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 Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:37 pm
 However unlikely it had seemed when she had first arrived there this morning, Timinee wasn't minding the general village atmosphere as much as she usually did. Most of the time when her profession took her out into the countryside, she would spend more time than was necessary for anyone to show their general displeasure. She would enter the outskirts with rather dainty steps, avoiding anything in the road that so much as looked like it could be a potential patty, brushing flies away and holding her gloved hand up to her nose, breathing deep the lingering smell of oil and leather rather than the harsh, unfamiliar smell of hay and animals.
But now she was wrapped up in her work, and all these distractions seemed to run off and hide from her, cowed by her intense concentration. A friend of her fathers had asked that he send out his best and brightest to repair some of his farming equipment and see if there was any way to improve on them to make them last longer and work better. Knowing full well how much his ambitious daughter loved challenges like that, he had sent her out there, carrying only her hammer and a warning to his friend about how his offspring loved to tinker and had best stow anything mechanical that he DIDN'T want her 'fixing'.
At the moment, she had her eyes on a common hay rake, brought into the village by her father's friend to get a few teeth replaced, and she was pondering on how she could make it so that if set in the right direction, it could pull itself along, gathering hay and depositing it in neat little piles until it reached the other end of the field. Or maybe she could go one step further and plot a track it could follow; like a shallow maze that would work as a guide for it to follow! Who would have thought she would find mere farming equipment so intriguing?
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Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2011 10:57 am
There was another soul who didn't generally like the village. It wasn't so much the atmosphere that the orange man didn't like. It was the fact he had to dress his best when he came in. Even in his youth, when he lived in the city with his mother, Chryses didn't enjoy the feel of clothes against his chest. More often than not, all he'd wear were shorts or breeches. Unless his mother forced him to dress up. Those were the only times you could get the teenager to wear clothes.
When he came to the village on business or to sell his produce, he found he didn't like to show off the snake tattoo winding itself around his back and part of his shoulder. Where once he was proud of it, now it was just a bad reminder of what used to be. Plus, it just wasn't professional to do your business without a shirt.
Pulling uncomfortably at the collar of his plain white shirt, the very tall man shifted the weight of the basket in his hands. Behind him, his slightly beaded tail swayed with his movements. He didn't bother to keep it free from the dirt of the road. He'd just get dirty once he made it back home, so why bother now?
Chryses' eyes scanned his surroundings as he made his way under the burden in his arms. The basket was filled with potatoes. He was delivering them personally to an old client, as he often did for the elderly. The boots were uncomfortable on his feet and he wasn't watching what was in front of him. The basket obscured most of his vision of the road before him. A stone soon loomed in front of one boot. The front of the boot snagged it and before he could comprehend what he'd done, he'd dropped the basket the catch his fall with his hands. Potatoes went rolling in the street, the basket rolling on its side. The farmer hit the ground with a loud "Oaf!" at the wind knocked out of him. Disadvantage one to being giant: Falls hurt.
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Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 6:39 pm
Ah yes........she almost had the perfect thought in her head of what she could do to make this cpommon hay rake extraordinary when a sudden thud caused the ground near her to shudder. Startled enough for her tail to bristle, Timinee jumped and nearly slipped and fell on a potato that had been rolling innocently by. She willed her hair to fall back into place as more potatoes rolled by her, a few getting cheekily caught up between the teeth of the hay rake.
Timinee whirled around to find the source of the thud and the fleeing spuds, and almost immediately spotted the large orange form sprawled in the road, basket overturned and spilling vegetables every which way. It looked almost humerous seeing someone so large in a position that she was more expected to see in little children who were easily knocked down. But her tomboyish ways didn't amount to being harsh like one. Still a little miffed that her brilliant thought had been interrupted, even by a poor soul who might have been hurt, Timinee walked over to the figure, stooping smoothly to scoop up a potato before reaching him, as she had percieved him to be when she got closer. "Hey there; you alright?"
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Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2011 6:51 pm
Chryses raised himself onto his elbows as he got his bearings. Such a tall man really hit the ground hard. His knees hurt. His hands were scratched up. His chin ached from behind bumped across the dirt. And everything in between seemed to have some small throb to it. There was one part of his stomach that was causing him some discomfort. Shifting his weight showed a stone lodged underneath him. That would leave a bruise for tomorrow...
Then someone started talking. His ears hadn't registered the sound of boots coming closer. So focused on all the areas of his body that ached distracted him from anything else. Trying to force a grateful smile on his lips, he turned his head towards the sound.
"Mostly," the farmer answered, managing to get himself to turn over on his side. From there, he moved to sitting on the ground, one leg bent under the raised position of the other. He lay his arm across the raised knee, still not sure he could get up right away. This was why he hated boots...So bulky. So in the way. Sandals were the only fitting footwear, aside from nothing at all.
Running a hand through his hair, Chryses reached out to grab the basket. A few scattered potatoes still held to the inside. He sighed his frustration. At least the old woman was patient. That was a plus.
"Just scratched. Maybe a little bruised." He ran a hand through his hair. It was left free of any of the usual buckles he kept in it. Mostly just to keep the bangs out of his face while he worked the fields. The bangs now stuck up a little at his petting of it. "Mostly just dazed."
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2011 10:05 pm
Timinee watched the man carefully as he would bring himself up into a sitting position there on the road. He didn't show any signs of having broken bones, so that was a relief. She could cure what ailed a machine in a heartbeat, but she was woefully inept at all things flesh and bone. She had been told to see the body as a sort of machine into itself, but she had never been able to see the comparison. Machines didn't bleed oil if someone scraped it, and bones were a lot harder to fix than most machine parts. This particular specimen in front of her looked as far from machine as one could possibly get: simple clothes that had a home-spun appearance, no glasses or any kind of metal visible on him whatsoever, which seemed strange to her. Even the ones who lived on the very outskirts of the city and were dubbed 'country folk' still had at least a metal trinket or two. Still, she liked his sunny fur and his generally wholesome appearance, an interesting change from the overdressed, punky types she had a tendency to see in her own city.
Crouching down, with her pink tail brushing the dirt from the road, Timinee eyed the basket and started scooping up more potatoes to place back into it. "Did you trip on a rock? Or were you trying to avoid something in the road? At least your potatoes seem alright; nothing a good wash won't fix." He really did look dazed; was it the heat maybe? "Do you need some water or anything? Maybe you ought to rest for a bit." He might not be used to being outside, much the same as her. Why then did he look as though he belonged out there, tilling the earth that had yielded the crop he was carrying?
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Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2011 10:01 am
Chryses was glad of the help of the strange young woman. He was still seeing a few spots in front of his eyes. He didn't like leaving her to pick up his produce on her own, but he didn't think he could move without falling over. Not even his head was watching her or the other people pass them by.
"Just a...Moment's rest would be good," the farmer replied, his mossy green eyes fixed on the dirt road in front of his booted foot. He didn't feel very tired. Working hard on the fields was a daily routine that he had gotten used to long ago. And he had been sure to cool off before coming into town. Not everyone appreciated a sweaty, smelly farmer near them. The old lady was kind enough not to be outwardly bothered by it. She was just grateful someone was generous enough to deliver her bought groceries to her. "I don't need anything else."
Rubbing both hands across his face, he finally raised his eyes to his potato saver, giving her a grateful smile once the stars stopped dancing in front of his green eyes. "But thank you. Large things fall hard, is all." He managed a little chuckle at his own dry joke, feeling much better already. Though not enough to get up. Large things did indeed fall hard. "Felt like a rock. Not often I dress in nice boots for a trip to town." Picking up a potato that had rolled against his thigh, Chryses dropped it into the basket.
A few passerbys were adding to the basket pile of the vegetables that had rolled too far away from the two closest to the basket. He was sure to give each a nod of thanks in return.
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Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2011 9:07 pm
Timinee was actually quite glad when the man smiled at her; a nice, genuine smile and not the ones that she tended to get from strangers, trying to figure out the rhyme and reason of her looks. She did notice that the man had a bit of a smell, but it was a lot less offending than the offerings the animals tended to leave in the road, and she figured that to him, she peobably smelled of her own trade: oil and copper and a slight hint of ozone. She usually suspected anyway that the only people who smelled good in their trade were the harlots that hung about on the corners of the seedier parts of the city, the tendrils of cheap perfume almost visible in the glow of the night lights.
Not wanting others who were less observant to trip over the big man, Timinee remained crouched beside him, hoping that a bigger obstacle would cause others to swerve around them as the big man sat and regathered himsef. Timinee's eyes wandered to the basket of potatoes, her eyes unblinking behind her glasses as she stared at it, an idea forming in the back of her mind on a basket that would never, ever spill it's load. If she could find a way to make a handle that swerved about and allowed the natural gravity to hold the basket in place as everything else swirled around it......
Her thoughts were halted by the big man's words, and she managed a smile and a nod just in time to keep from seeming impolite. "Well, if they give you so much trouble, why not dress in sandals, or even bare feet? I mean, the crap in the road would be a problem, but I'm sure you'd be a lot more observant than I am with avoiding them." She remembered all too well the first time she had come to a farming village; she had been greeted by a cow pie and she had correctly summarized that such an incident was a fair summary of what her trip there was going to be like. At least now she was out doing some good instead of sitting on the sidelines, watching ceremonies that involved bells of silver that she would have LOVED to have gotten her hands on and turned them into singing bowls.
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