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 Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 12:27 pm
"Mother says: Don't wander off. Don't talk to strangers. Don't eat strange things, or too much of the grass. Don't tease your sisters. Don't bother your mother, or father. Don't fight. Don't try to fly. Don't. Don't. Don't."
Espera made a mantra of this as she walked around the tree she shared with her sisters. As punishment for her latest escapade involving someone else's familiar, her mother, the illustrious Storm, had left her at the family tree while she took her sisters off to visit someone on the other side of D'ob. She had left her with the list of rules which Espera was currently repeating to herself in a sing-song voice.
It's not fair, Espera thought to herself. And then, her pride still smarting from her mother's chastisement, she repeated it aloud, more emphatically.
"It's not fair!"
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Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 2:31 pm
It was a small voice, the deep blue Bae considered as he moved slowly towards the source of the noise. This probably meant a foal, unthreatening and hopefully accepting. It would be nice to have company... provided whoever this person was didn't expect him to make sparking conversation.
As he stepped out of the small copse he had been concealed in, the stallion spotted the voice's owner. She was indeed a foal but she was the strangest he'd ever laid eyes on.
Her dapple-gold coat and her white mane and tail were not notably out of the ordinary. No. It was the combination of red Bae wings and the spiralling horn of an Ichsa that caught his gaze and held it. A half-breed. …Perhaps she would be slow to judge with all the teasing she must endure from other foals in the area.
"Hello little one," he called softly. "What isn't fair?" the white-maned Bae asked, having caught the sounds of her initial complaints but only the exact content of her last exclamation.
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Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 12:23 pm
Espera wheeled around on her hind legs, almost overbalancing when her wings got in on the action. She flapped these furiously to regain her balance. When all was situated, she turned her eyes to the deep blue-coated Bae stallion.
"Everything's not fair," she pouted, and then elaborated, "Mother says I can't do anything fun."
She danced forward, and then back so that she could see the stallion in his entirety, being too small to do so otherwise. In a piping, childish voice, she pointed out the obvious, as the young are wont to do:
"You're the color of the sky right after the sun goes down." Then she added, to soften her words (she had some sisters who were testy about the color of their coats), "I like it. I wish I didn't look so much like Mother. Everyone looks at me and says I'm just like her. "
In a conspiring whisper, she said, "I'm really not at all like Mother. I'm fun."
And then she changed topic quickly, as her mind jumped to one of Mother's rules: don't talk to strangers. There was a way around that.
"What's your name? Mine's Espera. Now we're not strangers."
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Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 12:56 pm
The Bae smiled faintly at the complement on his coat. "Thank you Espera; my name is Virgil, I am glad to meet you." The stallion smiled faintly. "I wouldn't worry too much about people thinking you're like your mother. People always want to draw parallels between those that they know to be related; it pleases them for the world to have patterns and cycles."
The Bae fanned his white wings gentle and glanced about. "She isn't nearby is she?" he asked somewhat nervously; adult Nequus always worried him, it would be so easy for them to harm him. The company of foals and creatures smaller than himself such as Rit and Shrial were far to be preferred.
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Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:05 pm
Virgil. That name would be a little difficult to pronounce, Espera thought to herself, but she said nothing. She knew that the sibillant and the plosive in her name wasn't easy for equine mouths to form either, and that she was in no position to comment on the ease of pronunciation for anyone's name.
"I like that. People like patterns, and so they make them up, even when they aren't real."
She scowled, "And, no, Mother isn't anywhere nearby. She took my sisters visiting. Can you fly?" She asked because she had noticed him fanning his wings.
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Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:25 pm
The dark-coated Bae smiled and nodded his head, twitching his pale wings once more. "Indeed I can, have you learned yet? Forgive me if it is an obvious question; I'm not that familiar with when foals learn different things on average."
The stallion swished his curly tail absentmindedly and glanced about; as the little one had said there didn't seem to be an angry matriarch about to leap on him for speaking to her child. No other adults either for that matter, which was nice. Perhaps he would be able to at least attempt a decent conversation without being overcome by stutters for a change.
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Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:28 pm
Espera tilted her head to one side. She understood the gist of what the older stallion said, but some of the individual words he used, and had used, were not part of her vocabulary.
"It is not a bad question. I don't know when foals learn different things either, on average." She added the last clause with an equine smirk. She like that phrase. On average. It made her sound much older and more learned.
"I have not learned yet. Mother says I'm too young, and my wings aren't strong enough. It's on her list of Don'ts. 'Don't try to fly.'" She snorted in annoyance at the rules her mother imposed upon her. "Would you teach me to fly? Just a little?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 5:53 am
The blue stallion paused. "Well..." He didn't want to anger any parents but since the mother didn't seem to be about... and it was such a shame for a sweet young filly to be trapped on the ground all the time. "I'll try but I don't know if I'll be a good teacher," the white-maned Bae said with a tiny smile.
"I suppose you have to start by practicing flapping on the ground. You do have to flap quite fast but not as fast as you might think." The dark-bodied Nequus smiled ruefully as he remembered his earliest attempts at flying and the frenzy he had beaten his wings with. Sore muscles had resulted and a lesson had been learnt.
"At first you'll need to flap harder and faster than an adult until you're confident and build up muscle but you needn't try to flap like a fly. Try beating your wings a bit now. It won't lift you up no matter how hard you do it, you need to be moving quite fast to be able to take off, so you don't need to worry about that," the stallion told his impromptu student.
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Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 1:23 pm
Espera obeyed Virgil's instructions and beat her wings up and down as fast as she could make them go. That, in itself, was an instruction, for she had never consciously concentrated on using her wings before. Mostly she kept them folded along her back, unless she was in danger of overbalancing or some such thing, in which case they seemed to spread and act of their own volition.
"Like this?" she asked.
She rose onto her hind legs briefly. He had said that she wouldn't take off from merely flapping her wings, but balancing on her hind legs made her feel a little more like she might become airborne. However, the violent motion of her wings and the sudden backwards disbursement of her mass nearly caused her to topple over, and so she came down abruptly onto four hooves.
The prolonged effort of flapping her wings so furiously was tiring, but she kept at it, unaware that her wings, which felt leaden, were slowing and sagging toward the ground.
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Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 1:59 pm
The Bae nodded his head. "That's right," he said succinctly, observing the foal's efforts. Well she seemed enthused and that was good but from how wearied her wings looked after that effort it would be a while before she managed prolonged flight. Still, they might manage something small for her today, something to keep the filly hopeful about her experiments with flight.
"Is there a big rock or some sort of small drop around here somewhere?" Virgil asked, glancing around at the surrounding area. If there was such a thing then, if she could be persuaded to leap from it, the golden foal might be able to flap and glide a little way before coming back to earth. The blue-bodied stallion snorted at a fly that had bumbled too close to his face and patiently awaited a response.
If there wasn’t such a thing, he’d have to come up with another plan.
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Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 1:12 pm
Espera considered. She hadn't noticed any large rocks, but there might be some, she supposed. But then, if there were, her mother probably would have forbidden her to go near them. She said this to Virgil, flicking her tail, irritated at her mother's restrictions.
"But I can find a rock. Let's go!"
She pranced a little bit away before looking back to ensure that Virgil was following, and then continuing.
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Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 7:15 am
The deeply coloured stallion smiled slightly and set off after the bounding filly. The zeal that foals possessed never ceased to amaze him; they seemed to have enough life in them for five average grown Nequus. He remembered being almost as carefree as the golden crossbreed when he was young but, as he had grown, he had learned more of the world and the dangers that were in it.
His slightly skittish disposition had slowly shifted into fear of anything that could conceivably do him serious harm and his stutter had been supplanted by an unwillingness to speak to his peers at all.
Lucky for him that the sire and dam weren't about; for once he wouldn't have to choose between fear and loneliness.
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Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:23 pm
Espera capered a little farther ahead, having sighted a rock which might serve as appropriate point from which to leap when she heard a very familiar voice talking to another familiar voice.
"Mother," she whispered in horror.
Then she remembered Virgil's reaction when she had mentioned her parents and she raced back to him, her eyes wide and her wings folded very close along her back in a display of nerves.
"You didn't want to meet my mother. You should go now. She's coming back," she warned, and then she made her way back to the tree as quickly as her tired feet would carry her, for they suddenly seemed to be made of lead, and her wings the same.
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Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 7:01 am
As the voices reached him, the stallion set his ears back against his skull for a moment before raising them again. They twitched nervously. "Thank you Espera," he murmured, "remember what I said; it comes naturally after a while. Goodbye little one."
With a last smile at the filly, the deep blue Bae turned in the opposite direction to the voices and sprang away as swiftly as his legs would carry him.
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Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 6:52 am
Espera watched Virgil depart and stared after him wistfully long after he had vanished from view. Itw as the first time in her life that she had willfully disobeyed her mother, and it was actually a great deal of fun. Plus, she hadn't been discovered. Her mother had actually praised her for her obedience in staying where she had been told to stay. This could be the beginning of a wonderful new existence, she decided.
I suppose this RP is finished, then. Thanks, Tawny.
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