"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
12-09-2020, 11:44 AM (This post was last modified: 12-19-2020, 09:09 AM by kahzie.)
Welcome to Round 2
Thematic Requirements:
- write the same encounter as in your first post, but from the animal/creature/being’s point of view
- if the name you gave the creature was an individual name, give it a species name as well
- if the name you gave the creature was a species name, give it an individual name as well
Grammatical Requirements:
- use first-person point of view, as the animal/creature/being
- correctly use a dependent adjective clause
- include either the word impignorate or nudiustertian in the correct context
- sentence must alternate whether they start with a vowel or a consonant
Miscellaneous Requirements:
- second round posts are due by 12:01 am Central Standard Time on December 14th
- any potential traits earned in this quest will be genetic for the characters who earn them, and can be transferred if made non-genetic
A creature whose large blue body was in the middle of my feeding grounds snored. Pausing from the feast of dead ghost fish in front of me, I waited to see if it would move. It did. What I could only assume was its head lifted, and the rest of it just sprawled out on the long-dry seabed like a useless hunk of flesh. I was saddened that it was alive; whatever it was, it would’ve made a hearty feast for my wife and two children still resting underground.
Living on a dry stretch of earth where only whispery ghost fish flitted in and out for the occasional means of eating was a hard life to live, but my wife and I had wanted a quiet existence away from the busier sections of the desert. A place where we could raise our little hatchlings and catch our little ghost fish together, forever. We’d only just made this home: to be precise, a nudiustertian span of time had come and gone since we’d burrowed in and hatched the little ones my wife had carried halfway across this godforsaken desert on her back. Our many eggs dried up one by one, but two had made it. Precious life in an unforgiving world.
I was a father now, duty-bound and ready to drag off what was left of the little ghost fish for my wife and children to eat when all of a sudden the blue creature turned to look at me. Disgusting, I considered the thing with huge eyes and two gaping holes in the front of its face, and it considered me for a moment before admitting the same out loud. Of all the- ! Never in my life would I have said such a thing, or been so rude. Under my shell I could feel my anger boiling over and I dropped the ghost fish, scuttling with my claws bared to teach it a lesson it would never forget: that I was Tityus pangaea, not some ‘Gahdern Hellspawn’!
Sadly for me, I didn’t even have time to think of my beloved wife and children resting underground before the creature opened its mouth and engulfed me with flame. Ethereal, my spirit left my little husk of a body and floated up, up, up towards the skies where it witnessed the final act of my widow coming to avenge me with our younglings there to help, and then I was at peace eternal. From Beqanna heaven I looked down, wishing only this: that outsiders would consider all life equally made and above all else, mind their Gahdern manners.
The low rumble of thunder is what pushes me deeper into the thickness of my lair and I make two observations simultaneously: a leopard whose pattern is characteristic of their species and the heat signature of a stranger in the near distance. In all the years I have spent lurking beneath the volcano, no stranger has met me and lived to tell the tale. Children have whispered stories about me, huddled around each other as if the feeling of their closeness will drive me away from the smell of their blood. Any meager resemblance of goodness or humanity rears its head when I see those nervous figures, so their fragile skins remain unblemished by my doing.
This stranger shall not be so lucky. It had been the nudiustertain evening when I had last tasted the sweet, supple meat of a horse. My lengthy stomach grumbles at the thought of two meals in one afternoon; the combination of leopard and equine would certainly carry me into the following cycle of the moon.
Instincts do not seem to treat the leopard well — I hiss with laughter at the thought of the feline thinking he is the largest thing in these forests — and it isn’t long before I am curling into the shadows to wait for the stranger to approach.
He smells unique, different from the ash and sweat and green that is typical of the creatures of this land. Everything within me whispers to jump upon him while he is puzzling over the remains of my meal. Whispers grow into shouting and eventually I cannot help myself. It always feels thrilling to stare deep into the eyes of my prey, to watch the terror darken their eyes and see their eyelids open wider at the sight of my large, pale head. Peeling my jaws from top and bottom, the smooth sensation of my bones unhinging brings a tingle to my scaly skin.
All my years listening to those children has given me the skill of understanding the equine language. Laughter would bubble from my throat if I didn’t have my mouth posed to engulf the stranger, so I launch my attack instead. Air is all I taste when my jaws snap closed and frustration burns against my pastel scales. How dare he evade me, when he could have succumbed so easily and fed me for weeks?
Under the constant drone of rain on the treetops comes the sound of a child’s laugh. While the stranger runs for his life, I decide there is easier prey to catch. All humanity in the world cannot protect the unfortunate youngling who follows the wide trail he has carved with his body. The girl’s scream when she sees me sends the birds of paradise scattering from their nests. It is bloodcurdling and hunger-inducing. My body winds quickly around her delicate body; I am fiercely determined she will not escape me as the stranger has. I hear the crunch of bones only moments after the girl screams, “The albino anaconda!”
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
The noise of the purple thing’s arrival is like a whipcrack across the ice-desert air, and the hunger – my ever-constant companion – wakens. I move, slow at first, too far for it to notice me. My footsteps should sound loud, here on the icefall, but there is silence. It’s a gift, of the tariaksuq, we are things made for cold and ice and hunting.
Mostly hunting.
It’s scarce, prey – live meat does not thrive in the desolate cold, the beasts seek warmer places. Not me, though. It’s in my blood, the core nature of everything tariaksuq, of me, Ombra.
Quietly, I move closer, and the snow and wind follow – they always do. It has not noticed me, not yet. They so rarely do, not until I am too close for it to matter. I stay on all fours, at first – easier to cover the ground – but as the distance between us closes, I rise up, let my full height show. Great and terrible, I have been called, but what do those words matter? All that matters is this moment, where I can smell – almost taste – the blood that I hunger to spill.
He sees me, finally. I am the monster his mind built. Nightmares come to walk in snow and ice.
Almost as sweet as blood, the taste of fear.
Breath is heavy in my lungs now, reaching over the noise of the snow. I have not eaten since that nudiustertian morning when an errant elk crossed my path, and thought that meal was sweet, I think I will find this one creature. There’s a sense of something about him, something I am eager to taste, to rend.
I watch him watch me, his eyes wide and cow-stupid. He should run – most of them do – but he stands as if frozen to the ground.
Easy pickings, then.
The wind whips harder as I pounce, and the snow turns red beneath our feet.
Like every day, I was just minding my own business, wandering the woods of my home - the land they call Sylva. On the nudiustertian morning, which was bright and warm, I had crossed paths with a colt that stood his ground and was very brave. They call me an elkear, after the two animals I resemble, which is very uncreative of them. In actuality my name, like that of my father’s and his before him, is Montgomery.
Not very mythical or poetic, I know, but a good strong name for a good strong creature.
A breeze stirs the leaves that litter the floor and brings to me the scent of a horse I do not know. Someone who does not live here normally, someone who I have not grown accustomed to. I move with caution, knowing some of these creatures possess magic I cannot even imagine, and abandon the feast of squirrel I had been wrapped up in.
Hardly a feast, you might think, but they were great sport to chase and catch.
A little bit of the creature I had been eating still hangs from my mouth when I finally catch sight of the stranger who looks as though he belongs to this woods as much as I do. His amber eyes snap to the squirrel leftovers and I watch them widen. And I decide then to have a little bit of fun so I roar. Not much effort is put into the noise but I am so proficient at it that the earth still trembles slightly with the weight of the sound. I think the ground must be playing into the farce with me, because this land knows me well enough not to fear me.
The stranger turns and runs into a birch tree on his way out and a low grumbling noise escapes me that may very well be a laugh.
I lurk in the northern sea, in the grey, frosted, water, feeding on fish and the bull kelp which grow high as redwood trees beneath the waves. The mackerel move through the kelp like birds through the forest and the oil in their flesh becomes the oil in my flesh, but I grow weary of their flavor, after a time, and drag myself to the gravelly, foggy shores of the Aboveworld. On this day, it is a foolish child that I find, curled up and sleeping beside the incoming tide, breath rolling her sides like the waves which roll and crash above my home with a noise like thunder. Her eyes open slow and discover me, Struan the Nuckelavee, and she smiles like some wicked, bright thing, trying her magic on me.
I am too powerful a creature to be hindered by that my child. The sharp stone of the beach cuts the bile-yellow veins and black blood hisses its poison onto them, sending hermit crabs scuttling away because they know to fear me. I am destruction, but the girl still pauses, red eyes matching mine, tracing the foul lines of my body and the noxious plume of smoke that stains the saltgrass around us black with death.
Finally, she runs. Up and up, leaping the heather and brambles like a white deer. She is so much faster than I expected, but I am not of this world, with two thick-muscled arms that reach and rake and scoop the earth from my way, and she cannot escape my dogged chase. I can taste the way fear lights up her veins when my fingers snatch at the moths that follow in her wake; when they turn to dust and the porcelain white strands of her tail singe and smoke. My favorite seasoning is the way terror salts the flesh of the horses, the way the smoke of my breath feeds disease into them. In the end, there is nothing to be done, nothing to impignorate, they always find their way into the gnashing piscine fangs, my skinless fingers pressing into weak and feverish flesh, plucking out eyes wet with tears like seawater.
This is the future we both know awaits the young albino as she races, heart beating over-hard and breath rasping in tired lungs. Over heath and dale, we run, and at last, she is tripping on weary feet, falling through a hedge and--
SPLASH!
I screech in pain when the peat water strikes my hungry hand. The freshwater leaves wicked purple bruises across bare muscle, pops vein and artery and leaves my flesh smoking are sore. Atop my back, the rolling head screams and yowls and its body wrenches itself as though to part from me, but we are one. To it, at least, I am inescapable. In my ears, the tea-stained wretch's voice sings insults, but I ignore them, withdrawing instead to the sea where the brine will quickly heal and the mackerel are easier prey.
There will be another day. And game less quick, less lucky than she.
It is I - Sir Huglava the 27th and a half (your kind might our spawning rituals odd but it is much easier to leave behind a leg with a desire to grow than to waste time tracking down mates. We Lava Frogs have far nobler causes, having impignorated our lives to protecting the Great Croaker, our mighty lord).
It rests in a burrowing mound in the distance of our hatching grounds. There it rises in the distance and even smokes from time to time. Our legends say that once there was such a great drought that the Great Croaker (who had no name then) buried himself beneath the Earth to wait for the rains to come again. When enough rain comes to soak the skin, only then will it finally wake. It slumbers beneath our webbed feet, waiting for enough water. There are also other adaptions to the tale - that there was Magic in the ground during that epoch. It was so thick in the air that it hung like fog but it reached for the roots as well, seeping into the soil where our Great Croaker slept. There it rests, feeding on the Magic and growing taller with each moon turn.
It is still there; for every thought of doubt that a non-believing amphibian has, the Great Croaker turns it into fire that comes burning down the sides of his sleeping chamber. When the Time of Watering happens, the mightiest amphibian that Beqanna could ever know - the Great Croaker - will rise. It is why we guard this place with such vigilance. That is why there are sentries posted all around this sacred mountain. I, alongside my brothers and sisters, protect our great god from those who would disturb him.
From those like the grass-eaters, like the one that has the audacity to step on my lunch.
"Intruder!" Bellowing in my most commanding voice, I stare at him with my burning red eyes. "You shall not pass!"
(We are normally peaceful creatures but the sky grazer has squished my meal. I am tired from overnight duty and my patience is very, very thin this morning.)
The grass-eater takes another step forward and I hop forward, ready to do battle. It is larger than I am but I am a decorated war hero from the Great Fowlout (egrets had come to roost along our coast and the Great Croaker smoked from below with a proclamation: no egrets, no surrender.) This grazer seems to understand that there will be no going forward for him. If we meet in battle, this will only end in his death (so says my unrelenting gaze).
He backs away.
I am victorious and the Great Croaker will rest peacefully for another day, thanks to my valiant efforts.
The morning had come without incident; if only it had gone in much the same manner.
I had started my day in the same way as usual - waking with first light, visiting the stream to relieve my dry mouth, then making my rounds to find something light to keep the hunger pains at bay. The only difference in my routine this morning was that I dared taking a less travelled path, and one that I’d soon regret choosing.
Everything about the path had seemed pleasant enough at first, with its opening wide enough for me to easily maneuver and the way dawn’s light splintered in beautiful columns through the canopy. That was until I had a small misstep and realized (albeit much too late) that I hadn’t been paying near enough attention to where I was going. A large log lay strewn across the path, and had I been looking at it properly instead of the glowing, striped blooms that hung poetically from the vines above me, I would’ve noticed how rotted it was. My weight is too great a load for the hollowed lumber, and I am left to scramble for sustainable footing as the wood crumbles underfoot. Unfortunately for me, the viney limbs that curtained the path on either side are much too eager to lend a hand, and in the span of a short breath I find that my grand, antlered head is equally as eager to get entangled in them.
For how long I stood there awkwardly and alone, I am not sure, but it is not the loneliness that bothers me, because for all I know I am the only one of my kind. It is the ache in my neck from the low headset that I am stuck in, and the way my long white ears are so messily touching the ground. Frustrated, I can’t help but snarl when I give one more futile attempt at escape, but it’s no use. And with a sigh, my eyes raise to find a strange Stripe Child staring at me rather stupidly.
The poor creature looks more than a scant bit timid, but also somewhat calculating, as if he were trying to figure out how to continue along this same path somehow. Of course that would be silly; this path is much too littered with rotting wood and loose stone for such a doppy, gangly looking thing to try and endeavor and surely it would get hurt by trying. So I offer him my best, reassuring smile (unfortunately revealing all of my sharpened teeth in the process) to try to win a small bit of his trust and shake my head “No” in an obvious warning to not go any further. I’m not sure how else to communicate with the Stripe Child, so body language will have to do.
Still, he decided to come closer, in spite of my best efforts and even going so far as to thrash wildly about in an attempt to scare the boy away. Oh, bless him, I thought in between heavy panting episodes, abandoning all hope of chasing the kid away, he must not be the brightest.
But I am surprised, because the Stripe Child hadn’t wanted to move past me and further down the path, no, he wanted to help me. And so I am rendered into quiet obedience as the boy made quick work of the stubborn vines and branches that held me captive. With a mighty pull and heave, I am able to wrestle myself away from the last bits and for the first time in what felt like a small eternity, I am able to stand proudly upright once more. I fight the urge to cry tears of joy and instead I busy myself with offering the child a few small wags of my tail in gratitude.
For awhile we stand there, keen to impignorate ourselves to a moment of tranquility and peace to calm our raucous breathing. Of course, it takes awhile for the time to pass, but as it does, I contemplate the child’s strange dialect. What had he called me? A Fuhflah? Was that what I was to be known as? I had always referred to myself as Basil, but I supposed Basil the Fuhflah would have to do now.
When we had both settled, I moved along the path in the direction from where we had both come, opting to backtrack and take the safer, presumably longer way across the land. A crest on the hill is the perfect place to stop and turn to make sure the Stripe Child is following, now that I had that pesky sense of responsibility nagging at me to make sure I saw the boy home.
I sleep peacefully in the furthest depths of the warren, dreaming of my youth. It seems like only yesterday that I was a small Koakling who bickered with his siblings. Suddenly, a voice beckons me from my slumber. As I roll one black eye open, I see spy one of the younger rabbits gasping for air.
“There is someone approaching, Ignatius!” she cries.
“I think you mean King Ignatius, don’t you?” I slur as I rise up onto my feet. My subjects, who are forgetful as it is, frequently address me by my name still. It is to adjust to, I suppose, as my crowning is rather nudiustertian. My father is not even cold in his grave yet. Everyone needs time to adapt to my reign and come to terms with our collective loss.
The young rabbit leads the way up the winding tunnels until the blinding light of the day comes beaming through the mouth of our fair warren. All the others have already gathered to stare down the pair - a fox and a rather unsightly horse of some kind. Despite the impressive size of my people, the equine remains firmly in place while the fox turns tail and runs the moment we make eye contact. I’ll have to work harder to scare off this lingering foe, it seems.
With a deep inhale and a ferocious grin to show off all my many teeth, I issue a rather uncouth belch that makes even the ground beneath my paws shudder with disgust. Either my enemy is a fool or rather full of himself, though, because he makes no move. He just stands there, menacingly. Am I doomed? Should I just ask him nicely? I glare at him and await whatever response he may give.
12-18-2020, 11:20 PM (This post was last modified: 12-19-2020, 09:10 AM by kahzie.)
Ionia, Tiercel, Sleaze, Viridis, Wight, Avocet, Grimlight, and Grove all wake up back where they should be. Sometime over the next 6 BQ months, a companion animal of the creature they “discovered” will seek them out. It can be the same animal or a different one, depending on individual interactions (as there was some clear wildlife harassment happening in this quest.)
Laia and Obelisk will be followed by a sedan-sized snowcloud that hovers about 20 feet above them for at least the next 6 BQ months, which will always be snowing in varying amounts, as a result of not replying in time to round 2. This can be permanent but is not genetic.
All creatures created during this quest will be added to the flora and fauna guide!
Please post in Updates to ensure your companion animal gets added to the database!
