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Home » Search » Roster » Whitepages » Records » FAQ » Guidebook
Make Your Heart a Compass
Open Rainforest Cliffs 
Virga
Currently championing: None
#1
this town is only gonna get worse

Vegetation claws at your flanks. The farther you journey, the thicker the forest closes in. Shadows scurry and press against the trunks just beyond the scope of your vision. Pricked ears follow their movements with care but you don't know what you're tracking. If they're even alive. The horror of this place rubs off on your skin and clings to you like grease. You want to go home, but for the first time in your life, there is no home to go back to.

It aches.

Like colic would feel, you think: a sick sucking pain buried deep in your guts. But pain at least is easy to spin into other things - into action. It's a reason to hate this place, to learn whatever gods made it and then teach them the might of your own deities, true deities. You want to break this new world open at the seams.

It keeps you going, at least: through the dark, past the sickly lights dancing like winsome faeries between the trees. The farther you go, the heavier the air pools in your lungs: damp and green. Despite the cool touch of the air against your flanks, lines of salt crust your black skin like the cliff sides back home. Exhaustion is an anchor, a steady weight. It cries against rage for dominating force in your psyche.

A vine slithers over your back. Wings raised in alarm stare bleakly, blackly, brokenly out.

Rage wins.

Still you're gritting your teeth when you reach the apex of your climb. And.... what did you think you might find, again? Was it the salt on the air calling you forward? Reminding you of home? But this is not home. This is a sheer drop overlooking the dance of foreign waves, and your stomach churns as your neck hangs over the edge. Once, once upon a time (a couple of hours ago) you'd have grinned to yourself and unfolded those beautiful god-given wings of yours and you'd have soared out to the distant speck of land rising from the tides. But not anymore. Not - here.

Ill temper, already filling you, overflows, and breath heaves from your lungs in a long, angry grunt. "...Fuck." You are not about to turn around and haul your sorry ass back through that hell thicket. No. You're.... you don't know, and you're angry about it. The feeling shudders out of you and your face snaps toward a floating point of pink light a few yards away. "Where am I supposed to fucking go?" you demand. Punctuating the sentence with a vengeful kick at nothing in particular, you send a piece of branch hurtling back into the darkness like a poorly made boomerang. Your attention follows its progress until it progresses no more.

Then the light is gone.

Maybe it was never there. The cliff still is, of course. And the water. And the jungle. And you - you're thinking you could really use a nap.


VIRGA
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Noitcerru
Currently championing:
#2
NOITCERRU
Coursing along the coast was full of memories for Noitcerru, most of them bad. While he had spent most of his childhood here, his earliest memories peppered with scenes like this - thresholds between the earth and the air, glittering expanses of foamed ocean ringed with the green edges of jungle and plain and forest - there was little to detract from the dangers of the sea, dangers he knew all too well. Even now there was an uncharacteristic dis-ease in his flight, a wariness that kept his eyes on the horizon for reasons a world away from his usual longing for the new, the novelty, the myth and legend of the next big thing. His wings were not waterproof, nothing stopping them from getting waterlogged and too heavy to fly. So much as a dip that went wrong was enough to keep him in the water, struggling against the tides until he was lucky enough to be cast off into the shore...if he even got that far.

With that in mind Noitcerru shouldn't have been by the coast at all. It was a deathtrap, but so, to be honest, was anywhere else. And he was attracted to danger just as much as the glint of good memories amid the rest, the chance of a diamond in the rough. History alone could not stop him; only the events of the present. And so he found himself over earth and air and water, his wings beating to keep him on  a steady current.

There was something that always attracted him to light. The shining luminescence of any object drew him in, activated some part of him that gave him no choice but to follow. The birds seemed fascinated with light too, following it with beady eyes and bobbing heads. He did the same with this light, nearing it until he saw a dark shadow by the edge. A stranger. Another horse. The effect was instantaneous. The birdman immediately approached from the side, concealing his approach with the ferns and the nearby vegetation. The pink light was nearby, but not so close as to immediately reveal his position. And he was glad. The stallion on the precipice between sea and water was...agitated. Noitcerru's ears flattened.

Something went flying by, skimming past him and further into the undergrowth. Noitcerru snorted softly with surprise, his useless legs pawing the air in alarm from the flying projectile. But the thing soon hit the earth, rolling to a stop just by his corner where he was concealed by the ferns. He stared at it, cocking his head until the object revealed itself to be a....branch.

The light had vanished; whatever it was, it had extinguished itself and left nothing but a patch of empty space where it once was. Noitcerru didn't know what it was, and didn't need to know; the Rift was full of lights and fogs and mists and dead gods, and there was often no explanation to find from its . But while the light had gone the stranger on the edge was still very present. Too present. Angry at the world, at a glance. Noitcerru studied him and raised his eyebrows at the folded wings on his back. A winged horse remaining like a hoofed, as though that was somehow...better. The thought of choosing to be on land rather than the sky was - curious. And the branch? The birdman sniffed it casually, his nostrils flaring as he turned to look at the stranger and his foul-mouthed outburst. Well, that just invited a response.

His feathered friend over there had looked away as soon as the branch met its destination; looking back at him, the birdman could see his attention was on other things. As soon as he was relatively sure he wasn't being observed he went up to the edge, where the vegetation stopped and the great vault of blue began. His wings beat in gentle arcs to propel him closer, moving slowly as to conceal his approach. The branch was teetering on the very brink, one second away from falling to the blue depths below; reaching over, his lips parted and his teeth closed around the bark.

And then it went flying, thrown back towards the black pegasus whence it came to, hopefully, bonk him on the nose.

"Talk." @Virga

run boy run
this world is not made for you
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as above, so below.
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Virga
Currently championing: None
#3
this town is only gonna get worse

You still aren't paying attention, Virga.

Blame exhaustion if you must - or the frustrated, fractured rage pounding in your skull. But you don't hear any noise of breaking underbrush. You don't hear the pound of wings, though likely you should. You're too busy staring at the ocean, feeling sorry for yourself, hating everything about the way this foreign air slithers across your skin. You've forgotten the stick, which never mattered, anyway, until it comes spinning back out of the darkness just like an actual boomerang and hits you right square in the middle of your pretty, pretty face.

Your pretty face contorts first with surprise, then rage, then fear black as the darkest part of your eyes. Your body twists instinctively in the direction of the attack, eyes scouring the thick forest, as your wings flap and flare. For a moment, you forget about the sheer drop off to your left. You only know attack, know something wants to kill you.

Gold glitters behind the leaves and boughs. Gold, and feathers, and your eyes narrow as you track it, your hooves leading you backward along the edge. The long, long spire of your horn drops just slightly, but in all honesty you aren't going to be doing much fighting right now. Your body already aches with the distance and horror of your months-long journey. It wants only to fling itself to the ground and sleep.

"What do you want?" you manage to grind out. It's downright civil, actually, and you'd be proud of yourself if only because your father would probably, barely, approve of that - but you don't have the presence of mind to be proud or anything else. You're all wires, bunched and trembling, ears slicked back and body tense, your stupid wings hooded like a vulture sitting over a kill. You don't even know if the creature back there can speak, or if it's real.

VIRGA
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@Noitcerru I am slow, but happy you replied here :D
Noitcerru
Currently championing:
#4
NOITCERRU
The birdman did not expect his aim to fly so true. To hit the legs, perhaps - a fetlock, or if he was lucky a rib. Some contact would be better than none. The stick was not thrown with too much force, not meant to seriously injure; Noitcerru was at a bad angle, and throwing was ungainly anyway. But a childish delight crossed his features as the stick hit its target, an infectious grin slipping over his face like a slick of oil. He couldn’t have got a better reaction! The male was tossing and turning and looking around  as though expecting another assault, and if he had had another stick Noitcerru might’ve considered it. As it was he watched with amusement, not moving an inch as the stallion realised he was not alone. It was comic - more than that, it was downright hilarious.

It was time to put him out of his misery.

He chattered, short sharp chirps ringing with laughter like sleigh bells - like jabs in the silence, needle-knifepoints serrating against the deep growl of the other male. His own wings grew wider like a banner flying free, pinions expanding to their full wingspan and propelling him out of the undergrowth and out from cover with all the ease of a stallion who had spent his life in flight and flight alone.  Off the edge of the cliff, suspended with stable beats and treading the air with his withered legs, he could not be touched by any hoofed on the ground - and he knew it. But this horse was not just a hoofed, and agile wings were pinned to his back just as they were to Noitcerru. He kept his distance, aware that this individual could follow him. Pfft. Indignation rose in his throat like bile. He could follow - he could certainly try. But being caught was quite a different matter, and it was there that he knew his talents lay. The thought invited something young and boyish in him, and the temptation of making life even more difficult for this man for his own amusement, teasing at his anger and poking at his irritation and prompting a chase, glimmered in his mind, tempting every part of him that was young and loved the thrill of the pursuit - particularly one he thought he’d win.  

But even he had his limits, and he wanted to savour this. He looked down at the male with barely concealed amusement. He was on edge, every muscle tense; the birdman could see that from here. His quick reaction was the lightning-fast, electric response of pure instinct and nerves - and perhaps he would have felt bad about that, but he was not the sort to linger on the past nor to regret, if he ever knew how to - or if he’d ever learnt that one had to regret, or that time went in a straight line. But he still looked at this male with curiosity - with the same curiosity that came with everything. It would be a shame, he decided, for this stranger to get too close to the cliff. He didn’t have malicious intent, after all. Intent, certainly, but not…not of that kind.

The male was like the very reflection of Noitcerru - not in similarity, but in sheer and utter difference. Black all over, it was almost as if his shadow had come to life. Or so Noitcerru thought, looking at this male with all of the curiosity he had for those who could walk. This stallion could fly just as much as he could - that was obvious - but it was that other side that so fascinated him, the physical and the grounded amongst the intellectual and the upper echelons.

He was still looking at the male as he spoke. "Did I startle? You?"  He spoke with a foreign inflection - but he lacked the hesitation of a beginner, hurtling himself into the language and frankly not caring if he didn’t pronounce anything oddly. His accent was blended with several, twisting and turning as he spoke like a living creature through his speech; a mesh of many accents in one, borrowed inflection from one and nicking stress from another, staggering through the common tongue of the Rift - and of the Helovians, too. Whether this stallion was one or the other Noitcerru could not yet tell - not that it changed anything. They were all the same, were they not? And still could be hit with sticks.

Speaking of which…he spoke again, his words, of course, undercut with wicked humour. "You should not throw anything that should not come back. All comes back in the end. Don’t you? Think?" The birdman chirruped brightly, apparently very pleased with himself - or at least thinking he was utterly hilarious. In his mind this male was practically asking for it. "Don’t want anything. Anything. What would I want?" He turned his head on one side quizzically, feigning confusion - until he came up with a smug answer. "More sticks?"

"Talk." @Virga

run boy run
this world is not made for you
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No it's alright, sorry for the delay!
as above, so below.
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