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 Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:38 pm
Quote: The Lantern Festival (10) : Scientists have been hard at work trying to understand the strange, glowing qualities of the luminescent caterpillars found in the caves by the reservoir. The caterpillars still shrivel up if they are taken out of the caves but their glowing secretions have been processed into an organic paste that can withstand the outside world. The city is selling paper lanterns infused with various seeds. The glow paste is full of minerals to support healthy plant growth without risking damage to the environment; all lantern purchases come with a small packet of activating power that will heat the paste up enough to mimic the effects of a candle without the concerns of flammability. When the glow paste loses its heat, the lantern will return to the Earth and upon the first rain (or any contact with water) the paper will dissolve and the seeds may begin to grow. All proceeds from the lanterns are put right back into the community to support local conservation and environmental protection efforts. Todd shouldn't have been out tonight. Not really. But he just... He was starting to feel cooped up. He didn't really like living in a house, not so... permanently. He was a creature of the outdoors, raised in the soft meadows and wide open grasslands of Fang, protected by his-mother-that-wasn't-his and father-that-wasn't-his. There had been many litters after he had come along, and they'd protected him until they died of old age. His siblings had mostly scattered, going off on their own paths to the adulthood of the Chrysocyon, and Todd-Fang... Well, he hardly felt older than a child on Earth. Back home, he'd felt respected and treated as an adult during his visits to the nearby village, because he had been, in many ways, even as their planet deteriorated and fell apart at the seams thanks to the encroaching Chaos. Chaos that had begun not long after he'd been made a senshi at a very young age. Being in a house was just... suffocating. So he went out, and with only a very small amount of people out in the wee hours of this morning, he took the glamour off, letting himself be himself in the outdoors for the first time in a long time, ears and tail rolling out and rotating and wagging as he let himself just be fully Todd and not human-mask-Todd. There were a few lanterns that had been abandoned around the park, some still glowing pleasantly, and he wandered over to them, cooing over how pretty they were. This... this was so nice. This felt like living.
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2022 10:11 am
It was finally, finally warm. It was even warm at night, which meant that Linnea didn't have to face the flaring sunlight in order to go outside. She could go for a run under the stars. With her bare feet pounding across the grassy fields of the parks and the sleepy festival grounds, Linnea felt like herself more than she had in months. She was finally wearing a loose fitting tank top and shorts instead of layers and layers of sweaters and blankets, and after she'd been running for nearly fifteen minutes without seeing anyone nearby, she tugged off the earrings that Soleiyu had made for her and let her tail show, too. This was nice. This was probably the happiest she'd been since everything had fallen apart back home. There were even lanterns scattered around for decorations, glowing like the stars above. That was when she saw someone else with a tail, and she blinked. She was used to humans. She'd been told that nobody else had tails here, so of course she was curious. Slowing to a walk as she grew near, she said, softly, "Hello?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2022 9:06 pm
Todd hadn't heard her approach. Not until she was speaking to him. He whirled with a snarl on his lips, growling low in his throat at the threat of being discovered, ears pinned back and tail carefully tucked between his legs to prevent damage, until he realized she, too, had a tail. The girl before him was also spotted, and his heart soared. No, he didn't know who she was, but that didn't matter. Not when he was meeting another like himself. A Senshi who was trapped on their world, undying, until they came to Earth on a hope, a prayer, and the magic of a dying comet. Instantly, his demeanor changed, ears perking right back up in happiness and tail wagging furiously behind him. "Hello!" he called back jauntily, rushing over to her with small, happy growls escaping his throat, only just barely preventing himself from immediately attacking her with smothering physical affection he desperately desired from a fellow alien. "Hello," he repeated, more quietly, though his tail never ceased wagging at its intense speed, "My name is Todd. You are like me! From where? I from Fang! I am very happy to meet you!" He clenched a hand into a fist, slapping it over his heart so hard that it bounced off his chest before resting there, smile never dimming. "Well met, new friend!" he announced without even knowing her name just yet. That didn't matter. Not when they were practically siblings already, just by circumstance.
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2022 4:43 am
Linnea didn't care that he growled at her. She didn't care that as soon as he was done growling and he was all smiles again, he was bounding up into her personal space. His ears had been slicked back, which meant they had moved, which was proof he wasn't just some human in a costume for the star festival. He was like her. "Well met," she repeated, her own tail swishing behind her with excitement. The smile that came to her face reached all the way up to her slitted eyes. She'd met Velencyans, and she'd felt a kinship with them, too, but this felt different. This felt more personal. After all, the man in front of her had a tail. "Daphne," she said quickly, nearly breathless from excitement. "I'm from Daphne. My name is Linnea." She leaned in closer, whispering the next part like it was some kind of secret even though she was already standing there in her true form. "I'm a senshi, I was pulled here by some magic after my world was infected by Chaos and my people tried to kill me." It felt so nice just to be honest for once, to have someone like herself to spill her story to without the knowledge in the back of her mind that it was going to be an inconvenience.
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2022 2:47 pm
Todd just couldn't stop himself. He reached out and grabbed her hands, squeezing them excitedly. "Me too. Senshi. Magic. Chaos." His ears and tail wilted ever so slightly, tail losing speed in wagging but never completely stopping. "My people..." He began quietly, slowly, squeezing her hands again and sighing, "My people did not. I was... child, when woken. Woken because Chaos was coming. Spent... long time alone, sort of, until found village. People helped keep me alive, until..." He wilted fully. "Until all died. Then... alone, for many, many years. Starving. But Earth... so ple... plenty.... full of stuff! Many food! Cheese!" he squealed, perking back up again. "Love cheese. What about you? What Earth food you like? Fun? Happy?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:05 pm
It was nice, the energy he put into squeezing her hands. Linnea squeezed back, and then, when he started drooping while talking about all the Chaos and death on his world, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and squeezed the rest of him. She was gentle enough that he could pull away if he wanted, but he looked like he needed it, and Linnea needed it herself, more than she had thought she might. “On my world, it was war,” she said. “Something happened to me that I don’t understand, on a night I should have died, and I was sleeping, and then I was here, and some people say it’s been a thousand years, but-“ She didn’t want it to have been that long. She didn’t. She’d rather go back to war, to people trying to kill her, than that. “There’s soup here, so that’s good,” she said, blinking away wetness from her eyes. “It’s so warm. I’m learning to make different kinds. Oh, and I have a sweet friend here.”
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2022 9:25 pm
Todd hugged her back, making happy little grunts deep in his throat as they comforted each other, until he pulled back so he could cant his ears and listen to her better. "Been thousand years," he confirmed, "Was awake. Whole time." He gripped his stomach with a hand and a grimace, but then made a weird face at the mention of soup. "Soup messy. Use spoon, hard!" he complained, crossing his arms and pouting. "Like hand foods better. Simpler. But... tell me about friend! I have friends too. Let me live with them."
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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 7:10 pm
It wasn’t the first time someone had told Linnea that a thousand years had passed since that night when her world had saved her life, but she never knew how to react to it. She stiffened slightly, but inside she told herself that just maybe, other worlds counted their years differently than her people did. A sinking feeling in her stomach told her otherwise but she pushed that aside for the moment. She didn’t let go of Todd’s hand, though, even as he pulled away somewhat. “You don’t have to use a spoon with soup,” said Linnea, instead. This she talked about with equal passion. Her tail whipped back and forth. She might have been trained in the use of several kinds of spoons, but not everyone was, and that should hardly be a barrier for enjoying something that was warmth and comfort in a bowl. “You can just sip it out of the bowl. You could put bread in it.” There were so many options. “I live with some friends, too,” she told him. “There’s a senshi, Alya, who’s been helping me, and some Mauvians. Soleiyu.” She dropped that name since the guardian had mentioned seeing other senshi like her.
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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:25 pm
"Soleiyu!" he yipped in happiness at recognizing the name, "Yes! I live with him. He is good. Make me very happy." At the revelation he could soak bread in soup and then eat it that way, his stomach growled loudly and he stared at her, open-mouthed. "Bread... soup... so smart!" he said, bouncing on his feet, tail wagging furiously. "Linnea so smart."
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