|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 8:02 pm
 The Vale's territory is still young, still tentative: she herself is green in their ranks, and learning to establish herself and live up to her reputation. When the sun begins to fall, she has strayed beyond the bounds of her tribe's lands, driven by the cool evening air and the crisp bite of autumn to meander among the brown leaves, her slow and steady steps their own sort of solemn dance to the music the crunch underfoot makes. Her gift from Never Idle, hard won, rests upon her head. She has taken to wearing it nearly always now: her face, generally inscrutable as it is, masked beneath the hard lines of the skull, her emotions veiled, her eyes a dull blue glow in the hollow sockets. A monstrous face atop the slim, compact lines of her body; a rigid head to contrast the elegant sweep of her red-splashed tail. Her steps slow to a march, and without realizing she is speaking she finds herself chanting, ever-so-quietly, an old Black Dog dirge in time to the crisp noises her hooves make in the autumn litter: Here he lies, his ribs, his bones
They will by autumn be beneath the leaves,
a feast for beetles, worms, the crows,
And his hair the bowerbird's to weave
among the branches of his nest...Uncharacteristically, Comfort is distracted. She seems, in a strange way, like a child: singing her strange sad songs from eons past, timing her steps with the rise and fall of the syllables.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2012 11:52 am
He ambles about in his own way with Goosebumps on his heels; the duo forever drifting on an unset, but clear path no other kin chose to walk. Demarcation lines blurring, they bump into each other before separating and continuing until he sees her, it, the possible ghost. Demanding mental clarity, he discards his harmless facade. But he just stands and stares. Dull but aware blue eyes lie beneath the hard shell, and her somber song and dance draws him in until she stands before him. He neither moves to continue the Black Dog stories, nor introduces himself. The uncanny semblance to him outweigh false notions of pleasantries. Goosebump abandons him. Time slows, he's unsure what to say or what to make of her. Tongue tied and beside himself, he waits for her distraction to give way to recognition. Anything. He yearns for an anchor to keep him part of this swamp. Being a stag doesn't change his desires much. Rejam I'm sorry for such a delay. I shut down when presented with greatness. Then you threw in Black Dog and a dirge? Game ******** over. Fiend is not cool enough, nor am I worthy of a partner. I promise the RP will get better. Performance anxiety and all that jazz.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2012 12:13 pm
When she takes notice of him, finally--sees him lingering like a phantom between the trees, all gleaming eye sockets and twisting horns and hair like strands of kelp in a smooth current--she draws up to a halt that disrupts the rhythm of her chanting, and breaks the lines down into silence. She is afraid. Maybe he can even hear the quickening of her pulse in the quiet, or maybe he can't; aside from the faltering of her song and her march she betrays no other bit of fear. But after a moment she lowers her skull-clad head to him in modest subservience, recognizing the fiend for what he is. "Good evening, Blessed One. Had I known my audience included the Swamp-touched I might have refined my delivery." Her voice now is much less firm, much quieter; it is not the confident thing it was moments before. Its edges tremble and break up like thin ice. fluorescein OMG hush that post was incredible and you know it. I'm more intimidated of you than you are of me.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:22 am
It never sits well with him how different others treat him. Especially with reverence he has not, does not deserve. Her fear laces the pregnant air to mingle with his discomfort. This should have been like any other casual meet and greet on his journey. Spend time with a kin, share a story, hunt or two and leave them be. He backtracks. Maybe he should have contributed to the Black Dog Cycles, but that mask and coat. This storytime exchange reverses. She throws everything out of sync. Her mask falls with each word she utters, her double row of top teeth clipping silently with each heave. It's an eerie disconnect to see her chant lovingly about decay. "Fiend." As the somber atmosphere elicits honest exchanges, electing to not use a different name, he finally states as he slowly, in a hopefully non-threatening manner, glides and invaders her area. Their shoulders flirt. Let her think he was just as odd as other legendaries. Stargarden thought he was a centipede at Ghost Thistle's Mound when the Zikwa emerged. They didn't come more peculiar than that. He stares at her hard mask closer, and for once thankful his sockets render his emotions inscrutable. Names aren't important, their role or what they did in the Swamp holds more distinction. "What do you do?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:42 am
Ah. That's better. A sensible question, and posed from the outset, with an abandonment of pleasantries--all good things. Her shoulders untense despite their proximity to the stag's. "Comfort," she replies in kind. "I belong to a tribe called the Vale. We have one of your own in our ranks--Wood Spider, a mare." It is with her customary taciturnity and modesty that she merely says she belongs to the tribe. Her own position therein goes unstated. "As for what I do, I have been posted to watch the borders of our territory. You come dangerously close to straying into those." Is this a threat? Surely not. She's as demure as she was before, her eyes fixed straight ahead and neither seeking nor avoiding his skeletal face. And yet she has the poised tone and the stubborn stance of a doe doing her duty. If she is still afraid, she is clearly willing to act in spite of it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 11:14 am
He gleams nothing from her answer and he's none the wiser. He tucks in the information about a Mare for later. But It does not answer why she wears that mask. Judging from the pride in her voice it's not one derived from punishment or shame. A cursory glance shows she's without battlescars. To better set the tempo of the conversation and get to the meat of the matter, he switches to old reliable boundaries. Her tribe name already forgotten he attempts to set her straight. "Lines are meant to be crossed, tested and how do you know someone's a friend or a foe? Just because I'm not one of you I'm not allowed basic rights." He throws in for good measure, "I've lost my ghost owlcat." Instinctively he hides his tail, a quirk of whenever he's not telling all of the truth. And looks at her own tail.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 11:27 am
What is visible of her expression under the impassive bone becomes thin, irritated. Comfort clearly does not believe that lines are meant to be crossed at all. She is a creature of rigid discipline. "I do not know if a trespasser," and she stresses the word gently, "is friend or foe til I inquire. But if you're just looking for a lost companion I'll volunteer my help." Not least because her own songbird lingers somewhere nearby, and the thought of spectral claws plucking it from its perch is unsettling. She matches his gesture with a flick of her own tail: as majestic and sweeping as his is sinewy and frightening. She begins to move past him, presumably to aid him in a hunt, but she pauses. "I have always wanted," she confesses, "to see a ghost. Perhaps today I shall see two?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 11:59 am
Rejam I PROMISE the rp'll get better! I will improve once I get in the groove of things. SO PLEASE CONTINUE RPING WITH ME. But I like the pragmatic Comfort with awkward Fiend. He notices her change of manner and is grateful when she acquiesces. And if he got to see more of her tribe, the better! It was a journey of mutual benefits with Goosebumps the chaotic element. Comfort's tail was uncanny to that of a songbird's, Goosebumps' favorite tackling target, and such an image pricks his memory. "Goosebumps likes the feathery friends though he seems to have befriended a reptilian one." He hangs on her every word, intrigued. What exactly lurks in her dutiful mind? "I'm not a tresspasser" he adds an aside as he tosses his hair, the curtain of hair raining down just so he can peer through the pink forest to catch glimpses of her face underneath the mask. He moves to keep up. Enigmatic doe, please lead the way.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:07 pm
fluorescein I LOVE YOU you know this, poor Fiend "Goosebumps being," she surmises, "the name of your owlcat? I assume he doesn't come when called, nor leave footprints for me to track--or does he?--or we'd not be having this conversation."  She whistles a little, a tiny noise: it serves both to comfort her fears and to show off that she has no problems keeping track of her companions, as a little bird emerges from the trees moments later to alight on her branching horns. Cocky little creature. And Comfort too, despite her impassive face: a show-off, under it. The bird fixes Fiend with a glassy eye, clearly uncertain what to make of him, and its head rotates about in the disorienting way that a bird's head will, so that it can keep its gaze fixed while Comfort, as Fiend's body language proposes, leads the way. "Reptilian?" Her own eye as she looks over her shoulder is unsettlingly like the bird's, shrewd and unreadable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:37 pm
Impressive. Goosebumps like other felines, liked to disobey just for the sake of disobeying and to show that they could. But Fiend was never the leader type, preferring to instead drift and subsist on good stories and fleeting, but bright companionship. Somehow, they were a harmonious bunch and he willed the owlcat to stay far, far away. As the bird lands on Comfort's horns,her two to his three, he's amazed the mask doesn't shift. How is it kept in place? Do others approach her? He feels an old lingering feeling bubble to the surface. Sadness. She is alone but hopefully only because of duty. But she has a bird, what meager friendship it can offer. "Reptilean in it flies but is not soft and furry. It's a wayward little thing that shows up when its bones stick out too much." For his sanity, Fiend had to stop caring. He was becoming increasingly neurotic that every glance was full of judgment and scorn. Even if it came from a bird who rocks in its head anyway. He just had to make do with the fact that he was an attraction, a curiousity. A freaking oddity, but slowly he was owning it. And for those days where he wasn't as confident, a certain pink and purple eaglehound got around. The duo of stares bounced off his falsely fortified spine. Curiosity had its uses."Do you ever take off your mask?" he asks as he follows, politely parlaying his specific interest of her bones into small talk.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 1:07 pm
"Do you?" she counters. Of course she knows he can't, but her own answer is implied. She glances back at him, and the eye is not the suspicious one of the bird any longer. It's been replaced by a kind of tender curiosity. "It is good," she says, choosing her words with care given her strange new friend's appearance, "to have a mask when meeting strangers who may become friends. To earn their trust and friendship is better than to have it unquestioning on the basis of something as tricksome and unreliable as a face." She returns to the task at hand, scanning the underbrush, curious about this flying reptilian but refraining from asking too many questions, from humoring him too completely. Far better to keep him talking on his own, his friendly overtures pleasing her. "For my friends, I take off my mask." The bird, done with its staring, tucks its head beneath its wing to rest.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2012 12:01 am
Rejam Just spent too much time on wikipedia on certain elves and a brown wizard. ********. A challenge he accepts. His response is interrupted by the appearance of a certain pink and blue ghost owlcat clinging to the tail of a royal blue feathered serpent. It sinks its claws into the serpent, weighing it down amid the feverish flapping of wings. It's almost comical how they connect. They get close and Fiend decides now is an almost too perfect of an opportunity to introduce Comfort to the latest bane of their partnership. "This" he begins magnanimously, "is a feathered serpent. One that constantly finds us, if only to rile us up and demand food. They fly and slither with keen eyes on the going ons of the swamp."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 9:21 pm
fluorescein NO FORGIVENESS. .... cos you could be learning about Thorin instead of Thranduil! But Radagast I approve. The bird's attention should be gained again, but she has nothing to fear perched so near her protectress, and barely ruffles her feathers. Comfort--from her safe distance--examines the serpent closely, her interest discernible in her stance, even if her face is veiled. "It seems a remarkably useful beast." There is a trace of something like envy in her voice. She is impressed, despite herself. She frequently is, by shows of power or of beauty. "Even if all it does for the moment is demand food, it looks like it could take in its fair share--and soar higher even than a crane, with eyes sharper than an eagle's if I take your meaning right. I take it that its companion is our lost quarry." Despite her obvious faith in the serpent's abilities, she does not seem afraid. It is not teeth and muscle that Comfort fears: her reaction to Fiend had been to his phantom nature, apparently.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 10:28 pm
Rejam I have my final exam tomorrow evening. i must sleep now! As if on cue, the pair untangle and Goosebumps finds herself transfixed by the new doe. The brief staredown ends with Goosebumps coming to an apparent decision before intertwining between Comfort's own legs. Spectral eyes on the prize: a certain red and gray tail. But the owlcat is not without is friendliness. A rumbling purr escapes. Coy and jealous, she's not too happy of the attention the feathered serpent always gets. He sees through Goosebump's affections and keeps quiet for his own plans. "Yes," and he eyes her songbird for its sake, "Goosebumps has taken a liking to you it seems. Feathered serpents are perfect blends of the air and ground. Though this one is particular of the water, it doesn't seem too good with swimming. Its obedient up to a point, but requires constant challenging activities. I don't require much assistance in hunting." How, he doesn't mention. His past didn't behoove him many sociable qualities but it did give him stealth and other tricks. On that strain of though, Fiend plots how he could get her to take off his mask. Then he remembers. He could just befriend her. Turning rather intimately to her side, her bird catches his attention first. Two birds, one stone. "Would you like to keep this feathered serpent for your border patrols? I like to travel lightly."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
