yael -- Maglardilla
must roll 50-100

He was running through the jungle at a breakneck speed, toes spread out to gain traction on the uneven terrain.

He’d done this before -- running, the world around him a blur. He’d done it lots of times when he was younger and easy to scare. He’d run like this and his heart would be hammering, his eyes would be wide open and his mouth would be gasping in fear.

These days, though… he ran mostly because he felt like it. He liked the feel of it, rocks against the soles of his feet and vines brushing past his arms. He figured it was good practice from when he actually had to run from -- or after -- something. Most people couldn’t handle the jungle as well as he did. Most people stuck to the narrow paths that snaked between villages and towns. Matchitemin didn’t get the appeal. Paths were muddy and crowded, and if you trusted them too eagerly they could lead you astray. All you had to do was cluelessly follow the wrong one, and you’d end up somewhere you had no reason to be.

His own sense of direction would never fool him that way. All you had to do to stay on track was to keep your eyes open and --

He skidded to a halt, the aforementioned eyed affixed to a bizarre creature clinging to a tree-trunk. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen before. Insect-like, certainly (and he’d seen plenty of insects), but large enough to stretch from his toes all the way to his hips. It was black, with stark red-yellow markings… one of which looked disconcertingly like a skull.

Had he been younger, he would no doubt have turned tail and run. He’d have made up some silly story about seeing an evil spirit out in the ‘deep jungle’ and… well, that was all nonsense. He’d lived for years now in the wilderness, and he’d seen every manner of creature, but absolutely no such thing as an evil spirit. People, he’d got to thinking, were just scared of the unknown -- same as he had been scared once. It didn’t necessarily mean that the unknown had anything scary about it.

Machitemin unhooked his whip from his hip, but didn’t unfurl it. He only wanted to see how this creature would react, and he stepped forward to nudge it with the coil of the whip.

It moved immediately, scuttling about halfway up the tree, then leaping into the air and sailing to a further tree-trunk. It used the membrane between its limbs to move this way, and Match immediately figured that it didn’t have much capability for flying beyond that. Maybe he could catch it? It was an interesting thing, and he wouldn’t mind it taking it back home to draw it in his sketchbook. Maybe Brux had seen something like it in the land he had come from? It wouldn’t be his first time encountering a creature from the mainland, after all.

He gave it a moment to settle back down, figuring on surprising it. When it stopped making minute scuttling movements, he leapt forward and reached for its shiny carapace. For a half-second, he gripped the edges of it… but it jumped up with surprising force, this time landing on his head before sailing off into the jungle. Matchitemin tried to chase after it, but quickly lost track of it’s haphazard movements. A half-hour of searching later, he shrugged his shoulders and gave up on the matter. If these creatures were appearing in Yael now, well, he’d probably encounter one sooner or later.

[word count = 597]