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 Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 9:04 pm
It was a beautiful Halloween day; it wasn't too dark or too cold, just perfect. So perfect that the little Vetala couldn't pass up studying outside for the first time in months. Despite how much she loved confined spaces, it was nice to escape her room from time to time. The fact there was a very hyper mini fire beast trapped in her room didn't affect her decision at all. Really. Truly. The way the 'child' ran out of the undead dorms as fast as her little backwards feet could take her wasn't the fear of flames the little beast was belching up for fun, it was really just how eager she was to enjoy the beautiful day.
Really.
Luckily, her retreat did have her take a book with her, the same one she happened to be holding when the first little flame spewed from DC's angled jaw...so studying definitely was on the agenda for today! She found a good place to sit, her back against one of the trees on the edge of the forbidden weeping forest, book open on her propped up knees and her backwards feet tucked under her rear. Reversed hands slowly flipped through the pages, her eye following the index finger that scrolled nail-down on the paper...and everyone around her tuned out.
Nothing else existed; not fire-spitting DC, not the forest, not the cries of the animals...just the book on her knees, and the words printed purposely across it.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 9:14 pm
Aurel was glad to be outside. His first full day of enjoying - and that word was used lightly - the academy had been interesting to say the very least. So many faces, so many people - it almost overwhelmed the Leshy. Sure, he had wanted to meet people and learn and do all sorts of things - but he'd never imagined it would be so hard to go from solitude in the trees to hustle and bustle so quickly.
Change was something that was a regular part of life in the forest. Why it coming at him freaked him out now was beyond him. Grateful to have narrowly escaped with his life (a vast overstatement, of course) he made his way to the one refuge he knew: Trees.
Unfortunately, his need for solitude did not come to flourish. There was a girl there, sitting (with her---WERE THOSE HER FEET ON BACKWARDS?!) with a book up against one of the trees. At least she wasn't...breaking it (Here's looking at you Christof!) so that was a plus on her side.
"...Please tell me you talk." He stated, moving to sit heavily against a tree opposite of the girl. He had books - even if he had no idea what the hell they were, or how to read them, he had them.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 9:37 pm
The question was met with a startled cry, a set of flailing limbs and a nearly flung book; luckily for everyone involved, the latter remained in her backward hands. A very wide gray eye stared at the Leshy, what was left of her lips twisted into a very thinly stretched line, and if it were at all possible she had curled her limbs even tighter to herself, trapping the book against her mostly hollow chest. A couple of seconds ticked by as the ghoul's mostly rotting brain clicked this and that into place, making her aware of the situation.
"Oh Jack! I...I'm s-so sorry! I didn't..." The book was dropped in favor of of panicked jazzhands, hoping she didn't offend the boil. "Um!...W-what?" Amrita stammered out almost stupidly as she realized he had asked her something, though the answer should have been quite apparent by then.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 8:27 am
Was everyone around here neurotic? Eyes widened as the girl flailed about, not sure what to do or what to say to calm her down...At least until she decided to curl into herself and stop her sporadic movement. Now, where did he go from there? He hadn't meant to scare the creature.
Aurel opened his mouth to talk and apologize for frightening her when she, instead, began to talk. "Ah--It is alright. Do not...urm..." English stumbled beneath his thick accent and he pursed his lips, "It is...alright?" Poor Leshy couldn't think of any other kind of comforting words and instead sat there looking purely awkward, unsure of what to do next.
"....Are you alright?" Too much use of the word 'alright' there, Aurel boy! "I am sorry for scaring you?"
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 8:43 am
Her wide eye squeezed down into a squint when he started to talk, followed by many different and awkward looking expressions; well, as many as only half a face could pull off. Accents. She never did well with accents. Christof was more mute to her with his accent than he was when his mouth was stitched shut. Luckily, she got the gyst of it, and shyly looked away to instead play with some dark hair over a skinless shoulder.
"Umm...Yes. No...I'm sorry f-for, um, yelling..." As she apologized, she kept glancing back at him. It didn't last very long of course, as she had a general like for not making eye contact, but once she was done talking, she had started to stare at him. Like, really stare. The branches, the moss, the colours...
"You look like a tree!" The little one pointed out, literally pointing with a backwards hand, sounding absolutely fascinated. Trees! She loved trees! "A-Are you a tree?"
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 8:57 am
Why was she staring? Did he have something in his teeth? Had a squirrel made a home in his hair again? Maybe a bird had left something less than pleasa---Oh.
A wide grin spread over Aurel's face and he laughed, branches on his back shaking with his body and causing a few leaves to fall off, floating gently to the ground. "No. No I am...Lesný mužík...Ah--Forest guardian. My name is Aurel. Who and what are you?"
There had to be an interesting story about a girl who had backward limbs and half a face, right? She could talk, which was a definite plus, and she didn't seem to like creeping and watching naked people which he still did not get the point of.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 10:25 am
On reflex, Amrita raised her shoulders when he started laughing, her eye darting to look elsewhere while she nibbled on her bottom lip. What was so funny? Did she say something wrong? He had her attention again when he introduced himself; rather, when he said what he was. A les-whatsit? Forest Guardian, apparently. The child pondered the situation.
"Tree." She said out loud, though apparently did not register that it hadn't been an inner voice. "Ah, nice to meet you, um, Aurel." Her fingers tented together, and she hesitated and tried to buy time when it came to answering at least a part of the question; it'd taken months for her to admit to what she was to her friends, she didn't think she could do it with a stranger...
"Uhhh...I'm Amrita. An, um, Undead...sort of." And there she was, right back to avoiding eye contact, fidgeting with her hair and chewing on her bottom lip.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 10:34 am
Well, the girl was certainly fidgety but was definitely better than most he'd met so far so that was just fine with him. He could be a little awkward too, he'd noticed. "Amrita. Undead." He pursed his lips. "I am afraid I do not know too much about others. How can one be...undead? You are either dead or you are not...?"
He was starting to grow slightly bitter at his Elder, now, for not educating him on the way of the world outside their forest. Really, it was becoming annoying and making him look far too ignorant (nevermind the fact that he was about most things!) and that just upset him further. He wasn't dumb - he was just asking dumb questions! Monsters, okay, he understood those. Demons? Well, obviously - but he was far removed from any customs that they seemed to have (except his name, of course. Elder hadn't been stupid enough to keep him uneducated about that one).
Undead and Reapers were the ones he just couldn't really wrap his mind around, for the moment. Didn't help he hadn't met a Reaper yet.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 10:52 am
"Uhhh..." Ooou, that was a loaded question! She mulled it over, thinking very hard, as proven by the odd scrunching of her face. In the end she just shrugged helplessly, peeling the book out from between her hollow chest and legs, setting it aside. "I...I don't know! Just...we are? Um." Scratching her boney cheek, she look thoroughly baffled.
"I...guess...because...we don't need to eat or...or sleep or, um, breathe or...ah, eat?" Tilting her head, she absently played with the visible muscles on her shoulder, and then jumped as a thought struck her. "Oh! This heart doesn't beat!" A realization she seemed proud of, and had absolutely no qualms in lowering the yellow fabric around her chest, just enough to see into the gaping cavity; there was pieces of a heart left, still protected by a creamy white ribcage. "See? Not beating. This body isn't alive."
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 11:01 am
But...But that made no sense. If the heart wasn't beating, you were dead! But she was talking! And moving and walking and speaking and...Aurel suddenly felt a headache coming on. Concern flitted onto his face when his mind wandered to the question of - Does that mean the animals I eat could still feel it!? and he didn't quite know how to take the idea of it.
Aurel stared wide-eyed at the gaping hole in Amrita's chest and wasn't quite sure how to respond. "...I am not quite sure how that works, Miss Amrita - You are female, correct? But it is very...interesting." Perhaps asking her gender was a bit on the obvious side but one could never quite tell. "...Does that mean that you are alive, but the body is not? OR that you are not alive at all? And if you are alive, and the body is not, I am not sure how that would make sense..."
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 11:11 am
"Um. Yes. I'm a Ghoul." Luckily, her torso was mostly eaten away and even outside of that; this body was about nine. There was nothing overly 'feminine' about her to worry about. Not that she ever worried, thanks to this body such things often went over her head. Sadly, he was making her confused with all of his questions and ponderings, and she pressed her hands to her temples, hoping to keep her brain from exploding.
"Ah! I don't...I don't know! It's...It's just like that!" She whimpered, perplexed by the questions. But as she tried to sort them out, she came to at least one particular conclusion; she kind of did box herself in when it came to telling the truth about her specie. Not that she was going to any time soon!
"Um. Um...Maybe not, uh, alive just..." Oh jack, what was that word?! It was on the tip of her tongue! Uhhhh... "ANIMATED. Animated. Um. By FEAR. Undead are animated by FEAR...?"
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 11:28 am
Poor Amrita - it was obvious she didn't quite know how to answer Aurel's questions but he had so many and she was willing to try and answer them. Obviously, that meant he could take advantage and ask as many as he wanted until she got tired of him and told him to screw off.
"But I'm not afraid of you." He said dumbly, looking at her like she was, perhaps, mildly off her rocker. If she was animated by people being afraid, that meant that someone had to be afraid of her. He was the only one in the area which lead him to believe....
Well, nothing was making any kind of sense. Thank you, yet again Elder, for making his life twenty million times more difficult than it actually had to be. Perhaps instead of teaching him about the lifecycle of an Earthworm you could have, uhh, taught him about FEAR. Maybe.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2011 11:51 am
"I mean that's the only way that I ca---" Amrita stopped, and then just stared at Aurel. Gradually, the stare became more and more distraught until, finally, she let out a wail of despair and buried her face into her backward hands, her thumbs crossing over what was left of her nose.
"I KNOOOOOW~~" She whined, thankfully muffling most of it with her borrowed own flesh. The little Undead was clearly upset by his little comment there. "I...I'm trying! I'm no...no good! I wa-want make my own but I...but I c-can't and...and....uwwaaahh..." The last noise was less of a sob and more of a drawn out lament, but the despair was there. Aurel just went and poked at her complete lack of scare-abilities. Way to go, Aurel.
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 8:17 am
Oh god. It was leaking. Why was it leaking. He broke it. s**t. He was in so much trouble it was his first day and he was breaking things! "Please don't...leak. I-I-I do not know what I said. Uh..." And now was the point the awkward turtle poked his head out and laughed at him.
Because truthfully, he had no idea what to do. Think. Think. Think. What did animal mothers do when their children cried? What did Elder do when he leaked? ...Had he leaked? The thought process quickly made a change for memory lane and he tried to remember a time where he cried. At least until another wail broke his train of thought and he was right back where he was before.
Instincts. Aurel. Instin---AHA! Arms went out and he tugged the broken girl against him in a giant hug. "Please stop leaking." He said again, hoping that if he coddled her she'd shut up. "...Make your own what?"
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 9:11 am
The last time Amrita cried, a disgusting black substance dripped from her eyes. This time it was just the sobs, luckily for Aurel. Apparently the thick black 'tears' were reserved for being faced with fire, and being slapped in anger by a trusted friend. Still, her whining was pretty believable on they're own; tears weren't needed, the emotion was there.
"Ah!" She squeaked out when she found herself crushed in a hug. It did a pretty good job of stopping her wailing, if only because the move itself surprised her. Nobody (with the exception of Charlie) hugged her suddenly! Especially not strangers. "I...I'm not leaking!" She protested with a little hiccup, and then suddenly froze. Her entire body went absolutely ridged. "...AM I?! Oh jack! Where?!" Panic bubbling again, she squirmed and tried to wriggle around to pat herself down, wondering if maybe the body was decomposing again...which shouldn't happen aaaaa~
Sadly, his question was lost in her panic to find the source of her leak.
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