Agitation

Agitation

Postby Greets » Mon Dec 10, 2012 1:42 pm

Sometime during the night the current residents of the Stables become aware of an interloper. The exact time it begins is not clear. A stir spreads among the horses - what is causing the disturbance is not something that should be here. They call to each other as they shuffle uneasily.

***
She had come here because it was warm and it did NOT smell of *them*. She whimpers to herself as she curls up in the hay in an empty stall. Her orange and black coat broken and battered. She scents the air cautiously, her ears swivel as she listens intently. She runs her tongue carefully over one of the many wounds her once beautiful coat now bears.
As time passes, the horses settle a bit though the scent of fresh blood still has them nervous. The stables are out of the elements and safe. They hay pile she is laying in is warm and so sleep claims her.
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Re: Agitation

Postby Rance » Mon Dec 10, 2012 3:33 pm

This is her compromise: she must do a deed for a friend betrayed, for her heart was not a terrible thing, but a conflicted thing, and the ink on her fingertips from rereading the letter burned like an old sin.

In the night, when all the stableboys would have been gone, she approached with caution, a crumpled piece of parchment in her bare fist. The young woman watched the building for some time, listening to the sleepy neigh of horses, strangling her sprig-patterned skirts in her free fist as if they had done something shameful.

When she knew there was no one else, the seamstress scampered forward, cloak flapping, boots squelching in the hardening mud. On the door of the stables, a note stuffed between the gray, rotting boards, as there had been once before. Not dictated, like the others. Written in a shuddering Standard, horribly misspelled, and in that, true.

to messa kaplen,

i am sorrey, i hafe dun a bad theng, i do not daserf forgivniss for beeng a bad seakrit-keeper,

your awfil fren, glorea


And when she stuffed the note between the door's panels with a quaking hand, she found the portal unlatched. The rusted bolt had not been drawn. With a moan, the door slowly leaned open, yawning, bringing to her the stink of wet hay, the sour odor of horse-droppings, and the thud-thudding of tired hooves.

She hated horses. She hated horses. And yet, with the fearful curiosity of a foolish girl, she leaned her head into the darkness of the stables. Little tangles of soiled straw clung to the bottom of her skirts, as with dreadful curiosity, she stepped inside and said, "Hello?"

A few noises caught her wary ears. The discontented shuffle of horses. A blast of equine flatulence sputtered out with no discretion. The occasionally snore-like whinny. She thought she felt their rolling eyes shifting to her, baring their flat teeth, staring her down. And something else she heard, too: the click, clicking of a damp tongue, a soft noise, stroking across fur like a jah'zoon cleaning its stubbly skin in the desert sun.

When her eyes adjusted, she saw it -- a curled bundle in the shadow, an animal that was not a horse. Her hands clutched at the threshold, and with her cheek against it, ready to run, she watched.

It was not a horse. She hated horses.
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Re: Agitation

Postby Greets » Mon Dec 10, 2012 4:32 pm

Her black tipped ears twitched at the sound of the door. Something was amiss. She opens her luminescent amber eyes, looking for the source. Her ears slide back until they become one with her skull as she bares her teeth and growls low in her throat at the person in the door. She gathers her dinner plate sized paws under her, the movement making the steel collar around her neck clink against the bit of chain still attached to it.

Goddess take pity, not want to go back. WILL NOT go back.

She counts on the dim light to hide just how bad off she truly is. They are small. Soft. She tenses and readies her weary body for yet another confrontation.
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Re: Agitation

Postby Rance » Tue Dec 11, 2012 3:10 am

She remembered...

..the hot day, for days in Jernoah were always hot, and she was in her final lecture before evening meal, before sunsleep. The Mother Sempstresses, they demanded threadwork in the morning until fingers bled. She had lost a nail a few hours before due to a misaimed needle, remembered how it had felt gouging underneath the fingernail and into the sensitive bedding of the rough skin. She remembered crying.

Now, though, Mother Proctor marched about in her studious gowns, and Gloria sucked on her index finger, trying to soothe the pain away. That day, they were pouring over a rather thick set of books of animals and wildlife. On the open page, a great feline beast, striped with black on yellow-orange fur like some creature from a blightmilk dream.

"Should you know the name of it," Mother Proctor said, gliding on silent shoes, "now would be the time to tell us."

None of the other apprentice seamstresses said anything. They knew more of their budding trade than they did of academic learning. They shrunk in their chairs, legs spread gracelessly, trying to hide in their collars or behind their books.

"Should you know the name of it," Mother Proctor reminded them, "now would be a good time to
speak, lest I choose to become capital on one of you."

Gloria thrust her needle-wounded hand into the air, palm wiggling, finger still wet from saliva. Mother Proctor's eyes turned to her. "Yes, Fingersucker?"

"I hurt my hand earlier,
menna; I am relieving the pain. But I know the answer."

"But yet you suck your finger like an infant."

"I know the answer," the girl repeated. "Please?"

Mother Proctor's eyes became softer, and for a hair-thin moment, Gloria thought she could feel approval in the old woman's gaze. She stopped her pacing and spread her palms out before her, encouraging the girl to respond.

"It is not a beast of Jernoah," Gloria said, spine straightening, the stinging pain in her finger quite forgotten. "It has qualities of both a feline and a vicious hunter. It likes the taste of meat. Myths hold it that the Nameless, at being so offended by its unnatural coat of orange, raked Their Many Thousand Fingers across its fur to blacken and debase the beast's pride. I believe they call it..."


"Cha'har," the girl whispered with a stutter as she clutched to the doorjamb, the word slithering out of her. "Cha'har."

There was a growl like the sound of shredding parchment. The young woman let out a shriek, a hand shooting to her mouth as her spine collided back with the half-open door. She scrambled back like a wounded bird into a puddle of mud and refuse. The creature's paws were platters, but her eyes were bottomless pits, opened wide as if she were trying to take in the horrifying image before her. Heavy skirts tangled wetly around her knees, strewn with freezing mud and damp straw. Instead of escaping, all she managed was to find the handle of the stable's door, to drag herself to her feet, swing herself upon its other side, and try to use it as a shield.

She waited for the creature to come hurtling at her, hungry, dangerous, violent.

Fingers curled around the great door, one set of fingers bare and dirty, the other set covered with the black fabric of a glove. She quivered with enough force that the tremors echoed in the mudpuddle where her boots were planted.

In the scarce light of night, the seamstress used the stable door for cover. She knew that wild, muscular body could bludgeon the life out of her before she could scream. Those monstrous paws could rend her in two, drag her intestines out across the grass like fiber waiting to be spun into yarn. Fear froze her, but more than that, a curiosity, one that beat away all thoughts of betraying friends. The letter she left fluttered like a moth's wet wing in the night air, still surely tucked between the panels of the door.

"Cha'har," the girl trilled, squatting, still watching the enormous feline shadow, before saying in Standard: "Please do not kill me tonight. I have just come to deliver a letter. A letter."
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Re: Agitation

Postby Greets » Tue Dec 11, 2012 11:05 am

She lurches forward, spitting defiance at the girl. Her paws stir up puffs of dust as she digs her claws into the hard packed floor of the stables and a low harsh, coughing roar is heard.

Go away!

The sound of her rage once again upsets the horses and they neigh their unease. Those made of sterner stuff stamp their feet while a few rear and whinny in terror. She lashes her tail and angles herself sideways to hide the still seeping wound on her shoulder. Her movements make the collar around her neck chime brightly in discordance with its wearers threat display. Again she lunges forward, her voice coughing harshly.

Go away!

She crouches, still hiding the wound which is once again bleeding. She tries her best to ignore the sharp, incessant pain and she knows something is very wrong. She roars again, her body tensed and ready to leap should the girl not take heed of her warning.
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Re: Agitation

Postby Rance » Wed Dec 12, 2012 6:16 am

She was like a duckling caught in a harsh wind – stumbling, tumbling back, always landing again and again in the mud, desperately trying to find her footing, but never having the presence of mind to place one in front of the other, or to turn to knees and crawl away. No, she clambered back, posterior skidding across spilled feed and through mud, heels pushing her away from the creature.

The horses started to buck, whinny, and lash. When their hooves beat the ground it was like thunder. When she heard those sounds, she thought she felt an invisible weight starting to crush her lungs, forcing her to breathe quicker, more shallowly. Horses. Blasphemy. Sin. Wretched, horrible creatures, so spoke the Nameless. And yet, she did not know why. Once, she had praised Blake Caplin for his patience with them –- patience she could never have.

She was halfway into the yard of the stables, whimpering, trying to extend a pale, mud-spattered hand as if it might urge the beast back more, when her eyes and mind –- mathematical, logical –- started connected little facts.

Go away, she thought she heard it say, but was that her mind distorting the snarl, trying to make it seem more human?

Little gems of blood glittered on the creature’s coat, which she saw before any of the damage, the telltale signs of well-hidden wounds.

The collar, a symbol of domestication, whether by force or by willing submission, a hint that something here was not right. Wild creatures did not get collars when under human dominion. They got leather muzzles, bits in their teeth, or hatchets between the eyes if they were particularly problematic. But a peaceful beast, a tame one…

If you love to live—, Marshall Emory had told her once, regarding matters of running and fleeing from confrontation.

The Jerno girl realized something: if she ran, it would not matter; the beast had four legs to her two, and if cha’har liked meat so much, she would be a meal one way or another.

Someone might have mistaken her for a foolish girl half-lounging in the rancid mud, one elbow swallowed whole by the muck, the gloved hand spread across her stomach. Stinking of the drenching sweat of fear, hand shuddering, teeth bared as if to prepare herself for a final blow, the girl said, “If –- If you speak, then you are capable of reason, and if you are capable of reason, then you must know: whether I am here, or whether I am away from here, I cannot hurt you. I cannot.”

But if the wild creature’s jaws did not agree with her conclusion, she clutched her breast, cradled her gloved hand close, and told the Nameless she was very happy to be received in death –- for that, too, like smoking pipes, was what a good Jerno did.
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Re: Agitation

Postby BlakeCaplin » Wed Dec 12, 2012 11:20 am

Blake had been almost ready to crawl into bed when he first heard the noises from the stables. A few knocks at the stall, a few whinnies into the night air. Could have been anything really, but it quieted for a time and so he thought better of heading out into the bitter night just to find some small animal had come to take shelter in the warm hay.

It began again, and it was more earnest this time. Much louder, more insistent. With a growl of impatience he would hoist up the sword belt from the chair and take the stairs at least two at a time, tearing out the kitchen door, much yelling and bitching from cook as he plowed through the place, to find the source of the ruckus.

As he rounded the building, he almost tripped right over Gloria. She was still, there in the mud, cowering in fear it seemed. The young man would look her over for signs of actual harm before his deep green eyes were searching the night for whatever had scared her so. Gloria was a bold girl, by most accounts, it must be something rather intimidating to have her laid back, seemingly waiting for the killing blow.

"Gloria, what in the name of the Gods are you doing out here? It's cold and dark, and you hate horses...what in..."

It was then that he looked toward the direction her eyes seemed to have averted from, and saw it, looking back at him. Still shadowed in the doorway of the stable, all he could really see were eyes. Large, they seemed to him, amber eyes that were definitely not human. Careful fingers would find the hilt of that old sword, not drawing, not yet. As his eyes grew more used to the night, he could make out a shape, low to the ground, four legs it seemed. And the strange glitter of metal near it's neck.

"Whatever you are...we don't want trouble. Just let Miss Gloria and I get back to the tavern and you can eat all the damned horses for all I care. Just...don't hurt her."

Blake took a careful, slow, position between whatever hid in the darkness and Gloria. If nothing else he would take the first blow and give her time to run. And run she should. So with a gleam of urgency in his young eyes he would look over his shoulder and hiss at the girl.

"Run....now."
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Re: Agitation

Postby Greets » Wed Dec 12, 2012 11:44 am

She sighs and wishes they would just let her be. She speaks as clear as she knows, why do they not understand. Her ears still backed she hisses, the sound large, even in the stables. Her shoulder doesn't really want to move anymore, yet she feels she must. The scent of the newcomer, while faint amongst the warm smell of horses is close enough to HIM that she knows he is here to put her back. She likes it outside. She will NOT go back.

She lurches forward and a move that would normally be a smooth, graceful leap leaves her in a heap in the stable door. Now out of the shadows, she is massive, easily the size of a small pony with paws the size of plates and fangs that can rend a horse limb from limb. Her orange and black coat is crisscrossed with minor cuts, but so many tinges her coat an ominous red. The rough steel band around her neck is obviously too small and cuts into her throat. The fur growths over parts of it say that it has been there for quite some time. The remains of chain still attached to the collar jingle and chime happily as she moves.

The creature starts to swipe at the newcomer with her injured limb, wincing in pain as she does so. She makes small mewling sound, hurriedly leaning her weight off the wounded shoulder. She hisses again and clumsily lunges forward, jaws wide.
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Re: Agitation

Postby Rance » Wed Dec 12, 2012 6:53 pm

Gloria, what in the name of the Gods are you doing out here? It's cold and dark, and you hate horses--

Words from a familiar voice, stirring her from that vulnerable moment, when she realized she was just a girl, and there was a beast bearing down on her. She prayed that the mud, the filth -- the stuff Jernos were made of, like all creatures -- might protect her, but not from a creature with angry black stripes and orange the color of fire along its spine.

Blake's appearance startled her. "Blake--" the girl gasped, splattering with knees and elbows through the muck, her eyes flaring, seeping. "I thought I might speak to it, I thought I might make it understand I meant no harm!" Words spilled out of her like frantic sparks. She grabbed his boot, his pantleg, anything, shuddering hands holding, only as he said, "Run...now."

Foolish girl who wrote such letters, foolish girl who left such letters, she scrambled for the fences, a boot sucking off her foot in the slop, a heel crashing down on a tangled skirt-hem and tearing it free so it flapped like ribbons behind her. She had made it only several steps, before--

They sang one day in jerethedral choir, transported on the divine smoke of incense, and they were all so young, and their eyes shined with happiness and reverence as one of the Brothers,
he raised high
a
jah'zoon hip-bone
and
drove it into the heart of a dune-hare
-- so perfect, so right -- and as the Brothers and Sisters of the Nameless lapped up the gore from the troughs, Gloria sang with praise, like all the little Jerno girls, and then the killing Brother stood high on the altar and praised the Glass Sands and the wonderful bounty once brought to them by a Growing Slave -- so wretched, so false -- and then a terrible Calamity befell them (she knew nothing of it, was far too young),
but they were all
so happy now
so she sang,
sang loud,
especially when the killing Brother said: "Hold chin aloft for the Nameless; remember you are Their creations, and They love you with vigilance, and that in your labors, your love, your life, you are strong by Their grace--"


Blake was there, and she had written such letters of him, and it made her sick with anger and betrayal, so ill with it that even as the striped beast bared forward, she could not run, could not just flee, no matter how much cold fear punched her from the inside and filled her stomach with acid.

"No," she whimpered, and then shouted: "No!" Because she would not let the scarred stableboy have this, not when he did not know what she had done, not when he had not yet read the note, her apology, her admission.

The striped beast had the eyes of a nightmare and its wounded, furious, bleeding, horrid rage.

Blake put his hand on an old sword, standing between her and the hungry claws.

The cha'har made to swipe. The seamstress -- stupid, afraid girl -- tried to right what all was wrong, and lunged for Blake, trying to snare the back of his collar, the back of his trousers, and drag him out of the thing's way, praying as good as a little choir-child.

"Do not hurt it," she begged him and the sky. "It is hurt -- it is afraid!"
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Re: Agitation

Postby BlakeCaplin » Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:03 pm

There is a hand clutching at his pant leg, and he is stumbling in the already treacherous mud of the stable yard. Gloria and her words. Always talking, always helping, always fixing. Seems like she broke more than she ever fixed, but she tried so hard. And she was trying even now to stop him from hurting this creature, who only now he could truly see as it stumbled from the stables into the doorway.

"Gloria, it will likely kill you, no matter your intent. Get out of here, you stupid stupid girl!"

He didn't mean it, and he hoped she knew that, but maybe if he hurt her feelings she would run. Maybe she would go back to the tavern and have herself a good cry while he tried to figure out what this thing was and possibly even stop it from killing anything. Looking back over his shoulder again, thought she might not notice in her current condition, his eyes shifted, the expression on his features savage as he snarled at her. Once kind green eyes now cold as hammered steel.

"Get out of here now, child!"

He could see it was wounded, but a wounded animal was almost always the most dangerous, and he would not have Gloria's throat torn out on his watch because she wanted to help it. The collar it wore was far too tight, and it cut into the animal's flesh brutally. A second of thought, before the sword was drawn, his intent not to kill the thing, but to release it's collar. It was too late. The great cat was already lunging for him, even as he felt Gloria's muddy fingers closing around the back of his collar, dragging him backward as the cat hit him full force.
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Re: Agitation

Postby Greets » Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:32 pm

Her world spun sickeningly as the blade met flesh. The finely honed blade cut easily, ringing to a stop on her collar. Thought she knew it not,it had saved her from much worse damage. The biting pain between her shoulders raged through her body. She cried out piteously and fresh, hot blood joining the older stains on her shoulder. The Goddess took pity on her child and the world went back.

The creature’s solid, muscular body lands heavily on the swordsman. The older wound, with the remains of the weapon that caused it still slightly protruding, can now be seen. The leather of her nose and the light parts of her pads are starkly pale against the darker hues of her coat. The collar that had likely cause so much pain is still around her throat, though now it lies sprung. The steel of the tortuous device kept it attached and unable to be fully removed without a bit more work. The only signs of life from her now are fast, shallow breaths.
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Re: Agitation

Postby Rance » Thu Dec 13, 2012 2:00 pm

Get out of here, you stupid, stupid girl!

It was a dance between a not-swordsman and a sickly, wounded beast -- a single blow, quick and unsteady, and for her, it transpired all in a matter of seconds. Blake had crumpled back against her. The sword had sung like a rusty fable from the lips of a bard who didn't know the right lyrics anymore. It struck, and she was behind the stableboy, letting go, fingers slipping free just as the lumbering creature overtook him. She let out a shout as the cha'har and Blake crumpled to the mud.

For a moment in the silence, the sobbing, wide-eyed girl could scarcely see that Blake Caplin still existed at all. She crushed her muddy palms against her mouth. The surge of adrenaline and fear turned into a boulder being crashed down like a blacksmith's hammer against the backside of her eyes. The monstrous feline was a crosshatch pattern of orange and black, but she could scarcely see it through the blurry eggs of her eyes. It still breathed, but most importantly, it bled, and she thought she saw Blake's hand half-submerged in the mud underneath the thing.

Child. He had called her child, and stupid, and she was -- just a stupid girl -- but the words pierced more efficiently than his old, oil-stinking sword ever could. In all her travels, she had never thought she might be putting a hands on a cha'har, but if she did not--

With mud strewn all through her hair, her already-threadbare dress strewn with a cartography of horse-mess and scattered feed, she did not think the night would culminate with this. A bare foot squelched in the mud, and then -- she had, like a proper Jerno, already consented to the concept of death, already reasoned that this might all end with her in damp pieces -- she raised the heel out from the filth and tried to plant it on the creature's back left flank. "Remove yourself," she said between her teeth, the hole of a missing tooth filled with the pink bulge of a tense tongue. "Just--" the foot pushed, and she grunted, "get off him, you violent beast! There is a note he must read, and you have quite--" leaning, straining, pouring herself clumsily against the collared creature's side. Heels finding foothold. Hands shaking, eyes apologetic, but incensed.

"Quite," she said, "made it more difficult for him to see what I must say. You see? You see," the girl gasped, palms and elbows pushing against the beast, her desperation for Blake to understand overshadowing the logic of fear, the realization that at any moment, the creature could turn, and that would be it.
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Re: Agitation

Postby BlakeCaplin » Fri Dec 14, 2012 6:13 am

And the world went black.

Just for a moment, as the large cat leapt at him, and the girl pulled backward. He felt the impact of the blade against the collar, heard it. And then there was a great weight, crushing the air out of his lungs with a heaving sigh.

As his eyes fluttered open he was once more aware of the intense weight, and soft fur covering his face. There were the muffled sounds of Gloria trying to push the great beast off of him. He could feel her barely moving the creature, pushing and muttering, pulling and pelading. His sword was on the ground, somewhere. His one arm outstretched beside him, the other flat against his chest, pinned between he and the cat. It did not move, but he could feel the distress in it's breathing. It was alive, but for how long was questionable.

With great effort he pulled his hand inward and flat against it, bracing the other on the ground beside him. With a long and steady push, he began to wriggle out from underneath it. Slipping inch by inch, even as the great cat slept. When he had finally gotten most of his upper body free, his arms braced in the mud, he is looking up at Gloria with a wide eyed expression.

"Well hells, girl. That was not my intent. At least I didn't kill it."

A final heave and he is free, but he is not finished with the animal. He stalks over to his sword, drawing it back out of the mud. Raising it high, he simply shakes the mud from it. Again his is kneeling next to the cat, using the tip of the old sword as some sort of lever, wedging it in to the already weakened closure of the collar. With a snap, the tip of the sword breaks, but the collar falls free. The wounds beneath showed him that this collar had been in place for quite some time, and placed there by someone who did not care at all for the animal they imprisoned.

"Gloria. We are going to need hot water. I will need a sharp knife from the kitchen, and some needle and thread. I know you have that. Then I will need your help dragging the cat back into the barn. She"...How he knew it was a she was not clear, but he seemed certain. ..."needs rest, and to be hidden from the patrons. You know how people are."

Blake had every intention of helping the cat now, but they needed to work fast, before she woke again.

"Come on, Little Fire, let's get you safe."
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Re: Agitation

Postby Rance » Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:34 am

Hot water. A sharp knife from the kitchen. A needle and thread.

She rushed back to the stables with considerable haste, one boot missing, the knife wielded in such a way that she might fall upon it if she stumbled, an oil-canvas bucket splashing over with steaming, just-boiled water. Heaving out each breath, she thrust the requests at Blake as if they were tainted, and then immediately gripped the hips of her skirt, squeezing the fabric against her. She shivered as if there were little miners digging through her veins. She cried audibly, though the act never broke her -- the tears simply did not stop, and her brain kept telling her they should be dead, that the cha'har could kill them both.

"What will we do with it," she said, staring at Blake for understanding. "It will eat your horses. Or--" trying, through her tears, to find logic or humor, ignoring her protesting stomach, "--or it will lay like just so on them as it did with you. You see? And it will smother them, and while I may wish them dead, I think it must go away, Blake. It cannot stay here," she said, and then added: "Oh, oh, it absolutely cannot! Ser Catch will take it as a pet, and then I should suffer the fate of never having clean underpants again purely out of fear.”

The girl rambled in her blistering Standard even as she squatted down beside the fastly-breathing beast and laid her trembling hand against its wild fur, gently examining the matted flesh and hot wounds underneath the collar.

”Who would do such a thing,” said the girl. “Messa Blake, of all the cruel and derelict things a human could do, how—“

”You are a wonderful student, Glour’eya. Likely one of the best,” said the Mother Sempstress O’ania as they sat in her quarters and drank tea. O’ania had never been a warm creature, and despite the heat of the Glass Sands, she always had icicles in her voice and chilled steel in her eyes. Her voice had a smoky quality, a treacherous rasp.

”Thank you,” said the seamstress, feet folded properly at the ankle, tea lofted, free hand supporting her elbow the way proper tea should be held. “I work very hard to be the best.”

”The other girls are afraid of you. That is a fine accomplishment. It shows me you take pride in your work.”

Gloria raised her chin and said, “If they try to take the work I embroider for your assignments, I make them bleed. Last week, I knocked out Pardah’s second upper tooth; just this morning, Marlera-Mas cuffed me in the back of my head to take my sampler.”

”And did you beat her?”

”I kicked her in the ribs until she vomited up her breakfast through her nose.”

”Good child,” O’ania said, sugaring her tea. “And what is the rule we never break?”

”Never break their fingers, Mother; never make them unable to work a seam or draw a thread.”


How could someone do such a wretched thing, she wondered, to a creature? Of course, she had beaten girls senseless back home, but that was the way of it, wasn’t it? She had been stronger and fatter than the rest of them; they had never once taken her embroidery and said it was their own. Yet, distress darkened the girl’s eyes as she examined the collar, and she said under her breath, “I’m sorry – I’m sorry,” to the animal.

With clumsy efficiency, she helped Blake drag the unconscious cha’har into the stable, and once they had unhanded the striped beast, she set instantly to work from her muddy pouch. Jittery fingers worked thread through the eyes of bone-needles.
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Re: Agitation

Postby Greets » Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:53 am

The red tendrils of pain at the edges of her vision faded leaving simple darkness. A minute pinpoint of light becomes noticeable. She turns her attention to it and it begins to grow. As it does, she realizes she is warm, as if her mother was once again curled around her as she had done when she was small. She sighs contentedly. The gesture reflects in her physical form. The light is now an ambient glow, revealing the soft grey surrounding her as if a warm fog might. The grey changes, evolving into the stark steel bars and sparsely clad cell she had spent her entire life in. Once she no longer needed the care of a mother, she had been taken away. Soft, distraught mewling snakes it’s way to her ears. Her ears search for the source of the sound and her physical form twitches it’s ears, searching. Her dream self reaches her large sturdy paws through the bars and wishes for the slim, dexterous ones that are both ever so useful and the agents of pain and despair. The dreamscape flashes, bright, blinding. She blinks the glare spots from her vision, wrapping her hands around the bars. She tilts her head in puzzlement, staring at the pale, delicate fingers. She follows fingers to hand, hand to arm, arm to shoulder and finally realizes this is herself. She ponders this. She decides that this is OK and swiftly flips the latch of her cage open.

Her physical form shivers and morphs, powerful orange furred limbs shortening and growing pale. The once gorgeous coat of sunset fur dissolves, replaced by alabaster skin. The sounds of splortching muscles and grating bone are heard, though the sounds are not overly loud. The process happens slowly, and unless one was watching for it it might be missed. The chaos dissipates, a slim, wiry young girl of indeterminate age with long orange hair lies in place of the unconscious creature. Her left shoulder is in ruins with the remains of a blade protruding from the wound. The wound between her shoulder blades still present and bleeding slightly. The wounds the collar left on the beast reflected on the fair skin of her throat. Her pale body shows many scars across her back and one ear is notched. Though this all she has made nary a sound.

Once she makes the decision, the vision of the cage fades and she is contentedly warm again. She has the feeling that she has done something right. She feels an approving nose bump and smells the sweet breath of the Mother.
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Greets
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Joined: Mon Dec 10, 2012 11:51 am
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