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 Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 12:56 am
 Steps lightly across the forest floor, tired eyes skimming between the tree trunks in hopes of spotting the difference. She murmurs beneath her breath without really thinking, resettling unkempt wings to ease their desire to take flight. This has to be roughly the correct location, although the saplings she remembers have grown up while she wasn't looking, masking the modest gravestones she'd hoped to find here. It's entirely possible that they've sunk into the earth over the course of several rainstorms, or even been disturbed by some form of wildlife. The latter prospect makes her lips purse faintly, more irritated with herself than the faceless beasts that might be to blame. She'd been young back then, hadn't realized that digging holes and covering them with dirt and rocks to mark the spot wasn't enough to ward off intrusion.
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 12:57 am
Tsunake  For as large and heavy as a beast he is, Jormungard has learned how to not make a sound. Of course, he isn't bothering with such a thing now, his jewelry rattling and the scales of his prized pelt brushing against his hide. He's caught the scent of some young thing, and with a low rumble of amusement, the stallion alters his direction to intercept her. She's an exhausted looking thing, but striking enough. Indeed, that curly mane is easy on the eyes. "You lost something?" His grin is lazy and disarming enough, but it does show some ominous looking teeth.
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 12:58 am
She hears the clinking retort of metal on scales a few minutes before the stallion himself emerges, the bright, beguiling color of him easily camouflaged by the surrounding green. The evenness of her gait is suspended for a moment, eyes raking over him with a perfunctory thoughtfulness, less notice than she'd given to her surroundings. The carcass he's draped himself with earns a more thorough examination, but it isn't until he speaks directly to her that her bright stare flickers up to his face. It's difficult to distinguish the gilded parts of him from the splashes of jewelry, all of them layered over one another until they're practically armor. His teeth are authentic enough, however, and she blinks heavy lids at him while considering the question. "Yes," she offers eventually, voice soft and a little rough around the edges from disuse. "I've misplaced some bodies. I think they were here, or nearby, but it's been some time."
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 12:59 am
Tsunake His laughter is a deep baritone, surprised into it even as he adjusts his wings with a soft ruffle of feathers. He certainly hadn't expected that statement from such a seemingly placid mare, but if anything, his interest is piqued. "Returning to the scene of the crime, are you? Gracious." Jormungard chuckles, looking her over more intently now. What a morbid little mare. "What do you want with old corpses?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:01 am
She startles slightly when he laughs, not altogether certain what provoked it and unused to hearing it in her vocation. At his question, her brow furrows further, and she wets her lips before she speaks again. "No. It wasn't a crime. More an accident." A tragic one, of course, but unavoidable in the long run. His scrutiny makes her wings fold tighter against her ribs, oddly disconcerted under the weight of it. At least the last part of his question makes more sense, a common inquiry whenever she's discovered doing her job. "To put them to rest - properly, this time."
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:02 am
Tsunake His eyes are half-lidded with mirth at her nervousness, but he's not inclined to let up and leave. Poor girl. "An accident? With several bodies? Mmmm." He hums, pawing at the ground with one hoof. She certainly doesn't look the sort to murder, but then again, not much surprises him these days. "Ahh.. and why does that task fall to you? Disposing of bodies seems like an odd profession." Then again, she was an odd mare from what little he'd seen
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:03 am
A nod in answer to his first two questions, though she isn't particularly inclined to speak further on the matter. In truth, she'd only got the gist of what had happened from the lone survivor, and he hadn't been long for this world after that. When the stallion finally arrives at the conclusion most do, it draws out a sigh from deep in her lungs, cool as well water. At least she's on familiar ground again. It's only too easy to fall on the defensive, even if her tone remains unchanged. "I'm good at it, or I've gotten better. And no one else wants to do it." She'd had enough accusations and profanities slung her way to know as much. It was hard, dirty work - she was tainted by it, wrong for doing it, and all manner of things. But those who needed her rarely turned her down, and the dead rarely formed any lasting opinions. "It is a task that needs doing, even if the living would rather not think on it."
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:04 am
Tsunake His hum is a deep rumble of sound, as mirthful as ever if not a little contemplative. "So a pretty little bird who dabbles in death. You are paid for your services, no? Or you somehow think this a charitable service to those too squeamish to care for their own?" His laughter was softer now, muted. "Does it make a difference if the bodies have been savaged? Eaten, even?" His curiosity was genuine, however dark. He did not see the point in tiptoeing around what he wanted to know, not when she had been so forward already. Yes, a fascinating creature indeed. "The living?" That laughter again, so low that it thunders in his chest. "Are you something separate, then? Something beyond the living?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:07 am
Easily ignores the endearment he uses, accustomed to a degree of sarcasm in regards to her appearance. The question she addresses directly. "Compensation comes in many forms; those who can offer it often do. It isn't charity, my work, but necessity." She listens to him list off the various states without a change in expression. It has, she reflects, been a very long time since anything made her flinch. "No, no difference. Some of them must be... assembled, before I can begin my work. It takes longer, but that is all."
She has begun to look around again, more keen on finishing what she came here to do than the remainder of this conversation. And surely one so richly adorned must have better things to attend to. When he speaks, her gaze cuts to him again, an uneasiness surfacing in the embers of her eyes. Upon reconsidering her last words, it's no wonder that he drew that conclusion, though she herself had staunchly overlooked it. Nephthys considers it at length before she answers, aware of his proximity to her, of her heart beating in her chest and her lungs filling and emptying like the tide. The words are quiet, bare and honest. "Separate... yes. I think so. Not beyond, or above, but apart." She eyes him anew, the overwrought, serpentine length of him. "I'm useful to them when death's come and gone. Those who see me outside of it perceive only what they fear most. It is not a welcome reminder."
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:08 am
Tsunake He clicks his tongue at that, perhaps exasperated. Compensation does come in many forms, but the only worthwhile ones are tangible. She was a fool for thinking so, but if toiling about in the muck and rot soothed her heart, who was he to question? Oddities for an odd mare. An ear flicks for a moment at the mention of assemblage, but his expression is unreadable. It is her reaction that feeds his appetite, and he drops the subject of her doting upon corpses to instead focus on the subject at hand. He waits, as patient as any predator, his eyes boring holes into her own as she seems to search for an answer. "And during the in-between? While you wander and wait for death? What are you then?" He laughs to himself, the tip of his tail twitching. "A ghost?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:09 am
She shakes her head at that, surprised to find a sliver of indignation working itself free as the previously insightful line of thought is derailed. He was missing the point, the one he'd apparently stumbled across by accident. "No. I can't be what I prevent: that wouldn't make sense. You're always what you are - until you're not. I am my purpose, and I will always have one, even if it denies me what others take for granted." Death, after all, was a force of give and take - to her, it bequeathed a cause, a constant. "I don't expect you to understand." She said at last, a little saddened by the truth of it. Those like him wandered occasionally into death - by their own making and otherwise - but they always came out the other side largely unscathed. She had been steeped in it for too long, if only by choice, what she had become was not easily interchangeable with the terms he offered.
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:10 am
Tsunake His ears truly do p***k at that, and internally, he barely bites back on a guffaw. His features are schooled to something curious, vaguely interested as though he's attempting to understand. She disposes of the body to for fear of ghosts? God, it was almost too much. "I suppose I do not, at that. When did you realize that this was your... purpose?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:49 pm
His quicksilver expression went unnoticed, her focus honing in on a small mound some yards away. Was that the gleam of bone she saw, mottled and greyed with age? Nephthys stepped toward it, stuck in the gravity well of possibility when the stallion spoke up again. She made a soft noise of impatience before remembering that he had, for the most part at least, been courteous to her. Even if he had laughed and questioned, he had never outright repudiated her. So she gestured sidelong, a bid for him to follow as she moved toward the precious bundle, careful of where she set her hooves and expecting the same from him.
"A long time ago. Years." Her answer was an idle one, mostly intent on excavating what was rapidly beginning to resemble the long, straight planes of a femur. "A plague had visited the herd my parents served, and many died." Nephthys' voice petered out while she considered the issue at hand, trying to best decide how to pull it up from where it was rooted. She eyed her companion's tail, gauging its prehensile abilities before dismissing it. The spikes he bore might damage the bone further. "There was a stallion who had come from beyond the sea. He had a strange manner of speech and dress, and those still among the living spurned him. I was young enough... and sick enough, that I did not understand his purpose there. The remnants of the herd stood well away from him while he gathered up the corpses, old and new, and spoke words over them. They seemed comforting, at the time."
Her parents had numbered among the dead; she could still remember her mother's face from where it had been angled her way toward the bottom of the pyramid, her flesh sunken, eyes drained of color and light. It should have disturbed her to find that such an image had overlaid the living version, but few things troubled Nephthys these days. "When he'd finished, he bowed his head. The bodies began to smoke, and before long they had all caught fire." Their embers had risen upward, toward the sky in a flickering procession. As she'd watched, her mother's face had blackened, eaten away by tiny licks of flame until only the skull had remained. It had been oddly beautiful, culled of its diseased cage of flesh.
In the present, Nephyths managed to get a better grip on the knob of bone and pull it free, then laid it gently beside the rest. She would need to match pieces soon, but there were still many small vertebrae nestled beneath the gloaming. "None of the elders thanked him, but he did not seem to mind. He spoke only to the dead." Three distinct skeletons were taking shape, one of them small-boned enough to be recognizable. "That might be why he noticed me, because I was so close to death. He didn't say that he was sorry, or offer condolences of any kind. He just asked me if I understood what had happened, and explained the parts I had not. When he was done, I went with him."
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