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 Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2025 11:51 am
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Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2025 11:53 am
January Prompt It's a new year in the Kawani lands! Winter is in full swing and much of the land is covered in snow. Does your soquili do anything to acknowledge or celebrate the new year? Are they part of a herd or family that has a tradition or ceremony? Have they made a promise to start the new year with a clean slate and change themselves for the better? Or did they simply try to stay warm and wait for the snow to melt and spring to arrive? Write an RP responding to the above prompt. Your soquili should acknowledge the fact that it is a New Year - how they react to that is up to you.  Quote: There is something to be said for the season in which the earth sleeps.
The season of dying and harvest is, familiar. It is the first season in which they stepped into the world, as he remembers it. Even before they had names they had a sense of the world, that it was their destiny to be strong or be dead and there was only a short time to decide and make good on the promise of their blood. The world outside of their baskets had been beckoning, the dying days of summer sliding into the crackle of autumn.
That is when they had emerged, shedding bindings like the trees were shedding their leaves... spilling deep red blood on the pale gold of dry grass. They were hunters even then, so spoiled fodder meant nothing to them. They needed prey, not plant life, to make it through the coming days. They needed to kill each other, to ensure they had the chance.
Some attempts had gone better than others.
Death's Door rages against the fact that he is the Second to emerge, bearing scars from the First, contributing to the blood on the ground. The only way to correct this flaw in the universe is to kill the First, to become the Only.
He has followed the First -his blood sworn enemy, the one they call Harm- for all of his days. At times they meet and clash and break apart injured only to meet again. At times they draw apart until it seems they will never meet again, but that is not a reality to tolerate for the rest of their lives. One day Death must find him, must kill him, there are no other goals than this.
Day after day, season after season, it remains the same. Stalk. Hunt. Fight. Separate. No true dying, not yet. It is Spring again, when young from all walks of life are easily hunted. Then Summer when the South is nearly too warm to tolerate and it is more pleasant to move North to the shadows of the Mountains. Creeping in again is Autumn. Autumn which was their first season, marked by the harvest and the death of the greenery that surrounded them... The easiest season for Harm to blend in during, the most troublesome perhaps for Death. Then again is Winter, when all the greenery has gone to sleep, the trees are mere skeletal shadows of themselves, and the Mountains loom more impressive than ever. A silent world of white, thick snow and ice crystals on every surface, water gone solid, shadows blue where they cling in the wake of forests.
This Autumn saw a change when Death stepped back first, no longer interested in the relentless pursuit that would carry through snow and ice and long months with little prey to feast on. This Autumn he retreated back to the deep den in the foothills, to the cave within rock that would keep out the worst of the elements. He fed well on deer and the fat fish that had been stranded when the summer rains ended and the waters settled into their resting depths. So many shallow pools that had once been part of the river held easy pickings for him.
Death gorged and then retreated to the den to sleep, to move hardly at all for the harsh stretch of winter. He could hunt again in Spring, in the new year. This year, this year he would catch and kill the First... But for the Winter he would sleep.
***
Ice crystals crack outside of the den mouth, falling to the ground to shatter. Death flicks a blue black ear at the sound, absorbing it, cataloguing the change from the way the wind had roared and howled during the harshest of the days. Now it almost seems peaceful, not biting at the warmth of this deep place so much as whispering of a changing season. So then, the new year is here, and with it a new Spring.
Death's Door lifts his head from where it is tucked down into his paws, stirring in his bed of leaf litter and dried moss, gouged and cut by his claws or ground into scraps beneath his weight. He slowly rises to his paws and shakes, freeing much of the trapped flora from the fibers of his coat so he can pad toward the cave mouth and peer out into the weak sunlight. The last dregs of winter, but an incoming spring. Good. This year would be different. This year he would become the Only survivor of his siblings, would live up to his name once he destroyed the pale one that called himself the Spirit Bear, his brother.
"Soon, it is you who will be in Harm's Way." He mutters as he steps into the weak sunshine, keeping to his bear form for now.
Once he has found a fresh meal, perhaps something young stepping out into a new world for the first time, he will expend the energy to shift. Ground cover will be more efficient in the shape of a stallion, swifter to the hunt and swifter to the kill. The process of becoming the Only. But the bear is best first for finding a meal, for holding off the chill of the snow he can still see around him. There is no reason to approach this new year, this new hunt, with hastiness... Strategy will have to play a bigger part, this time.
Death's Door snarls at the memories, growling his discontent to the frosted-white world that shows him no prey has been through this area. There are no tracks here, he will have to continue to search and well beyond the den it seems. Something had learned where danger slept, in these woods. How irksome.
Too many failures lay behind him, in the hollow days of years past. This time must be different. Perhaps a trap to catch the False Spirit? Something to lure him in so Death can finally reach him. The Silver Bear rumbles thoughtfully to himself. Yes, a trap sounds like a nice change of pace.
But first, a meal... He hasn't eaten since last year.
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Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2025 4:48 pm
Quote: The weather is turning but mother nature has one last hurrah in store - it seems she has mustered up a blizzard that's blown down from the mountains and over the majority of the Kawani lands. This is highly unusual for this time of year, it seems winter was not ready to let go! How does your soquili fair in this blizzard? Do they see the signs early and manage to avoid it completely? Do they seek shelter in time and wait it out? Do they find themselves stranded and in danger? Do they fend for themselves or do they help others around them? Write an RP responding to the above prompt telling us about how your soquili responds to this natural disaster! Should you meet the requirements, the spirits may send them something to keep them warm!  Quote: ]'A little late for snows to come dancing, is it not?' The mixed-featured mare finds herself mutely asking the world around her, blue and yellow eyes narrowing as she searches the sky for signs her instincts are correct.
Though the sunlight gleams down on her, catching on her golden horn and spilling warmly over her darkly feathered wing backs, Stanza can feel the oncoming weather brewing before it begins to make itself known. There may not yet be churning clouds or actual falling snow, there may not yet be signs the peaceful rise of spring is about to nearly be stifled by winter's last rush, but she can sense it is so. The thin sprigs of grass and tender blossoms that have already begun to flourish are perfectly on time, but it seams there will be one last bite of cold to see how many will fall before it.
While the weather remains gentle for the moment, Stanza knows it will not last. A blizzard is coming, and it feels like a swiftly striking one too.
There's something she can't quite put her paws on that tells her so.
Something that makes her ears perk up, a humming of atmospheric sensitivity that makes the ice crystals clinging to her chime softly. She fluffs her feathers up as she considers her surroundings with a faint narrowing of her eyes, long tail lashing contemplatively. Stanza debates matters before she comes to a swift conclusion. It's no good to continue on with her scheduled journey to the mountains. For if her instincts are correct the worst of it will be coming from there anyway, sweeping southward in an unseasonable rush of snow and ice and sleet-field wind. Dangerous and unpleasant travel conditions, to say the least.
"Ugh, flying in a blizzard? Hardly worth the wing damage to attempt," the white, winged canid mare decides with a sharp spin, throwing herself into a ground-eating gallop with a lash of her fox like tail. "I think not. Back home on the ground would be wiser, and faster..."
There's a warm den just within the reawakening shield of the woods that will keep them out of the weather if she can find her mate in time. It should still have some forage stashed nearby and plays host to a convenient stream and rock pool. Even if the blizzard strikes hard it won't be enough to freeze the water source within, and plenty of melting snow means a clean water source. The oaks have all begun to reawaken which will hold off the worst of the weather conditions, meaning good grazing shouldn't be hard to find and hunting is unlikely to be negatively impacted. So it's just a matter of hunting down a certain shadow dog, and convincing him to curl up with her until these late season snows have come and gone.
Not having a better plan, Stanza races off to Underland to see if her mate has gone to tea with his family. Though he is not, once there she takes the time to have a cup herself and inform them of the shifting weather. It is hard to resist the chaos and mirth of the cousins and their games. They receive her news with good grace and perhaps only the mildest of concern. She can sense Katya is bemused by the warning but willing to believe it, though deep in the heartwood here they are unlikely to be greatly affected. Maybe a little snow will get through, more likely their trade partners will be snowed in and things quiet for a few days. Nothing insurmountable, in the grand scheme of things.
A little snow is unlikely to discourage the Cheshires from tea or games, so Stanza imagines that very little -if anything- about Underland life will change in that regard.
"Try visiting the Den you mean to settle in," the Cheshire Queen of the Underland advises, her own dark mate at her side. "If anything can be said about the ShadowDogs? Well, let's just say, perhaps he will surprise you."
***
"Since you weren't there, I went ahead and told them that rough weather was headed this way. I suspect a late season blizzard with a fairly severe bite. Since I was already there I had some tea, we talked for a little while, and then Katya told me to see if you were here." Stanza explained softly as she fitted herself to his right side, curling her pale side into the mixed shades of dark velvet of her mate's pelt as they stood in the mouth of the den and watched the snow begin to fall. "Well she cryptically suggested that I go wherever I meant to take you to, and suggested that you'd magically be there. And you were, which is probably the most annoying thing?"
There's a low rumble of laughter and she gives him a playfully irked shove in response to it.
"I can't help but wonder how you would know that I would be looking for you, when there's still very little sign of weather so severe I'd need to turn back... More to the point, how would you know to head here so that you arrived first, when there's not even a reason for you to guess I would suggest we wait out the storm here. If things had gone according to plan, I would have been winging my way north. I might have been caught in it, and I don't even know where you would be if the day started out well and then went poorly."
"You could just say I know you."
'Cryptic but romantic,' Stanza thinks fondly, giving another sulky nudge before she settled herself against his side, basking in his warmth. She affectionately curls her tail around his leg, pressing her cheek into the splash of white that wraps along the underside of his neck.
"Alright, Shadowman, you know me." Stanza allows, watching as the snow continues to fall with increasing speed. "Let's head back into the shelter and you can keep me warm, hmm? I can't think of a better way to wait out a blizzard than with you."
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