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 Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 10:23 am
Thump.
He'd been circling overhead for far too long; it had been getting more than a little dull. Still, the blow he had struck with one hoof had snapped the bird’s neck and now he had his breakfast. He even had a half swallowed fish as bonus which couldn't be a bad thing.
Ignatius curved his path down and, bird clasped between his teeth, landed in the entrance to the cave he often used for shelter when he was in the area and trotted inside to eat. He made short work of the bird and fish, neither had been large, and soon he was outside in the late afternoon sun once more, flicking a few lingering feathers from his face with his tail.
The draconic stallion yawned and gave himself a shake. Tonight was another night and there was a beach to scour for interest and excitement, not to mention something to fill the gap that bird had left. Rustling his wings, the Reya set off from the cave mouth in search of something small and squeaky to kill and possibly some grass too.
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 10:39 am
 Desdemona cursed, loud enough to scare a few tiny sparrows from the tree nearest her.
The ocean water was cold. Very cold. How this happened, she didn't know, but she knew that it was rather chilly. Stepping further into the salty water, she shuddered as she grew accustomed to the numbing sensation in her hooves.
A fish swam lazily around her front legs, weaving in and out in a frusteratingly perfect figure eight. She watched it for a while, studying every silver scale and pointy spike on it, then lashed out with her hoof without warning. The fish shot out of the water, dead on contact with her hoof, and landed with what sounded like a slap on the water. The mare picked it up in her mouth and tossed it over to the shore, careful to get all of the scales out of her mouth before continuing with what she was doing.
She waded further into the ocean, the water coming up to the bottom of her stomach now. The water had always comforted her, and she felt the tingling in her legs slowly subside. It was a rather peaceful day, she thought with a frown. Where were the gale-force winds, knocking over trees and sending the small creatures of the world into panic, when you needed them? Oh, she wished for a breeze to ripple the ocean's surface, to make some white noise with the trees. But there was nothing.
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 11:06 am
But for that, he might have avoided the brightly hued crossbreed. As it was, his eyes saw a perfectly good fish that nobody seemed interested in and his stomach rumbled its approval of the idea whilst his mouth began to water. Being thus outvoted by his body the brown Nequus walked over to the recently deceased fish, bent down, sniffed at it and then bit it in half.
Chewing on the silvery treat with satisfaction, this was why he loved the coast, the Reya raised his head to watch the Bae-winged mare. Swallowing, he commented; "you do know the stories about handsome sea stallions aren't true, right?" Three times this year he'd caught silly girls hoping that their true love would just walk out of the waves and, after falling in love with them on sight, bring them down to a watery kingdom of plenty and cheesy happy endings. Three times. How many idiots could one world hold? If this was another of them he was going to lose what little faith in Nequus he had left.
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 11:19 am
Desdemona turned to see the dark stallion take her fish. Her fish. How dare he.
"I'm not in here looking for an idiot of a stallion," she hissed coldly. "There are enough of them on land for that." She looked back into the water to see another fish, larger this time, had resumed doing what the first had been attempting. With another flash of her hoof, the fish's dead body slapped against the surface again and Desdemona hesitated before picking it up to throw it onshore.
"You eat this," cautioned the spider-webbed mare. "And I'll be extremely upset." She scowled as she tossed the dead fish onto land, looking the stallion in the eye with an air of "I'm not afraid of you."
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 11:39 am
Ignatius gave the mare an extremely under-whelmed stare. "What kind of freak are you to eat flesh?" he asked with a snort. "You're body isn't designed for it; it'll make you sick you know. What are you planning to use it for? A decoration? Or have you got a Rit friend hiding somewhere that you’re getting food for?"
Funny, she hadn't reacted to his appearance at all; even the most hardened of stallion spared him a shocked blink. She really must be a freak, that or crazy or possibly so bloody macho she couldn't even admit a modicum of surprise. Perhaps that was why she sounded so scornful of stallions; he hadn't met many who liked their girls to have more testosterone than they did, she probably couldn’t get one if she tried.
Ignatius bent to gulp down the second piece of the fish he'd claimed from her before raising his head again. "Anyway, I haven't seen you around here before; you new are you?" She did look fairly young, which might explain her apparent stupidity, so it was possible she'd started coming here in the time he'd spent wandering through the crystal lands.
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 11:54 am
"It's an offering, you narrow-minded buffoon," Desdemona said through gritted teeth. "For protection. I'd ask you to be respectful about my beliefs." She flicked her mane back, out of her eyes, and really had a good look at the stallion. Man, was he hideous, but that's not what bothered her; he was too sure of himself. He didn't scare her-- he was far from scaring her-- but something about him told her that she should be frightened.
She waded back to the shore. Shaking loose bits of seaweed from her legs, she dried almost immediately in the sun. She strode past the stallion without a glance in his direction, nearly touching him as she passed, and shook her legs to try to get the feeling back into them. She picked up the fish, cradling it gently in her mouth, and placed it on a giant rock. The rock was burning hot, and the fish almost seemed to sizzle as she dropped it.
"Why do you call me a freak, bub?" she asked, not looking up from the fish. "Yes, I am new here. Do you call everyone that's new a freak, or am I just special?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 12:12 pm
Oh... An offering? Well fine, that was alright then. "Hu, never seen anyone make a fish offering before," he commented casually, glancing over at the scaly creature briefly before looking back at the half-blood. The word sorry hung on the edge of his tongue but remained unspoken partly because he'd learned not to be so quick to kindness over the years and partly because of the stress on 'me'. He knew he was a freak; wasn't that en-Gods damned-nough for everyone?
"I called you a freak I thought you were going to eat it," he replied with an equine shrug. "I've seen Nequus who spend too much time around Rit try it... So what is it you're offering the fish to?" the spined-stallion asked, silently debating telling the mare that she still had a piece of seaweed in her tail. As he waited for a response, his own drew idle patterns in the sand behind him.
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 12:21 pm
"Well, if you haven't seen it before, you obviously haven't lived," said the mare in that same cold tone. She left the fish on the rock, sizzling in the hot sun, and trotted back to stand at the edge of the water. She mumbled a few words to herself, in some foreign language, and closed her eyes. Breathing deeply, she fluttered her wings to try to cool herself down as she made the offering.
When she was finished, she looked back at the now-burned fish on the rock. The offering had worked. "I'm offering it to the Goddess Moon, to protect myself and my loved ones through this night and the next." She busied herself now, scowling as she saw that the stallion was still standing there.
She flicked her tail impatiently, staring just past the stallion's head into the distance. Feeling that her tail had an unwanted visitor, she looked back to see the seaweed. It looked nice in her nearly-white tail, and she decided to leave it there. Why not? It wasn't hurting anybody, and it looked quite nice, making her feel good about herself for the first time in her life.
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 12:34 pm
Moon goddess? Well something had happened for sure though he wasn't sure what. "Obviously," he replied with a snort, looking back at the mare. Perhaps she was right, though if she was it wasn't for the reasons she seemed to think. Speaking of seeming, she seemed to have noted the seaweed. Good for her... He was looking at the fish again for some reason; it wasn't appealing as food anymore or anything but it still drew his eyes.
"Does it work?" he asked with a flick of his head at the burnt thing. If it did, maybe that was what his parents had missed. Perhaps they'd pissed off a deity somehow and as punishment his mother had been turned to madness and he had been... Well, made the way he was. Ignatius flicked his freakish tail and the spines on his face moved as he set his jaw against further musings.
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 1:03 pm
Desdemona frowned. "I seem to think so," she muttered. "But who's to say what works and what doesn't? It may just be a placebo, concocted by some madman for the sole purpose of making others look like fools. I think it works; bad things happen when I don't do this." She looked him in the eyes now, her own dark ones trying to search down into his soul without revealing too much of herself.
"You can eat it, if you'd like," she said coolly, turning away from him and motioning towards the fish. "I've heard it tastes wonderful after this ceremony..."
She quirked her head to the side for a moment. "Wait... who are you?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 1:22 pm
Well it still seemed silly to him but whatever worked for her and it was one explanation for what had happened to the fish. Nevertheless, he wouldn't put it past some b*****d to make up a story to explain something that just happened in order to snigger at people. Still, a spontaneously combusting fish was fairly impressive whichever way you looked at it.
The odd looking stallion approached the offering, which the Moon Goddess had apparently finished with, and sniffed at it. Much though the idea of eating something burned had seemed odd, it did smell rather good.
"My name is Ignatius," the amber-eyed Nequus informed the multi-coloured mare as he took another cautious whiff of the burned fish. He took a nibble and chewed at the changed flesh thoughtfully. It was good; no better that raw but no worse either just... well different. Nice.
"You heard right by the way," the brown Reya said with a momentary almost smile and a nod at the fish. "Thanks," he added, the unfamiliar word feeling odd on his tongue. It was very seldom he had reason to that another creature and even more seldom that he actually did it. Ignatius sniffed the steaming fish again and took another nibble.
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Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 4:04 pm
"Desdemona," she said quickly, pulling a few leaves from a nearby tree with her teeth and tossing them half-heartedly into the ocean. "And I always hear right."
She waded back in, wincing slightly as she sliced her leg on a rock underneath the clear surface. Cursing slightly, she made her way calmly back to the shore, her leg oozing a little, her mind clouded by the thought of sharks and other meat-eating fish attacking her and anyone near the blood in the water.
"Don't go in the water," she warned dreamily, her eyes misted over with pain and determination to seem stronger than she actually was. A dark look crossed her face as she placed her leg on the burning rock, burning her leg to stop the bleeding. "Unless you want to find a shark. Then, by all means, be my guest."
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Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:10 am
Ignatius wrinkled his nose at the crossbreed mare and shook his head. "You are aware that burns are just as, if not more, likely than cuts to go bad, aren't you? Still, if you're hanging about here you should be fine; something the seawater stops infections, though it does make worse scars." Personally he thought it was the salt that did it; that was the only difference he could sensibly come up with between freshwater and the ocean. Still, he didn’t see any reason to share that; let her think it was her Moon Goddess or whatever.
Turning his eyes to the shallows, the stallion snorted. "I've no desire to run into a shark; they taste bloody awful, far more trouble than they're worth." Burnt fish on the other hand... the draconic stallion snaked his head out and took another bite of the moist steaming flesh.
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Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:52 am
"I'd much rather have a burn than be bleeding all over the place... the blood attracts predators, and I would be in no shape to run if I had lost enough blood," she said matter-of-factly. "Besides, this is called cauterizing the wound... I've done it before."
Desdmona motioned toward her left-hind leg, where a scar the size of a hoof was on the inside of her hock, barely visible over her feathered hooves. She moved away from the rock now, the bleeding gone and a hissing wound in it's place. She limped over to the water, smacking another fish out, and threw it on the rock.
"Be my guest and eat that one," she said, smiling truthfully for the first time in a long time. Her cheeks seemed weighed down by the effort, and she went back to her usual scowl. "A personal favor." She waded deep enough for the salt water to start stinging, savoring the feeling of the pain on her leg. Well, at least she knew she could still feel.
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Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:22 am
Well, perhaps he wouldn't have to make too much effort in finding food today after all, he considered with a cursory glance at the old wound he was being shown. Still, fish or no fish he couldn't help but wonder... "What predators? There's nothing in this world that eats Nequus... unless you were referring to an overly 'friendly' stallion." He'd heard the word used to describe those that would claim a mare for their own against her will.
Ignatius took another sizable bite of fish before turning back to look at Desdemona. "I haven't seen a crossbreed before," he commented, looking her up and down. "Funny, all the stories would have you believe mixed-bloods had three heads or something." Yet she had the audacity to look less weird than he did. Hu.
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