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Rainforest Cliffs shadow play - Printable Version

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shadow play - Gwyn - 07-14-2017

Her father had found a cave in the towering, vine laden cliffs which was suitably large enough for several unicorns at once.  Though it meant rotating out the dry spots, it did give the foals, at least, a safe and dry place to sleep, out of the constant rain, but the fallen in caverns along the stone effacement also had left the adults on edge about this one, especially when they hadn’t found many others of comparable size.  Not sure what that suggested, Gwyn found she didn’t really care.
 
She didn’t understand why they couldn’t be grateful.  They were still alive, and they had found a place to sleep.  It was dry, and when she snuggled up with Arleigh or her parents, it was warm.  The creepy smoke and glowing things weren’t out here, and though the sounds of beasts out there roared and cackled and peered through the shadows with blinking eyes, they had not been attacked.  It was a naïve perspective; the girl was too young to really understand the desperation of the situation they had been thrown into.  She did not know that the plants she had been fed each day might have killed her, because the adults didn’t know what they were, or that the cave she found so safe and comforting could fall in at any moment, due to the incessant rain; she did not understand that, though they had not yet been attacked, they most certainly would.
 
So she wandered.
 
It most certainly not wise, but Gwyn was not yet these things.  Plodding along slowly, the rain dripping down the oversized leaves of the jungle foliage above, she looks everywhere, seeing the world through a child’s eyes:  strange, magical, new.  Her heart does not thrum with fear, for her parents are near, and will save her, and she has never met danger at all.  What is out in the world for her is discovery, and the lonesome princess would discover all that she could.
 
Finding a particularly huge tree, its roots so numerous that she was sure it would take her days or weeks to count them all (if she knew that many numbers), Gwyn steps towards it with amazement writ across every inch of her face.  What an amazing tree!  She nearly gasps aloud, but doesn’t, the sort to keep things to herself – at least, so far.  Instead, a quiet murmur of awe slips through the air, her small hooves carrying her about its base, ice blue eyes searching its far away canopy.


@Galahad


RE: shadow play - Zahra - 07-17-2017

The nauseating, neon lights of that creepy portal-point lay far, far behind, like a magenta burp across the northern horizon, and quite frankly the arachnophile was pleased to be rid of the penetrating, white eyes and licking, hungry shadow. Although the cosy, uninviting nature of tangled vine and dense vegetation through and around the region did truly appeal to her reclusive, cold character, the harrowed resonation of those plunging from the previous dimension, together with the constant inconvenience of their bumbling stupor, proved too much for her slim belt of tolerance to bear.
 
The level of her dissatisfaction was neither soothed when one dear sister had fled at random into the whispering wilds, without strength of their bond to reel on back. An uncomfortable night (and a less than pleasant day), had been spent impatiently waiting, but Hannah just never returned.
 
So it was that the spider-girl and her faithful pet came to dwell in a forest far less wonderful.
 
Tall timber cast long eerie and unnatural shade across the littered, pathless floor of the rainforest; should the sun have been smiling stupidly down upon it all - that might have made more sense. As it were, however, rain was bucketing down upon her, still, and so leaden and low were the gathered clouds against the canopy that any other (denser) traveller, could have been forgiven for believing night had fallen. Reluctantly she had been forced from her aerial ambition with saturated feathers and an irritated mind.
 
For a good length of time she and Ilham searched for a reliable shelter (leaves here, though large, filled like vessels and then purged their burden into the undergrowth below), until at last they came upon the edge of the world. Disgruntled, and still hounded by divinity’s sniggering tears, the arachophile was forced to skirt the slippery, rocky cliff side – with an obnoxious sea of fog to obscure view of whatever life (or death), lay beyond. A smirk sliced through her sour expression as thought of a fresh finale crossed her mind.
 
‘Turn back…’ came the lucid, logical voice of reason – like a tsunami through her plot.
 
“Of course,” she retorted softly, with unnecessary (and not wholly intended), bitterness. Legs pivoted lethargically atop the sudden dead weight of her hooves, but together she and the spider made it safely back into the bush. A short time later, they came upon the ridiculously vast trunk of a tree (perhaps even a pillar holding up the rotting base heaven), though as she settled to stew beneath the cover of one descending root, another someone appeared, around the girth.
 
A heavy sigh vented from soggy, velvet rims and a spray of water burst forth from their midst.
 
“Are you lost?” Gruff tone questions promptly, prepared to deter the child onto a less ‘interactive’ course. Sodden feathers fasten unforthcomingly around her barrel, and though her ears wander through the unfamiliar tune of this wet world, pale, golden eyes a fixed snug upon the black.

“Like delicate lace,
So the threads intertwine,
Oh, gossamer web
Of wond'rous design!
Such beauty and grace
Wild nature produces...
Ughh, look at the spider
Suck out that bug's juices!”


― Bill Watterson, Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
Image

@Gwyn - I hope you guys don't mind (I can scoot her out)


RE: shadow play - Galahad - 07-17-2017

It was a curse. He’d heard them use that word…thought he knew what it meant. A curse. The pale gold colt slipped through the woods and bush, careful not to let another shrub fall prey to his white flames. Whatever a curse was, it had happened to him, and it was bad. Very bad. So bad when he’d asked Da (usually easy going and willing to answer) he’d been told in a not nice way to go to sleep. How could he sleep when he was cursed?! Especially when he didn’t even know what that meant?!


So he hadn’t gone to sleep. He’d come out here. Finding in himself a surprising stubborn streak fueled by pride. Without Haldir. Without Casca. Without anyone. Of course that only carried him so far before the question returned. Was he cursed? His mind tried to wrap around what had happened, but the light had been so bright…then they’d just appeared. In a pool of rain water he’d admired them, thought them comforting cool the way they let drift gentle warmth on his back, and lite the world around him. Had they not set a bush…and then several bushes after that, he might even like them. But they were trouble…Big trouble. He knew that the moment Ma had to nudge him aside as they lay to sleep…least he burn her.


A sound breaks his thoughts. Da had taught his sons well basic skills of listening, really listening, and stealthing. Slowly the colt takes more note of his steps, avoid the branches and leaves which might rustle. Da had magic to help him, but his sons did not, they had to learn, as he reminded them. Now more than ever in this hostile world. Whatever that was. It sounded bad though. Why did everything sound bad lately?


He steps around a knot of roots to finally find them. A Pegasus mare, and foal. The pale colt hesitates for a moment, but as he hears the mare’s question he comes round the bend of roots. Sea eyes look from one creature to another, only glancing up to the canopy of the tree. He leans towards the more youthful one, his own instincts drawn to her. Remember some happy fleeting moments with Castiella and her twin…of fun. Yet his voice catches at what to say. What to ask. So only a small “Hello” dips out. What did Ma and Da usually say when he met horses? Ah, why was this always so hard? “Who are you?”

OOC: Still sans table...sorry. Must fix that soon.
@Gwyn @Zahra


RE: shadow play - Gwyn - 07-17-2017

Another is beneath the tree, and Gwyn comes upon her with surprise. She is an adult, which immediately raises flags within the filly’s mind (strangers, her parents called them), but she is a pretty one, marked with gold, like her father, with wings, like Arleigh. Arching her already graceful neck, Glacia’s daughter silently regards the stranger from a safe distance with luminous, pale blue eyes, her slight smile fluttering into a frown when she is tersely asked, are you lost?

She shakes her head no.

I don’t think so,” she proudly but quietly states, turning her head to look upon the boy who has arrived among them. His hello is timid, unlike her well articulated greetings and words; though soft, and not overtly ostentatious, what Gwyn did say was said with firm conviction. The tenderness of the colt alongside her is interesting, and she spends a moment searching his face, as if there is something to be revealed there, other than he is handsome, and adorned with ivory and gold.

They all match, she notices, her lips tilting up; she is the darkest, and the boy brightest, while the sassy stranger is a blend of both.

Gwyn,” she answers, “who are you?


RE: shadow play - Zahra - 07-17-2017

The small black, the foal, seemed little deterred by the distinct show of unfriendliness and that youthful defiance, her confidence, spurred the long gold-fringed tail behind to flick sharply. Had the Zahra ever been so brash? More often than she might have preferred, vision of younger days returned to suggest that a happier, adventurous soul had once existed - shell collections, clover prisoners - yet it was always so difficult to decipher the fact from the fiction… The barrage of memories was always so wild and obscure, and there were times revisited that she could just not fit into her short-spanned existence. 

As the tiny chiselled face shakes in answer, beloved golden hue catches her eye. Seconds before, she felt little inclined to explore the bug-sized stranger, yet as her pale eyes drank still more of the filly’s exterior, curiosity reared its unpopular face. 

One ear swung pensively backwards as the spider-mare regarded the quiet words stated.

Another had already materialised through the veil of leaf and rain, similar in size to the (apparently), resolved little girl, and as her company’s head swivelled to notice, Zahra too shifted focus.

What was this? 

The image of another - another - burned through her mind with all of the ferocity, vibrancy, of forked lightning. This time, there was clarity before her squeezed eyes; a tall stallion, golden against a field of fresh snow - with a putrid pasty horn jutting from the skin above each eye (she couldn’t place the reason for her racism, only that it was as much a burden in her heart as the pit of blackness in her soul). With an unsettled feeling churning in her gut, the arachnophile beheld the marine-eyed colt’s arrival with unbridled wariness. 

And inhospitable silence. 

As though caught in slow motion - at least according to Zahra - he manoeuvred a few concluding steps across bold buttress-roots to be with them. 

'Hello,' he greeted in a puny, pathetic voice and honey gaze retired with rising weariness, to the world of emerald giants beyond him. 

The deliberately aimless wandering of her mind was culled suddenly and her attention lured back, by the sound of the filly’s firmer voice. 'Gwyn,' she revealed to the unanimous question as it hung on unanswered, above the pitter-patter of relentless falling water. “Cute…” the oldest muttered with feigning interest, aiming a narrowed glance towards the boy before then sharing her name. “Zahra.”

“Like delicate lace,
So the threads intertwine,
Oh, gossamer web
Of wond'rous design!
Such beauty and grace
Wild nature produces...
Ughh, look at the spider
Suck out that bug's juices!”


― Bill Watterson, Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
Image

@Galahad


RE: shadow play - Galahad - 07-17-2017

The younger one he likes. She smiles to him, and the colt can feel a warmth spread through him, beyond just the flames upon his back. She was older than he, but not by much. Her sturdy voice and mind reminded him of his other friend and he feels pulled up by it. His own voice was thereby stronger than before when he answers. “I’m Galahad.” His head dips, but then he turns to the older mare.

All the warmth he felt nearly blew out as he met her narrowed icy stare. His harks twist back slightly, suddenly unsure and feeling he interrupted. He’d done that with Ma and Da before, but they hadn’t been like this. Of course, maybe the other foal had disturbed her? Woken her? The colt took a step back, but he tries to keep going. Castiella had been…a bit much to take in, but he liked her in the end. “Nice to meet you…” It trails, showing his unsure grasp of the situation and her glances.


The colt had not been exposed to hate before. Though Da and Ma had been very open at the world, and the colt knew fear, loneliness and others he shouldn’t yet, he hadn’t found hate. Not that he could name this either. All the colt could tell was the mare seemed cold hearted. It was hard for the babe to even know it was directed to him. So when he shifted with awkwardness that he couldn’t even identify, he voice returned to its unsure start. “Is this your tree?” His eyes look from the girl back to the older mare, unsure of the difference in the two or what he had just walked into.


OOC:: I'm sorry it is short!
@Zahra @Gwyn


RE: shadow play - Roskuld - 07-18-2017

roskuld
Still ignorant of all the trouble I'mma get us in


“No, it’s MINE.”

I didn’t even know what the kid was talking about.

“Back the fuck up off it, kid.”

But I mean, whatever.

I stepped out of the wetness, and the only reason why I wasn’t bloodstained was because of the incessant rain pouring down all over my body; besides that, you could still see the raised notches of skin under the pricks of ruined coat, the only signal of the claw-scars that raked across the front of my body.

I dunno, man. I don’t know why I decided to fuck with some kids--maybe it was because I was reaching (reaching, reaching--) for that familiar melted glow in my heart whenever a kid skipped in my path; a warmth that hadn’t belonged to me, but had belonged to a heart that was so twisted and linked to mine there was no way none of that loving ooze would find its way to my breast.

Don’t know why Chico loved kids so much--he would just spark up and glow at the sight of them. And now here was some kids, and he wasn’t around to glow (cuz he was dea--), and I guess that’s what pulled my spirit deeper into the harassed smoke of the dark, sunken place I’d fallen into.

Anyway, I uh. Came outta nowhere, my head down, pushed forward like a foraging snake; I snorted at this shot of gold-dust while his Ma (I guess) and his sister (or whatever) stood by not too far away. “Fuck off my tree, jerk,” I growled; my eyes were insolent and dark, raking from one face to the other, and the air above my back sizzled and sparked faintly in the pounding of the rain. For no real reason, honestly. I wasn’t even mad; I just wanted to see what would happen. I’d never tried being an asshole to kids before (I’d never had the heart to try it--)

My eyes fell on the silver-plate collar that circled the mare’s neck. Something about it--the way it glinted in the light, the vagueness of the gold on her coat and the way it played with her blacks and whites--something about it stirred in my memory, in the deepest recesses of my memories to something close and tender and sweet. But I wasn’t in the headspace to be able to recognize a piece of my past like that, a piece of me, so I just smirked something dirty at the mare and decided to fuck with her anyway. Ooooooh, you stole somethin’,” I sneered, my voice coming out like oil.


{OOPS CRASH OOP}

You know, the one at W. 103rd and Broadway?



x



RE: shadow play - Gwyn - 07-18-2017

The mare continues to grumpily glare at the both of them, which the girl returns with her own steadfast expression, occasionally going back to admiring the tree, or looking at Galahad, as he introduced himself, and said more quiet things. Zahra, as the somewhat terse stranger is called, complements Gwyn, which earns a smile.

Unused to children, rather than adults, the girl is at more ease talking to the older mare than she would be the youth alongside. That the boy is much less comfortable than Gwyn is obvious; he backs away, seeming ready to apologize, while she remains in place, believing, with all of her heart, that no one had a greater right than the next to be here.

So, when another arrives, and audaciously proclaims that the tree is in fact theirs, the girl turns to meet her with a gaze that is cold and distrustful. It grows all the more so when the clearly adult person begins to cuss, as well, and her tiny muzzle raises in defiance. Though Gwyn might have admired the sparks emitted by the stranger any other day, or their strange coat, all she feels now is…

Well, she’s not sure what it is, but it certainly isn’t like. Not sure what to do, but knowing that she would like the tension to come to a stop (and figuring that they'll continue arguing - she does live among the Basiners, after all), the girl looks first to Zahra, then to the crackling adult, and makes a childish decision.

I can do that too,” she states, looking at the stranger (what gender was this person, anyway? They talked awfully rough, but something about their shape…). Though her magic had initially seemed to be tied to the cold, in this land, something had changed; perhaps good, too, considering the constant chilly rain. Now, however, as Gwyn had learned after being startled a day or so after arriving, she could choose to make herself crackle and glow. So she did.

The blue light radiated and pulsed, danced and crackled; the Time God’s power, her father had laughed and said, touching her forehead, as he always did. It made her feel conflicted, to meet someone else who was touched by Time, as well, only to find that they were total jerks.


RE: shadow play - Zahra - 07-19-2017

Perhaps any other day (or maybe if the portal had just rewarded her death), the young colt might have found himself beside pleasanter company - at least the cute filly with the golden tattoo fed his apparent need for attention, smiles… whatever foals wanted. The creamy runt offered his name, Galahad, and for the most part, it seemed like all of the pleasantries were over and done with. 

Except, ‘nice to meet you…’

Expressive, obsidian ears slipped rearward, challenged by his brazen attempt to make peace through politeness. There was a skerrick of humility in the look she returned, a trace of the empath on the other side of bipolar’s spectrum, though a sharp snort soon shattered that mild-mannered sentiment. The black, with her bold stare and ‘too-old’ air of conviction, stood ground stubbornly (impressively) while the colt, like a niggling itch right up there on her withers, began to speak again.

As though out of nowhere, another - stocky, horned, and rather deranged - broad appeared to challenge every one of their tense trio. 

Should there have been hackles there upon her to bristle, they would have, right at that moment. Lips pulled instead, into a tight frown across pearly, stained teeth; though the maniac was larger, easily braver and very much more intimidating, there was a part of the arachnophile who was driven to oppose. Wielding at the pitiful colt, a tongue still fouler than any she could recall, the shiny black mare dared their defiance with menacing eyes. 

Zahra couldn’t help but notice, stare, at the water sizzling along that well-padded spine. 

The stranger glanced her way and dimpled black chin tilted instantly left, eyes dancing away across the soggy undergarments of the trees - or anything really - far, overhead. 

‘Ooooooh, you stole somethin…’ came the antagonistic bait like oxygen to the flame.

Immediately roused to bite, the golden-bellied reaffirmed her gaze. Ears turned snugly against the modest, wet slick of mane and her face lifted beneath a sprawling, incredulous expression. "I most certainly did not." Her tone, though obnoxious, wavered with hesitation for resilience wasn’t among her straggly strengths. 

Thankfully, the tiny filly (perhaps in stature only), possessed courage enough for them both, and drove that feathery, foal-like voice like a knife through the boiling atmosphere between them. 

To the coward’s surprise, alongside those childish words, a static energy began to simmer along the insignificant looking frame behind her. Legs shifted, discomforted by the very obvious glow of blue electricity, and the winged found herself sidling feather first towards the meek golden boy for any kind of reassurance. 

At least at the end of the storm, she could glue those two back together… 


“Like delicate lace,
So the threads intertwine,
Oh, gossamer web
Of wond'rous design!
Such beauty and grace
Wild nature produces...
Ughh, look at the spider
Suck out that bug's juices!”


― Bill Watterson, Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
Image



RE: shadow play - Galahad - 07-20-2017

The colt jumped, his leafen starred head turning to see the on comer. She…He…They were older too, and big, not tall but big. At first, especially given his size, the colt thinks to steps back, perhaps to leave this site all together. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable conversation and not having his father’s sass or his mother’s tact yet, the colt had nothing to combat it. He remembered his Da at the beach, how he ragged the mare, and when she gave him an earful, he did too. But the colt was not the gold, and he also remembered how he’d not enjoyed that conversation. So for now those traits are kept silent. But then the black…unicorn, drops her tongue again. At the curse something else comes over the colt, and his ears fall flat back on his skull. He may be shy, and he may be timid to the coldest of the other mare, but he was not simply that.


Then the big mare…he was pretty sure…he thought. Came straight up to him, head down, like a snake. Something began to grow hot in his chest, something that licked and lashed up his senses. He couldn’t explain it (especially not given that had the other mare said it was hers, he would have left), but it held him solidly in place, rooted to the spot. And when that mare snorted at him, the colt snorted back. He was nice enough to leave someone’s home, but he was not nice enough to let himself be bullied. He possessed enough blood from Ma and Da for that, a trait he didn’t need to be taught.


He was proud enough not to leave, but he wasn’t bold enough (yet) to speak out further. So though he did not move, he also did not speak. The older ones were doing enough for him though. As the crackling, sparking black examines the Pegasus the colt watches with care. The accusation takes him by small surprise, it shows in the tilt of his head and the lifting of one ear. But she’s quick to snap back at him, and the ear returns back. Still…he wondered. Da stole things, Ma too, they told about it in their stories. Was she like them?


Of course, there was one more who needed to have their say. The colt turns his ivory crowned head to look at her as she spoke with a boldness. Though his harks lifted back up to hear it, he liked it. She was brave and spoke out, and for some reason, the pale colt admired her for it, even before he knew another thing about her, so much so, that the corner of his lips lift. But then she does something rather frightful. Blue begins to arch from her back, crack and sizzling with warning of its danger. The small colts body grows rigid, but he doesn’t leave her, merely watches. He after all liked her. He thought…


One hark though does catch the sound of one of the olders..moving closer. The sea eyes glance to her, daring to look from the filly, and see the white and dark Pegasus mare. Wasn’t she annoyed by him earlier? But he doesn’t question it, (though his eyes catch site of the object in question around her neck, its craftsmanship apparent to even he), and turns back to the black and filly. He could show off his magic…. No. That was out of the question. The white flame licked feathers on his back were enough, even for him. He doesn’t want to remain silent though…the filly hadn’t. But he also has nothing to show off either (though he does have some power to back him up, which fuels his small pride). “You don’t have to be rude.” ( or curse his innocent mind still thinks). He spat, but coldly, accusingly, weighed down to a flat tone of bitterness, darker than he had spoken earlier.

@Roskuld