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 Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:11 am
Clopin sat outside of his den, toying with a gold and turquoise necklace he had pocketed when he and the others had found Miss Chel washed up on the shore of the river and he was thinking about his old life as he stared at the trinket. Something like that would have bought so much food for his old clan-members. Part of him missed being his entertaining, somewhat thieving, self, leading his band of gipsies. He waved the necklace back a forth, his eyes following it as it swung back and forth.
He started humming a bit, smiling as his eyes narrowed a bit.
"Justice is swift in the Court of Miracles, I am the lawyers and judge all in one..." he sang softly under his breath, grinning. Maybe he should start working on getting back to normal.
Chel was wandering again. After living her entire life within the confines of one territory, she found herself lapsing into a disorienting wonderment in her new home, her second chance. Everything here was so strange and raw-- the young otter, while thankful for the blessing, still felt at once cornered and completely lost at times. There were times when she woke up wondering where she was, others in the middle of the night wondering if she were even alive. And always she dreamt of falling, water, and of birds crying.
She stopped, shook herself from her reverie with a murmur. Too much thinking had gotten her lost. She'd followed the bank, hadn't she? How'd she ended up...-- her ears twitched. Humming?
While she figured she was on land not her own, it wouldn't hurt to sate her curiosity. She followed the sound, coming around Clopin's den; she was surprised to find him there, a very familiar face indeed. For a minute she simply watched, head tilted, as though trying to find the mind that had suddenly run off.
"Keeping a token for the memory?" she asked with a laugh. "I would think sacrificial gold would be tainted gold." She kept well out of his way. She had probably been the only one who hadn't kept a souvenir from that day-- Nohochacyum had long since been buried.
Clopin glanced up for a moment at the sound of another's voice and smiled lightly at Chel.
"Perhaps," he said and looked down at the necklace again before giving a small half-laugh. "More habit, I suppose. Where I came from, something like this would have had a lot of meaning. Are you feeling better, Mademoiselle?"
He looked down at it for a minute before sliding it so that the pendant part was resting on the pads of his paw. He didn't need it, not here.
"Would you like it back? I probably shouldn't have it," he replied and grinned with a small wink. "Not really the necklace type."
"At least it'd mean something to someone," Chel said under her breath. She kneaded the earth beneath her paws, a nervous habit she had picked up in the past few days. It was difficult, trying to piece her identity back together. She straightened with a self-assured grin and a toss of her head.
"I am-- so much as a person can when they've found out they've still got a life to live," she admitted, a little confused. Chel felt as though she were wasting the days she had been given. A faint smile warmed her mouth, eyes crinkling.
"Oh? That's a surprise," she joked. She shook her head, "No... you can keep it. Maybe all of its luck wasn't wasted on me."
Chel stretched her forepaws out and stood up, moving to keep herself busy; her gaze flit around the den, the trees, the sky, before settling on Clopin searchingly, "Where are you from anyway, oh savior-of-mine?"
Clopin stood and walked to her, slipping the necklace around her head anyways.
"I come from a large colony far east of here," he explained, smiling in some parts sadness and some parts remembrance. "I lived with my friends, but we were treated as vermin by some of the others. After a while, it got dangerous until we finally rebelled and won our freedom. Afterwards... They could get on without me," he added as he sat back with a small shrug. There was a little pain in his eyes, but only for a passing moment, so fleeting that one might have missed it.
"Not enough reasons to stay, so I left." The dark male shrugged again, a small, crooked smile on his face.
"Oh?" she intoned gently, bowing her head to accept the necklace, but never removing her eyes from his face. Chel was no expert at reading people, but she was not blind either. She touched the necklace with an absent paw, studying Clopin like she had once done with the Popol Vuh.
"Do you make it a habit of saving those in need and then moving on then?" While she didn't question his story, she didn't exactly believe it entirely either-- there were pieces missing and it was clear there on her own face that she was curious. But why would a quasi-stranger bother telling her anything but the basics? She snorted.
"I would think freedom would be enough to keep anyone around."
Clopin looked away and his claws dug into the ground a bit.
"I lost someone very dear to me. Staying there was not on the top of my good-idea list," he replied in short, clipped tone. He stood and paced farther away from her, walking to the edge of the stream he lived beside. The bottom was deep enough for him to see a small bit of his reflecting, seeing the frown on his face and the hurt in his eyes. But his over-active imagination took over and he saw Chantal, her eyes wide and frightened as she reach out of water towards him as she drowned. Had she cried out for aid? Screamed his name above the sound of the falls as she was pulled towards the waterfall? He hadn't been there, he hadn't had the chance to save her.
The horned male growled softly and flicked a rock into the water, trying to banish the image from his mind.
"They understood why I had to leave."
The sudden change in his demeanor made the muscles across her shoulders grow taut. Chel was inexperienced with loss, her family alive and well somewhere back within the confines of her old home. The thought of never seeing them again pained her, but they had seen very little of her (and she of them) when she had been chosen. They were prepared - as much as parents could be - for the loss of one daughter for the good of their nation.
"I'm sorry." Her brow creased and fighting instinct, she approached him though did not draw too near. She did not, however, fight the instinct of speaking what was exactly on her mind. Some habits were hard to break.
"But don't you think you may have been held dear to someone else? Perhaps not in the same light, but-- I don't know," Chel laughed, an odd, hollow sound. "Your friends. One loss shouldn't--"
She paused, struggling with the words as though coming to her own personal conclusion, mind drifting yet again, "Shouldn't demand solitude."
Again Chel paused, clenching her jaw, "You don't seem whole, if you don't mind my saying."
But what on earth did she know? She was the loss.
Clopin glanced at her before he sat down again with a sigh on the back of the water.
"I doubt anyone can be whole when they lose their other half," he replied, his tail curling around to rest against his paws. He nodded slowly and changed his mind into shaking his head instead.
"There probably was. But... It's hard to watch your friends with their mates and children after something like that."
Her lips formed a small 'o' of realization. Chel had only ever known familial love and love for her clan. Inexperience halted her empathy. She sat back and regarded her paws, tail twitching.
"Still," she began again, thoughtfully. "You shouldn't fight what was fated to be, good or bad. Back where I came from we celebrated a person lost. Well! We celebrated everything, really, even sacrifice--" she stole a moment to grin and hold her paws up "-- but when a loved one leaves this earth, they're going to sit with the gods forever and ever. They don't have to deal with the sufferings in this world."
She toyed with her necklace, "That's what he high priest told me. But don't quote me on it! You can't lament forever, you know, and you don't look like the type that was meant to frown."
Clopin smiled and laughed a bit.
"You sound like she did. Whenever I was stressed with my duties to the holt, she would tell me my mouth wasn't made to frown," he replied, running a hand though his hair until he pushed his hat completely from his head. He scratched where his fur changed from short and mocha-colored to long and black.
"I suppose so... To be taken so early, though..." He paused and blinked as her words settled.
"Sacrificed? Chère... is that how you came to be here?" he asked, tilting his head as he looked at her.
Chel beamed, mood lifting considerably. She leaned forward with a stage whisper and a wink, "See? Us women are pretty smart. That's why luck's a lady and fate as well!"
She liked to think all things happened for a reason. Spontaneity did not exist in life, not without reason. Tragedy struck sometimes as a teacher, sometimes as a highlight to something greater on its way. These were the thoughts that kept Chel going even with plucked from the comfort of her own.
Chel laughed to fill the awkward silence she created in not answering immediately.
"I... well, yes. I'm a botched sacrifice?" She worried her lower lip, ears flicking back, "I'm supposed to be dead, obviously. Is... sacrifice not common around here?"
"Sweet Mother Mary, no," Clopin replied automatically as he picked up his hat and replaced it upon his head. He had never heard of otters sacrificing others to their gods. But apparently that was the background she came from.
"At least, not that I'm aware of. I actually don't know many of the others in this area." He scratched at his beard lightly. "Mostly I've just run into pirates. I've heard there's a few that might actually eat other otters or some strangeness like that, but no otter-sacrifices."
Chel laughed at the promptness of his response, mouthing 'Mary?' with a crinkled nose. She was so used to sacrifices in her life-- the only upset was her becoming one. Her stomach writhed in memory.
"Eat them? That's barbaric!" she said, eyes widening. "No, no. We only ever threw people into the cenote, played ball to the death, occassionally carved out a heart.... To appease the gods, of course! We never ate them though, that's... euw! I just don't understand... how are things rectified without a sacrifice?"
She waved a paw, clearly unaware that her own peoples' religious practices were just as bizarre.
"Pirate? What's that?" Chel blinked.
Clopin chuckled at her mouthing and scratched his cheek.
"It's a religious thing," he explained with a wave of his paw before nodding his head a bit.
"Quite right. I'm not sure what's truth and what's fiction, but that's what I've heard." The gipsy considered her question a little uncomfortably. The easiest way to explain what a pirate was, was to compare it to what he usually was.
"A pirate is a type of thief. They usually go after humans' pearl farms and fish hatcheries verses stealing from other creatures like general thieves. You met a pair of them when you washed up here, remember? The young male dressed in red and the older male in brown."
Chel blew her cheeks out with a quiet noise of frustration.
"That's unsettling. I guess I'll just have to hope for the best and pray to never cross paths with these people. Oh, I knew I should have never buried that totem!" Out of the frying pan and into the fire with that one. Surviving a sacrifice just to become another's snack? Her chin jut in defiance. Let 'em try!
"Oh! That's all?" Chel felt a bit like an idiot for even asking. Why were there so many words for thieves anyway? She'd probably steal a pearl or two (or three or four...) if ever presented with the opportunity. Her lips curled in to hide her sheepish smile.
"Are you a pirate?" she queried, batting at the brim of his hat. One had to wonder about the hat trend around here....
Clopin laughed merrily, something he hadn't done in a long time, though it sounded so much like his old self that it actually startled him. Inwardly, of course. She knocked his hat askew, down into his eyes and he lightly pushed it back up.
"Not at all, mon chére. I am a gypsy, an entertainer, for the most part. We would help out others with random tasks when they needed it, but we were generally viewed as thieves and murderers by everyone else in the area, so we mostly kept to ourselves, except when we hosted large celebrations." A thief, yes when he felt like it was necessary. A murder? Never. Only once had he ever killed another otter, and that had been defending the gypsy holt. Those that had been hunting his people had finally managed to get someone into the Court of Miracles. Clopin had not allowed the male to leave and when he had fought back against the gypsy king, well... Only one otter was left standing in the end.
Her eyes crinkled into playful half-moons. His laughter was like her own personal success. Chel made the outline of a hat above her head.
"I thought it may have been a requirement for pirates," she said with a smile, one shoulder coming up in a light shrug. His people, these gypsies, their life... Chel found something familiar in his explanation. Fate played a funny hand sometimes. Far removed from her home, presumed dead, by herself... and yet a little piece of home in a veritable stranger? A blessing.
"An entertainer? Really? What do you do-- wait! Let me guess!" Chel held her paws out as though it would stop him from speaking. She bit her lower lip, eyes cutting away in an exaggeration of deep thought, "I got it! You juggle. Right? Tell me I'm right~"
Laughter bloomed in her voice.
Clopin shrugged. She was right in her observation, many of the pirates he knew wore hats. He wore his mostly because he didn't like the way his longer fur grew from his head. As he had grown older, it had slowly grown farther back from his forehead.
He laughed as she guessed what type of entertain he was and he slowly shook his head.
"Not generally, no, but I know how," he replied and his puppet appeared from seemingly nowhere to rest on one paw.
"Are you a singer? A player? A dancer? A story-" the puppet asked in a higher-pitched version of the gypsy's own, stopped only when the otter whapped it on the head.
"Hush, the lady is trying to guess," he chided the puppet before giving Chel a look that asked her to try again in her guess.
Chel pouted a moment before she resumed thinking, lips puckering as she wracked her brains. So he juggled, but it wasn't his main shtick. All right! Let's see...
"Oh!" Chel stared at the puppet, leaning forward to study it while she chewed on a golden nail.
"What do you think?" she asked, consulting the puppet in a loud whisper. Her eyes flicked up to Clopin's face and she held up a paw to shadow his eyes-- because that would definitely keep him from seeing that she was most certainly cheating!
"I want to say story teller, but I bet he dances too. What do you say?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 2:03 pm
A small chuckle fled Clopin's mouth as she covered his eyes, amused that she was really taking the puppet "seriously". His fellows had usually just laughed and wrote it off while the children went along with it, amused at the competition between the puppet and the gypsy king.
"Oh, he does everything! He sings and dances and tells stories while singing and acrobatics! The King has to lead in the celebrations, after all!" the puppet squeaked, his arms flailing a bit. He wasn't the king of the gypsies, not anymore, but at least here he could publicly admit that he had once been so. Back in Mauricie, only his comrades had known that fact. If anyone else had known, he would have been in great danger from those that were hunting the gypsies. Much as he would have hated it, his friends would have risked their lives to rescue him should that have happened.
The puppet turned back and forth for a moment before leaning close to Chel.
"But mostly he tells stories and sings songs," the puppet "whispered" to her.
Perhaps one of the things Chel would miss most was caring for the children in El Dorado, of which she got along better than her fellow adults. They appreciated tradition, yet were not so steeped in it to be completely blinded. Sometimes, considering her own beliefs, she had to wonder if she had ever truly grown up.
Like now.
Her mouth opened to speak, but nothing came out. She glanced between Clopin and his puppet, face writ with surprise and wonder. A king? She pulled her paw from his eyes, the question clear within her own.
"Then I can't guess either or, you know, if he's a king. That means he's a little of everything," Chel said gently; her paw curled against her chest. "A singing king, huh?"
Clopin smiled a bit and shrugged.
"I was. It was tradition to call the leaders of the holt to be called King." He sat back, hiding the puppet again.
"I mostly sang stories for the children along with puppet shows. Most of the others played instruments or danced and I did too sometimes, but on a general basis that's what I did," he explained, waving a gloved paw. He tilted his head to one side.
"What did you do in your... Before you came here?"
"I caused mischief," she said around a small grin. Chel's tail swept across her paws, her head tilting as though she were consulting very deeply with her memory.
"Mm... well, my mother and I raised food, mostly, growing, breeding... that sort of thing. I tended to religious shrines-- but after I was chosen by the High Priest to, well, die, I began more scholarly studies in preparation for... the day," Chel said. It was clear in the way her ears swept back that she was still unsettled by the entire ordeal. Sometimes it was difficult to move past the simple act of waking up, that life wasn't some reoccurring dream. Had one thing gone wrong, had she not been found, or had one tiny thing been different, she could have been-- her stomach dipped with fear. Chel sucked in a breath, clenched her jaw.
"I used to love listening to the storytellers in El Dorado." She began to knead the earth beneath her claws, watching rivets as they were made. After a moment of consideration, she looked up with a smile, "Tell me a story, would you, Gypsy King? Unless you'd rather sing one, of course."
Clopin chuckled at that one. Causing mischief was certainly something he knew well. He listened as she explained what she had done. He had known a few otter like her mother, and a few priests who had attended to the religious areas in the territory, but as he had previously stated he had never met another otter destined to die.
"Well, you survived it, and that's... what counts," he said and reached out to pat her paw. He smiled when she asked him to tell her a story. He searched his memory for one she might like and yet all he could think of was the story of how they had freed their land from the tyranny of Judge Frollo. His eyes watched her as his voice lifted up, singing of how the madman had persecuted and arrested his people, of how a deformed young male, a young gypsy female, and a young male who had once worked with the judge had helped to defeat the judge and free their lands of the persecution of his people.
His voice was strong and yet he didn't sing loudly. He didn't need to. There was so much feeling in his voice and in the song itself that he didn't need to sing much louder than his normal tone of voice. When he finished, slowly tapering off into silence, he smiled at her. He had gotten back into his old habits to such a point that his smile was soft, parental, and it showed through his eyes as well.
The voice she heard was not the voice she had expected. Chel was accustomed to the low, chanting voices of her people, the type that resonated in the bottom of ones belly like a roll of thunder meant specifically for the gods. Clopin's was so very different-- she had never heard a story sung, for one. But oh, if she wasn't stolen by the idea, hanging off his every word as if they were being painted right there in front of her face. The excitement of the story rippled through her fur, just beneath her skin.
For a while Chel did not know what to say. In some senses, she was reminded of Tzekel-Khan-- if only in how his invocations hooked a person into listening. But Clopin was no conniving high priest. There was a hint of relief in the smile that blossomed across her face; she felt as though she had been privy to such a gift.
"Is it true, then? The story, I mean," she asked in earnest.
"Oh yes, very true," Clopin sighed, nodding slowly. He had lost many a friend to that mad creature, throughout his entire life. He tapped his broken tusk with one claw.
"When I was young, one of the guards bashed my head against a rock. Broke my tusk and knocked me out for two days," he added, flexing his paw a bit. He had other marks, scars from mistreatment and burns, mostly on his front legs, but he kept them hidden. He didn't like others to see what they had done to them, how much he and the others had to survive.
Chel looked horrified, "What a monster!"
Violence was something a person worried little about back where she had once lived. An occasional neighborly dispute was settled within the hour; it was a veritable paradise. Sacrifice transcended violence, of course-- that was an honor done in the name of religion.
"What on earth for?"
Clopin shrugged.
"My cousin had stolen a fish from one of the shops and the guards were beating on him rather roughly. He being younger than me, I tried to help him out." His tone was nonchalant. It was long ago and in the past. At least that time they had left him and his cousin lying bruised and bleeding on the ground. A couple times he had actually been taken in by them. That had been a much less pleasant experience.
"Things were very hard there for a time. I had to send a lot of my fellow holt-members away until it was safe again. That was how..." He stopped there, shaking his head to rid it of the bad memories.
She gave an incredulous, somewhat panicked laugh, "Over a fish? Something so trivial-- you must have plenty of battle scars. The most I ever got for stealing was a stern talking to!"
Chel couldn't wrap her mind around living in hiding-- not out of choice, but out of necessity. Her brow wrinkled as she eyed Clopin, wondering just what he had gone through to gain his freedom. Stories, after all, only told so much.
"'That was how' what?" she prompted. There was a note of vicarious anger in her voice, clearly upset for him and at herself because of her inability to hide it.
"I had to send her away and she drowned," Clopin snapped, angry at himself over the whole mess. He stood and paced away from her in an agitated manner. A small heh of a laugh left him and he flopped back down, rubbing a paw against his forehead as a few more pained laughs left him.
"How ironic, huh? I send my sweet, innocent... I send her away to protect her and she dies anyways," he spat, his voice growing slightly in hysteria. Some others he'd known had said he was a little off. Maybe it was true. But the question really should be, how long had his mind really been fragmented?
Chel jumped, drawn sharply from her empathy. Perhaps it hadn't been so brilliant to press him, little as she had. She had no right and instinctual wariness leapt up as a precaution. Still, a part of her -- maybe because it had been he who had drawn her from the water -- refused to bow out and leave him in the frightening hysteria he was crossing towards. She had never dealt with grief, but she had been taught the value of company. So Chel gathered her wits and padded to Clopin's side.
"And you think she would want to see you like this? I don't know much, Clopin, but-- grieving will not bring her back. The past is the past and questioning fate will give you no answers," she said. Chel slid onto her belly and gave him a sidelong glance, "You just... have to keep breathing. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had the waters taken me to death, but I stop myself... because I'm not dead. I'm alive, and it's for a reason. You're alive for a reason too and it's not to fall apart. It's not to be a ghost. I may not know you well, but I know there's something more."
Chel stared off into the trees, head lowering onto her paws. She couldn't fix a person, only they could do that for themselves, but she could try and point out the pieces of themselves they had missed and hope that they would pick them up again.
"You have pleasant memories of her, yeah? Focus on those, because that's what really matters." She nudged him with her tail and tried to smile.
Clopin sighed and slid down to the ground pressing his face into his paws.
"I knew her as a pup. She was such a charming little thing. Her aunt took her away for her safety and when she came back... She was enchanting. Everyone loved her. She sang better than anyone else in the holt. She loved the children so much," he said, shaking his head slowly. He missed her so, and yet Chel was right. How strange, how he could be so blind to something so simple. Chantal wouldn't have wanted him to hurt, she had never been able to hurt another creature, which was part of why he had sent her away.
"You're right... it's still hard, though. I miss what we had, and what we could have had."
"What you had is what you need to carry with you," Chel encouraged. She hummed a note and smiled, shutting her eyes. "I know it's not the same, but even after everything that happened during my last days in El Dorado, I try not to think of that time. I think of my mother and my father and-- " she laughed a little "-- the day my grandfather taught me to hit a ball just so. I hit the high priest in the back of the head, but it was a good shot. And he deserved it anyway! Things like that, you know?"
She had to wonder if a sacrifice still worked if the person failed to die. Chel rolled onto her side, ears flicking.
"I think... it'll never make itself right. The loss, I mean, but it won't hurt forever. It can't."
Clopin looked up, his eyes dark and unfocused as he looked ahead. His imagination at work again, he could picture her story, see a small version of Chel with an older man, playing with a ball and it coming in contact with the stuffy-sounding priest.
"Did he laugh, your grandfather?" he asked, though he didn't look at her. He would have laughed, had it been his daughter or grand-daughter. Maybe not while the priest was still there, but surely afterwards.
"How he laughed!" Chel said, laughing herself. "He had this, mmm, warm, deep laugh. I used to think Chaac lived in his belly and I'd press my ear to his stomach to hear the thunder when it came."
Her eyes crinkled. It had been a silly thought, but so real when she had been younger. She held her paws up and widened her eyes.
"Ooh, but the high priest-- he was maaad! Spitting mad--" she clawed the air and hissed for emphasis "-- I was really little, so my grandfather took the blame even though it was obvious I had done it. Never happened again, that's for sure!"
Clopin smiled a bit, lowering his head again so that his mouth pressed against his paws.
"It sounds like you had a very nice puphood," he said softly. He closed his eyes, picturing a memory of when he was a younger otter. He and his cousin were playing with the children. He was always thin as a stick where his cousin was a larger man, with the same laugh as she described. Clopin would twirl the children around, lift them into the air. His cousin would hold them close and laugh as they laughed.
"We had our moments. When we were happy, playful. Only in the Court were we truly safe, though."
"It was a paradise all its own." And then she grew up and realized there was a world beyond that Shangri-la. She kept her lips sealed tight about that however; had she been selfish, wanting to leave as she had? She was an impulsive creature, that was for sure.
"What was your court like, Gypsy King?" Chel grinned as she stretched out on her back, hair falling like a halo of black ink around her head. The way she pictured it was something like her own home. It was all she had ever known, after all.
Clopin looked up, glancing at her before returning to an unfocused gaze ahead of him.
"Our court was under ground, hidden and unknown to anyone who wasn't one of us. We couldn't trust them, it was too risky... We'd decorated the walls with colorful cloths, made private quarters with them. Some had their own alcoves, but it was mostly one large open den. The smell of food and the sound of children's laughter was always evident, and come night, the sound of soft merriment and lullabies echoed in the cavern. It was peaceful, happy. We were a good people, just trying to get by as we saw how. Few of us knew any other way," he described, closing his eyes so that he could see it again. His friends and their families living their lives in safety, the sound of music playing and children laughing. When he left, that was how the entire territory was.
But at that time, his ears were deaf to the music and laughter, his eyes blind to the vibrant colors and cheerful faces.
"Under ground?" she parroted, surprised. "But the gods live there, I thought."
Chel stopped a little too late. She laughed at herself and covered her face with her paws, embarrassed by her naivete.
"I mean-- that's where my peoples' gods live. It almost sounds like El Dorado. We are a hidden nation, but it was our choice. In fact, I didn't realize there was some place out there until I was chosen. I think I was the first to leave, to be honest," she said, growing thoughtful. She tried to reimagine Clopin's home and came up with something that resembled the inner chambers of the pyramids. She'd only been inside once and had been reprimanded for sticking her nose where it didn't belong.
What are you going to do? she had asked the priestesses that had caught her. Kill me? Oh, wait~
She had been exceptionally bitter those last few days.
"Sounds like you found happiness in spite of the situation.
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Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 12:55 am
"We did. Everything was a game. Even when... Even when we caught trespassers in our home and were forced to... take care of them, we still did it with smiles and laughter," Clopin recalled, shaking his head. He was part of the reason for that. He had been notorious for making jokes about everything and he knew that if he didn't make the hangings or imprisonments an amusing spectacle, his people would grow hard and bitter. He never wanted that.
"Everyone has their own beliefs. Where I come from, we believe that God lives in the sky."
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