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 Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2011 2:43 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2011 3:07 pm
"I'm not so sure about this..."
"Trust me, it'll be fine! Malta's waiting to catch you anyway."
"That's...not actually comforting..."
It was early morning and early fall. The sun had only risen an hour or two ago but there wasn't much of a way to tell. The low hanging clouds had blocked the sky from view and covered the mountain in a thin fog. It was from within the blanket of fog that the voices of the siblings came. Such conversations were becoming more and more common between the pair as Etoile's schemes grew increasingly more dangerous each day. Today the sunset colored mare was leading her abused brother along a river to, what she considered a promise, a waterfall. Fog be damned she had planned this days in advance.
"Look, someone will see you in trouble and come rescue you." She said with a beaming smile. "The fog will clear up soon enough. I mean look! You can see those trees way ahead already!"
Fionn was not nearly as confidant in his sister's plan. He knew that she had gone out to scout the location with Malta nearly a week ago. He knew that Malta said there was a decent path to the rock he was supposed to stand on. He knew Malta would be keeping a close eye on everything to assist if she needed to. She had even borrowed a rope from some place and managed to fashion it into a pair of horse sized loops with some help of raccoons. He knew all this but that didn't change the fact that he was supposed to be standing on a rock, above a waterfall, in the middle of a rushing river.
"Could we not find a replacement for me? Just this once? Princesses must have body doubles right?"
Etoile simply laughed. It was not a good sign for Fionn.
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2011 3:15 pm
Finally, he had made it! Malchediel stood at the bottom of the waterfall and looked up that thundering cascade of water. From where he stood now the top was shrouded by fog but that was slowly clearing. It was a majestic and inspiring site. He was glad that he had listened to his sister and sought this place out. It was the perfect place to practice his fighting... or maybe something a little more fun.
Malchediel had always been a bit reckless and it had only been increasing in scope lately. His sister Chandra had just had foals and being an uncle wasn't sitting quite right with Mal. He loved foals and found them great fun... he just wasn't certain he was old enough to be an uncle just yet. Uncles were old stallions past their prime. He was still too young and vigorous for that title.
What he really wanted to do was climb to the top of the waterfall and fling himself off of it to land in the pool below. That had been his plan, a variation on a story he had heard about his grandparents, but he wasn't so sure now. The waterfall looked awfully high and the water was moving awfully fast...
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Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:00 am
"I'm really not sure about this!" Fionn had not given up his protesting and now that he was staring at the roaring waters he was seriously considering making a break for it. "Wandering around swamps is one thing Etoile but..." his light eyes drifted over towards the cliff's edge, "I'm going to die doing this!"
Etoile sighed as her brother hastily backed away from the rivers edge. He'd been such a good sport up until now. They'd enjoyed kidnappings and diplomatic ventures, endured brutal rain storms and illnesses and even spent a night trying to locate some sort of cursed graveyard that they'd never found. Sure, Fionn would panic over every little thing but he'd always come out ahead, that's what made him such a good princess in Etoile's eyes. He didn't surrender even in the face of danger.
Until now.
"I already told you you won't die." It was now her turn to protest. "We've taken all sorts of precautions and it's not even that scary!"
To prove her point Etoile picked her way across the stepping stones to reach the large one in the center. Her hooves slipped over the slick stones but she somehow managed to stay upright. Fionn cold feel his blood running cold at the sight.
"It's too dangerous! Come back!" He cried out to her.
Etoile shrugged his warning off. "I'm already here."
And so she was though she rather wished she wasn't. The fog wasn't hiding the bottom of the plunge any longer and suddenly it seemed like such a very long drop. She could see the leaves and limbs of trees, the larger rocks that littered the sides of the river and some horse that was definitely not Malta.
"Hey! We have an audience! Hello audience!" She called down nearly losing her footing in her excitement.
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Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 6:25 pm
Mal squinted upwards. The fog was lifting now and he could make out the top of the waterfall. There was one strange rock shaped like a soquili up there...
He blinked. That wasn't a rock. It was an actual soquili. It was a peach and yellow mare standing on a rock in the middle of the rushing river shouting down at him. His jaw dropped. Even he thought that doing something like that was a little too dangerous, and there a mare was doing it!
"What are you doing?" he shouted up at her. "You're going to fall and die, you know!"
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Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 7:12 am
"Don't be silly!" She called back down. Why did everyone think this was so dangerous? "There's someone down there waiting to catch me if something bad happens!"
At that moment Etoile froze and slowly exchanged looks with her brother. Where was Malta? Just as slowly as they had looked at each other the pair looked back to the ground. There was no sign of the purple mare anywhere. Their one safety net was missing. Etoile gulped as the reality of the situation set in and Fionn shuffled closer to the water's edge.
"J-just come back good and slow sister." He said pawing anxiously at the ground. He'd said it was a bad idea. He had been right.
Etoile focused her full attention on getting back to shore feeling unusually frazzled. What made her brave was her ability to suspend reality. That was hard to do when reality was staring her in the face gnashing it's teeth. Once her hooves were back on almost dry land Fionn softly butted his head against her's.
"I request that you never do such a thing again." He muttered painfully aware of how bad things could have, and probably should have, gone. Etoile was lucky, there was no denying it. Something powerful was looking out for her, no doubt about it. "Pardon me, good sir!" He called approaching the edge of the cliff. "But might there be a way down from here that is both swift and safe? I should like to repay you for knocking some sense into my dear sister!"
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 1:52 pm
Though normally Malchediel didn't think about it, he found himself envious of his sisters' wings while watching the mare precariously getting off of the waterfall. He imagined what it would be like if she fell from that height. She would get swept by the water swiftly over the edge of the falls and plummet to the shallows and rocks below. He gulped slightly then sighed with relief when she was safe and sound once more on solid ground. He didn't think his unicorn healing powers were strong enough to help her much if she had been bashed by rocks.
"A way down?" he repeated while scanning the area. This was his first time here but Chandra had told him that there was an easy path he could take to the top of the waterfall if he wanted to. It had seemed like a great idea then but after seeing a near tragedy up there, even reckless Malchediel was having second thoughts.
He squinted and spotted it. The path wound its way through the brush and up to the top of the falls. It looked a little overgrown by brambles, one more reason why he was just as glad he wasn't the one who needed to use it. "There!" he shouted while pointing with a foreleg. "It's hidden by the bushes but you can climb down there!"
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Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:18 am
Etoile wandered closer to her brother as the horned stallion searched for a way down. She was preparing to tell him that there wasn't a way down this way when suddenly he found it. "Where?" She asked feeling like someone had just blindsided her with a codfish. Nothing was making sense to her right now. Fionn sighed and nudged her before brushing past to get to the bramble patch that the unicorn was pointing too. For a few moments he said nothing and just peered about looking for the path.
"It's right here, sister." He said pushing his way through the bushes keeping a serene face against the branches that caught in his tail and scratched at his sides. Etoile stretched her neck to see this fabled path that her brother was walking too.
"That's for goats!" She complained. "Those little rock climbing goats that live on mountains! The ones ogres eat for breakfast!"
"And now it is for soquili." Fionn had to fight not to roll his eyes, an unprincess-like behavior. The path was nowhere near as bad as Etoile was making it out to be. It was wide enough for a horse to get down easily enough. Etoile wasn't the princess, she was the story teller, she rolled her eyes before begrudgingly following.
Once all four hooves were off the path he made his way over to the unicorn stallion stopping at a polite distance. He bowed gracefully and smiled appreciatively. "Many thanks, good sir. I fear it would have been quite the endeavor getting down without your aid. Pray tell, what is your name?"
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Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 10:21 am
Malchediel watched the pair as they made their way down the path. He wondered if he ought to dash up there and help them down. So far they did seem more than a little disaster-prone. He was relieved to see them finally emerge at the bottom, both in one piece. Now that they had come down he could finally get a good look at them. They were both regular soquili and had similar spot patterns on them, though in different colors. He suspected that they were related somehow. He often did silly things with his siblings too, after all.
"Uh, no problem," he said in response to the male's thanks. "I'm sure you would have figured it out eventually." The path was hard to find but not impossible. It just would have taken them a bit longer in Mal's estimates. "My name's Malchediel, Mal for short." Using his full name felt far too formal for the current interaction.
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Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:03 pm
Fionn glanced back at his sister as she too left the path looking less than pleased at the turn of events. "Somehow, I suspect we would have just followed our trail back the way we came." He admitted. Etoile was one for crazy plans but neither of them particularly cared for traveling down strange pathways, at least not with proper investigation first.
"Not that it's a bad thing!" Etoile called wandering over. She was still a bit embarrassed over her flub but she had noticed something that needed investigating. There was no time to griping about the mistake now. As she brushed past Fionn he didn't fail to notice a very special glint in her eyes. It was the "narrator's glint." She was constructing another story and judging by the way she was now circling the unicorn.
Should he warn the other?
"You weren't ever a plant before now were you?" She asked before stopping her shark-like behavior to stare at the green marks on his back.
Too late. Fionn did his best to offer the other stallion an apologetic smile without his sister seeing. She took her story telling very seriously. Knowing her she would have rewritten the poor male's entire history by now and if Fionn reacted in a way that didn't suit her new story he was liable to get hurt in one way or another.
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Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 8:38 pm
Mal thought that he understood the thread of the conversation until he was asked whether he was once a plant. Strangely, he felt that it was the sort of question he ought to know the answer to. He was no stranger to the Padmapani herd and knew that they believed in reincarnation and living lives as different animals and things. He had never heard of being reincarnated as a plant before, but he supposed it wasn't too different from being reincarnated as an ant.
"Ah... um... maybe?" he asked, as if he was expecting it to be a trick question. "Do you do those Bodhisattva vow things too?" His confused mind understood that the Padmapani herd all undertook those vows but he didn't understand what they meant. For all he knew, reincarnation and those vows were all mixed up together.
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Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 7:38 am
Maybe? Etoile and Fionn exchanged looks, however, where Etoile's was nothing but excitement Fionn's was confused. How was that the answer?
"Bohiwhatsa vow thing?" Etoile had no idea what that was. What she did know that if she had arms she would have liked to embrace the poor creature who couldn't even remember if he had ever been a plant or not. What horrible tragedy could have occurred to make him forget what would obviously be an important part of his past? The obvious answer was some sort of freak accident involving a goose, a cliff and two goats.
Noticing his sister displaying signs of drifting deeper into her fantasies Fionn decided to step in and continue this encounter verbally so as not to confuse people. "Pardon my asking, but whatever is a...bod-he-sa...va?" He frowned. This was a word he was unfamiliar with and it was dreadfully embarrassing to be unable to pronounce it properly. As a princess he was supposed to have good diction, it was a skill that, according to his sister, was as important as grace. "I'm so sorry." He apologized feeling his face warm. "Would you mind explaining what precisely this vow is?"
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