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 Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 3:34 pm
He thought he wanted to crawl into a rabbit warren and not come out for a quarter moon? That was nothing compared to now. Cathair tried not to let his shame make any effect on his pawsteps, tried not to falter or slow. It was clear that Tia was not the spiritual sort. Not that he had thought she would be because of her condition--far from it. he had just hoped that maybe she wouldn't reject something he believed. But of course, she was sensible, scientific, reasonable, logical. These were good things, important things to be in the modern day and age. And while he admired those traits, inside he still yearned for the peace and timelessness he experienced when looking up at his ancestors in the stars. "Ripples are energy being transferred through water," he mumbled. And a vacuum is where there isn't anything, even air." Even more indistinctly, he muttered, "There's no death, and there's no disease, and the food never runs out. That's very important to a warrior."
He didn't have anything to say about other afterlives. He didn't know much about any of the afterlives of his housemates--they were mostly a secular lot, despite the deities that lived literally upstairs. Ebony spooked him too much to talk to. Maybe she would have some book in her big collection about comparative theology? He didn't know. He wasn't even sure he cared. For all he rejected some of his father's ways, there were still some he strongly believed in. Like StarClan. Tia might not have meant it like that, but Cathair felt hurt by her brushing it off.
No, I think it's time I thought about something else. Cathair tried to think about birdsong, and the changes of the season, from the fringe of the woods to the meadows. Despite his sudden downturn in mood, he felt his heart leap and soar in joy at the sight of his familiar, beloved meadow. It was home, after all.
((Sorta. Cathair's father, Fogstep, is a pet I used to get at a lot of different shops. Whenever I got him at a Warrior-based shop, I usually got him in WindClan, so Foggy is, at heart, a WindClanner. He brought up his only son like that here.))
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Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2012 8:12 pm
Tia felt like a small weight had settled in her chest. Something she'd said seemed to have put Cathair a bit out. She thought she'd worded her response neutrally enough, but maybe not? She supposed no matter how it was said it would still be a little awkward to talk to someone who wasn't so sure about something you firmly believed in.
Tia just didn't want to blindly accept something. She could never say that aloud though, she'd get a moment of silence followed by the moronic, "But you are blind," or she got giggled at. So she was forced to find other ways to explain.
It wasn't that she couldn't or didn't believe there could be something beyond this life, but what good was a system of beliefs shoved at her from someone else? No. She envied Cathair his conviction and the peace that came with it, but he was older than her. He knew himself. Tia didn't. If she didn't fully know herself, how could she know what she truly believed?
Tia's ears twitched, bringing her a distraction. "The wind changed," she said quietly, neck straining forward and ears twitching. The sound of it and the feel, like....lower down, and stronger. Why was that?
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Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 9:24 am
Cathair shook the subject out of mind. He had never been told growing up that discussing religion was a bad idea in most cases, but he was (unknowingly) beginning to learn that. If they didn't discuss it again, then they wouldn't have that awkward silence that had settled between them as they entered the meadow. He wasn't sure what she was thinking, but he knew one thing: he didn't like that awkward silence. He liked talking with Tia, liked feeling like there was something new to learn and old things to discuss. He shook himself out, stretched his wings to get the mental and physical kinks out of his system, and said, "This is the meadow. There aren't any trees in it, so it's mostly grass and shrub. There's a river off in that direction, and the wind came off it. That's the one disadvantage of open spaces," he added. "The wind comes in stronger because there isn't anything to block it." Mentally, he added, What do you think? He was slightly nervous now that he would like something that she didn't. He liked having common ground with her. He wasn't trying to impress her, just find things they could talk about together. I guess if she doesn't like it, we can still talk about other things, or talk about why one likes it or one doesn't like it.
Cathair found himself wondering if he'd ever had a...a friendship like this. He hoped he could call Tia his friend. It certainly felt like friendship. But he didn't have very many friends who shared something like this with him. None at all, in fact. There was something different about Tia, and he liked that difference. If we disagree...it won't be too bad. It can't be too bad. How can it be bad? We live and we learn. Cathair began to feel better about their earlier conversation.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 2:34 am
"What do you do for shelter," Tia asked, her mind half on the question and half on comprehending the meadow. Her whole life she'd been surrounded by trees, and now she was being told she was in an area where there weren't any. She could walk forward, with no fear of running into anything and focusing solely on the ground beneath her feet?
The concept was both odd and intriguing.
She took a few steps forward, careful not to wander too far from Cathair since she was still waiting for his answer. There was grass beneath her feet, more than what she'd ever felt in the forest, but also a lack of mast such as dead twigs and leaves. She could smell water, the river Cathair had mentioned. There didn't seem to be much else to smell though.
'No,' Tia thought, taking in another breath of air, 'it's that the smells are different from what I'm used to.' There, now she was getting the scents of the meadow. Grass was a softer scent that trees to her, and there was a mixture of other plants joined in with it. She could also smell.....rabbits. A tiny smile crossed her face. No wonder Cathair smelled a bit like them, they must be a ready food source out here.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 9:38 am
"When it rains, my dad seeks shelter under shrubs. I'll usually go inside if it's raining hard enough. Dad only goes inside if it's snowing. I think Mom cured him of spending too much time in the snow or something."
Cathair closed his eyes and scented the air, curious as to what Tia might smell coming here to the first time. Grass. Gorse. Rabbits and field mice. Field mice were well and fine, but he still preferred rabbits. Oak here and there, off in the distance, and birds in distant trees. The wind blew strongly here--not enough to knock them over or make it feel cold, but enough to bring in scents.
Suddenly, Cathair wondered what he smelled like. It was no good pressing his nose into his own fur and smelling that, because he was so used to his own scent that he couldn't detect it on himself. I probably smell like Dad, which wasn't much more useful, since he always thought of his father's scent as, well, his father's scent, not as being composed of anything else. It was another category, like "bird," or "hare," or "pine tree."
He glanced at Tia and smiled at the small smile on her face. She only just got here. I'll ask her what she thinks when she's had more time to scent it.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 1:04 pm
Tia paused, ears twitching and turning her head in Cathair's direction. "There's an inside here?" She ran over the scents she'd picked up. It all smelled a bit different, but it was still plant and definitely outdoorsy.
Then again she had no idea what an "inside" smelled like since she'd never been in a building before, so maybe she wouldn't recognize the scents even if she did pick them up.
Tia felt a kind of impatient eagerness inside her, like being a kid again. Expanding her territory knowledge wasn't really new stuff, it was just memorizing the lay of the land while going through the same trees and sparse undergrowth. This meadow was "new", and made her want to explore.
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Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 2:21 pm
"Off to the south, by the river, there's a big house. My dad and I live there. Mostly, though, we live near the house, we don't really live in it, except in bad weather. But we're still considered a member of the family, as it were." Cathair was surprised to realize that he'd forgotten to mention it. I guess I didn't think it was important. And it wasn't, to him. It was an incidental. It was a place of strange scents and stranger people, and he had quite a few friends there, but it wasn't his home--the meadow was. Funny how things happened and how he thought.
Cathair lifted his nose to scent the breeze. He couldn't smell the House at this distance. At this time of year, there was no fire in the fireplace, so there was no smoke, and Citrine wouldn't be beginning her cooking spree until after Halloween. At the moment, he could mostly smell the prey and the grass.
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Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:18 pm
Tia stepped back a few paces so she was level with Cathair again, and reached out to tap his shoulder. Or she intended to tap his shoulder, what she got felt like part of his chest and part of his leg.
"Lead me around and tell me about your home," she said, facing the meadow but with her one of her ears swiveled around so it was pointing at Cathair. "Just walk me through and tell me what you see."
She thought for a moment, then added, "Same as how we walked here. Set whatever feels like a normal pace, and if it gets too fast I'll let you know. As long as you don't step wrong, I don't step wrong." A small, amused smile crossed her face. She wasn't sure quite why she was amused, just that she was. Maybe something to do with the contentment and excitement combining inside her.
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Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2012 9:13 am
Cathair wasn't sure how to react when Tia touched him. It wasn't unpleasant, and he was sure she was aiming at his shoulder, so he decided not to mention it. He thought about reaching his wing out to brush her side, to show her where he was so that she could follow him, but she might have misunderstood that as a gesture to show her that she'd missed his shoulder. He didn't need to do that. She already knew, surely, and she'd know where he was by hearing. Instead, he began to lead the way.
How do I describe sights to...well, to someone who can't see? He flicked his tail and decided to just go for the gusto. "The grass is mostly golden-brown right now, with some green blades here and there. It'll all be brown by winter, though. Green plants are still alive--moist, and full of life. They're soft and still good to eat for the herbivores." On an impulse, he reached out and plucked a blade of green grass, holding it towards her nose. "This one's green." He dropped it in embarrassment, wondering if he was being rude. "I don't mean to be patronizing," he added quickly. "I just, I just realized that 'green' is a color, and you've...it's not a good description, that's all." He shook his head. "Anyway...
"We're currently on a path through the meadow. I use it when I'm not hunting, but mostly it's other people that use it. This is the footpath--we have a wider one for vehicles, but that's off to the south and east. I remember when I was a kit and we helped some of our housemates make this trail. You follow it far enough up into the forest and you find a lake. It's really quite...nice. Except in the evening, lots of mosquitoes. The lake, I mean, not the path."
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Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:09 pm
Tia followed most of hat Cathair was saying, though the bits about color went right over her head. She didn't ask though, already knowing colors were one of those things you had to see to get, though the plant life comparison gave her a better idea of things.
She was content to just follow Cathair's voice and footsteps, trying to get a mental layout from his words and taking in the different smells. There was one word that completely puzzled her though...
"Vehicle," Tia questioned, wondering what on earth that was.
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:32 am
She wasn't offended? Cathair began to grow in confidence and feel better. "Vehicles are big machines made for transportation," he said. Then, because big was another visual adjective, "Loud, metallic-sounding, and the really big ones sometimes make a noise that can be felt as well as heard. Not all of them sound like that--most of them don't--but they...I don't know, they sound like they're far off the ground?" His confidence waned a little, but he soldiered on. "Machines are metallic-sounding and they usually smell like the lubricants that keep all of the metal parts from wearing out or scraping against each other. They also smell like their fuel. I'm not quite sure what the ones that run on electricity smell like, though, but they're generally speaking a little quieter and smell less like fuel. Usually, fuel smells very...unnatural. I'm not sure how to explain it. Some of my housemates are machines, or part machine, or they're the sentient parts of machines. They smell very different from everyone else."
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Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:11 am
Though she had no eyes at all, Tia did have eyebrows in the right place and fur patterns that went across where her eyes should be and made it a bit less obvious. Which was good, otherwise her face would have looked quite weird when she began pulling expressions. Like the frown the was slowly making a deep furrow on her brow as Cathair tried to explain vehicles.
She exhaled through her nose when Cathair finished speaking, and shook her head. "None of that helps much, I'm afraid. A lot of sounds have feelings to them, in various strengths. I don't know what metallic sounds like. If I knew what lubricant was I could many guess at what it might smell like, but I have no clue. Everything I've ever smelled before has been natural, so fuel is a blank to me. I don't know what a machine is either"
Tia made a tiny, frustrated hum in the back of her throat. "Sorry. I know you're trying really hard to help me understand. I just don't have enough knowledge to make all the pieces fit."
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Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 9:15 am
Cathair drooped. "Maybe we can find some and I can show you. Well, you know what I mean." He watched the markings on Tia's face distort as she frowned. It was...interesting. A little creepy--she didn't appear to have eyesockets either, not from what he could tell--but interesting nonetheless. It did nothing to distract him from the sense that he had failed her. What good was he if he couldn't describe things?
He let out a tiny, voiceless sigh, and tried to figure out what else he could describe. He fell silent for a while, just trying to enjoy once more the open meadow that was his home. But now, everywhere he looked, he found himself at a loss to explain it. Maybe I shouldn't even try. You don't learn from descriptions, you learn from experiences. With that in mind, he reached out a wing to brush against her side as a sign that he was altering their direction a little. He wanted to head towards the garage.
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Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 12:14 am
The frustration slowly bleed out of her while they stood there, the sounds and scents of the meadow washing over her and making her feel a bit more grounded.
At Cathair's wing brush Tia automatically reoriented her position. It was actually a common practice for her. Listening did give her a general location, but touch helped her place an actual location and even a bit of the positioning.
"Where are we heading next," she asked, wondering just how much there was to the area.
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Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 10:34 am
"The garage. Maybe it'll be easier to know what a machine is if you can smell it or touch it? I don't know how to operate one, and anyway, I'm not allowed to, so I can't provide any sound, I'm afraid." Cathair shoved any doubts into the back of his mind. He didn't like second-guessing all of his actions. "That is, so long as you don't mind? I mean, I don't want to push the matter or anything like that and bother you." Suddenly, it occurred to Cathair that while he was showing her his own home, he had no idea what hers was like. If she wasn't sure what it was like in a building, had she never been to the shop? Where did she live? Had she never gone into town, where there were plenty of machines? Now he tried to remember if she had mentioned her home earlier, any hint of where she was from and what she did or didn't know. I guess I'm going into this just as blind as she is. Ignorant, at least.
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