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 Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 1:35 pm
Grinning around a whole mango is no easy feat, but the black-coated palui was managing it more or less, and the grin only widened when she set her prize down on a flat rock beside the babbling river. Licking her chops in anticipation Artemis sank her teeth into the fruit’s thick skin and, bracing it with her paws, pulled back to reveal succulent yellow flesh.
The smell filled her nostrils at once; sweet and rich and perfect. She was never going to manage the whole thing, but she planned to have a good try all the same; given the effort she’d put into sneaking into the human’s den and then out again with her purloined dinner it would be a shame if any of it went to waste.
Chirping happily to herself, the toughly built female released the strip of skin she’d peeled back and took a big bite of the subtly perfumed fruit. It was excellent; for some reason food stolen from humans always was.
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Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 2:22 pm
 A black and rainbow Palu floating down a stream is a strange sight indeed. Luckily, there were few beings around to see her and Xi can just drift downstream with no worries.
Letting out a content sigh, the normally energetic female was happy to just relax. Especially so after an entire morning of trying to swim against the current. It sounded like fun at first, and she thought that she could easily overcome the river. But she underestimated her 'opponent' and ended up with no strength left to even drag herself onto the shore.
Sooner or later, she'll be washed out into the ocean and hopefully she'll have enough energy to wander home. In the meantime, Xi just enjoyed the scenery that was passing by.
She almost fell asleep at one point before a loud bird squawk awakened her. With a lot of splashing, she looked around frantically for the source of the noise. There was no way she was going to find the bird among all these trees though. But there was another Palu on a nearby rock eating a round orange thing. Xi forgot everything else, including the fatigue of her muscles, as she made her way closer to them.
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Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 2:46 pm
The squawk had startled Artemis too, and though she soon decided it wasn’t a threat she made a reevaluation of her surroundings. The bird had warned her that she’d been drifting off in a little world of her own; anything could have been creeping up on her... But no, there were no threats, or at least no obvious ones. There was, however, the unknown quantity of the strikingly marked female heading towards her.
Taking another mouthful of fruit, the small palui assessed the situation. It was a water palui, larger than she but not necessarily stronger. Not necessarily hostile either. Best to introduce herself as soon as possible and see what the other’s reaction was; if it was aggressive, which didn’t look too likely from the set of the water’s face, she had plenty to time to either flee or prepare for a fight.
“Hello there,” she said as she decided this, raising her head and licking juice off her face, “I’m Artemis. You hungry?” There was, after all, plenty of mango for two and she had no objection to sharing with a stranger when there was excess; such an attitude tended to make life easier for all concerned in her experience.
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Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 3:25 pm
Blinking as she pulled herself out of the river, Xi was a bit surprised as to how this Palu was friendly and offering food to her. Wild ones often chased her out of their territory, much less shared their fruit. Regardless, she tried not to show her confusion and instead put a smile on her face.
"My name's Xi. And yeah I'm hungry!" She meandered over to her rock, still not quite used to solid land. Swimming upstream made her hungry as well as sapped her energy, so she was excited for a chance to eat.
Except what was this? Xi sniffed the orange thing, hoping that Artemis wasn't trying to poison her. It was a wild notion, but she was still a stranger and she didn't know much about her yet...
After pausing for a moment, the Palu decided that there was no way that any poisonous thing could smell this sweet. She bit into flesh before she could change her mind and savored the new flavor on her tongue.
"Thanks! But... What's this? I never saw it before. Or tasted it."
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Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 8:11 am
Good; not hostile then, jut went to show that a little friendliness and optimism could go a long way. Artemis grinned at her new companion, at Xi, shook her head slightly. “Haven’t a clue what it’s called to be frank; it’s a fruit the humans have. I stole it from a den earlier on but there’s no way I could eat all of this by myself.”
She didn’t feel guilty about stealing from a human’s stores as she would from one of her own kind; the big creatures always seemed to have more than enough to feed themselves and their kits. She had glimpsed another palui in the den as she’d dashed though, one that had let itself be tamed she guessed, and even it had looked very well fed. Humans had it all, it seemed, and yet so few of them ever seemed to forage. Just one of the many things about the two-legged creatures she’d probably never understand.
“So is this your patch?” Artemis asked of Xi after taking another bite of the sweet fruit. “I’ve not been around here before.” She’d been moving further and further out of her old haunts and closer to the human lands of late. For one thing, food was easier to find around humans than elsewhere and for another a new coalition had formed in the areas she’d lived in before. Rather than get herself injured in a fight over her old territory, she had left peaceably; the alternative had been joining up and being told what to do by some big male, and that was not her idea of a fun life at all.
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Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 11:12 am
"Stolen?" The fruit became bitter right then but Xi didn't spit it out. She was hungry after all, and it's a long way back to home. Still, after a few nibbles, she didn't feel like eating any more of it. Her stomach was satisfied anyway, though it seemed like a rock was tumbling around in it.
"Er... anyway. Not really. I'm just passing through here, like you." She nudged the fruit away, reminding herself to ask what she ate when she got back. "I mean, I was... swimming... in the river and was just floating along when I saw you."
She didn't want to mention that she'd be trying to fight the current, since it sounded stupid now that she thought about it. And Artemis mind find it silly too.
"I'm not that found of swimming here though. I live by the beach, where the water's a lot deeper and there's more interesting things to find." Xi added, just because. "And there's not many predators out there either."
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Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 3:31 am
Artemis grinned, licking more juice away from her face. “Well that’s always good, but I’m not too great a swimmer so I’d probably just hang around where it was shallow and be boring.” The sea was pleasant so long as she could keep her paws on the bottom, and she enjoyed spending the odd evening watching it either come in or go out but she had little to do with it other than that. It was powerful, she knew, and she didn’t fancy getting caught in a current and pulled out into open water. That, she supposed, was one of the advantages to being a water palui; being a powerful swimmer must let you explore all sorts of interesting places.
“I like the beach though,” the small female added after a moment, “it’s fun to see what sort of weird things wash up sometimes, and I like shells.” She’d had one or two in her old den and she’d enjoyed looking at the pretty things, but not enough to bother bringing them with her. Still, when she found herself a new patch to settle down in, she could start gathering them again; starting a new collection would be fun, she could search out some of her old favorite kinds and look for new one too.
Perhaps it was best that she’d moved out of her old territory; every day now was new and different, and Artemis could see the appeal of never settling down for long. It might be nice, spending life wandering where she pleased during the day and settling down to sleep wherever she was when she got tired.
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