Post by Pavane on May 28, 2010 12:35:14 GMT -5
Characters:
Soto - female Wolf
Shag - male Wolf
Niyt - female Wolf Pup
Raven Spirit (NPC)
Setting:
Storyteller's Butte - Mid Spring (RL day 4)
------------------------------------
Night has come to the Butte. Not knowing where the Pack she has been hanging around is at the moment, Soto has wandered back up to the rocks, away from the Oasis, to get a better look at something-- And, it being Soto, she is singing softly to this something while looking at it way over her head. "~Cold moon, lonely as can be, sailing where the starlight fades to blue. Don't you sometimes feel like me? Wish the friends you dream about were true? And they would sail away with you, sail away with you. Some day, you may tumble down, sad because your light is nearly through. Moon, stay, I will search around, climb until your light is nearly new. And then I will sail away with you, sail away with you.~" She smiles to herself, tail curling at her hip, petite forepaws pressed together as she sits, staring up with those curious eyes at the light above.
Shag is standing tall and still, watching at the base of the Butte, perched up as high as he'll go to keep a steady footing. He's looking out over the desert wasteland, silent and stony as the great rock behind him. The night sky is reflected in his starry pelt, and he takes a deep breath as he hears Soto's singing coming closer. He doesn't look towards her. He's attentive to the empty space beyond himself, and beyond that too. Whatever has Soto's attention is not noticed by Shag. He seems alert. Ready. Prepared for... anything, really.
Niyt is sleeping, tucked under a small bush nearby, sprawled out onto her side. Her breaths are slow and even, and she doesn't stir as Soto approaches, singing her song. The desert seems... expectant, tonight. Soto's voice stands out, and yet it doesn't seem to touch the stillness that permeates this flat land, stretched from horizon to horizon and simply... waiting. But waiting for what?
Ears perk, and eyes close, as a sudden wind dances, ruffling Soto's fur, and she falls quiet, the tune lost to a soft hum in her throat. Eyes open again; but this time, almost drunk in their hazy quality. "Mother.." She murmurs softly, "I hear you mother... What is it..? This land here waits, anticipates something. What comes, mother?" Her whispering accents the glaze to those skyblue eyes, and her tail, dipping into a limp state, expresses her own mental state of... not being all there at the moment, hearing something in the wind. Something is coming.. And for a moment, Soto slips from a conscious state into that of a walking dream, seeing, yet not seeing; standing in anticipation as well.
Shag looks down at Soto before him, raising an eyebrow, and wanders down next to her, the stars on his back shimmering. "Shush," he says quietly. "They're here. And they..." He blinks and peers into the night. Shadows shift, somehow, on the ground, and the moonlight is distorted by wind rushing over the ground. "Something's arrived," Shag murmurs. And they can hear it, the two of them, and maybe Niyt too... a voice. A breath on the wind, spoken of nature and not of a throat like theirs. It gets louder, speaking words nobody understands anymore.
The wind gusts over to Niyt, after ruffling over Soto. It shivers through the branches of the bush, making the small leaves there rattle, and ruffles up along the fur of her back - and she opens her eyes. For a moment longer, she simply lies there, but as that voice begins to speak, the pup rolls onto her belly, and slowly draws herself to her feet, her ears perked. A pup without speech of her own yet, the words seem less strange, perhaps, than they do to the adults; for a pup's babble contains fragments of ancient words, long lost - and she has not yet forgotten all those fragments in order to learn the tongues of modern times. She stands listening, to a voice of nature that she does not yet know is strange.
Soto can hear it; whether she does or not is not easily judge at first, for her eyes have gone cloudy, stare dead ahead at nothing; like a trance has befallen the she-wolf. For a moment, it almost seems as if hr blue eyes glow with light reflected from the moon, and then she answers Shag back with a hiss: "I know they are here.. they come with a message; all spirits do." She starts to sway a little, humming to herself a low, atonal noise.
The shadows around seem as flighty as the dust, kicked up and blown by gusts of wind. One of them separates from the ground, blustered and dark, a piece of black that floats in midair. It zips towards the two wolves. And then, alighting on a nearby cactus, is a raven, cawing loudly as it appears. It peers at them through one coal black eye, and then the other. "Two!" it squawks. "Two chances... both with equal chance of failure!" It preens itself lightly. "Neither understand. Gotta learn to babble before you can speak!"
Niyt takes one slow step forward, then another. The wind teases through her soft grey fur. It draws her, brings her like a small grey cloud through the night skies. She tilts her head to one side to better catch the sound as she listens - oh, she listens! The one that now speaks is newly come, and yet it has been whispered about by all the smaller voices that make up the spirits in the everyday, the soft rhythm of the world that some can hear. Those other voices are quiet, now, as a pack is silent when the alpha speaks. That silence is stranger to Niyt than the raven's voice.
Glazed and gleaming eyes glitter; Soto steps forward toward the cactus solemnly, her ears cupped forward, her blind-yet-seeing form stopping before it, as she sits, and seems to stare. Then she speaks; as if not completely there: "Babble, oh winged one- that we may hear. Let us know with hearts more than ears." She seats herself, that low toning coming from her again; as if she were trying to thin of a song, but were incapable; as if something lingers just on the tip of her snout to be said and yet cannot find its way out.
Shag watches the raven warily, his eyes wide with respect, admiration... and is that fear? Yes, it's fear. The big papa wolf is afraid. He knows, he's seen this flying omen before, and it's spoken to him several times. The raven regards Soto carefully, tilting its head back and forth. It leans forward to the female and seems to sniff, if that's possible for a bird. After a few moments of silence, it speaks again. "You will die."
More words; they pass over Niyt without her comprehension, and she listens to the tones instead. Her eyes seek out the raven's form, trying to fix upon it - and yet his shape seems as incomprehensible to her as his words, and she keeps finding instead the shadows that make him up, the darkness in the world that has taken form, as it has voice, and now shows itself. She tries to look deeper, to listen harder, too young to understand how frightened she should be - that her guardians are as helpless before this manifestation as she is, and unaware that she, too, has been drawn by it.
"We all die, we all die, we all die.." Responds Soto without real tone. She continues to stare at the raven, even as it speaks of her demise. "We all die, and then we float, and the wind carries us along; the stars guide us to the moon, where we go to meet those who came before us." She sways a little in her seat on the ground, again staring, yet not. "We all die, we all die, we all die in the end, and then we become the dust and wind."
"Babbling," the raven says almost disdainfully. It flaps its wings and Shag takes a few steps back, eyes ever upon it. The fluttering makes his silhouette shimmer and shake. "Stop babbling! Have to find the truth! You are babes, yet. Must grow. Or you get *snicked!*" The great black bird clacks its beak sharply, like a guillotine slamming shut. It caws at Shag. "He knows. Ask him! You've already failed." Without warning, tt takes wing and circles them, three times, cawing with each complete circle. "Power of earth moved by water! Small enough to trample, big enough to trip! Everything changes to stay the same!" Shag hangs his head miserably, as if some hidden, distressing message was revealed to him. He doesn't move from his spot, staring at the ground in silence. The raven returns to the cactus and hops back and forth, impatient. "Will not /float/ when you die. Crunch. And snap. And break. And twist. He's here. He's coming. He will eat your eyes. Not these!" It points at its own eye. "The ones that let you /See./"
Ears lay back, and Soto suddenly breaks that odd continuous tone to let out a low, moaning howl. it comes from somewhere in her stomach, and ripples out, low, and odd, almost as if she were calling from the very earth to the sky and turning herself inside out. Once the sound dies away, Soto hangs her head... then weaves a bit as she stands, and shakes her head out. Slowly the cognition is returning to her eyes, but she seems still ... awake and yet not. She turns to look to Shag, and half-moans out softly, "Shaaaag... He speaks words that sound like something is going to come from the river.. like water is going to raise up and cover the land... Would the Ancestors truly do that again..?"
The wind is soft, now nearly still, and the spirits that it carries - those long dead, those newly dead, those who have never lived - slip past quietly. Niyt sits back on her haunches as the raven takes to the air and circles overhead, watching up at that bird-shape, shadow-shape, not a shape at all but a sense makes a tripled circle, round like the sun at day, round like the moon at night, round like the bowl of the heavens that the wind travels through. She catches the agitation of the bird, the misery it provokes in Shag, and she stares all the harder at that strange bird-not-bird shadow that refuses to clarify itself to her sight, to her eyes, to what it is that lets her see.
The raven begins to laugh. It's a high, cackling, unwelcome and grating sound. It doesn't stop until it fixes Soto with a glare. "Can't say! Too much already. Shamans so smart. You figure it out! I'm just the messenger!" Shag shakes his head. "No... no, it... the /bear,/ Soto, the bear. We can't go back to the forest, now. It's not safe." "Failed!" the raven declares. "All of you, both of you, failed. Lost contact with the Mission. Can't walk on Wild Roads no more! Tell me. What is the most important thing on a log over a river?" Shag opens his mouth to answer, but the raven squawks at him. "Shut up, know it all!" it screeches, and turns to Soto expectantly.
Niyt's ear flicks at the sound of the raven's laughter, and she ducks her head down for a moment, letting out a soft little whine, a small whisper of noise in response to the strangeness, the mocking chaos that is the shadow-bird. She opens her mouth a little, the thought of trying to catch the bird slipping through her thoughts - but then she closes it again. How can she catch something she can't quite see? She hesitates, unwilling to flee yet not understanding, not knowing what it is that is before her.
"The most important thing on a log over the river is what can cross the log to make it to the other side." Soto replies, grimly, having starts to shake the cobwebs away, bringing her back to something of her former, if not completely trippy self. "The forests?" She looks to Shag then, ears laying back, "There's a bear loose in the woods, there's a bear loose in the woods.." She frowns.. and then moves over toward Niyt, dipping her head, to try and nuzzle the puppy, gingerly.
"Pfft," the raven replies, blowing out its breath and seeming quite disappointed. "Just what I thought," it says, shaking its large head slowly, pecking the cactus with its large beak. "Wrong, wrong, wrong! Wrong answer. You," it says to Shag. "Bring the stars out of the sky and into their eyes." Shag nods, slowly, seemingly comprehending the message. The raven looks over at the pup, shaking its head again. "Sad. Build a future where there is none for /you./" It leaps off the cactus and zooms straight overhead above Niyt, buzzing Soto as it goes, and before it even gets more than a few feet, it is gone, melted away into shadows once more. The desert returns to normal, for now.
Watch the bird, the strange shadow, the spirit-shape. Niyt's attention is on it, ignoring Soto as she moves towards the pup, as she nuzzles the unmoving Niyt who has no answer for a question she does not understand - but perhaps her steadfast searching towards the bird says something of her thoughts. Don't stop. The motion is not physical, and yet - there is a motion in seeking, and the pup is intent on it - and then the bird flies over her, and she sits back onto her haunches, staring at the space where it once was as the usual sounds of the desert - the soft calls of night birds, the whispers of the spirits of the place - rise once more, now that the eerie presence has departed.
Ears slick back as Soto seems to come fully to herself, trying to comfort Niyt, but at the same time, looking up to Shag, and asking, "... Shag... What did he mean? I.. I am not well trained... I wish to know more. I wish to know so I can help. So she can live." She looks down to Niyt, with concern; even if the pup is not her own, she worries about her all the same. She looks up from the pup, then adds, softly, "... Mother said once, to see a black bird was to see death coming.."
Shag, at last, seems to notice his own daughter in the middle of all this. Immediately, he heads for her and moves to pluck her up by the scruff of her neck. "You shouldn't be watching this," he reprimands her in a husky, tired voice. But the fact that she's seen it means she was meant to. His eyes are haunted as he heads back for the butte. He looks over his shoulder at Soto. "Didn't you hear him? Death's already here," he says simply around the pup in his mouth. "Don't worry. You'll learn." And he keeps walking.
Ears lay back as the she-wolf frowns, and nods, then turns away, to look up to her friend the moon. "... Mother, I wish you were here for me now.. I wish you could explain these things instead of just whisper things to me.." ... She sighs, shakes her head, and turns away, slinking to the shadow of the rocks, and plopping into then, hunkering down, an looking... confused and forlorn.
Niyt doesn't resist as Shag picks her up, carries her back with him. She's tired, worn from the strangeness she's witnessed, the power she can't yet understand - if she ever will - that nevertheless draws her. This will be the stuff of strange dreams, and perhaps dreams that touch upon these spirits once again. Time will tell - it always does. And it always leads to death, now... or later.
Soto - female Wolf
Shag - male Wolf
Niyt - female Wolf Pup
Raven Spirit (NPC)
Setting:
Storyteller's Butte - Mid Spring (RL day 4)
------------------------------------
Night has come to the Butte. Not knowing where the Pack she has been hanging around is at the moment, Soto has wandered back up to the rocks, away from the Oasis, to get a better look at something-- And, it being Soto, she is singing softly to this something while looking at it way over her head. "~Cold moon, lonely as can be, sailing where the starlight fades to blue. Don't you sometimes feel like me? Wish the friends you dream about were true? And they would sail away with you, sail away with you. Some day, you may tumble down, sad because your light is nearly through. Moon, stay, I will search around, climb until your light is nearly new. And then I will sail away with you, sail away with you.~" She smiles to herself, tail curling at her hip, petite forepaws pressed together as she sits, staring up with those curious eyes at the light above.
Shag is standing tall and still, watching at the base of the Butte, perched up as high as he'll go to keep a steady footing. He's looking out over the desert wasteland, silent and stony as the great rock behind him. The night sky is reflected in his starry pelt, and he takes a deep breath as he hears Soto's singing coming closer. He doesn't look towards her. He's attentive to the empty space beyond himself, and beyond that too. Whatever has Soto's attention is not noticed by Shag. He seems alert. Ready. Prepared for... anything, really.
Niyt is sleeping, tucked under a small bush nearby, sprawled out onto her side. Her breaths are slow and even, and she doesn't stir as Soto approaches, singing her song. The desert seems... expectant, tonight. Soto's voice stands out, and yet it doesn't seem to touch the stillness that permeates this flat land, stretched from horizon to horizon and simply... waiting. But waiting for what?
Ears perk, and eyes close, as a sudden wind dances, ruffling Soto's fur, and she falls quiet, the tune lost to a soft hum in her throat. Eyes open again; but this time, almost drunk in their hazy quality. "Mother.." She murmurs softly, "I hear you mother... What is it..? This land here waits, anticipates something. What comes, mother?" Her whispering accents the glaze to those skyblue eyes, and her tail, dipping into a limp state, expresses her own mental state of... not being all there at the moment, hearing something in the wind. Something is coming.. And for a moment, Soto slips from a conscious state into that of a walking dream, seeing, yet not seeing; standing in anticipation as well.
Shag looks down at Soto before him, raising an eyebrow, and wanders down next to her, the stars on his back shimmering. "Shush," he says quietly. "They're here. And they..." He blinks and peers into the night. Shadows shift, somehow, on the ground, and the moonlight is distorted by wind rushing over the ground. "Something's arrived," Shag murmurs. And they can hear it, the two of them, and maybe Niyt too... a voice. A breath on the wind, spoken of nature and not of a throat like theirs. It gets louder, speaking words nobody understands anymore.
The wind gusts over to Niyt, after ruffling over Soto. It shivers through the branches of the bush, making the small leaves there rattle, and ruffles up along the fur of her back - and she opens her eyes. For a moment longer, she simply lies there, but as that voice begins to speak, the pup rolls onto her belly, and slowly draws herself to her feet, her ears perked. A pup without speech of her own yet, the words seem less strange, perhaps, than they do to the adults; for a pup's babble contains fragments of ancient words, long lost - and she has not yet forgotten all those fragments in order to learn the tongues of modern times. She stands listening, to a voice of nature that she does not yet know is strange.
Soto can hear it; whether she does or not is not easily judge at first, for her eyes have gone cloudy, stare dead ahead at nothing; like a trance has befallen the she-wolf. For a moment, it almost seems as if hr blue eyes glow with light reflected from the moon, and then she answers Shag back with a hiss: "I know they are here.. they come with a message; all spirits do." She starts to sway a little, humming to herself a low, atonal noise.
The shadows around seem as flighty as the dust, kicked up and blown by gusts of wind. One of them separates from the ground, blustered and dark, a piece of black that floats in midair. It zips towards the two wolves. And then, alighting on a nearby cactus, is a raven, cawing loudly as it appears. It peers at them through one coal black eye, and then the other. "Two!" it squawks. "Two chances... both with equal chance of failure!" It preens itself lightly. "Neither understand. Gotta learn to babble before you can speak!"
Niyt takes one slow step forward, then another. The wind teases through her soft grey fur. It draws her, brings her like a small grey cloud through the night skies. She tilts her head to one side to better catch the sound as she listens - oh, she listens! The one that now speaks is newly come, and yet it has been whispered about by all the smaller voices that make up the spirits in the everyday, the soft rhythm of the world that some can hear. Those other voices are quiet, now, as a pack is silent when the alpha speaks. That silence is stranger to Niyt than the raven's voice.
Glazed and gleaming eyes glitter; Soto steps forward toward the cactus solemnly, her ears cupped forward, her blind-yet-seeing form stopping before it, as she sits, and seems to stare. Then she speaks; as if not completely there: "Babble, oh winged one- that we may hear. Let us know with hearts more than ears." She seats herself, that low toning coming from her again; as if she were trying to thin of a song, but were incapable; as if something lingers just on the tip of her snout to be said and yet cannot find its way out.
Shag watches the raven warily, his eyes wide with respect, admiration... and is that fear? Yes, it's fear. The big papa wolf is afraid. He knows, he's seen this flying omen before, and it's spoken to him several times. The raven regards Soto carefully, tilting its head back and forth. It leans forward to the female and seems to sniff, if that's possible for a bird. After a few moments of silence, it speaks again. "You will die."
More words; they pass over Niyt without her comprehension, and she listens to the tones instead. Her eyes seek out the raven's form, trying to fix upon it - and yet his shape seems as incomprehensible to her as his words, and she keeps finding instead the shadows that make him up, the darkness in the world that has taken form, as it has voice, and now shows itself. She tries to look deeper, to listen harder, too young to understand how frightened she should be - that her guardians are as helpless before this manifestation as she is, and unaware that she, too, has been drawn by it.
"We all die, we all die, we all die.." Responds Soto without real tone. She continues to stare at the raven, even as it speaks of her demise. "We all die, and then we float, and the wind carries us along; the stars guide us to the moon, where we go to meet those who came before us." She sways a little in her seat on the ground, again staring, yet not. "We all die, we all die, we all die in the end, and then we become the dust and wind."
"Babbling," the raven says almost disdainfully. It flaps its wings and Shag takes a few steps back, eyes ever upon it. The fluttering makes his silhouette shimmer and shake. "Stop babbling! Have to find the truth! You are babes, yet. Must grow. Or you get *snicked!*" The great black bird clacks its beak sharply, like a guillotine slamming shut. It caws at Shag. "He knows. Ask him! You've already failed." Without warning, tt takes wing and circles them, three times, cawing with each complete circle. "Power of earth moved by water! Small enough to trample, big enough to trip! Everything changes to stay the same!" Shag hangs his head miserably, as if some hidden, distressing message was revealed to him. He doesn't move from his spot, staring at the ground in silence. The raven returns to the cactus and hops back and forth, impatient. "Will not /float/ when you die. Crunch. And snap. And break. And twist. He's here. He's coming. He will eat your eyes. Not these!" It points at its own eye. "The ones that let you /See./"
Ears lay back, and Soto suddenly breaks that odd continuous tone to let out a low, moaning howl. it comes from somewhere in her stomach, and ripples out, low, and odd, almost as if she were calling from the very earth to the sky and turning herself inside out. Once the sound dies away, Soto hangs her head... then weaves a bit as she stands, and shakes her head out. Slowly the cognition is returning to her eyes, but she seems still ... awake and yet not. She turns to look to Shag, and half-moans out softly, "Shaaaag... He speaks words that sound like something is going to come from the river.. like water is going to raise up and cover the land... Would the Ancestors truly do that again..?"
The wind is soft, now nearly still, and the spirits that it carries - those long dead, those newly dead, those who have never lived - slip past quietly. Niyt sits back on her haunches as the raven takes to the air and circles overhead, watching up at that bird-shape, shadow-shape, not a shape at all but a sense makes a tripled circle, round like the sun at day, round like the moon at night, round like the bowl of the heavens that the wind travels through. She catches the agitation of the bird, the misery it provokes in Shag, and she stares all the harder at that strange bird-not-bird shadow that refuses to clarify itself to her sight, to her eyes, to what it is that lets her see.
The raven begins to laugh. It's a high, cackling, unwelcome and grating sound. It doesn't stop until it fixes Soto with a glare. "Can't say! Too much already. Shamans so smart. You figure it out! I'm just the messenger!" Shag shakes his head. "No... no, it... the /bear,/ Soto, the bear. We can't go back to the forest, now. It's not safe." "Failed!" the raven declares. "All of you, both of you, failed. Lost contact with the Mission. Can't walk on Wild Roads no more! Tell me. What is the most important thing on a log over a river?" Shag opens his mouth to answer, but the raven squawks at him. "Shut up, know it all!" it screeches, and turns to Soto expectantly.
Niyt's ear flicks at the sound of the raven's laughter, and she ducks her head down for a moment, letting out a soft little whine, a small whisper of noise in response to the strangeness, the mocking chaos that is the shadow-bird. She opens her mouth a little, the thought of trying to catch the bird slipping through her thoughts - but then she closes it again. How can she catch something she can't quite see? She hesitates, unwilling to flee yet not understanding, not knowing what it is that is before her.
"The most important thing on a log over the river is what can cross the log to make it to the other side." Soto replies, grimly, having starts to shake the cobwebs away, bringing her back to something of her former, if not completely trippy self. "The forests?" She looks to Shag then, ears laying back, "There's a bear loose in the woods, there's a bear loose in the woods.." She frowns.. and then moves over toward Niyt, dipping her head, to try and nuzzle the puppy, gingerly.
"Pfft," the raven replies, blowing out its breath and seeming quite disappointed. "Just what I thought," it says, shaking its large head slowly, pecking the cactus with its large beak. "Wrong, wrong, wrong! Wrong answer. You," it says to Shag. "Bring the stars out of the sky and into their eyes." Shag nods, slowly, seemingly comprehending the message. The raven looks over at the pup, shaking its head again. "Sad. Build a future where there is none for /you./" It leaps off the cactus and zooms straight overhead above Niyt, buzzing Soto as it goes, and before it even gets more than a few feet, it is gone, melted away into shadows once more. The desert returns to normal, for now.
Watch the bird, the strange shadow, the spirit-shape. Niyt's attention is on it, ignoring Soto as she moves towards the pup, as she nuzzles the unmoving Niyt who has no answer for a question she does not understand - but perhaps her steadfast searching towards the bird says something of her thoughts. Don't stop. The motion is not physical, and yet - there is a motion in seeking, and the pup is intent on it - and then the bird flies over her, and she sits back onto her haunches, staring at the space where it once was as the usual sounds of the desert - the soft calls of night birds, the whispers of the spirits of the place - rise once more, now that the eerie presence has departed.
Ears slick back as Soto seems to come fully to herself, trying to comfort Niyt, but at the same time, looking up to Shag, and asking, "... Shag... What did he mean? I.. I am not well trained... I wish to know more. I wish to know so I can help. So she can live." She looks down to Niyt, with concern; even if the pup is not her own, she worries about her all the same. She looks up from the pup, then adds, softly, "... Mother said once, to see a black bird was to see death coming.."
Shag, at last, seems to notice his own daughter in the middle of all this. Immediately, he heads for her and moves to pluck her up by the scruff of her neck. "You shouldn't be watching this," he reprimands her in a husky, tired voice. But the fact that she's seen it means she was meant to. His eyes are haunted as he heads back for the butte. He looks over his shoulder at Soto. "Didn't you hear him? Death's already here," he says simply around the pup in his mouth. "Don't worry. You'll learn." And he keeps walking.
Ears lay back as the she-wolf frowns, and nods, then turns away, to look up to her friend the moon. "... Mother, I wish you were here for me now.. I wish you could explain these things instead of just whisper things to me.." ... She sighs, shakes her head, and turns away, slinking to the shadow of the rocks, and plopping into then, hunkering down, an looking... confused and forlorn.
Niyt doesn't resist as Shag picks her up, carries her back with him. She's tired, worn from the strangeness she's witnessed, the power she can't yet understand - if she ever will - that nevertheless draws her. This will be the stuff of strange dreams, and perhaps dreams that touch upon these spirits once again. Time will tell - it always does. And it always leads to death, now... or later.