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 Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 11:13 pm
Mahuika was wet, and dirty, and sore. None of the things she enjoyed being.
Grumbling to herself, she rose up to her paws, shaking herself gingerly. Well, nothing was broken, at least. Well, she didn't think so. She could feel all of her extremeties. That meant she was okay, right?
"What are you going on about?" She asked, a bit irritably, as she phased in to realize that Yakone was already babbling about something or another, not pausing to inquire about Mahui's well-being. Not that she was asking about Yakone's, either, but that wasn't really the point.
She sniffed about, curiously, padding through the knee-deep water -- she was still so small that it came up to her chest in places -- and splashed deeper into the 'throat' of the cave. "...I know what this is," she said, with a sudden pang of realization. Her tail wagged. "This is where that underwater river ends up. If you walk this way, you can feel the current start up again."
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 11:40 pm
… Underwater river? How could this place be as simple as the end of the underwater river? “Well, I suppose you’d be right…” Yakone shrugged, catching only bits and pieces of what her sister was trying to tell her. But really, this place is much more special than that. Dear sister, if only you believed…
But Yakone couldn’t make her sister see or hear the things she did, and for that, Yakone pitied her. Too bad, it really was something else to be able to speak with spirits. Ah, well… but, and Yakone made special note of this, at least Mahui had broken her out of reverie and pointed out something most interesting - a small detail that hinted that life still went on beyond the cave, further down where someone from their pack may very vell be drinking at that exact moment. “You know what I wonder?” Yakone began, setting out after her sister to feel the current for herself. “If this is the end of the river, and rivers have currents… do you think there might be some interesting treasures down here? I’m sure something must’ve been washed this way at some time in history.”
It made total sense that if spirits could be swept down the river and collected in the Stomach, then surely a number of goodies were just waiting to be discovered. “I say that whomever finds the first trinket wins!” she barked, tilting her head and staring hard into the waters as they coursed around her toes. ”What do you say, Mahui? Up to the challenge?”
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 12:52 am
A challenge?
Well, of course she was up for a challenge! When was Mahuika ever not up for a challenge?
Temporarily forgetting how annoyed she was at being wet and slimy and beat up, she jumped immediately on task and splashed into the water, feeling around for the current and sniffing at the air as best she could. "Alright," she said, trying to clear her nostrils of the slimy cave smell that had settled down into it. "Treasures it is. For keeps."
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 2:15 am
Aaaand that was how to make Mahuika do stuff.
Of course, Yakone was just as enthusiastic about finding the first spiffy new relic; so many things, so many possibilites, what could she find?! Would it be sparkly? Or would it be dusty and old? Ohhh, maybe she could -
Well, she wasn’t gonna find anything if she stood there thinking about it while Mahui hustled about with a newfound vigor. Yakone didn’t even bother to try and scent out anything, knowing she wouldn’t be able to tell old cave funk from old treasure funk, and instead decided to go with a slightly different tactic; she wiggled her toes about through the current, sure, and squinted for all she was worth in the modest glow-worm light, but when it became very obvious that neither sense was going to be of any use… she decided to cheat.
At least, she figured it was cheating. Mahuika might not have believed in the awesome power of spirit-chatting, but Yakone was still more-than-quiet as she began muttering under her breath. “We’ve had so many very wonderful conversations, Mouth, and it would be such a shame for my dear sister to find your things before I do. Don’t you agree?”
But the Mouth was being noncompliant, once again, and the only voice she heard was her own - hardly, though, over Mahui’s thorough searching. Shoot, Mahi was going to find the first treasure, and with any luck it’ll be the best thing ever, and Yakone wouldn’t be able to study it or keep it for herself because this was a game for keeps! “Okay, fine, anyone at all out there?” she hissed, pinning her ears back and frantically beginning to kick up slow-moving water. “Just a hint? A nudge in the right direction? A -”
A sound, hardly a whisper, echoed through the hollow of her ear - she had heard something! “Yeah? Yeah, I’m listening!”
She shouldered onward, deeper into the water, to where she could definitely feel a strong tug at her legs. The sound had come from this direction, not from where Mahuika ventured, so Yakone knew it wasn’t just some extra noise… it came again, softly, but a touch louder, and - - oh, it was just so exciting, but Yakone wasn’t finding anything yet!
Then, her paw hit something.
It wasn’t a big something, nor was it a particularly out-of-place something, feeling a bit like stone against her paws as she nearly slipped; but then, it felt as though she was pushed right back up, and crying out loudly Yakone plunged her entire upper half into the water. It was pitch black, and not being able to breath was frightening, as though she might be pulled under, too, but…
But she had it, safely in her mouth, and surfacing with a great deal of bluster and splashing, Yakone barked, “AH GOSH SHOMETHIN’! HUI, LOOK!”
She didn’t even bother to find out what it was before bottling straight toward her sister, treasure lifted high and tail wagging madly. It hadn't occurred to her that it might not be Mahuika's definition of a treasuee, but still - Yakone found it first!
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 11:51 pm
So far, Mahuika had found: silty mud; grainy mineral rocks; tadpoles; slimy cave water; slimy moss; and more silty mud.
Overall, she wasn't particularly impressed with her search. She'd also come to the conclusion that caves were disgusting and from now on she was going to brave the cliffside to go drink from the outdoor river, because the underground watering hole was now tainted by this entire experience.
Then she heard the splash of Yakone's head dunking under and she yelped, wheeling around to get a good look. Her eyes narrowed, and she was about to go investigate -- maybe she'd fallen in a hole? -- when she resurfaced, holding.....something slimy.
What a surprise.
"Well?" She demanded, not at all interested. Treasure was supposed to be shiny. That...did not look shiny. "What is it?"
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 9:23 pm
“Aah…”
What had she found? What hadn’t she found?! She’d found the greatest treasure of all, from the secret store of the spirits, so regardless of physical shape it must have been something amazingly powerful! Maybe it did mystical things, like grant wishes or show what the other side of death looked like - not that she had much of a mind to see those sorts of things, but it would certainly be interesting!
So why did Mahuika sound so… indifferent?
She had a good point, however. Careful not to drop her most precious of items Yakone wiggled herself into shallower waters, eyes soaking in the half-light and finding a place where the water was no more than a thin veil across a more-or-less flat (though slick) surface. Tenderly - very tenderly! - she set her treasure down and began pawing at it, wiping away years of slime and muck and slowly exposing an odd, curved shape… she nosed around corners, and didn’t hesitate to lick away what couldn’t be removed with her toes, until finally, she thought she saw…
“Nope. I don’t know what it is,” she admitted.
Actually, that was only partly true. Yakone knew what teeth were, and was more than able to identify them now that they weren’t fuzzy and green, but beyond that… her mind drew a blank. “What do you think it could be? It’s like a bone, but it’s got teeth in it. So… either something bit the bone and all its teeth came out, or…”
Yakone’s words faded as, once again, her ears picked up the faintest of sounds - a whimper, or a moan, or -
Her ears perked. “Did you say something, Mahui?”
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 10:04 pm
"Might have been my stomach," she said.
She crossed over the cave, curiously, splashing through the shallows on her way to investigate. She sniffed the muck-covered thing, then backed away, sneezing. Blech. "No, I think it's a jaw bone," she said, moving her own jaw up and down as though to verify that she still had one. "But...Those are weird teeth," she said. "Flat and bumpy. Like whoever had them was gnawing on rocks and broke all of them."
A sudden thought hit her mind. "Maybe somebody got trapped down here and all they had to eat was rocks."
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 10:52 pm
Oh, dear. “Nothing but stones? Mahui, that is miserable and dark.”
But it was likely. Very likely. Caves didn’t have edible things within them, unless one counted algae as edible, and rocks were everywhere; at what level of starvation did rocks seem like a tasty meal, though? “You’re probably right. Nah, you’re usually right about this sorta thing. Poor, poor little beastie, that must’ve been a terrible way to go!”
She could hardly imagine what it must have been like, to chew away all the most important bits of her teeth on rocks after days and days of no food, lost in an underground labrynth, perhaps to wander miles and miles without the feeling of the sun on her fur or grass under her paws… then to waste away, or fall into the river and be swept to a place where her remains would be swallowed by darkness, her spirit taken to the ceiling and strung where not even the most powerful of wolves could reach -
Alright. So she could imagine. And it was the most deliciously frightening, saddening thing she’d ever imagined, enough that for the brief space of a moment, she actually had very little to say. She kept thinking about a death brought upon an unwilling sacrifice, tracing the line between mystified and curious, all the while hearing the steady crescendo of Mahui’s whimpering stomach. Yakone had her doubts about the source of the sounds, however, and thought of voicing her opinions, but for now? Her mind was beginning to wander away from just the jaw, wondering if perhaps there were more pieces underneath the murky water. “You know, I bet this old bone would like to have its other parts nearby…” Yakone hinted, fondling her new jawbone and giving Mahuika a disarmingly tricky smile. “Then, we could find out what it is!”
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Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2011 11:30 am
All the while that Yakone was busy day-dreaming about the tragic life of the jaw bone's owner, Mahui was contemplating more practical matters. Such as, for example, how it had come to be trapped here eating rocks, and if that same fate was going to come over them.
She looked up the way they had come, at the slimy decline, and debated whether they would be able to climb out.
She looked the other way, up stream of the now rather stagnant water, peering into the gloom where presumably the current would grow stronger and the underwater river would lead up to the watering hole.
Neither path looked particularly difficult to navigate. Maybe she was wrong, maybe they were really trapped down here forever. Or maybe whoever had belonged to those teeth was really, really dumb.
Or possibly injured in some way. Mutilated, maybe. How had that come to pass? Did they fall, or did someone come along to mutilate them? Ah, now...that was a thought.
"...What?" She asked, blinking. Yakone's words caught up with her. "Oh. Yeah. Okay. Do you think it came from up stream, maybe?"
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