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 Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 2:22 pm
Maggie strode through the fields outside Oldcastle, her cottage mercifully receding into the distance. She loved her mother, she truly did, but some days she just had to get out of the house. Couldn't stand to be in the dim interior that reeked of old age, sickness she couldn't cure, and a thousand different herbs and tinctures. A shadow comprised of dark gray and white pursued her through the grass, fluttering to and fro and lighting occasonally. Maggie knew damn well Sybil was there- Sibyl was always there, whether she wanted her to be or not. Presently she was refusing to acknowledge the obnoxious bird as much as she was refusing to acknowledge the sting of her mother's words. It looked like it was going to rain again, which suited the young healer just fine. She was wearing a sturdy cloak and sturdy boots- she'd not be catching cold.
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Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:04 pm
"No, lift your feet, you crook-pated varlot! Don't shuffle!" Patrek's bark rang out clear and commanding across the field as he parried his opponent's feeble blow with a careless flick of his own blunt training sword and jabbed back, dancing forward on light and practiced feet. His opponent let out a howl when the dulled blade jabbed into the mail draped across his chest. There was an edge of frustration in Patrek's words, not because his pupil was proving unskilled at swordplay, but because he was proving to be an unwilling opponent. There was weakness in the way Aufidius slunk back after being hit and an irritating lack of motivation to retaliate, and certainly no drive to win.
"We've been doing this for over year, lad, you're running out of excuses," Patrek growled, pushing Aufidius back a step at a time while the singer's defenses continued to fall. Thwack! Patrek's sword hit Aufidius' chain mail again and bounced off. The singer stumbled backwards. Patrek kept a watchful eye as his companion recovered from the stumble, but then he nodded to a silent gray buck that had been standing motionlessly to the side, indicating for the Guardian to take over.
The skies were overcast and there was a humid chill in the air, but sparring had worked up Patrek's blood and he stripped his shirt and tossed it aside while Careo took up sparring with Aufidius with undisguised reluctance. The Guardian had never taken to the singer, whose antics seemed repeatedly inexcusable, and if anything he pushed the young man even harder than his Chosen did, though it was more out of disdain than anything else.
"Don't drop your sword hand! No, parry!"
There was another howl of pain and Patrek groaned as Aufidius, dropping his sword hand, reached desperately to block Careo's antlers with his free hand. The buck sensed the weakness and with characteristic disregard for Aufidius' well-being, drove the point of his antlers into the singer's arm with a huff.
"Y'stupid nag! What d'ye do that for?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:16 pm
"What the devil is going on over there?" Maggie mused aloud to herself, hearing the raised voices and clatter that sounded very much like a fight, though what the hell anyone would have to fight about in a fallow wheat field was beyond her. Sibyl, sensing a lapse in her mistress' foul mood, swept up to perch on her shoulder, peering in the direction of the sound curiously. "Boys will be boys!" the rook declared in her voice like a rusty old hinge, and the hedge-witch shrugged. It certainly did sound like one of the combatants was shouting advice to his opponent, but the howls of pain sounded... mm, perhaps a little too genuine. Especially that last one- perhaps the practice session had gotten a little rough? "Guess someone'll have to patch up their bruises and scapes," the healer sighed to her bird, sounding rather put-upon as she started trudging in that direction.
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Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 9:14 am
Careo prided himself for his patience. He rarely rushed and he could spend endless hours simply standing and observing, hardly moving an inch. But his tolerance for Aufidius had grown thin over the years, had been thin, in fact, almost since the moment of his birth. This last insult seemed in some ways to be the last straw. The buck pinned his ears and squared his antlers to Aufidius' chest, and would have charged if his Chosen hadn't cut in with a loud and non-negotiable, "QUIT!"
On his part, Aufidius had managed to swing his sword up again and seemed ready to slash the dull blade across the buck's face in self-defence. Both singer and Guardian stopped dead as Patrek tossed aside his practice sword, striding decisively over to the pair of them. He dismissed the buck with a jerk of his head and shoved the singer back by the shoulder, disapproval tangible as he wordlessly pulled up Aufidius' sleeve to check the damage.
Careo's blow hadn't broken skin, but the muscles in Aufidius' forearm were shot. His hand rested awkwardly in a half-closed claw, unable to either open or close fully, and bruises along the arm had already formed, angry ones that promised to turn black and blue and purple the next day.
"We'll find a healer in town," Patrek said in a tone that suggested he thought the appropriate treatment was to have Aufidius grow a pair and deal with it. But Aufidius would certainly not stand for protracted pain. The singer's sullen grunt was interrupted by an image sent by Careo of of a woman approaching with a bird.
Hedge witch? Patrek ventured, noticing the rook's unusual glowing eyes.
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Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 8:05 pm
Maggie trudged to the top of a small hill, preceded by a swooping Sibyl who cawed once and circled the trio below. Finally beholding the source of the disturbance, she sighed and shook her head- as motely a lot as expected. And another Guardian... apparently it was a month for those. She crossed her arms and shook her head at the sorry sight, and stumped directly towards the man who was favoring his arm. Spirits knew if she ever took a day off the damn town would probably burn down. It was always something... Without so much as a 'Hi how are you' or 'by-your-leave, she took the injured man's hand and began probing his injury with experienced fingers. "What happened?" Maggie asked bluntly. She didn't so much care, but it would help her figure out what damage his arm might've taken. Sibyl continued to circle overhead watchfully: given that there wasn't anywhere to alight but the potentially-unfriendly Guardian's antlers or her definitely-unfriendly hedgewitch's shoulders, she chose to remain aloft. MoonRazor Sorry for the delay, my life took a turn for the slightly mad this week...
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Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 11:55 am
Patrek's quiet anger, most likely at both Aufidius and Careo for having lost their tempers, was palpable. He didn't say much in the way of expressing it, but neither did he try to hide it in the way he held himself and his set jaw. He had turned his back on Aufidius and gone to retrieve the sword he had tossed aside by the time Maggie arrived, swinging the sword in a practiced arc as he watched her from the corner of his eye.
"Let the buck gore him, he did," he said disdainfully. The blade sliced through the air as he cut it upward at nothing in particular to keep his muscles loose.
"Violent, he is," Aufidius retorted, wincing as Maggie's fingers pushed one the bruises on his arm. "I says before, I says, I didn't know them magic deer could get rabies," he continued, much to both Patrek and Careo's displeasure. "But thiss'un... sure is aggressive enough to have it."
Patrek bit back an angry growl. Many times before he had felt utterly frustrated by Aufidius, but this was the first time he had felt any genuine anger toward the boy. "Careful, ma'am," he intoned. "You don't want to spend too much effort on this lad, else you'll only find it all for naught."Shady Maru Life got a little busy for me too ><
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Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 8:34 pm
The woman paused at that, blinked once, then chuckled aloud. "Futility is something I'm well used to," she answered drily, the comment directed over her shoulder to the Chosen behind her. "Congratulations, lad, you didn't break anything," she informed the man whose arm she was examining. Which was the point at which she realized she'd forgotten to ask his name... people usually got testy about that sort of thing, but not always. Apparently these gents were some of the ones that didn't. "But I have to tell you, I don't think Guardians can get rabies. My name's Maggie, by the way. The chicken's Sybil." "Hag." the raven hissed, flaring her neck feathers at her ward, but the effort seemed halfhearted, and Maggie continued unperturbed. "Mm... that bruising's pretty deep. You'll want to rest it for a few days if you don't want the damage to be permanent." Dispassionately, she proceeded to pull her kerchief out of her hair, then extended her hand to accept a jar of salve proffered in her familiar's sharp beak. With a quick motion and no further preamble, she smeared a two-fingered dollop of salve down the long, purpling mark. Then she proceeded to begin wrapping the young man's arm up using her kerchief as a sling. "Don't suppose you'd indulge a bit of morbid curiosity and tell me exactly why you thought squaring off against a full-grown Guardian was a good idea when you can barely hold a sword?"
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Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 8:57 pm
"Aufidius," he said, busy pondering her words. "Impossible to say what this'un is capable of," Aufidius added darkly, frowning mightily at Careo. Neither had quite trusted the other since the Guardian's birth, when his sudden and mysterious appearance in Two-Step's stall had all but scared the wits out of the singer. "Him and his crazy eyes. Spends all day standing still, he does. Never know what he's thinking."
It was true, to the extent that Aufidius had no idea what Careo was thinking. The same could not be said for Patrek, who received a fairly constant and informative stream of information in the form of Careo's observations and inferences. Either way, of course, the buck's disdain for Aufidius was quite clear and that alone had always made the singer uneasy. His easy, if foolish, charm usually meant that he was fairly popular in a crowd and being confronted with such unadulterated dislike was off-putting to the extreme.
"Patrek," the guardsman put in, ignoring his companion's words in favor of studying the rook. But even the bird couldn't keep his mind off the situation for long. Grudgingly, the soldier glanced over at his friend. "That means no guitar-playing," he said bluntly.
"Yea, yea..." Aufidius muttered equally reluctantly as Maggie pulled his arm into the kerchief sling. "I didn't know chickens could fly," he added, half as a joke as he tried to put off answering the question. Much as sparring seemed a chore to him, Aufidius knew it was Patrek's way of expressing that he cared - enough to put in the effort to try to teach him anyway. "I can hold a sword," he ended up protesting, unwilling to acknowledge Patrek's effort or the fact that much of it had gone to waste in the past year.
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Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 9:15 pm
Maggie'd blinked at her patient's name, but the conversation had continued before she could comment. At the boy's assertion he could hold a sword, she raised an eyebrow. "Oh, aye, and I'm a small rabbit named Earl. Don't lie t' yerself, lad, you're no more a swordsman than I am a workbench."
She turned and looked at Careo, raising an eyebrow and shaking her head. The motivations of magic deer were foreign to her. "I trust your Chosen knows what's in your head," she commented at last. "But bullying's never a good look, lad. Remember that."
Turning at last to Patrek, she offered the jar of salve. "Since you seem to be the ringleader of this little circus, I'm giving this to you. Aufidius here'll need to put it on once in the morning and once when he goes to bed 'till it's gone. He shouldn't need a refill, but if you do any herbalist can make bruise cream." She paused, tilting her head and returned her attention to the patient. "Aufidius... did your mother really name ya that? Seems a bit unkind."
Sibyl looked up at Aufidius and seemed to shrug her wings. "Hag." she said, apparently by way of explanation, then set about preening the feathers along her back.
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Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2014 6:45 am
"I ain't a swordsman, but..." Aufidius seemed to be on the verge of arguing, but he it occurred to him that she was probably right. The only reason to insist otherwise would be pride, and Aufidius didn't have much of that anyway. The singer just shrugged and cradled his arm, somewhat mollified by the fact that she had fixed or at least helped fix it.
As Patrek reached for the salve, he could feel Careo's steam of thought and emotion, much of which seemed to be mild disgust. The soldier knew what the buck thought: that Aufidius need to hurry up and toughen up before life tripped him hard enough to hurt, and no amount of coddling would help speed the process. Especially not someone like Aufidius, who had a knack for spotting the easy way out and taking it without a second thought.
"He'll remember," he said, pocketing the salve. For entirely vain reasons, Aufidius was sure to want the bruise cleared. The next day or two might see the singer boasting wildly about his near miss with the Guardian's antlers, but a bruise was still unbecoming.
"What d'you mean, unkind?" The singer echoed, turning to look at Sibyl. "I like this bird." He shrugged again. "Well, I don't have me a mother, so I wouldn't know. This here's my own name." By which he meant he'd chosen it many years back and stuck with it ever since.
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Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2014 12:00 am
"Lucky you," the hedgewitch said at the mention of his mother, and for once her tone was lacking in sarcasm. "As for what I meant by unkind, it's a name both pompous and absurd." And, with that, the snark in her tone had returned. If the raven could have rolled her eyes she would, but she hopped to Aufidius' shoulder and preened his hair comfortingly. "But I suppose if it's yours you feel you're stuck with it.." She looked between the two men and the deer and sighed, looking to Patrek, who honestly seemed to be the only sensible one here. "It's no business of mine, but I have to ask- why exactly it is you're trying to teach this fellow to fight? He doesn't seem to have the stones for it ."
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Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 1:03 pm
Aufidius let out a small huff that suggested he did not entirely agree, but sat in sullen silence as the raven groomed his hair. She was a nice bird, friendly. The singer couldn't understand why the hedge witch didn't seem too fond of Sybil, but he was quickly coming to the conclusion that the hedge witch didn't make much sense in general. Women. "Ah, but you understand, don't ye?" He muttered, reaching to give the bird a light scratch.
Patrek, meanwhile, simply shrugged. Maggie wasn't wrong. Far from it. Aufidius was one of the least competent people he had met when it came to handling a sword, and his repeated failures to master even the basics were increasingly frustrating. But that didn't mean Patrek couldn't at least try.
"There's trouble out there," he said finally. "And more to come. Maybe I can't teach him to fight like a man, but at least when the time comes, he'll know which end of the sword to use." It wasn't optimistic, but it was more than most would concede.
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