06-24-2015, 10:01 PM
Nish isn’t so much a wise man as he is a simple man.
He simply learns from experience and experience has taught him that the lowly squirrel often goes unnoticed by its’ equine ‘superiors.’ Thus, gathering information is made incredibly easy; he could barter with kingdoms the things he has heard, if he ever heard anything besides who was sleeping with whom and what the faeries said the gender of such and such mare’s cousin’s foal was going to be. Maybe he should just make everyone sick instead.
Yes, yes. A plague brought on by rabid squirrels sounds quite nice.
Except Dominion might catch something.
And he quite likes her.
She isn’t nearly as irritating as everyone else seems to be, nor even half as stupid.
Actually, she’s pretty smart.
And….
Nish, leaving it at that, decides to let his squirrel instincts take over and lo and behold he finds himself heading towards the first acorn tree he can find. Which is in the middle of the meadow, no less. Where trees are sparse except around the edges and the grass is long and tall and keeps mostly everything else hidden. Which is stupid. Maybe if he made himself a little bit bigger – yup, five feet at the shoulder and fourteen feet long (giant fluffy tail included). Totally ordinary squirrel.
“OH. MY. GOD!” Overprotective Mama Bear Mare shrieks, gathering up her daughter and nearly trampling her son in the process; that’s the thing about twins, he supposes. If you kill one there’s always an identical or almost identical one to take their place. So it’s fine. Totally fine.
Except the boy falls down, scrapes his knee, starts to cry and then Tarnished feels a little bad about it.
“Meh,” Nish grumbles in his squirrel voice, checking the child before the crazed mother comes back to chase him off and, again, almost tramples her son in the process.
‘Must be a new Amazon.’
--
A couple of hours, a few hoofprints, some shifting, and a little bit of explaining later, Nish again finds himself in his massive squirrel body – but this time he’s closing in on the tree. He barely misses the entire exchange between the black squirrel and her opponent; which, for circumstance’s sake, is pretty fortunate. He might have turned tail and ran if he knew – if he even assumed he was in the presence of a magician. They were not to be toyed with, his mothers had done everything in their power to make sure that lesson stuck.
And it has.
But Nish, in his squirrely state, isn’t half as clever as usual and it doesn’t occur to him that black squirrels might be a little bit beyond the norm. He’s sure he’s seen one before, somewhere. Maybe. It doesn’t matter, because his giant nose is twitching and his mouth is watering. He wants that nut, no matter the cost. “MINE. NOW!” Nish half-chirps, half-bellows before diving at the (well, let’s face it, in comparison to him currently) miniscule black squirrel.
He simply learns from experience and experience has taught him that the lowly squirrel often goes unnoticed by its’ equine ‘superiors.’ Thus, gathering information is made incredibly easy; he could barter with kingdoms the things he has heard, if he ever heard anything besides who was sleeping with whom and what the faeries said the gender of such and such mare’s cousin’s foal was going to be. Maybe he should just make everyone sick instead.
Yes, yes. A plague brought on by rabid squirrels sounds quite nice.
Except Dominion might catch something.
And he quite likes her.
She isn’t nearly as irritating as everyone else seems to be, nor even half as stupid.
Actually, she’s pretty smart.
And….
Nish, leaving it at that, decides to let his squirrel instincts take over and lo and behold he finds himself heading towards the first acorn tree he can find. Which is in the middle of the meadow, no less. Where trees are sparse except around the edges and the grass is long and tall and keeps mostly everything else hidden. Which is stupid. Maybe if he made himself a little bit bigger – yup, five feet at the shoulder and fourteen feet long (giant fluffy tail included). Totally ordinary squirrel.
“OH. MY. GOD!” Overprotective Mama Bear Mare shrieks, gathering up her daughter and nearly trampling her son in the process; that’s the thing about twins, he supposes. If you kill one there’s always an identical or almost identical one to take their place. So it’s fine. Totally fine.
Except the boy falls down, scrapes his knee, starts to cry and then Tarnished feels a little bad about it.
“Meh,” Nish grumbles in his squirrel voice, checking the child before the crazed mother comes back to chase him off and, again, almost tramples her son in the process.
‘Must be a new Amazon.’
--
A couple of hours, a few hoofprints, some shifting, and a little bit of explaining later, Nish again finds himself in his massive squirrel body – but this time he’s closing in on the tree. He barely misses the entire exchange between the black squirrel and her opponent; which, for circumstance’s sake, is pretty fortunate. He might have turned tail and ran if he knew – if he even assumed he was in the presence of a magician. They were not to be toyed with, his mothers had done everything in their power to make sure that lesson stuck.
And it has.
But Nish, in his squirrely state, isn’t half as clever as usual and it doesn’t occur to him that black squirrels might be a little bit beyond the norm. He’s sure he’s seen one before, somewhere. Maybe. It doesn’t matter, because his giant nose is twitching and his mouth is watering. He wants that nut, no matter the cost. “MINE. NOW!” Nish half-chirps, half-bellows before diving at the (well, let’s face it, in comparison to him currently) miniscule black squirrel.
equus mutatio, immortality, disease manipulation, trait immunity