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 Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 7:48 pm
Whiskers twitched, white eyes wide, as ears swiveled and paused. Seemed to be clear, he thought with a tiny squeak. No predators, no big stomping feet, nothing. No vibrations trembled the wood floor whatsoever, and only the sound of the wind through the shutters he'd scrambled between. Yup, this could be a new home. Maybe.
The pale grey body scurried along the the floorboards, the shadows playing oddly along it's back, making it appear as if the mouse was changing. Before long, it wasn't actually a mouse any longer, but a rat. A moment later, a large grey squirrel, then a small silver fox. By the time it reached the doorway, it appeared to be a rather stumpy steel-grey gargoyle. "Just in case," it muttered, and waddled through the doorway and down the stairs.
Below, the rooms echoed with his stomping steps, and nothing else. Dust rose with each heavy stomp, making the gargoyle wave it's short, twisted arms about while the creature grumbled audibly. "Stupid time, won't leave me alone, even when I AM alone."
Having made sure that there was no living thing in the abandoned house, he waddled to the front door. It let out into a deserted street, but the gargoyle gave a gutteral roar anyway, before turning and stomping back into the depths of the house.
Not far away, a boulder detatched itself from a pile of similarly sized debris and began it's slow way towards the entrance. It came slowly on four legs, which ended in stumps with barely recognizable toes at the end. It's head stretched out as an oddly shaped lump stuck on the end of a thin, sinewy neck, while a scraggly limp appendage behind it might have once been a tail. Most noticable of all was it's massive shell, what once might have been a lovely deep shade of green, or perhaps brown. Now it was an unhealthy grey, like a mummified body with all the moisture leeched from it. It made not a sound, but mandered it's way across the street and wearily into the door that had been left open by the gargoyle.
"Welcome home, Morpa my dear," the gargoyle grated out, a hideous but bizzarely genuine grin contorting it's ugly face.
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Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 9:21 pm
Their last home had been overrun. Masses of plague-ridden rats had poured in through every tiny crack and crevice, gobbling whatever could be construed as food and madly biting each other and anything else that moved. Of course he had simply changed his hide to that of dragon scales, practically inpenetrable. Even so, it had surprised him (even him of who knows how many ages!) how they would still bite at him in terrible frenzies, breaking their own teeth on his scaly hide.
He had had to of course rescue dear Morpa, though. While she could withdraw into her shell for protection, soft parts of her body had still been vulnerable. So he had scooped her up and tromped out of their old home, leaving everything behind. Again.
His life had never been stable. Not even back when he was a child, though that was farther back than he could possibly remember. Truth to be told, he wasn't entirely sure where he had come from anymore. Neither was he able to recall what his original form had been. It had been too much fun making fools of everyone else by changing his shape to the most unexpected things. He enjoyed catching them off guard, making trouble for them.
But now here he was, claiming a new home for himself and his stalwart companion. She never said much, of course. Tortises weren't known for their witty conversation. In fact, that's one of the reasons she was such a treasured companion of the shapechanger. She simply had nothing to say, nothing to argue, and no criticism to offer. Neither did she hold empty praises out to him, or punish him with cold silences. Oh, she was silent, alright. But in a placid, accepting way. He liked that about her most of all.
So when her life had been threatened by those crazed vermin, he had opted for the wiser choice for her sake. He had taken the form of a dragon and winged her back the direction the rats had come from. Go far enough, he figured, and he'd find a place they'd already died out in. And sure enough, that's what he found.
Satisfied as Morpa made her way into the creaking house, he again shifted his form, this time all the way up to appear like a beareded old man. His back was bent, his joints knobby and enlarged. A scraggly beard dangled off his chin, and his hair grew at odd lengths and was mussed in a wild manner. But oddest of all, as was true with any of his forms, was his eyes. They where still white. Blankly white, with no pupil, no iris, nothing. Simply a smooth white surface. Old Morpa didn't mind, and neither did he. Those stupid fools, thinking that this made him an easy target. He always showed THEM!
He cackled unsteadily, tottering about in what could have been interpreted as a wobbly jig. Then again, maybe he was touring the room. Not even the tortise would have been sure. Some might have wondered how he managed not to stub his toes, or run into walls. If anyone had bothered to ASK, he would have told them. "Several hundred years and you learn how to LISTEN... and how to see without the eyes," he'd have replied with a slightly off-kilter grin, showing crooked and broken teeth. Of course the inquirer would have then sidled away, dismissing him and his answer as both entirely mad. Which they may well have been justified in concluding!
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Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 9:54 pm
He came back to himself as Morpa doggedly plodded into the room and headed straight for a bevvy of dead rats. Oh, now this would not do. It seemed he had some cleaning up to do!
From the hearth he snatched a metal shovel, which in the back of his mind he knew was meant to remove ash from the fireplace. Right now all he thought of it as was a convenient vermin disposer. The rats had chewed practically everything else to pieces. There once had been a metal-handled broom for the hearth as well, but every bit of the bristles had been gnawed off.
He fended off the tortise with his skinny body and began smacking the furry bodies with his implement, swinging back and then forward towards the nearest carcass. It was flun limply away, towards another corner of the room. He repeated this process with each dead rat he found, forming an alarmingly large pile in that one corner, near the front door. When the room was clear, and Morpa was looking about mournfully, he scurried over and began shoveling them out the front door with a fervor that flung the vermin clear across the empty street. It wasn't like anyone would care, much less as if he would have minded if they HAD cared.
He soon returned to the wandering tortise, letting the metal shovel clatter to the floor, discarded wherever he happened to drop it. He went and knelt before his shelled friend and spoke in an astonishingly soft, though raspy, voice. "I know your belly hurts, my dear." His blind eyes stared at her unblinkingly. The tortises watering old eyes stared right back. "I'll find something or other for you. Just wait here."
And with that he stood and began moving towards the still open door. He stepped out onto the porch, closed the door, and began to change his shape again. He cycled through various creatures until he was small enough that he stopped changing, his body now that of a dark-grey bat. With a high-ptiched chitter, he climbed a crumbling post nearby, then launched himself into the smog-choked air, just as the sun's blood-red rays pierced the cloudcover moments before the sun itself slid below the horizon.
Though for this bat, night was as good as day. Neither mattered to his blind, white eyes.
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