"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
08-06-2020, 07:29 PM (This post was last modified: 08-06-2020, 11:48 PM by Ridiculous.)
There was a loud ‘pop!’ He appeared at the edge of a river, quite astonished and confused. “Wait, what?” He says out loud, to himself more than the world around him. He glances around, curious to see what time had done to him. Supposedly, he could manipulate time, but so far, it would seem that time was manipulating him! Because this was not the kind he remembered.
The river had changed shape. Any longer and he may have found himself in the raging waters, being swept away with the current. “Oh, thank dog!” He laughs, then happily starts to trot off before—splash! He thunders into the raging river, having not paid attention to his footing and stepped on the weak spot along the river where it subsequently caved in beneath his abnormally large figure.
It takes him a minute to regain his footing in the treacherous waters. He felt at home on land, but in the river, he was definitely not at home. His legs scrambled for footing on the loose sand beneath his hooves, and rocks came flying at him as the current pushes him down. Somehow, he keeps his head above the water, though, which helped. A little.
Finally, he manages to plant his hooves firmly against two large rocks that intersect. He shoves his weight back against the current, and searches frantically for a way out of this predicament. It doesn’t take him long, for, you see, the river widens and the current slows just after the two rocks. Of course! So he carefully lets his body slide between the rocks, only to find that they drop off sharply on the other side. The other side was not just wider, but deeper as well, and now he couldn’t touch.
And his big body is not meant to float. It’s so large and gangly. So instantly, he wants to sink. His legs fly through the water, trying desperately to both stay above the water and to move through it as well. Finally, he reaches solid ground once more and tumbles from the river, gasping for air and looking like a complete idiot. “I hope nobody saw me!” he breathes.
She has not moved from the River, partly because she finds it interesting, partly because she is lazy and prey is more abundant here. The fishtailed woman has been mistaken for a pretty mermaid by one or the other stallion, and taken the advantage easily. And that seemed preferable to swimming all the way back to Ischia, where people are now a little wary towards seabound mermaids, thanks to her own dad. How ironic that he had been the one to be found out by the nereids, when he had always sworn them to secrecy before.
Nevertheless, the Kelpie births her child here; here where not a second after her daughter breathes for the first time, a colt-ish young male takes a dive. Had Nilam not been busy, she would have snapped him from below within a heartbeat. Now, the loud-mouth male makes it to the shore just moments before the sapphire Kelpie and her red and blue-marked daughter (scaled and toothed, that’s a keeper) break the surface. ”Glyndwyr,” she tells the girl, ”food.” she tells her casually. The first lesson for her pointy-toothed daughter, and possibly the last for the colt on the shore; that is, if he doesn’t have some sort of magic of his own that is better than hers - and nearly none are.
08-08-2020, 10:32 AM (This post was last modified: 08-08-2020, 12:39 PM by Ridiculous.)
ridiculous
do you think I’m funny?
As he stood there dripping off on the sandy beach, something caught his attention. It was a creature like he’d never seen before. "Shit," he said, and if he wasn’t already red in color, he might have flushed red. "You saw that, I assume." He grins sheepishly. "I hope you enjoyed the show!" Then she said something that made him stop, something in a foreign language. "Huh?" But he didn’t have to wait long before she clarified in a familiar language.
Food? Are you kidding me? Ridiculous might be somewhat...ridiculous, but he definitely didn’t constitute as food! And he took offense to the idea that this...this thing would consider him to be food! He stood there on the bank of the river, sopping wet and eyeballing this half horse, half fish creature and her freshly spawned offspring, and almost laughed. “If you think I’m food, you really have another thing coming!”
With that, he snorts and moves to turn away, but suddenly, he slips once more and finds himself in the waters again. This, of course, opens him up to their attack. Fuck! Was he seriously going to get eaten by a child? The thought flashed through his head as he crashed down into the deep waters and once again began flailing about, trying to get his large weight back to shore before this fish-creature could get her grubby hooves on him.
Then it dawned on him. He could use his powers! For half a second, he stops thrashing and concentrates on shifting time so that it slowed down. Hopefully it would slow down for her and her alone. However, this would not be the case, as he found himself moving slower through the water. It did allow him to think quicker, though, and he could see her in the waters, calculate her movements. He was large, too, so he could use this aginst her and her demon spawn. ”Come at me, bro!” he sputtered.
There is little that could stop a kelpie in the waters; but unfortunately her teaching of the shark-toothed girl meant the guy on the shore had a warning. As clumsy as he may be, Glyndwyr would never be able to catch this colt, since she lacks the fishtail that would lend her the much-needed speed. She'd have half a heart to make a point of killing the child, but since it's a girl, and since it's at least, you know, a carnivore, she leaves her be. She is almost a kelpie, and Nilam doesn't feel like correcting nature's flaws within her.
Besides, she has bigger fish to fry.
The fish she is trying to catch, is problematic. Another thing coming, he'd said, right before dropping in the water, but when she slashes her tail to catch up with him, which should have brought her to him in half a heartbeat, he employs a trick of his own - a rather familiar one.
Nilam has never met anyone else who disrupted time, but the ability resonates within her, and she counters it without thinking; speeds up her own time as a reaction to his slowing her down. Her daughter gets trapped in the time bubble he'd created, but the split-second recognition changes the mother's intent - curiously, the child almost forgotten, she wraps her mermaid-like body over and under the young male's body, though she does not avoid a kick to her tail (thankfully it slides off, mostly, as water on scales). And yet, instead of biting, she uses her every charm and hypnotizing ability to soothe him. "There, there. I'm no threat - the girl was over-eager, but she's far away now, trapped in time by you." Nothing about the first part is true - it had been Nilam herself who'd intended to eat him - but lies come so easily when tactile hypnosis is used.
She leaves him, hopefully subdued or dazed. She swims away from him a bit and turns with a suddenly inviting wink. "Wanna do that again?" After all, she could make it happen - they could make it happen - and the mother, in fact, has no problem going with him instead of nursing a child that's only half-kelpie.
there is no new wave only the sea
@[Ridiculous] let me know if anything needs changing!
He was shocked, to say the least, when the water changes around her, speeding up to his slowing down. The child, however, gets caught in his web of slow time. He has half a mind to snatch her up and use her to get the mother to leave him alone, but the look in her eyes says she wouldn’t lift a hoof to save her.
Not only that, but she has the advantage. She can move through this water like a knife through butter. And she does so, moving directly next to him and wrapping her odd tail around his body. Panicked, he lashed out at her, and one hoof manages to connect with the tail, but it does little to stop her.. He feels himself being lifted from the water and placed back upon the shore, a soft voice ringing inside his head, calming him down.
He remains calm for only a moment, though, as he remembers: this one intended to eat him!. Once again, he scrambles for safety, ashamed that he’d needed her help to save him, after she had threatened to eat him.
He pants heavily a few steps from the river, watching her wearily. While on one hand, he is terrified of her, embarrassed in front of her, and confused by her, on the other, he is intrigued. This…thing had used time manipulation! He had met some gifted individuals before, but never one with time manipulation like himself!
He grins at her words. Wanna do that again? He has half a mind to say yes, but he was exhausted already from the double harrowing ordeal. "Not really, but I’m down to see what happens next!" And with that, he blinks and time skips forward. It only skips forward about five minutes. There is little difference. He still stands on the bank, she still perches on the edges of the river with her child nursing at her side, but he does magically know her name and a few other random things about her, and he’s regained the wind in his chest.
@[Nilam] feel free to fill in some of this random information he learned about her in the five minutes they skipped. Lol
The young mother tilts her head at the young male, his response somewhat odd to her as he skips over a small part of their meeting. Ridiculous - a name that befits him then, she would say later on. Nevertheless, this action is contradicting with what he said, and yet she doesn’t bother to change it. He allows her filly to catch up with her dam, though, and the girl finds a teat to suckle from. A dramatic eyeroll follows, as well as a sigh, but she allows it. For now.
”Now what?” she casually asks, flicking an ear to chase away a buzzing fly. Her gold-flecked eyes follow his every muscle - no longer is he just meat, though the hunger in her eyes is somewhat indistinctive, if she’s honest with herself; a trait that the magically-insanely beautiful young mare has used before to get what she wanted - though she is somewhat disappointed in the girl, but well, maybe she doesn’t have to nurse her too long.
Might as well speed up her time and see if she grows into someone useful.
Later, she thinks - back to the topic at hand. Now what, indeed. It seemed they had come to a stalemate, which is entirely new for the gold and sapphire mare. Suddenly, she wonders something else. ”Say, how old are you anyway?” Had he reversed time on himself, she wonders? Was he not actually as young as he appeared?
Truth be told, he had jumped ahead in time so that he was no longer panting and weak. He still didn’t trust this finned creature nor her beastly child. He wanted to be ready to bolt, just in case she decided to eat him once more. But despite his obvious fear of her, he was curious about her, because she shared the same time manipulation that he had. That’s what kept him hanging around, watching her carefully, breathing normally now and feeling the energy coming back to him.
She asks “what now,” and he chews on the question for a moment, wondering what now himself? "Are you done wanting to eat me, then?" He grins, a goofy look on his chestnut face, especially when he tilts his head to the side to look at her. "So, were you born with your gift of time manipulation, or did you gain it somehow?"
When she asks his age, he tilts his head the opposite direction. How old was he? "Well, I think I’m two," he says, though he sounds quite unsure of himself, "but I did seem to skip a good chunk of time to come here. I don’t’ have very good control over my time manipulation, and I think I may have skipped a huge chunk of time, so maybe I’m a little older? Or is it younger?" He gets this confused look on his face as he tries to think about it.
Ridiculous eyeballs the filly as she suckles at a teat beneath her mother’s belly and finds himself curious about that fishy tail of hers and her pointy teeth, and her unusual coloring. "What exactly are you?" He suddenly blurts out.
Nilam has relied on her magically good looks and tactile hypnosis all her life; many of her siblings shared something predatory, the girl nursing with her now is no exception. But the sapphire-and-gold mare does not have the patience her father has; when she wants something, she speeds up time or reverses it to give herself a second chance (and do it better the next time). No such thing is possible when the subject manipulates time as well, however.
He asks if she is done wanting to eat him, and she chuckles. ”Of course not.” Yet, she shrugs as if it’s unimportant. To her, it is; she can’t eat him now, or it is so unlikely for her to succeed that she doesn't try. Never mind what she wanted to do. She tilts her head ar his question and nods at the first half. She doesn’t know where the gift came from, only that it is not something any of her father’s other children have. And he has many - so many that the deduction that it is something from her mother’s side is painfully obvious.
While he racks his brain for his own age, the sapphire mare sidesteps and half-heartedly kicks the girl. A small his might be heard when the filly comes close again, until she stays away from Nilam’s belly. Two, he thinks, and she decides that that’s a good enough age for the girl as well. She hasn’t done it before, however. His confession that his control isn’t great snaps her attention back to him, and momentarily disappointment flashes across her face.
He studies her in return; her tail is obviously gone, but he’d seen it and the scales are still there; as is the elongated jawline, as are her shark-teeth. ”A hunter, obviously,” she states. Her father had been locked in a hole not too long ago, for being discovered as the source of several... disappearances. So she doesn’t blurt out the name of her species, even if it’s rare. It wouldn’t do to spread such knowledge - especially not across time. ”And what does that make you?” she smirks.
So she still wanted to eat him. Well, then it’s a good thing he was no longer panting and tired from the ordeal in the water, just in case he needed to make a run for it. Granted, he might just trip and fall face first back into the water as he’d done previously. That was funny, though, if you think about it, and he does like to laugh at himself.
She doesn’t answer his next question, about where her time manipulation comes from, but that’s okay. He assumes this means she doesn’t know. "Well, both my mum and dad have magic. Mum just has regular magic, but dear ol’ pops has the king of all magic. He’s the best" Ridiculous speaks as though he has met his father, but in reality, few children of Carnage ever get the privilege of meeting him. "But anyway, I am pretty sure that’s where my time manipulation came from."
He is so caught up in trying to remember his age that he completely misses the mother kicking her daughter. If he had, he might say something about how that’s not very nice, that she was just trying to nurse, as babies will do. "How old are you?" Let’s just never mind the fact that boys aren’t supposed to ask girls how old they are, he just blurts it out.
He might be oblivious, but he somehow doesn’t miss the disappointment in her face when he tells her that he’s not very good with his gift. "Uh oh," he says, “Did Ridiculous just get put back on the menu? He laughs, but a part of him prepares to bolt if she should try to eat him again. His legs stiffen, and the adrenaline in his veins spikes so that his heart starts beating rapidly.
So she is a hunter, whatever that means. He decides that she doesn’t actually want to tell him what she is, but that’s okay. She is a mare of few words, meanwhile, Ridiculous is a talker. “I am ridiculous, of course! A laugh rolls off his tongue at this. ”And I don’t just mean my name. I mean in general, I’m ridiculous.”
He sure likes to talk a lot, she thinks while he continues babbling about where his magic came from. Now she knows he is the son of two magicians. Hmm, so if one of them were vengeful, perhaps eating him wasn’t a good idea at any rate - regardless of if she could or couldn’t catch him.
Her daughter had come back to her, and she rolls her eyes at the child and slashes her tail in the girl’s direction until the bleating thing finally decides to lay down for a nap. ”Four,” she answer his question without lying - when it didn’t matter, such as now, it was best to stick to the truth. When using hypnosis, which she currently couldn’t due to his distance-keeping, sticking as close to the truth as possible was always the best way to go at it, and she doesn’t change tactics in this normal-esque conversation either.
She snorts when he asks if he’s back on the menu. ”No. I need her to speed up.” she nods to the sleeping young predator. Having decided that she’s predatory enough to live, but that she doesn’t want to nurse her, it would be the best for the both of them. ”I’ll do it myself,” she concludes then, but before she steps towards the girl, she chuckles at his other answer.
”Then why are we having such a normal conversation?” she point out haughtily. Her dark blue mane tangle when she shakes her head, then continues towards the girl.
