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 Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 1:37 pm
Briar smiled and nodded as Vixen walked away, thinking about the story she had told so far. Humans had permakits too? Well he supposed it made sense, Modifoxes couldn't be the only ones with a variety in their species.
And while he figured this, in the back of his mind, a subconscious smile was brought to his face at the cheerful ringing of Vixen's bells. The sound made him feel very relaxed, like it was chasing away bad thoughts or vibrations in the air and replacing it with pure and clean stuff. Maybe he'd have to get one someday.
He focused outward now, on the meadow, and had to admitt that Vixen was right. It was a charming little circle of land, with sweet-smelling flowers and the rich scent of earth and sun-warmed grass. The water from the creek added to the fragrance with wet earth and stone, and made a cheerful background noise. The bubbling harmonized beautifully with the tinkling of bells, actually.
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Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 7:15 pm
"Ah. Sorry about that, story telling is thirsty work." Vixen said after raising her head. She looked at Briar and noticed he seemed a lot more relaxed than before and she smiled.
"So...where was I? Oh, right. So, the nice man is trying to figure out how to continue feeding his family and making the human kits happy, when he stumbles onto the nine deer-fox that had been seaching for their purpose. They had collapsed in the snow after getting lost, but the kind human called his human perma kits and they used a sled to bring the nine to the nice human's shelter. After he and his mate nursed them back to health, he demanded no payment, but the nine were adament.
Thinking he may have found the solution to his problem, the kind human asked if they would be willing to pull a sled once a year for him. The nine agreed and the kind human made it known to all the human kits that they should also set out treats for the deer-fox. If they didn't, they'd be put on the 'no-toy' list instead of the nice list.
The nine enjoyed being with the nice human and his family so much, that they decided to stay and work for him as their newly found purpose. Oh, and since humans can't understand Modi-foxese, the nice human gave them all new names. I'm actually named for one of them. The names were: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, and Rudolph."
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Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 10:13 pm
"That was a really nice story," Briar said when Vixen had finished speaking. "I can see how kits would love to listen to it." He softly chuckled under his breath. "You couldn't get a litter of kits of my kin to sit still afterwards, they'd be reenacting the entire thing." He shook his head in a good-natured way. "We were created for that, to pull sleds or heavy burdens through snow. It's more competitive for us."
Briar met Vixen's eyes, and smiled a little. "Wouldn't that be fascinating, if you were a descendant of the original Vixen?"
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Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2011 5:27 pm
Vixen smiled. "Clarice always liked it. She used to jump everywhere, pretending to pull the nice man's sleigh." Looking back at Briar, she nodded her head. "I can understand that. I know I have a competetive streak in me as well. I'm not nearly as bulky as you though, I think I'd be better at speed games or races than pulling heavy loads."
"The original Vixen?" She tilted her head and wiggled the stub of her tail. "That would be very, very cool." She stood and jumped around like a deer, making her bells jingle merrily, just like she imagined the deer-foxes from the story would. Coming back, she re-sat on the rock and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry about that, I tend to like movement rather than stillness."
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Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 2:12 am
Briar just smiled in a kind way. "No need to apologize," he said. "I am one for stillness myself, but I don't find movement disconcerting." He tilted his head a touch and the smile grew by a hair. "And it's who you are. Never be as-ashamed of who you are," he said, stumbling a little over his words. They were hard ones to speak, for they were the very things he'd been trying to convince himself of for some time now.
Briar cleared his throat and attempted to distract himsef. "Hmm. Well I'm sure in a speed race you could beat me but with a heavy sled strapped to your harness I'd have the advantage of muscle," he said. "My kind does have the less muscled types better for agility. They tend to be towards the middle of a team to help steer us without having to plow through snow.
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Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 12:19 pm
The deer fox nodded. "You're right, I suppose. I try not to be, but apologies tend to slip out sometimes when I get embarrassed." She chuckled, still a little sheepish for acting like a kit. She heard the catch in his voice when he was giving her advice and frowned slightly, wondering what was wrong. "Those are good words, you know," she said cautiously, thinking that the dog fox needed to hear the words too, "you shouldn't be ashamed of who you are or what you like. You are you, and no one can take that away."
Smiling, she moved back onto the subject of racing, allowing the dog fox to drop the previous subject if it was too uncomfortable. They'd only met each other a short while ago, after all. "I think I'd be in the middle too. Like I said, I'm far better at agility than muscling my way around."
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 1:30 pm
Briar's lips twitched in a brief smile. "I can't speak from experience of course, but I've had friends who pulled sleds. I know the strongest are at the back of the team, to pull the most of the sled weight. You have to be tough regardless to pull a sled, but I think you'd find the experience to be interesting and maybe even fun."
Another small smile. "With your energy, you seem like you'd enjoy a race."
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 9:01 pm
Vixen nodded in agreement. She knew she was stocky enough to pull a sled, though she'd probably have to put on some muscle; she had running muscles but not pulling muscles simply because she didn't really pull anything.
"Race? Is that a challenge?" She asked, smiling at Briar and waggling her stubby tail. She didn't want to push him if he didn't want to but he was right...racing was right up her alley.
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Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2011 10:32 pm
Briar blinked, confused, then realization dawned on his face. "Oh. I only meant it as a side comment." But then, for some reason feeling horrible about possibly letting Vixen down when she seemed so excited, "But we can race if you want? I mean I never did it in a competitive sense, and I only run around on occasion. Not that I can't run in a race but it's just that I've never been in one before. Not that I've never wanted to-."
'You're babbling now, just shut it,' a little voice in the back of his mind piped up, and Briar gladly obliged. He could feel his face heating up in embarassment. He had never quite put so many words together at a single moment, not within his memory. That thought just made him blush a little more. He hadn't been able to help it though, it was like he couldn't stop!
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Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:15 pm
Vixen was a tad confused. She'd gotten as far as he hadn't meant to offer a challenge...and that they could race if she wanted...but she wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to or not. "We don't have to race, Briar, if you didn't mean it like that. A race should be fun with both contestents having their hearts in it. Otherwise, one will simply let the other win and that's just not fun."
His blush confused her more until she realized he was embarassed. Embarrassed about...? Not racing? Talking? She tilted her head to the side and frowned slightly. "Do you want to race?" She asked, putting epmphasis on the 'you' to make it clear that she wasn't going to push him into it and would only race if he wanted to race as well.
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Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 1:28 am
Briar's held a look of slight confusion. "I-I don't know," he said, brows furrowing in a slightly frustrated way. "It doesn't feel like I don't want to race, but I don't know what it feels like to want to race either."
He took stock of his physical condition. "My heart and breathing are a bit faster than normal and my paws feel like they're starting to sweat a bit," he rattled off, as though if he told Vixen everything that was different about him that she could give him an answer of why he felt so weird. "It actually feels like I have already been running, but only just a little."
((Pretty much it's his body responding positively to the thought of a race, mixed with the confusion reactions of not understanding the race reactions. Briar is a very confused critter XD))
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Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2011 1:42 pm
Vixen tilted her head a little and frowned. She never got sweaty paws from a race, but she did know about her heart beating faster before a race. It was the adrenaline. "Sweaty paws and fast breathing sound like you're nervous. Or excited maybe? I think if you didn't want to race you'd feel more...calm and bored. Maybe disdainful. This sounds more like anticipation."
Vixen tilted her head the other way and looked around the clearing. "How about a short race. From here, around that tree," she pointed at on a small distance away, "and back. That way, if you don't like it, you wont be too spent and if you do like it, you'll have energy for a longer one."
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Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2011 11:05 pm
Briar looked doubtfully down at his own body, but if that's what Vixen said what was happening to him...
After all it wasn't like he had any sort of previous experience to go by. His parents didn't want much to do with him and if he ever beat his brother in a race he was pretty severely punished for daring to be "better".
What if Vixen started to hate him cause he managed to beat her?
Briar bit his lip, and examined the tree she's proposed as their racing point. Since she was smaller and lighter the short distance suited her better. In a longer race over flat land he was pretty sure his size and strength would be his advantage then, for Vixen looked more like the type to only manage spurts of speed for short distances. Of course he could be wrong, and even then if she paced herself, using those bursts to gain on him and then slowed to rest, she could still win long races.
But this short race she was guaranteed to win. And if she won, maybe she wouldn't hate him?
"Okay," Briar agreed, a slight bit of doubt still in his voice causing him to draw out the O.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 8:09 am
Smiling, Vixen drew a line in the dirt with her paw and got behind it. "Alright, come here besides me and I'll count down. Then we'll race all the way around the tree and back." She watched Briar closely, he didn't sound so sure about whether or not to race. And the expressions on his face were fluctuating so quickly, she could barely figure out what emotions he was feeling. They seemed negative though, and she wondered why.
"Why?..." She trailed off, warring with herself on whether to pry or not, but curiosity finally won out. "Why do you seem so...down all of a sudden? Did something happen that would make you not like racing?" She asked cautiously. "Not that you have to tell me or anything." She said quickly.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 4:37 am
Briar mentally started, but fixed a smile on his face. "No, no, nothing like that," he assured Vixen. After all it wasn't anything to do with racing that had him flustered, it was the matter of who won. He quickly trotted over to the side of the line Vixen had indicated, still smiling as he looked down at her.
"Go ahead and give us the countdown, then we can start," he said, trying to put some cheer in his voice. This was obviously something she found enjoyable, he didn't want to ruin it for her!
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