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 Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:44 pm
"It's... it's....." The Shrila paused, eyes wide as his Mistress's hooves (if that's even possible) as he stared at the cliffs, the rocks, the beach, the sea, the everything. It was simply... just... "Magnificent! It's... it's absolutely gorgeous, Mistress! Oh, thank you thank you thank you thank you for coming here!" He squealed in his intolerable, high-pitched shriek he called a voice. "Can we stay for a few days? A week? Please?"
"Don't push your luck," she said through gritted teeth, readjusting her leathery wings and flicking her tail. "You're lucky I even considered bringing you here. I don't even know why I agreed to do it in the first place; I must be daft, this place stinks. Too salty for my tastes," she grumbled, glaring off at nothing.
"Oh, humph!" He pouted, his voice flitting off to her other side. "You don't like it because you can't see it, that's all!"
"That's probably why I don't like a lot of things," she said curtly.
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Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:46 pm
Quickly lifting her head to keep her sensitive nose away from the sharp pincers of the offensive little creature, she couldn't help but smile again and follow its progress slowly. "Go on, get back in there; your family misses you, I think," she murmured, her smile fading to a rather sad version. She missed her mother dearly, missed the few friends she'd thought she'd had in the herd, but most of all, she missed Milo. Dear, sweet little Milo; had he stayed with the herd, or had he left too? He'd probably left; he'd always said how firm his opinions were on anything regarding an arranged mating. If he was anything else, he was a loyal little thing, and he was probably almost as upset about the whole thing as she was, if not moreso. Yes, he'd probably left immediately after finding out what had happened.
The thought brought a smile to her face and she offered the crab one last glance before turning, scouring the beach sands in search of interesting bits of driftwood, shells, or any other random bits that caught her attention. She figured anything neat-looking that she could stick in the cave, Maurice would probably like. If not, well; she could just as easily keep them for herself, and stick them in her own cave once she picked one out. That is, if she stayed at the ocean after he returned. She wasn't quite sure if she wanted to or not.
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Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:48 pm
"Oh, Mistress, can we pease? Please?"
"Ugh! Fine! If it will get you to shut up..." She trailed off, grumbling, ears pinned to her skull as she took a few hesitant steps closer towards the edge of the cliff. "But you'd better give me the best directions you've ever given with impeccable estimates and distances."
"Of course, Mistress!" He said shrilly, overjoyed. "The edge is just a foot away, Mistress."
"Okay," she said slowly, hesitantly, perking her ears forward. She took a deep breath before unfurling her wings, giving them a quick stretch before she did anything stupid. She exhaled slowly and, with a decisive snort, launched herself over the edge with her hindlegs.
Wings outspread and held steady, despite their protest from lack of use and from the cold air, she managed to glide fairly decently, albeit at an angle towards the ocean. "Angle your wings down-left, Mistress," the ghost prompted, ever present at her ear, and she took his advice and angled her wings accordingly. If nothing else, he did have good flying advice. The Speaker's angle shifted to be more parallel to the beach before he spoke again. "Down-straight," he advised, and she did so, beginning her not-so-slow descent towards the sands below. "You're about 10 yards above the beach now, Mistress -- Five, three... Just a few feet, pull up a bit! Oh dear! Be careful, just another foot or two! Oh no! Be careful, look out! Look out, Mistress! Right there, you just missed it! Oh, be careful! EEK!! Mistress!! I can't watch!!"
Despite his spastic ending, the old mare managed a fairly decent landing -- if you call tripping, stumbling, and almost falling fairly decent -- and trotted forward a few unsure paces over the shifting sands before halting suddenly. That was one reason why she hated the ocean, the sand. Plus, the salty smell and taste of the air, while prevalent on the cliffs, was infinitely worse down here. "Happy now?" She grunted, glaring.
"Umm... Mistress?"
"What is it, Betel?!" She snapped, glaring off to where his voice was coming from.
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Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:49 pm
Sonata merely stared at the strange Aeri before her, frozen in mid-prance. Who.... what was she talking to....? This certainly was rather.... rather strange... The mare had acted like, like.. like she couldn't see the ground, the way she'd tripped and stumbled. Her bright eyes locked onto the Speaker's white ones, and she blinked, a bit confused. Blind? It seemed so; not many with white eyes were able to see anything, or so she'd been told.
But, all that aside.... What, was this mare crazy or something? There wasn't anyone there besides her and the pink-speckled mare; who was she talking to? Whatever it was had a name... Beetle or something strange like that. "Umm..." She began, swiveling her ears cautiously and preparing herself to turn tail and flee if it came to it. But, she wouldn't learn anything that way... But what to ask first?
She turned over several different questions in her mind before picking one, hoping it would be answered. Truthfully, of course. Hopefully this mare wasn't crazy... "Who are you talking to...?"
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Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:50 pm
Bella froze as the light voice reached her sensitive ears, and she merely stood there for a moment, dumbstruck. It wasn't because she was nervous of the voice, or frightened, or any other similar emotion -- no, she was more.... surprised. Confused. Baffled. Hurt.
She opened her mouth to speak, but quickly shut it again. No, no; it was impossible. It was. It was, and she knew it.
Pinning her ears against her head, the Speaker snorted irritatedly and stamped a hoof onto the shifting sands. Damn, she liked the loud thud her hooves made on the ground, but here it didn't make much noise at all, if anything.
She tossed her head so her irritating forelock would stop poking at her eyes, and--
"She's an Ichsa, Mistress; a gray and white and pink one. Very pretty, with a long mane and tail."
Bellatrix snorted. Of course it wasn't her. Why she'd thought that this creature before her -- whom she couldn't see -- was the same from her past, even for such a fleeting instant, was ridiculous. She was gone. Dead.
"Betelgeuse," she snorted, pawing at the sand. "He's a ghost. Now, who the hell are you?"
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Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:05 pm
Betelgeuse? What kind of name was that? Still; was it really a ghost, or was she some sort of crazy nequus that the pink-speckled mare should flee from? Hopefully she could find out soon. "Umm... Hello, Betelgeuse," she said tentatively, hoping she pronounced his name right. It was a mouthful.
Turning her emerald eyes on the blind Aeri, she offered her a polite nod, still not positive if the elder mare could see or not, and cleared her throat a bit. "My uh, my name is Sonata," the Ichsa offered, shuffling her tendril wings uncertainly, "I left my herd a couple months ago because father tried to shove an arranged mating on me to an arrogant a*****e. Father was the herd leader, so he could do things like that." Probably too much information, but the other mare had asked who she was, so it was probably sufficient.
She tossed her head a bit to get her forelock out of her eyes -- the wind had a habit of flopping it around so she couldn't see -- but only succeeded in getting it caught on her horn. Cursing silently, she tossed her head once or twice more, before the strands of hair finally cooperated and behaved. Snorting a bit, she focused on Bella once more. "Now, it's your turn. Who are you, and who's this Betelgeuse person....thing, and can you really talk to ghosts?"
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Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:55 pm
The old mare couldn't help but give a snort of amusement. She hadn't any idea why; normally she'd just turn and leave with types like these, but.... but she wanted to stay. Something was nagging at the back of her mind to do so.
"Bellatrix," she said shortly, reaching a wing up to rid herself of an itch with her thumbclaw. She got more use out of those two things with scratches than she did with her whole wings with flying. "Betelgeuse is -- was, at some point years and years and years ago -- a Shrila. Belonged to some long dead relative of mine, he's a ghost now. Here's his skull," she said as she tossed her head, causing the aforementioned bone to thud lightly against her chest, eliciting a disgusted expression from the young mare that Bella could not see. "The only reason I can talk to him, and that you can neither see nor hear him, is because I'm a Speaker. I talk to dead things," she added bluntly. Just in case this little bint, you know, didn't know what a Speaker was. She sounded rather young. Acted like it, too.
"She seems like such a young thing, Mistress, and so cute, too. May we stay in her company a while longer?"
Always slow, was Betel.
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Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 9:03 am
A Speaker? Something finally clicked in her mind, and things started to make sense. Speakers, Milo had told her, could speak to ghosts and those long past, to spirits and the like. But, in exchange for their gifts, one of their most important faculties was stripped from them; the power of sight. So, this mare was blind. She also wasn't crazy. ...well, she still could be, but she didn't exactly seem like it. Then again... did any crazy Nequus seem crazy until they actually did something crazy? ...did that even make sense?
Shaking her head a bit to rid herself of the off-topic thought pattern, she studied the dusty-coated mare with bright eyes. So, this Betelgeuse was a Shrila, hu? A dead, ghost Shrila. Milo would probably love to meet him, although if no one could see or hear him, then that was a shame. When was the last time Betel had seen another Shrila? She hadn't a clue.
"You can really speak to the dead?" She was a Speaker, of course she could. Oh dear, she was so awful at thinking of things to say... Oh my.. "So, um.." She kicked the sand lightly with her gray forehoof. "I, um.. Oh! Do you like being able to talk to the dead and ghosts and stuff?"
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Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 9:32 am
"No, I hate it," she grunted. If it wasn't for this stupid ability, she would still be able to see, she would never have inadvertently ran farther from her original herd, and she would still have --
"Mistress," Betel interjected hesitantly but firmly, knowing exactly where that train of thought was headed.
She snorted. That was one of the only good things about the sanity-shredding little ghost that was her constant companion. Despite how angry and irritated he made her, despite how awful he was and how she felt she'd lose her sanity because of him every day... He was the only reason she could keep her head. Huh. She still wondered how that was possible.
Leaving her answer at that, she canted her head to the side and flicked an ear. Either this Ichsa was nervous, although she certainly didn't sound like it, or she was just a horrible conversationlist. "You're not good with conversations, are you?" She pointed out, figuring that she was right and it was the latter, not the former.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 11:35 pm
Oh, well that was certainly.... blunt, she decided; but that was a simple thing, really. The other mare would either love it or hate it; such things usually only went one way or the other, and hardly ever stayed in the middle. At least, she thought Speakers were magic users. How else would they talk to dead nequus? Magic was the only thing she could think of to explain it, so magic it was.
"What--oh," she said sheepishly, casting her emerald eyes to the side and scuffing at the pale sand a bit. She was a terrible conversationalist, she knew, but she hated it when others pointed out such a fact. She knew she was bad at it; why did they have to rub it in? "No, I'm not," she admitted with a sigh, ruffling her tendril wings a bit and holding them more comfortably against her flanks. "I'm better at singing, really, or talking to someone I've known for a while." A certain white and black Shrila came to mind, and Sonata couldn't help but smile, albeit a little sadly. "What about you? You're... uhh... you're...."
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Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 11:24 am
"...better with conversations than you?" Bella prompted with a flick of her tail, ignoring Betel's amused cackling. "Even though I probably talk to a lot less people than you do in a day." Being blind, the dusty paint mare missed the hurt expression on the young ichsa's face at he comment.
Singing, huh? She'd never really heard anyone sing before. Save, of course, her mother on sparse occasions. Betel had tried to sing before, but she promptly dropped his soul every time he attempted it, and he swiftly learned that his Mistress did not like his singing. "Singing," Bella mused, flicking an ear. "I haven't heard anyone sing in a long time." Years, really, if she didn't count Betel's sorry attempts. Which she didn't, of course. That wasn't singing, that was screeching in different pitches. The tan paint Speaker shuddered at the thought.
The slender mare opened her mouth to speak, but Bella continued on, unaware that the gray ichsa had wanted to comment. Even if she knew, she wouldn't have cared much. "Then you should get to know people faster, so you won't screw up what you're trying to say as often."
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Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 12:42 pm
The slender gray mare shifted her weight from one hoof to another uneasily, warily eying the tall Speaker as she took a step backwards. She did not like this mare, not at all. She knew she was bad with conversations, but she didn't need that fact rubbed in her face. Sonata also did not want to be told what to do; she'd left her herd because her father did that, and it annoyed her even more that some complete stranger was attempting the same. "I, um.."
What could she say? She didn't want to say anything that could anger the paint mare; she looked really strong, not to mention how tall she was. She must be 19 hands, at least. But still, she was definitely faster than the Speaker, so if she did irritate the elder mare, she could outrun her. "Yes, I should work on that." But not with you, she thought.
"I uh, think I should go now, though," she said hesitantly as she took a few steps backward and started to turn, watching as the Speaker began t o glare. "I need to go, uh.. go find more shells for my friend." She didn't need to of course, but she wanted any excuse to get away from this strange mare. And with that, she quickly turned and galloped off as fast as her legs could carry her, her heart beating a bit faster than it should out of nervousness. She hoped she'd never see the Speaker again.
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Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 12:48 pm
At the gray mare's nervous fake excuse and sudden departure, the dusty mare couldn't help but snort in annoyance. "People today," she scowled, flicking her ears back. "I tried to be nice and she just up and ran. People today aren't as nice as they were back in the day, are they? All stupid assholes, really," she said, turning and blinking her milky white eyes.
"Yes, Mistress," he agreed, looking after the slender ichsa. "She's really quite fast, though."
"Yeah, well, that doesn't matter much, let her run away if she wants," she snorted, walking carefully over the shifting sands. "Now that you've gotten me stuck down here, how am I supposed to get back to the valley, Betel?" She asked matter-of-factly, eyelids lowered a bit and brows raised in a questioning gaze.
"Ehehe...."
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