09-20-2020, 03:35 PM
Lightning laughs, choosing her tree
The flames had drawn her home at last, but by the time she arrived, the Shadowborn had drenched her woodland home with the sea. On nimble hooves, the little bay leapt between the wide redwoods, their bark bearing scorch marks new and old. The giants don't care about the fires that pop up between them, though, that is a problem for younger things than them. The dragonlings would have had to try much harder to do more than clear the scrub brush and the thin pines growing in the understory, and in the end, they did not seem to try very hard at all. Their legs carry them north, leaving paltry fires that the Taigans quickly drench.
North, the Pangeans traveled, with other things in mind - the burning of Nerine, so that something else may climb from its ashes - and north, Popinjay follows, like a crow chasing the scent of war. She comes too late for the battle, it is too hot and burns fast, suffocates itself on its own rage until there isn't oxygen enough to maintain it, and what remains is smoke and steam and rain. In the midst of it, a strange child with strange toys, coaxing the toothy black plants from the charred earth. Sharp eyes follow him curiously. He looks like a creature of the Taiga, not of Nerine, though she's never seen anyone quite like him there before. Still, there are so many places to hide between the redwood kings, and perhaps the salt left behind by the ocean portals has driven him out from the thickets.
"What a peculiar gift." Her favorite sort, of course, she loves them immediately for their strange shapes, accepts them as her own without hesitation.
Wisely, or not, she fears nothing - not him, nor the wide, open grins of his young plants, and she drifts towards the one closest to her, running dark lips over its black, pine-needle leaves, barely flinching when it snaps at her reflexively. She pulls out of reach with a delighted laugh. They are beautiful and wild, crafted to withstand northern winds and the sea-fed storms, and she returns their fanged smiles with one of her own, flat teeth glistening in the misty grey light. They are not like the weeds and thorns growing in Taiga's blackwater, they are not like the bright flowers of the Pampas, they are more like animals, she thinks, like the pale, eyeless fish living deep in the hearts of the caves she explored as a child, biting blindly, hungrily, at the things that touch them.
"Thank you," Poppy turns her mischievous grin from the newly-birthed plants to their maker.
Welcome to Nerine. Mind the garden, it bites.
North, the Pangeans traveled, with other things in mind - the burning of Nerine, so that something else may climb from its ashes - and north, Popinjay follows, like a crow chasing the scent of war. She comes too late for the battle, it is too hot and burns fast, suffocates itself on its own rage until there isn't oxygen enough to maintain it, and what remains is smoke and steam and rain. In the midst of it, a strange child with strange toys, coaxing the toothy black plants from the charred earth. Sharp eyes follow him curiously. He looks like a creature of the Taiga, not of Nerine, though she's never seen anyone quite like him there before. Still, there are so many places to hide between the redwood kings, and perhaps the salt left behind by the ocean portals has driven him out from the thickets.
"What a peculiar gift." Her favorite sort, of course, she loves them immediately for their strange shapes, accepts them as her own without hesitation.
Wisely, or not, she fears nothing - not him, nor the wide, open grins of his young plants, and she drifts towards the one closest to her, running dark lips over its black, pine-needle leaves, barely flinching when it snaps at her reflexively. She pulls out of reach with a delighted laugh. They are beautiful and wild, crafted to withstand northern winds and the sea-fed storms, and she returns their fanged smiles with one of her own, flat teeth glistening in the misty grey light. They are not like the weeds and thorns growing in Taiga's blackwater, they are not like the bright flowers of the Pampas, they are more like animals, she thinks, like the pale, eyeless fish living deep in the hearts of the caves she explored as a child, biting blindly, hungrily, at the things that touch them.
"Thank you," Poppy turns her mischievous grin from the newly-birthed plants to their maker.
Welcome to Nerine. Mind the garden, it bites.
@[wilt]
