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 Posted: Wed May 31, 2017 6:15 pm
 Things had gotten very quiet in Fahargiga's swamp since the kids had gone off to join their father. It had been, in fact, lonely, a concept that Fahargiga had, up until that point, been completely unfamiliar with. The fact was, she was a black dragon, and black dragons simply did not socialize much with other people. Other animals, sure--they got along well with reptiles such as alligators and snakes. They were fine companions. But they tended not to mix it up much with stars and dragons. Intelligent company was dangerous--they were rivals more than anything else, and nuisances to boot. No, a dragon was far better off being solitary by far, and anyone who thought it was a good idea to go around socializing with other people should do it far away from her swamp, lest she eat them.
The feeling of loneliness then was not a comfortable one, and neither was it a familiar one. All her life, Giga had been happy to be alone. Solitude was not the same as loneliness. Solitude felt good. It seemed that that had changed, as well as everything else since the hatchlings had been born. Suddenly she'd found herself full of--ugh--affection for the little nippers, and what was worse, once they were out of her scales, she wanted nothing more than for them to come back.
They were better off far away from her, though. Adult dragons should not have to share a territory, and they must be adults by now (the other possibility, that they had died, was unthinkable. It made Giga angry and hungry at the same time--if someone had laid so much as a hair on either of her daughters' scales, there would not be enough left of them for the carrion beetles to feast upon). So it was better by far that they were with their father. The dilution of their--her--dragon blood should be sufficient to allow them to be comfortable in each others' presence, but she was afraid that they might make her annoyed if they had stayed around.
This brought up an uncomfortable possibility in Giga's mind--was she changing into something different? Was she becoming...social? How much would she change now that she was a mother? She growled. There were some times in which she wished she'd never become a mother!
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Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2019 4:28 pm
Nature could be glorious and beautiful. There were few things in life as beautiful as a forest in the early spring, when the sun was just beginning to shine with warmth again, and the little green buds were appearing on the end of every twig and branch. There was nothing as rejuvenating as the rain, either a spring storm still full of the cool of winter, or a summer storm, playful but melancholy, as though the rain regretted hiding the sun. The stars on a clear night were beautiful any time of year, but winter or summer was best, when either the cold air nipped you and made the stars sparkle brighter, or when the warmth of summer surrounded you, and shooting stars streaked across the sky.
Yes, nature was beautiful by its very existence. Most of nature, anyway. Swamps were pestilential, disgusting, full of noisome smells and unidentifiable sounds. Maybe you could hear a bird song, but you'd hear the croaking of frogs and the growls of alligators as well. What birds there were here were ugly, spindly, things with beaks like malignant growths designed to...what, drink the water around here? The water was disgusting, too, there was far too much in it. It always tasted either too bitter or two sour (depending on the swamp), never fresh or clean like a mountain or normal forest stream. Swamps were so awful he was pretty sure they weren't natural, like some sort of curse or blight on the land. Disgusting. And yet, Mingzhu Lung found himself slogging through a swamp. He'd missed all of the signs, deep in thought about poetry, that the river he was following fed into a swamp.
"Brought this on myself," he muttered under his breath as he lifted one hoof out of the knee-deep water. Covered in muck and worse. Ughhhh! Gross!
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Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2019 7:40 pm
Giga was interrupted from her quiet contemplation of the end of her life as she knew it by the sound of someone else's footsteps. Whoever they were, they were small--their hoofsteps were light and their voice was high-pitched. Whoever they were, they were whining loud enough to be heard over the insects and distant bird call.
She lifted her head from the surface of the water and scented the air. It was hard to describe how the smell of a dragon differed from that of ordinary stars; no matter their breed, she could smell that little different thing about them. Maybe it was a touch of the unnatural, or maybe it was more magic in the air. Either way, she could tell that the stranger in her swamp was another dragon, and that just. Would. Not. Do. She snarled and lowered her head back to the surface of the water and surged forward through the canals of her home towards the noise. This was her swamp. No other dragons were allowed here! She would chase this trespasser out of her swamp at any cost!
As she approached the sound of the annoying voice, she saw that her assessment had been correct. He was one of those dragons without wings, the kind with antlers instead of horns. She growled again. Not as annoying as some other dragons could be, but she couldn't help it--she could not tolerate threats to her domination, no matter how small and seemingly harmless the vermin was. He couldn't fly--good, he would have to run or to swim to get away from her. She could do with a good chase.
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 4:17 pm
The sound of the swamps subtly changed--so subtly that Mingzhu didn't notice it at first. The sound of bird calls changed. They were a little more shrieky now, and the croaking of frogs had stopped. The alligators weren't growling either, and in the quiet he could hear another sound he hadn't heard in this swamp before--the sound of water moving. He looked around, but the thick vegetation was such that it was impossible to see the ground (or the water, whatever--that was another awful thing about the swamp, what looked like ground was, half of the time, just cruddy water!) more than a few feet away from him. But through the trees, he could see the water ripple. Plants on top of the water shifted and bobbed, but where there were breaks in the constant vegetation, he could see the water itself rippling. It was a bow wave. Something in the water was coming towards him.
Suddenly the change in the sounds made a horrible amount of sense. There was a predator nearby, and the birds were singing out warnings to each other, while the frogs were staying quiet so that the predator didn't notice them. The creature, whatever it was, had definitely noticed Mingzhu, though. He couldn't think of any other reason for a creature of that size to be heading for him.
It was time, then, to run. Over rough terrain. Half of which was secretly water in disguise. Still, a twisted ankle was better than a missing leg, so Mingzhu turned tail and ran as fast as he could.
He was honestly a little surprised with how far he got. In the blindness of panic, subtle little things stood out, and several times he shifted his hoof in time to avoid what he realized without touching it was one of those hidden patches of water. The missed dangers made him overconfident, however, and inevitably he found himself going over tail over teakettle into the bushes as one of his feet plunged into a deep puddle in the ground. He scrambled to pull his head out of water, sparing only a flicker of emotion for his ruined silk sleeves (well, they were ruined anyway by this swamp, it was too late for them now definitely, they were beyond salvation) before he turned to look at his pursuer.
He had been expecting a really big alligator, or a really, really big fish, but what he was confronted with instead was another Star. Big, very big, and covered in scales and scutes like a, well, like an alligator. Its head looked like a skull full of needle-sharp teeth, and it had a curving pair of Algiedi horns curving around its face. It was still undeniably a Star, though, in the way it held its head on its neck. A fellow Algiedi-Solara mix, although she had the wings to go with it. Mingzhu gulped. Eep. A creature like this screamed danger just from looks alone, and all of those stories he'd been told as a foal about cannibal Stars that would gobble intruders up was now coming to life in his head. "H-hello?" he said. "I'm sorry I intruded, I seem to have gotten lost in your swamp, I wonder if you could trouble yourself to show me the way out, then I could get out of your..." He hesitated. "Scales...?"
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