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 Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:49 pm
Julian gave a shrug, looking out onto the grounds and searching for the children.
"Where'd Ike and Lenore go?"
"Oh God oh God oh God oh God - "
Lenore scrabbled back a little, trying to focus on the things shadowed face. Her heart beat wildly, making her gasp for breath.
"Oh no. Oh, oh no."
The creature limped forward slowly, its breath rising in a giant cloud from its wide jaw. A dribble of blood leaked from its lips onto the snow, steaming where it fell. It's main eyes focused on the bird creature, while its smaller second set looked towards the squirrel. Both were too small for its taste - perhaps they'd just come to bother it. Leaping down from it's perch, it crept forward, sniffing at the bird in dull interest.
"Ahh, shoo, no, go away, go away," Lenore squeaked, scrabbling back further. She gave a yelp as she pitched backwards, and scrabbled at the snow for a handhold. Looking behind her, she gaped at how high and treacherous the rockfall looked. Turning back slowly to face the animal, she unfolded and flared her wings in instinctive warning.
"Leave me alone...!"
Squinting against the reflected light from the bird's wings, it gave an annoyed grunting growl. Its hackles raised at the threat the bird made with it's worthless wings - it had only wanted to see what she was. Nothing more. Limping forward a bit further, it bent its head down, its tongue licking at the blood-splattered snow. A little too sweet for it's taste, but what the hell. Wasn't like she could defend herself.
It ventured further, lips trembling over saliva-slickened fangs, and gave a wet, rattling growl.
Lunch time.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:54 pm
"I dunno," Rabid shrugged, "I hope to God they're okay."
"Shouldn't we...yanno...go look for them?"
"Yeah. Probably," Rabid stated simply before beginning a slow trek out the door.
Ike whimpered in a moment of indecision, before giving a feral cry and leaping at the thing, throwing all of his weight into it. If anything, he could possible throw it off balance. Make it attack the thing that healed.
Something inside him, though, kept him from actually digging in.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:07 pm
Following Rabid like a whipped dog, Julian squinted in the bright light and looked around aimlessly. Lenore had set off at a pretty fast pace - her footprints had left long gouging tracks in the snow. He followed them a little ways, and looked up in dread as he saw where they lead.
"Uh, guys?" he said, pointing warily in the direction of the trail.
"Problem."
Thinking someone had just thrown a snowball at it, the animal left off menacing the bird to look around incredulously. The squirrel actualy thought that would help?
"Oh JEEZ!"
Taking advantage of the distraction while she still could, Lenore slashed out at the animal. Her wing sliced cleanly through the air, splitting the flesh below the creature's meaty neck.
The animal's bemusement turned to rage as it howled in agony - yet another injury. Great. Rearing up on its elephantine back legs, it roared and pawed at the air, eyes screwed shut against the pain.
Dammit, why did that keep happening?!
Rolling sideways in the snow and springing up beside Ike, she grabbed hold of him and dragged him down the rockfall, terrified.
"C'mon c'mon lets GO!" she shrieked, daring to look behind only once, feeling relieved at the escape and strangely guilty at what she'd done.
With a final howl, the creature collapsed into the snow, breath heavy and foam dribbling into the snow from its mouth. It glared at the fleeing prey with it's secondary eyes, the larger pair trying to see what damage had been dealt.
Stupid bird.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:12 pm
"Oh, s**t," Rabid murmured, leaping back and forth in indecision, "Eeeeh....eeeeh....LESSGO!" She took off at a sprint without thinking.
"No! God damnit...YOU'LL GET YOURSELF KILLED! AGAIN!" Liam followed closely behind.
"...but..." Ike murmured mindlessly as he was dragged, trying to look back at the creature, "...but it's hurt...Len...Len, you made it bleed." His pupils had dialated now, causing both of his eyes to go predominantly black.
Keep running, you idiot. JUST KEEP RUNNING!
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:27 pm
"Ah, crap," Julian muttered, running after her.
This was turning out to be a supremely crappy day.
"Yeah, and I feel badly about it," Lenore snapped, running blindly and weaving through the trees. "But considering it just wanted to eat me - well, yeah."
But as terrified as she was, she realized how beautiful the thing had been - she'd never seen anything like it before.
And she'd killed it.
"Ugh..."
Dragging itself painfully up out of the snow, the creature gave a rattling growl and began the arduous climb back to its cave. Damn birds and their suicidal squirrel friends - how was it ever supposed to get any peace with things like that running around?
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:30 pm
"If it'd eaten you...you could have slashed its mouth up," he peered behind them again, "I think I hear it moving?"
"IKE! LEN! WHERE ARE YOU?!"
"CHARLOTTE! WHAT THE HELL?! Can't you...talk some sense into her?!"
Ike stopped moving abruptly, his pupils suddenly shrinking to normal size.
"Did you hear that?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:38 pm
"I wasn't going to let it eat me to begin - Oh crap, it's Liam and....wait, who's Charlotte?"
Dragging Ike behind a particularly thick tree trunk, Lenore peered out cautiously. She could see running figures through the trees, and clapped a hand hard to her forehead. She'd been dumb enough to run in here in the first place - who knew what kind of trouble she'd get them into now with Jabir and Maggie since everyone else had followed her in?
That is, unless that thing didn't decide to give chase and eat them all first.
Releasing Ike at last and darting from out behind the tree, Lenore gave a bird-like whistle and waved her arms to get their attention.
"Hey! HEY! Over here!"
Julian paused and looked around, searching for the source of the voice.
"Guys, they're over here," he shouted, taking off in the direction of Lenore's voice. Finding her after a minute or so, he gave her an angry look and grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to get his breath back.
"What are you doing in here? You know it's out of bounds!" He said, looking her over to see if she'd been hurt.
Lenore twisted away from him, looking even angrier.
"Oh, cram it, you hypocrite - like you don't come in here all the time to kill stuff," she snapped, turning away and folding her arms crossly.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:44 pm
"My mum," Ike replied before snapping quietly, "Len."
Rabid turned on a dime and followed Julian. Upon spotting the children, the wiped a rogue tear from her eye and pointed toward the edge of the woods, "What the Hell did you think you were doing?!"
"Couldn't you slow down?" Liam finally caught up, panting, "Short legs!"
"Oh!" Ike piped up, "I was...really mad. So I went into th' forest. Len followed me in. She said I would get hurt. I didn't listen. I'm sorry." He dropped his head in feigned shame and twisted his ankle around on the ground.
"You should know better!" Rabid cringed and raised a hand, but used it to scratch the back of her head instead of whacking Ike. She hated the forest. Loathed it with a passion. She cursed the day she and Crow had wondered about its contents.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:50 pm
Lenore blinked, stunned.
He'd taken the fall for her.
Julian, ignoring the jibe, steered Lenore forward, his grip hard on her shoulder.
"Let's get out of here. Now." he said, eyes wandering around warily.
Lenore did nothing but nod, glancing back to give Ike a childlike, unreadable look.
Why had he done that for her?
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:56 pm
Liam nodded his head to the side and groaned.
"This way. Follow the shrimp."
He wasn't going to get into it.
Rabid grabbed her son roughly by the shoulder and began following Liam, mumbling under her breath in various slurs of Vavvian and Creole.
"You know what you did was very stupid...right?"
"Yes, Mummy," Ike kept his sad demeanor, completely ignoring Len's look. It was hard to concentrate on anything with William's horrible ranting screaming through his head.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 8:42 pm
But they couldn't go much further because Jabir was blocking the path. His neck was fully risen and his tail was swishing in anger
"What are you doing here and why in blazes there's the scent of fresh blood in the air? Do you have a death wish or something???" he was so angry his voice came out in hisses, accompanied by a low growl
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Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 10:39 am
Lenore went cold at the sound of Jabir's voice, and looked up at him fearfully. In all truth, he scared the living daylights out of her.
"I...we....er, you see..." she sputtered, frantically trying to come up with a proper excuse. She couldn't, wouldn't, let Malachi get punished for her stupidity.
Julian kept his grip on Len's shoulder, shrinking back from Jabir a bit himself. His nocturnal activities would probably not sit well with Jabir if Len let anything slip.
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Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 2:44 pm
Rabid immediately let go of her son, stone-faced. She took a step back and joined Julian and Lenore.
"Jabir! Jabir...I'm sorry," Ike said, looking down at his feet, "I got really mad, so I ran into the forest. Len followed me, and she told me I would get hurt, but I didn't listen. This...uhm...thing. Big pretty cat thing. It was gonna eat me, so Len slashed its neck and dragged me away. I'm sorry..."
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Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 2:57 pm
"There is time for that later. Now I want all of you out of here imediatly!!! We won't be alone for much longer"
He cleared the way and let them pass, protecting the rear of the group. Hopefuly they would manage to get out of that place before other creatures started to follow the scent
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Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 5:35 pm
Lenore didn't know what to do - why on earth had Malachi lied to keep her out of trouble? She just didn't understand what had gotten into his head - she wanted to grab him by the collar and scream out why - she just didn't understand enough about friendship to get his motives. Wrenching herself free of Julian's grip, she trudged through the snow with head held low, trying to reason it out.
Julian bit back a quick sigh of relief - he'd have to be careful to either find a new place to hunt or find a ways to stave off his urges to kill; it was just to risky to keep it up with Jabir around.
Fuming and growling at the latest humiliation, the animal paced its cave restlessly. It could still taste the sweet blood of the bird on its tongue - not that it wanted to it her, now. Just get back at the little runt. Limping forcefully out of its cave, it scented the wind carefully for a few moments. There were others at the forest's edge - a human, no, two.... the wretched bird, her little tree rat friend, and two things it couldn't identify. One smelled faintly of death, but the other - the creature gave a grunting snarl of discomfort, shaking its massive head. The death-scented didn't bother it in the least, but that last one...
Giving a barking growl, the creature began the agonizing climb down the rockfall and began to track the path that damnable bird had taken. It'd show her who was boss - once it found her, anyway.
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