it was a snarling, angry wolf Osmond was faced with, not his usual easy-going, diplomatic familiar. It surprised him, even frightened him a little, with a look at those fangs. Maybe the summer sun was getting to both of them.
"Go find a clump of dirt to look at ten paces away from here. I don't want you to move or lay down or anything, just stand there and stare at it. I will come to get you when your time out is over." Growled Ulfred so fiercely that Osmond couldn't find the spirit in him to argue and off he went without protest.
Eventually he found a small dirt clearing in the tall grasses and stared at it blankly. He had been in this position before and found at these times, it was the easiest to just zone out, or occasionally reflect on his life before now, until Ulfred came to fetch him. Staring at the dirt, he exhaled and his mind slowly began to drift and wander.
"Hot day out today." He said to no one. "Good day to be under some trees, or standing in a river so deep it runs under your belly. You gotta be careful with those sorts of rivers though, or you'll be washed upstream and while it's an adventure and you have bragging rights if you survive it, you gotta be careful all the same, because sometimes there are are rocks or waterfalls and if you are a smaller sort of creature then you could very likely get hurt. Not me though, I'm pretty big. My da must've been big too, though I can't remember him now. Shame, really. My ma must've been a beauty, too, since I am a handsome thing. Why else would the ladies be flocking to me? Well, it may be my charm. That must be it. I'm the most charming charm-merry, charm-iest... Wait, what was I talking about? Oh well..." And so he went on and off like this, talking to himself or to the breeze that came through or the bugs on the ground. He talked so much that his voice became hoarse (which was ironic, if you think about it) and when Ulfred came to fetch him, he nodded, no longer having the voice to talk.
And off they wandered, towards the mountains and both of them enjoying the peace and quiet, until Osmond regained his voice again and asked. "Are we there yet?"
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Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 11:40 pm
Contrary to Ulfred's prior belief, it was more difficult to keep track of his bonded in the mountains. In the plains, the stallion was immediately noticed, what with his large stature and bold markings, but in mountains, everything shifted in scale. Everything was large, the trees, the rocks, the scents too, in the way that everything was so overpowering! He didn't know how his father could stand it, to live in a forest all the time.
"Os?" He barked, on the hunt for his companion. He had just seen him by this tree moments ago, distantly remembering Osmond telling him to come over and look at what he found, but looking at the tree now gave him nothing. No interesting sights or animals or Osmond. He growled in irritation and was lifting a leg to make sure he didn't start wandering in circles in on this blasted slope of a mountain trail, when a looming force behind him caused him to jump and turn around with a snarl.
"No need to look so spooked, Red." Said Osmond with a jovial grin on his face. Ulfred's was one of irritation, feeling thoroughly unamused, but before he could get a word in, his bonded continued. "C'mon, I found something real neat and it's real close too. You'll love it." And so Osmond turned around and began to lumber off. As annoyed as Ulfred felt, he was curious about what Os had found and so followed him. Who knew, maybe it would be something worth his while.
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Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2016 11:54 pm
The hike up to the mountain had been worth the wait (though maybe not the boredom) as the mountain was covered with all manner of interesting things. It had trees bigger than five Osmonds stacked up on one another and it had all sorts of holes and weaving roots and creatures scurrying underfoot.
There were flowers and mosses and mushroom. His eyes widened with delight when he recognized a particular mushroom in particular. He worried not for his familiar, he knew Red could find him again. Red's nose was the best he had encountered when it came to tracking. Granted, Red was the only wolf he had gotten close enough to see their tracking abilities in practice, but by golly if he wasn't impressive he didn't know who was!
Anyway, he wandered off towards the mushroom patch. This is when he wished he carried a satchel the most, thought Osmond, but for the time being, he just stuffed two awkwardly into his pipe. Nothing could go wrong with that plan.
The mushrooms may have been the source that caused him to wander away from Red, but it was the sight past the tree that caught his interest the most. It was a butterfly, brightly colored and dancing in the air.
"Hey Red, come look at this!" Said he to his familiar, before following the fluttering butterfly, with wings of blue and gold.
He followed it all the way to a narrow pathway that he could only just squeeze through (though he was pretty sure he heard his hood rip-rats!) and man, oh man was it a sight to behold. There were dozens of butterflies, all in different colors spiraling around various colored flower bushes. It was beautiful, so beautiful it brought tears to his eyes and a happiness swelled within him.
"Isn't it wonderful, Red? Red?" When he gathered no reply he looked down and found his familiar was not at his side. He must not have jpined Osmonf after all. Well, wouldn't he put a stop to that nonsense! This time, when Os went to collect his familiar, he would make sure to take him along. This sort of sight was not seen every afternoon, after all!
It took some careful backtracking and then he found his familiar staring up at the mushroom tree. He must have spooked the poor pup, for suddenly he was being growled at, but it was so cute to look at that Os couldn't do much else than smile, not meaning to partronize his companion. He just made a simplified explanation and than walked off, this time certain Red would follow him. Whaddya know? He did.
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Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2016 9:58 pm
As you can imagine, it was immensely satisfying for Osmond to lead Red into the butterfly garden he found and watch the pup's eyes grow round with delight. While he was not a shallow stallion, or even a particularly prideful one, he did take happiness in showing others a good time. (In more than one sense of the word, when it came to pretty mares.) It was even more satisfying (delightful even) when Red suddenly leapt forward and began to chase about the butterflies, pawing at the air. It was something one might expect a creature of feline to do, but though he dare not admit it, even Red was a bit of an oddball. It was one of the many reasons Osmond loved him so much.
As he was watching his familiar dance about the clearing, a sudden pang of homesickness and nostalgia fell over him. Usually, he would smoke these feelings away, but he found that rather than missing the snowy mountains, it was the company of a certain songbird. He didn't want to smoke away those feelings. He wanted to remember his familiar forever.
It was true, before he had Ulfred, he had another. A charming young bird whom he had acquainted himself with when he was nothing, but a colt himself. He had been interested in performing ballads of his adventures to be back in the day and one of his songs (the one about him fighting off an adversary that was the size of ten drafts stacks up on one another) had attracted the brightly colored bird and his next (describing the young mare that would become his lover) got him to stay. They wrote songs together and talked days away about the adventures they were going to have. When they set out, they created ballads at the end of every night on what they had done that day.
Osmond was sure that they were going to be together forever. The two would be each other's muses and minstrels until the day they died together. Unfortunately, fate had other plans. Only... It wasn't fate, but Osmond's own stupidity that had caused the death of his familiar. They had decided to seek out the hot springs of the west, but rather than take the forest route, Osmond had wanted to go through the plains.
"It's not safe out there, Ossie. I don't want to go." His familiar had said, but Os shook his head and given an amused laugh.
"You needn't be so frightened, featherbrain. Nothing can best the strength of the two of us together. Be it skinwalker or Kalona or forest fire, nothing can spook us away!" He rolled his eyes at the wide-eyed songbird, who was constantly fluffing and preening his feathers into place, only to fluff them up again. "Look, if you're so nervous, I'll go out first and show you it's fine."
And off he went, leaving his familiar to make pathetic whistle-whimpers.
He walked straight out, his stance relaxed, almost cocky. He was half way out from the trees when he turned his head to call his familiar over when he stumbled and heard a loud anguished cry beside him. Looking down, he raised a hoof to see that he had broken through a hole and within it were crushed eggs, small and slimy. Snake eggs. He backed up only to pause as he heard a rattling behind him. Turning, he saw pained, furious slitted eyes fixed on him. It was hissing so incoherently that he couldn't make it out, but he had the distinct feeling that the snake was the mother of the eggs he just crushed. Oops.
The snake bunched itself and Osmond froze, unable to get move with those eyes trained on him like they were and then there was a flurry of wings and a cry for his name and a voice telling him to run and he bolted. He ran across the plains and then veered for the forest instead. He coughed and panted and heaved with fear and foreboding as he called for his familiar, but no response came. He trembled at the thought of going out to the plains again, but he had to find his bird.
With steady steps and his eyes trained on the ground, he made careful work back to the spot he had crushed the eggs with. The remains of the eggs were still their, but luckily, their mother was not. In her place however, was something far more dreadful. Blue feathers lay strewn about the plains floor, with only a picked apart carcass where the body should have been. Not only had he left his familiar to die at the fangs of a snake, but he couldn't even retrieve its body before the scavengers got to him. He collected the feathers that he could and left the rest. He didn't got to the hot springs. He didn't go anywhere. His mind had left him and his body just sort of drifted. He hadn't picked up a tune since.
"Os?" Ulfred was looking up at him, eyes concerned. "Os? Y-You're crying." So he was. Oh Angeni, he had had enough of feeling blue for one day.
"'m alright, Red. Let's say we stay in this clearing for a bit and have a smoke, eh?" His familiar, who didn't smoke one bit (save for the second hoof he was subjected to by his bonded) shrugged and nodded. Relieved, Os smiled. It was time to make the memories go away, for now, at least.
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