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[ H. BATTLE ] where soul meets body ( lurks & mimsy )

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its me debz
Crew

Wicked Shadow

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:39 am


Hot on the heels of his dissipation at the red one's hands, Lurks returned to another base that had once housed a number of hunters. It had been sprawling: up in the tree-tops and on the ground alike, on the side of a mountain.

All but one building had been retaken by the forest, fog rolling through the vine covered walls and broken windows, frogs and birds and all sorts of mortal minipets providing a backdrop of cacophony.

It was pleasant, here, Lurks Beneath decided, kicking his feet in a puddle outside the perimeter, leaning back to stare up through the foggy canopy, fingers sinking into the earth. The chirps and cries of other bugs roused in him a curiosity. A spiral of moths emerged from his parted lips, shadow and translucent, floating all around him like cherry petals fall when in season.

This place was not home or anything like it-- because home was dessert and sand and scorching heat-- but it was comforting in its own way.

Nature yielded for no man, not forever, and at this base, she was slowly recovering what was hers.


xnothing yet
PostPosted: Sun Jul 13, 2014 1:49 am


The forests of Colorado had been neither as expansive or exotic as her current location, but this place reminded Mimsy so strongly of the early days of her childhood. Armed with a net, miscellaneous other trapping tools, and containers for specimens (which were all much more advanced than those she'd used as a child), the nostalgic sensation of the hunt enveloped her with the fog.

It was this, paired with the exciting potential of meeting insects that she had never encountered before, that resulted in the more carefree demeanor that she currently seemed to have.

She was balancing on a tree that had fallen across a small trickling stream - arms held rigidly out at her sides, tilting upwards and and back down again with each precarious step - when something fluttered into her vision. Curiosity was more than enough to expedite the process of traveling the length of the timber, and she hopped off of the end on the other side a short moment later.

There was no fluttering creature in sight.

"Where have you gone?" she mused aloud, eyes searching the canopy above instead of paying any amount of attention to where she was going.

cherno astra

Nothing Yet
Crew

Obsessive Stargazer


its me debz
Crew

Wicked Shadow

PostPosted: Sun Jul 13, 2014 2:32 am


He heard her approaching-- and heard her murmuring, too-- but did not move. Instead, he stayed seated near the still water, skeletal fingers sinking into the soft earth.

"I haven't gone anywhere," Lurks replied, as if she'd been speaking to him, and not to some escaping presence. "Are you lost?" She wore the white coat of the Original and the red one, marking her as a human-but-more. He wasn't yet biased against them as a whole to lunge for them. Instead, he blinked up at her, moths still a flurry around him.

And then, after a beat: "Are you looking for her?"

Nothing Yet
PostPosted: Sun Jul 13, 2014 2:51 am


There was a fair chance that the insect which had seemingly gone missing would approach again without warning, and one more significant that a more mammalian creature would attempt to flee or attack her; of all the things that could startle her, Mimsy had not been prepared for what did.

With a jump and a short gasp, she dropped the net she'd been holding, but made no motion to retrieve it. Her hands had been flung upward in her concern, fingers reflexively curling inward with the spike of anxiety, and they remained near her shoulders as she held them there in silence.

The lack of sound or words was not from fright, however - the sight of the entity in front of her, surrounded by a veritable swarm of things that fluttered, had captivated her in awe.

"Oh," she sighed, when she was finally able to make a noise. Her fingers flexed with an itching urge to touch, and her eyes seemed to sparkle through the reflection of the insects' constant motions. "I was searching for one of your lepidopteran companions, but I am afraid that I do not know which one it might be. They are all so..."

Her fingers bent inward with a restraint that looked assuredly painful, and she lowered her hands to clasp them over her chest, a gesture of delight.

cherno astra

Nothing Yet
Crew

Obsessive Stargazer


its me debz
Crew

Wicked Shadow

PostPosted: Sun Jul 13, 2014 3:17 am


Lurks liked this one, he decided, almost immediate. She seemed to be in an appropriate amount of awe for his talents, and seemed to like bugs besides that too. The name she said meant nothing to him, but he had a feeling it was an important human word for something like his moths. Lurks may have been childlike, but even he could draw simple conclusions like that.

"Oh," he replied, standing as he did to brush off his knees, bandaged as they were. It was obvious, from the front, that he was mostly bone and wrappings and cloak, an ominous scar painted red carved into the bone just below his neck. It was visible when his hood shifted, along with the crown of horns he wore.

"You may touch them," Lurks offered loftily, helpfully directing a shadowy piece of himself to land on her shoulder. It would sit for a time, then melt and shift into a spider, and peaceably move where directed.

The swarm died down, flying back into the scavenger's body through the ribs and mouth, or reuniting with his gossamer black wings. They seemed to have little rhyme or reason associated with their movements, and would erratically climb out through various orifices without bothering him at all.

Lurks Beneath gave her an inspection, from bottom to top, before settling on at her legs with extra intensity. "Space!" Skipping closer, he reached out to touch and pull at them, with no clear grasp of personal space. "Star Walker," he declared, "that is you. I am Lurks Beneath. That's me!"

Nothing Yet
PostPosted: Sun Jul 13, 2014 4:01 am


The granted permission brought on a change that was immediately evident, as Mimsy's eyes searched rapidly over every little visual detail that he offered to her. They were all cataloged and saved for later, but the swarm took precedence, especially after she had been so kindly invited.

"Thank you, Lurks Beneath." Respectful gratitude was evident in both her tone and the bow of her head that she gave him before she finally touched them, as he'd said she could. It both tickled and didn't, which was fantastically odd. "I see that I need no introduction!"

For someone so obsessive about the names that she allowed to identify her, this might have been the greatest compliment so far. She allowed him to touch the stars that helped her walk, as it was only fair, and focused with a nearly equivalent intensity on the spider born of shadows. A rattling giggle passed through her lopsided smile, and she stroked the creature like it might as well have been a tiny kitten.

As she allowed it to crawl down her arm, her gaze was fixated upon the movements of the other insects, which appeared to treat him as some sort of hive. That was not a possibility that had ever crossed her mind with moths.

"How do you do this? I want to be capable of doing this," she lamented, fingers gently passing over and through and next to the unpredictable stream of wings. Any touch was soft and well-intentioned, and her hands remained steady, motions as fluid as they might have been in a cascade of water. It continued like this for a short while, and her expression remained one of sedated wonder until she gasped again without warning.

"Ah, I am capable of this!" With the announcement of her profound realization, she withdrew her hand and brushed her fingertips over a different spider - it appeared to be made of gem and metal, and had been resting very patiently at her throat until the moment that she touched it. The brooch appeared to bristle and shift, as if disgruntled with her disturbance, before settling into a motionless state again.

Which was when she burst into thousands of tiny little spiders.

They engulfed her in a tangle of thin legs and minuscule bodies within seconds, a pulsing sea of countless arachnids that flowed in currents like schools of fish, directed by instincts nearly as unpredictable as Lurks' own swarm. There were no further comments or motions from Star Walker - only spiders.

So many spiders.

cherno astra

Nothing Yet
Crew

Obsessive Stargazer


its me debz
Crew

Wicked Shadow

PostPosted: Mon Jul 14, 2014 12:55 am


She noticed things with eyes sharp like Salbei's, so maybe she was what a human Sage would be, a chronicler of insight and facts, enshrined for the future of the colony. Lurks did not get the point himself-- he lived in the now-present-near future, without much thought for any far off future besides his own.

"The Star Walker remained entertained by his pieces, paying them the proper tribute. The Original could learn a thing or two, from this one.

"I am," Lurks replied, unintentionally cryptic, because the bugs were just... a part of him, like his horns or wings were. A constant that persisted no matter how he aged, never changing. Curious at her statement, Lurks straightened up to see what she meant, sneaking a peek at the little piece of jewelry until-- "OH!" he squeaked, before bursting into wild, countless giggles.

Jumping up and down and waving his hands excitedly, Lurks(barely) resisted the urge to take her by the hands. Instead, he breathed: "You are like us." He sorely wished that his brother had been here to witness this joyous occasion. "We are famine, we are colony, we are swarm."

His own shadows snapped back entirely, his skeletal body taking in the insects like the snap-back of a rubber band. Lurks Beneath extended them again, imitating her entirely. From his ribs and mouth poured many, many spiders.

Nothing Yet
PostPosted: Thu Jul 17, 2014 12:05 am


This was not the first occasion that Mimsy had 'enhanced' her situation with the use of her new artifact, as a standard of an overwhelming curiosity dictated that she needed to use it almost immediately after its retrieval to determine if it really was the item of legend. This was the second, however, which meant that it was the first time that she had attempted it in the company of anyone.

The 'shield' of arachnids removed the visual stimulus of Lurks Beneath and all that he was, which allowed her to focus long enough to concentrate. This was a particularly effective method of removing oneself from a situation, but there was nothing subtle about an approximately six-foot-tall pillar of spiders. Perhaps it was best used in circumstances of camaraderie, like this one - or to repel those who were woefully afraid of these fantastic creatures.

"Well." The end of one word began a cascade of spiders from her lips, and all of them seemed to have discovered an urgency to migrate away from her body in a chain reaction that accelerated all at once. When the last of them lingered at her fingertips, weaving in and out of the spaces between them, she smiled apologetically towards him.

"I am like you, but not nearly enough. I am not famine, and I can only imitate your swarm." In the absence of her own, she carefully passed her hand through some of the spiders that spawned from him, lips twitching into a grin as they moved over her. "Yours are superior. Mine will not stay. I wish they would, but they won't."

cherno astra

Nothing Yet
Crew

Obsessive Stargazer


its me debz
Crew

Wicked Shadow

PostPosted: Sun Aug 03, 2014 2:54 pm


Lurks hid his face with both skeletal hands, stifling a giggle as she spoke and bugs poured forth from it, as if the Star Walker were a veritable fountain of their eight-legged friends. It was like looking into a mirror.

He let out a sad, soft sound as they disappeared, vanishing. Unlike his own, that were malleable pieces of fear that he extended and wrapped around him and retracted at will, hers were not centrally stored within her, within her...self, since he was unsure if humans had cores.

"Well, you are very very close," he offered, kindly, chest puffing up in pride at the bountiful compliments the hunter bestowed upon him. It was about time someone truly recognised his greatness.

After a moment of thoughtfulness-- which involved a screwed up face and squinted eyes in concentration-- Lurks clapped his hands together with a dull thwack. "Maybe you could borrow? I have many many, after all. Can they go with you?"

Nothing Yet
PostPosted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 2:15 am


Receiving the compliment that she was 'very very close' to the entities in famine encouraged Mimsy's own prideful smile. The sense of smug pleasure had no time to set in before he made an offer to her - one which eclipsed the initial reasons for her presence here.

"Yes! Well...perhaps. I will do my best to sustain their existence, but cannot ensure it. If you are comfortable with this, then--" An abrupt gasp severed the remainder of her sentence, whatever it was, and she reached to free a hairpin from her tightly-wound hair. A large portion of hair that could not quite fit into her braid yet fell over her face, only to be swiftly tucked behind her ear in the next instant.

The thick, muggy air of the jungle filled her lungs as she took a deep breath, trapping it there by biting down on her lip. A need for concentration overwhelmed all else, evident in the mask that her expression had become; this was important, as strange as that may have seemed, considering that she was focusing on pinning a galaxy-colored hair accessory onto the cloth of a Famine Horseman's head.

"An exchange," she explained, once she settled back on her heels and allowed herself to breathe again. "I will take a small portion of the many, and you will have the option of being one who Lurks Beneath the Stars."

It was a fair trade, in her opinion.

cherno astra

Nothing Yet
Crew

Obsessive Stargazer


its me debz
Crew

Wicked Shadow

PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 5:51 pm


"Yes, yes," Lurks replied, clearly chuffed to bits about the whole arrangement, freezing in place to watch the Star Walker bestow an offering to him. Holding perfectly still, the Famine horseman let her affix the accessory to his person. He had no hair, of course, so it fit nicely on his hood. It sparkled wonderfully, he could tell.

Lurks giggled behind his hands, bouncing on his bony heels, approving in the highest manner of his title. He touched the pin reverently, deciding to attach it to something more firmly soon, so he might not lose it. That would be a most egregious sin.

Maybe Sindri would help him turn it into a nice thing, that would stick better.

"Well," Lurks Beneath said, with no small amount of gravitas and self-importance, "take good care of the many many. When they go away, they may find their way back, but I do not know how it works." He reached out to pat her face, skeleton-bone to skin, and with that same seriousness: "You are a good Star Walker. I go home now."

Nothing Yet
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