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 Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 4:00 pm
From a bird's-eye view, it was plain to see the something that glinted on the shoreline as Tuaria crested the treetops just at the edge of the forest. Whatever it was, it was partially burried, and from any other angle might have looked like a shining, white sea pebble. On the other hand, in all her rock-hunting, the gold harpy had never seen anything with such a beautiful luster. Surely it was too good to use for grinding herbs. And anyway, it seemed far too small.
Despite repeated warnings from her elders to never go near vast bodies of water, especially the ocean, Tuaria figured it would be alright, just this once. Anyway, the tide was out, and it was certain to be a while before it came rolling back in. The perfect time to go treasure hunting along the beach.
 The harpy child landed in a flurry of feathers. Unfortunately, this stirred up the dunes she had had her eye on, and the gleaming pebble was lost. Tuaria needn't have worried, however. She hopped to and fro on the soft, ivory sand, sparkling bits of mica and pieces of intricate shells catching her sharp eye. She tilted her head this way and that, examining her specimens excitedly with a talon, careful to keep her feathers well away from the water. Certainly no one back home could boast of a find like this! No one was near as daring. And no one would get into near as much trouble if she was caught.
Alarmed by this, she twisted her neck to crane upward toward the sky. Nope - no harpies around to spy on her. As if there would be. Ha! Whenever she went out, the others would be left far behind in no time, too slow to do anything but go aout their business collecting herbs. Tuaria, though, she had something else planned. Gathering up her treasures, she raked them behind a boulder, deciding that she would pick the best of them later to give to Moss. It was he whom she had waited for here in the first place. The two had agreed to find a fabled fish-person to teach them music, and what better place than in the sea?
There was no sign of anyone yet, though. The forest and sea were as barren as the sky, no matter how many times the chick kept checking back over her shoulder. She hopped around agitatedly, never one to be comfortable sitting still. It wasn't just her restless nature, but her fear that kept her on the move. Any moment, something could pounce on her from the trees behind, or drench her on the surf ahead so that she couldn't fly. Or worse, her mother would come spot her and attack from above.
No, no it did a harpy no good to hop around helplessly on the sand. But no matter how paniced her bird-brain grew, the other part of her absolutely refused to take off without Moss knowing she was there first. She just wished he'd hurry. The sun was setting, and it would be near impossible to find her way home in the dark.
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Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 5:47 pm
Meanwhile, Moss was taking his sweet time. There was something about the concept of time that eluded the young satyr; he would spend it, waste it, and kill it without a thought, and if others asked what took him so long he didn't understand their frustration. It was a beautiful day -- every day was a beautiful day! What better way to spend it than to revel in having no responsibility and, best of all, no worries?
He loped along easily through the forest toward the seashore where he and Tuaria were meeting. This was going to be fun! He had his flute in his hands and was trying to figure it out. Of course it didn't work to blow straight into it, no matter what combination of holes he covered up, so he had to be creative. He held it vertically and blew across the end of it. That worked somewhat, but it still didn't sound right. Maybe he just had to practice. So he did, blowing with different strengths and at different angles, trying to see what effect covering the holes with his fingers had. It was hard to keep them covered and he often found that the instrument let out shrieking noises if he didn't cover them properly. After a short time he stopped and bent over, panting. This was not working. He'd just have to wait until they could ask the fishperson, as they had planned. When he caught his breath he stuck his flute into the bag that Tuaria had given him and continued on his way.
He reached the edge of the forest and trotted down the beach, keeping an eye out for his harpy friend. As he went he sang a song, but there was no one to listen to him except for himself so he didn't bother to enunciate the words. His voice rang out over the leisurely sighing of the waves with no concern. Moss had discovered that as he got older his voice became deeper and resonated more, and while he sometimes had trouble with it splintering on him he was very pleased with this new development.
"Ohhhhh Tuariaaaa~!" he sang out, continuing to follow the melody, "Where are you hiding, oh Tuariaaaaaaaa?" He flashed a grin and crammed way too many syllables into one line: "Don't tell me I'm singing this loud and it turns out I'm... just-singing-to-myself!" He lost it then and paused to spin around lazily, laughing. "Agh! Hahaaaaa Tuaria! Are-- aahaaahaa... Are you here yet?"
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Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 8:08 pm
Not much farther down the shoreline from where Moss & Tuaria met up, a quiet groan could be heard. It grew louder as the goat hybrid approached, but wasn't near as loud as the satyr's cheerful voice. Finally, as it seemed it could grow no louder, a voice from beyond the boulders gave a frustrated cry. "UNNNNGHHHH!!!" The tiny creature shoved its pale hands over where its ears might have been. "Will you SHUT UP?!"
The voice sounded hoarse, and somewhat feminine, but then as young as it was, it seemed as though it could belong to either gender. Hidden from all the beach-wanderers by being wedged amoung a much rockier, sharper part of the beach, the smallish figure had avoided notice the whole day until then. Its body was slick with oozing kelp, and its lower half was tangled in the dark green sea plant, so that it was nearly impossible to make out the child from the boulder he was tangled to. Slanted diagonally, the rough edge of the rock had caught the kelp snagged at its 'peak', so that the helpless, angry being was suspended at an awkward angle. He had long ago given up trying to struggle out of the situation, as he had only gotten himself more entangled. Accepting his fate, the child would have never expected to hear the voice of another before the sun dried him out, but somehow the moisture of the kelp that imprisoned him had kept him alive this long. It was agonizing torture, he decided, set upon him by whatever higher powers there were. Or perhaps the Ocean Herself didn't see fit to keep such a scrawny, defencless child amoung all her other majestic wonders, and chose to spit him out onto dry land to get rid of him.
It wasn't as if Iridae had any objections to this. He wished he were dead too. His mother and father had long ago been taken from him, and so now he had no one to cry over his dried corpse after they found him dead and rolled up on the beach like sushi.
Stupid, stupid tears! the child thought, feeling his eyes become wet even as the rest of him dried. The sun was agony, beating against his pale, easily scorched skin and his blood-stained scales, which had been scraped against the rock. Never in all the years since his parents died had he wept. But then, it was much easier to avoid tears underwater than it was on dry land, where everything hurt - the blinding sunlight, the grinding sand, the salty sea air, the old memories...But his worst regret, above all, was that Iridae had lost it. His most valuable posession - his mother's favorite string of pearls, along with the spiral shell pendant his father had given her. He had always told them it was a gift from the unitaur; a symbol of their gratitude to the loyal family, as the shape of the shell was similar to the shape of their horn. And its color. Its pearly white glossomer surface was enough to rival the inside of any pearl oyster. But never, his mother had told him once, the shine of his own iridescent scales. It was her loving, affectionate term to call him 'her loveliest pearl' or 'most precious treasure'. But he never forgot his real name, and after his parents died, he would never be called anything else, not by anyone. Their images had long since faded from his mind. He couldn't even remember what they looked like anymore.
Big baby, he called himself, a few more tears trickling down his face as he kept silent, staring at the sea. Maybe if you cry enough tears, you'll slip yourself out of this mess and drown in your own sea...where the sharks will smell your blood and you'll be no one's problem...
Just then, however, a thought struck him. His mother's string of pearls - the ones he'd lost when he got washed up on the beach. The voices down the beach - what if they found them?! No, he couldn't let them take them! Those were his MOTHER'S pearls! That was his FATHER's shell! Suddenly filled with a fury of pent up rage, both at himself for losing the string and the newcomers for possibly discovering it, he started yelling and twisting and writing against the rock he was tethered to, his bleeding tail only staining both the rock and kelp with more dark blood that contrasted sharply with the rest of him. The pale child was not used to such an enviorment - his home was at the bottom of the island's shelf, in the fathomless depths were no average eyes could see. So little sunlight reached him over the years that he had grown rather white and perhaps some might call it sickly.
He'd made a vow never to approach land again. But when that tide had come in and swept up his pearls in its wake, he had no choice but to go after it. And he would not die, not now, after going through all that trouble to retrieve it just so that a couple of air-breathers could swipe it up and hoarde it away.
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Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 9:43 pm
"MOSS!" Tuaria screeched as the singing satyr seemed to dance into view, so caught up in his song he couldn't stop singing. She didn't have the heart to chastise him, exactly, lest he put a halt halt his merry tune, so she darted down from one of the higher stone perches she had settled herself on, and raked her gold talons through his moss-green hair. Not enough to do any real harm, of course, but enough to grab his attention.
"Moss, where have you been?! My mother's going to kill me! What took you so long?!" She alighted on a smiliar rocky outcropping, choosing only those that were too high above the water for the waves to splash. Tilting her head, she sensed something different about her satyr friend - something more intimidating, though she hadn't sensed it in the air. Almost nothing was intimidating to a harpy with a height advantage.
As she settled on her perch, however, shifting about to get a grip with her claws, she peerfed forward, taking a good long look at the satyr. He was no longer a child, that was for sure. His mossy green hair had crept down along his checks and outlined his jaw, granting him a rather stunning grassy goatee. She wonder if he was aware of this change, and considered darting forward to pluck at it teasingly, but decided this wasn't the time. Secretly pleased to see the bag she had given him still slung around his shoulders, she ruffled her feathers against the salty surf and gave him a hard look with predator's eyes. This was easier said than done, however, as her eyes were as soft a blue as the cloudless sky.
"You're so unfair! Just because you don't have anyone to yell at you for coming home after dark doesn't mean I don't!" she twittered animatedly at him. Actually, she couldn't have been more glad to see him. Though she wasn't willing to admit it, she was certain it was too dark to find her way home through the dark by now. It was why she had settled for the rocky boulders, certain that was where she would spend the night. "Mother's going to kill me when she finds out tomorrow..." Tuaria moaned, brushing up her feathers against her cold, bare chest. "I'll never get rid of the smell of all this salt in time..."
"I'll tell her I was out fishing with Auntie," the child harpy muttered to herself, now hopping up and down on the rock, as if pacing. "Yes, that's it! No! No, Auntie fishes in the mountain lake...there's no salt up there...oh, what am I going to doooo!" Shaking her head, she decided it was no use worrying. There'd be pleanty of time for that tomorrow. Instead, she turned to Moss.
"You silly satyr, did you find out how to sing, or did you make that up?" she asked him, grinning awkwardly. She never could stay mad at him. Unfortunately, tone-deaf as she was, Tuaria couldn't tell the difference between a monkey's screeching and a nightingale's song. But she liked how happy Moss looked as he sang. And about her, no less. It was nice to think someone cared enough to use her name. At home, her mothers, sisters, and aunties never used names, and Tuaria kept finding herself grouped in with the rest.
At least I have Moss here now, she thought, though she knew it was more than she could ask for to request his company on the cold, wind-swept shore the entire night. Deciding to enjoy what little time she had with him, she chirped somewhat badly to his little melody, until another sound caught her acute predatory senses. She paused, tilting her head, the smell of fish on the air.
"Do you hear that?" she asked Moss. The breezes had changed, now blowing the sent of the sea child and the sound of his frustrated cried toward them.
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Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 11:40 pm
"Waah!" Moss yelled when Tuaria perched upon his head. He flailed his hands at her, pretending that he was trying to push her off but not actually making any contact. "I've a harpy on my head! Oh noooo, it's not going to eat me, is it?!" He laughed merrily as she moved to the rocks and began scolding him.
"Well let's see, what was I doing? I saw some berries and I had to pick some, and then I had to pick some more in case you wanted some. Here, you can have them!" Opening his bag he offered her his loot. Inside the bag there was a little pile of berries in one corner which he'd separated from the rest of the contents with a large leaf. In the bag he also had his flute and a strangely shaped rock which he'd kept because he thought it looked like an old person's nose, and something that funny was well worth keeping. He sat down on the rock next to the harpy and put the bag between them.
"For a while I was trying to make my flute work, but I couldn't," he continued. Sheepishly he smiled, kicking at the sand with his hooves and folding his hands behind his back. "Aw, I'm sorry Tuaria. I hope you don't get in any trouble." He didn't understand why her mother would be angry, but he suspected that harpies thought differently from satyrs and he let it go.
Then he looked around with his ears cocked and tried to hear what she was hearing. Immediately he noticed it. "I hear something." Curiously he eased off of the rocks and listened hard, trying to discern the direction of the sound. "I can't tell what it is." He frowned, focusing. "It's stopped now, hasn't it? Could you tell--" But then the noise started again, more insistent, and Moss could tell it was coming from a short distance down the beach. He waved silently for Tuaria to follow him and he strode in that direction. It sounded like something angry, so he was wary, but he was far too curious to stay away.
The white of the syrin stood out against he dark rocks and kelp and water as if he was a glowing light. Moss couldn't miss him. The satyr leaned over the edge and looked down at the child. "Oh!" It was a fish-person! A small one, and a trapped and bleeding and apparently quite distressed one. "Would you like some help?"
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