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 Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:07 pm
Alyna giggled, thinking about Haya's tail deciding to act up and catch itself in that log. "You must've done something to make it mad." she said playfully.
Alyna grinned. "You don't fool me, Haya, you're too nice to eat foals." Alyna had realized by now that he was joking earlier, that he wasn't mean at all. If he was, he would've eaten her by now, and he wouldn't have been nice. So, she decided that he must be a nice Soquili, regardless of his Kalona blood. Alyna was beginning to wonder if Kalona blood really had an affect on whether or not someone was mean, or if they chose that path themselves.
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Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 1:23 pm
"Oh yeah? Too nice, am I?" He tried to puff himself up larger but couldn't manage to make any expression other than a silly smile. He liked foals. He wondered if he could go out running with his foals like this when they came out of their baskets. Ayanna would probably appreciate the time off, right? It'd be fun for both of them!
"I suppose I am too nice to eat you," he admitted. "But you're too nice to eat anyways, so it works out."
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Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 9:00 pm
Alyna giggled. "I am? Well then, I'm glad of that. I wouldn't want to be eaten." She smiled broadly, glad to have met such a friendly Soquili.
"You know something, Haya?" she asked. "I think my guardian wolf is wrong. I think that people choose to be nice or mean, that their blood has nothing to do with it." She nodded confidently. Alyna felt that Haya had proven her guardian wrong about Kalonas, and she was glad that Lyka had been wrong. She shivered a bit before saying, "But now I have to convince her of that. And she's not so nice when I'm trying to prove her wrong."
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Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 4:43 pm
Haya thought about what the foal had said for a moment and how it compared to what he had thought over his life. It was refreshing to hear that opinion from someone, but there was a little more to say to it than that. It wasn't that he disagreed with her, he just felt like there was some more on the subject she ought to know.
"Weeeeeeell... yeah, I'll agree that blood doesn't make the soquili. It's more... upbringing, I guess. My mom raised me to be nice and I think that's why I turned out nice. If I had been raised by someone who taught me that eating foals was the right thing to do I'd probably do that." He looked at Alyna with serious warning in his eyes. He didn't want her to get hurt like he had for hoping that someone could be otherwise. "You have to remember, a lot of kalonas have been raised to be evil. You have to watch out for those ones and it's hard to tell which is which sometimes."
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Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:59 pm
Alyna nodded gravely, hearing the truth and the plea in his words and eyes. "I will remember...I promise to be careful, Haya..." Suddenly, noticing something, she pressed closer, peering up at his nose, and the faint scars there. "Haya...what happened to you here?" She asked softly, wondering if the warning and slight bitterness in his eyes had anything to do with those scars. They looked serious to her. She couldn't think of anything that could make scars like that, slash marks in his fur that she hadn't noticed before.
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Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 5:15 pm
So, she had noticed those. Haya's mind raced. He could tell her the truth and maybe let her learn from his mistakes but that might be a bit too heavy a lesson for the filly. When he thought about it that way, she really knew enough about avoiding kalonas as she needed to right now. He didn't need to make the conversation morbid with the truth of his scars. Instead...
He grinned and snapped his tail back and forth in mock battle. "A bear tried to eat me but I taught him a lesson! He was twice as big as I was and all covered in brown fur. He may have scratched me up pretty good but he still has a hoof-shaped dent in his forehead that I left him with!"
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Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 6:57 pm
Alyna's eyes widened. "You fought a bear?!! Haya, what's a bear?" She looked up at him, her big blue eyes confused. "Bears sound scary!" Alyna imagined a big furry monster, twice as big as Haya, tearing with teeth and claws. She shivered, and pressed closer to Haya. "I don't ever want to meet one of them!" Alyna didn't realize that Haya wasn't telling her the truth. She was too young to tell the difference between a lie and the truth.
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Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:10 pm
Alyna wanted to hear about the bear, did she? Haya could certainly indulge her with a story. He threw his head back dramatically, mane flaring out around him. "Bears are scary! They are twice as big as a soquili and weigh as much as four! They are covered in thick coarse hair and shamble around slowly... giving anything they see looks like this."
Haya lowered his head and gave an expression mimicking one of stupid and hungry curiosity. "They eat everything... berries, plants, squirrels... They'll even eat a soquili if they can catch one! They eat all fall and get fat so they can sleep all winter. The one I found had just woken up so was starving hungry when he saw me. He tried to eat me but me and my tail... we were too much of a meal for him to chew!"
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Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:38 pm
Alyna shivered again. Bears sounded really ferocious! "You're lucky to be alive, Haya!" she exclaimed. "I don't think I ever want to see a bear, if they're that scary..." Looking at his scars again, she said, "So, a bear did this to you? Did you do something to make it mad? 'Cause there are an awful lot of scratches..." Alyna said, her eyes filled with concern. She really didn't like bears, not if they hurt her new friend. She liked Haya a lot, he seemed to get along pretty well with foals such as herself, and he was so kind to her, even after she had been afraid of him.
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Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:51 pm
Haya felt like he was really getting the hang of this storytelling thing. It was pretty fun and Alyna was a good audience for it. He looked at the scratches as she pointed them out and then continued boldly on with his narrative.
"Of course there are a lot of scratches! The bear tried to eat me! Since it had been asleep all winter it was raaaaavenously hungry and I must have seemed pretty tasty for it at that moment. I didn't do anything to annoy him. I just was taking a look and he charged me. He managed to swipe me in the face where I got these scars," he pointed with his tail to two parallel scratches running down his nose.
"It was a long and grueling battle. We both nearly died but in the end I managed to escape with my life and the bear managed to find a river full of fish to eat instead. To this day... I wonder what that bear is doing now." He ended on an ominous note and wondered if he had pushed the story a little too far. It was starting to sound more like a story and less like the truth now... but maybe she'd buy it anyways.
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Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 8:54 pm
Alyna smiled, following along with his tale until he said "to this day." Haya didn't really talk like a storybook usually. At least she didn't think so. "Hey, Haya?" she asked tentatively, not wanting to be rude. "You sound like you're a bedtime story...Did you really fight a bear like that?" she wondered if he was telling the truth like her brother told it: mostly true, but stretched in places to make things sound more impressive.
Even if Haya wasn't lying, Alyna didn't want to meet a bear ever. If they were as Haya described them, Alyna was worried that they would eat her! Maybe bears were more scary than Skinwalkers and the mean Kalonas Haya told her about.
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Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 1:52 pm
Haya was a decent enough storyteller but even he knew that he wasn't much of a liar. At the direct confrontation to his story he couldn't help but paw a little sheepishly at the ground. When he managed to convince all four hooves to stay down at once it was his ears that started fidgeting next. "Of course I fought a bear like that! Where else would I get scars like this?" He probably shouldn't have asked the question, rhetorical or not. Now she might get speculating.
Maybe he could distract her with a quick topic change. That was his only hope for saving face. "You know what's also pretty cool? Turtles! There is a little lake with rocks that all the turtles like to sit on nearby."
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Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 10:13 pm
Alyna thought hard. Where else would he get scars like that... Alyna didn't know. But she could always ask him. But wait. Where did turtles fit in all of this? Confused, Alyna sad down, her head spinning. What did turtles have to do with bears?
Alyna knew that she had to figure this out. "Haya, you look sheepish, are you ok? I hope you don't mind me asking so many questions...it's just, I wanted to know if you were telling me the whole story. I don't mind if you don't want to talk about the bear anymore, or if you were attacked by something else and you don't want to talk about it." Alyna smiled at him. "Lyka's the same way, she doesn't talk about her past at all, no matter what I do to try to get her to tell me about it. It must've been really bad, for her to be separated from her pack like she was. I've always wondered if she ran away, or if she... was forced out. But she won't tell me anything! Not even a little bit. So, if you don't want to talk about this, Haya, just say so, ok? I don't have to know if you don't want me to."
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Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:29 pm
So, she had caught him. Haya felt more sheepish than ever yet also a little grateful at the offer to drop the subject. That was remarkably mature for a foal. Haya knew that if he had been confronted by a similar situation in foalhood he probably would have kept going at it until he got something more definitive. He gave Alyna a crooked smile and tossed a lock of mane back from his face.
"Find me again when you're older and maybe I'll tell you the whole story, ok? Until then... I'd rather just say it was a bear."
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Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 7:55 am
Although Alyna didn't realize it, the ones that she had met in her short life were having an effect on her. Lyka taught her patience, as Alyna frequently pestered her about things that Lyka would never reveal. Her parents taught her unconditional love, as she consistently denied their wishes and ran off, yet they still loved her and showed her affection. Taja taught her how to have fun. Karma taught her stillness and maturity, rational thought, and the process of thinking things through. And Haya taught her the foolishness of prejudice. Alyna had unconsciously taken something from each of these encounters, something that was shaping her thoughts and actions, molding who she would be in the future.
Alyna nodded, a smile on her face. She had thought so. She would've been completely fooled if the topic had not abruptly turned to turtles. Alyna still didn't understand how turtles fit into any of this, but she figured it really didn't matter. What Alyna did understand was that someday, when she was bigger, she would look for Haya again, and learn the whole story.
"I think I can wait that long." She said, thinking that she probably wouldn't see him again until then anyway.
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