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 Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2024 7:32 pm
Cactus Cat: Al Pine, Jumaane, ???, ???
Mothman Plush: Harlan, Okpokoro, Jon, Doc Perish
Cursed Dagger: Sluagh, Selda
Scorpion: Martyn, Doc Perish
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Geyser Eelborn generated a random number between
1 and 3 ...
2!
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Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2024 8:49 pm
Quote: 250 words (more is fine if you want, but the blurb must be finished) about how you find, obtain, receive (etc) the Cactus Cat. If you roll a 2: The cat is somewhere between complacent to mostly tolerable to you.  There were strange things you found in wild places where few Soquili or Usdia stepped foot. But the longer Al lived in the mountain pass above the Flutter village, the more strange things Al saw, and in the end, it had to be because of how many Soquili and Usdia and other creatures passed through. Take, for instance, today’s traveler, perched on a tree stump and staring at him, the end of their long tail twitching.
Al had never seen someone like this before. They were clearly a cat—perhaps a bobcat, judging by the shape of their face and the tufts of their ears. He’d always felt a certain kinship with bobcats and lynx. He’d been a lynx in another life, and he still wore the appearance of his past life. So of all the non-Soquili creatures in the world, he was always most happy to see one of his kin. This one, though, was strange, in a way he’d never seen before. Their tail was long, for one thing, long like a cougar’s. And it was branched. And their entire body was covered in spines, like the spines of the cactus he had seen in the southern deserts when last he’d toured the world outside his mountains.
He’d never seen a person covered in spines, though, or looking so much like a cactus that had stood up and walked around on its paws.
The cat turned their head to look at him, their purple eyes haughty and disinterested. Al felt like he was being judged, and for a moment he felt annoyed, until common sense settled in.
“Sorry, I should’ve been introducing myself, not staring,” he said, ducking his head ruefully. “My name is Al Pine. What’s yours?”
The cactus cat stared at him, still silent, tail still twitching.
Al decided to press on. The cat was a stranger, after all, and it wouldn’t hurt to be polite, right? “I’m the warden around these parts. That means I help people in need. And my mate runs an inn not far from here, if you’re looking for a place to stay.”
This seemed to get the cat’s attention, though they were still trying to hide it. Still trying to look like they didn’t care at all. But Al could read a person’s body language, and more importantly, he could see how the cactus cat shivered when the breeze picked up a little. Winter was coming to the mountains, faster than it did in the lowlands, and harder than it did in the desert.
“Do you…have space for the night…?” the cactus cat said at last. She was quiet, as though afraid to admit that she might be interested in help.
Al knew better than to press the point. “We do. Good, dry caves with insulation. Dry pine needles, shed fur and feathers. We don’t allow violence against anyone who’s sapient, though, or any companions of another guest. Not that I think that will be a problem,” he added, keeping his tone steady as though it weren’t an afterthought, “just letting you know what the rules are before you agree to anything. We know it can be a deal-breaker for some folks who eat meat.”
The cat nodded slowly, eyes still narrowed. “Alright, so if someone has a rabbit companion, no attacking the rabbit, and no attacking any unaccompanied rabbit that can talk, that kind of thing?”
“Or can speak sign language with their ears or paws. We don’t generally get guests who aren’t sapient, though,” Al said. “More or less, if they’re in our cave, they can’t be hunted.”
“That’s…fair,” the cat said. The wind picked up, and this time the shivering was even more noticeable. “And your other guests?”
“We don’t have any at the moment,” he said. “But we likely will as the weather gets worse. It’ll snow tonight or tomorrow.”
The cat shifted on her paws, looking worriedly further up the pass where the terrain got higher. “Right. So. Cost. And. What happens. If there’s too many people in the cave?”
“Cost is nothing you can’t part with. If you have nothing to pay, then pay with a story or a song. And if there’s too many people in the caves, we’ll have to snuggle up close.”
“Mm.” The cactus cat’s tail twitched. “I can’t really…cuddle. I mean, I can. It’s just, most people would really rather not cuddle with me. If you get my drift.”
Al’s gaze followed hers to the end of her tail. Those spines looked sharp, sharp enough to cut and slice. “I see your point,” he said at last. “But we’d find a way around that, I promise. There are gaps and crevices in the cave you could fit into that others wouldn’t be able to. But the caves are relatively deep, so I don’t see that being a problem. We’d figure something out—we don’t throw travelers out into the snow just because they’re a little spikey.”
The cat took a deep breath and shivered harder. “I think I will take you up on your offer then, Master Pine,” she said. “I don’t have much to pay, just so you know.”
“That’s fine. Like I said, just a song or a story will do.”
The cactus cat’s name was Saguara, and she’d come up from the desert hunting a strange bird. “I know, I know,” she said, warming up in the main chamber of their hostel. “But it’s like that for predators. We hunt creatures. We’re hunters.”
Al had introduced her to Flannghaile and Una to get settled in, and then he’d had to leave to start his afternoon patrols of the pass. With the weather closing in tonight, he needed to make sure that people were safe—that the residents of the pass were ready to handle the snow, and that travelers coming through knew there was a place to stay. There ended up being a few Soquili and other species in the cave that night, five guests in all other than Saguara. Cozy enough that the extra bodies would keep everyone warm, but not so cozy that poor Saguara would need to worry about injuring anyone. Once the storm had passed, the guests had started trickling out, especially as the larger ones broke the snow ahead of them. But Saguara had stayed.
“I was minding my own business one day when I saw this magnificent bird. With feathers like jewels, like the metal two-leggers wear. You know, that kind of sheen. And I wanted to see where it was going. It was flying north, and north’s not a normal way for birds to fly this time of year.” Saguara tilted her head. “Maybe that was because I was chasing it. I dunno. Never did catch up to it in time to ask it where it was going. But I lost it in the mountains. So…no luck there, I guess.”
“What will you do now?” Al asked. The barrier made of woven sticks and twigs and wedged in place in the cave entrance that served to keep the worst of the weather out of the cave had been pulled aside to let in the winter sunlight that glinted off the snow that hadn’t melted yet. Beyond the snowbank the dark trees rose on the other side of the meadow their cave looked out on.
“It’s so pretty out here,” Saguara sighed. “So different from home.” She looked up at Al, her tail twitching. “Your mate. Mistress Flannghaile. And Miss Una. Do you think they’d let me stay here?”
Al smiled. “I think they’d let you stay as long as you like. You’re good company, when you set a mind to it.”
Saguara smiled. “What can I say? I like you all. You’re nice. And your home is warm and beautiful. I think I could enjoy myself here. Once my fur’s grown out.”
The usdia’s smile grew wider. “Well, I think I can speak for my mate when I say that you can stay as long as you like.”
WC: 1336
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Geyser Eelborn generated a random number between
1 and 3 ...
1!
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Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2024 9:19 pm
Quote: You fall into an apocalyptic dream. The area is a wasteland. To the left is a bridge shrouded in fog, and you decide to head that way. Out of the fog, a mysterious being appears with glowing red eyes. There's a papery flap of wings and a low buzzing that seems to be aimed at you. You feel your skin prickle while a great sense of destiny seems to hold you in it's grasp. You have met the mothman. Write a minimum of 250 words about your encounter with the mothman. At the end, the only things left behind are your memories and a mothman plushie. If you roll a 1: You see the mothman for what he is! An omen of death and destruction, a harbinger of some terrible doom. Can you prevent it? What do you do?
The ground was hard and black, and as he watched, the bushes and the trees crumbled into ash until he was surrounded only by the lifeless stones and an empty vastness ahead of him. The sky was red as cinders and only half as bright; ahead of him, a river the color of blood sullenly trudged past its banks. The only shelter to be found through the crimson fog that rose from the dead earth was a great bridge of fallen and tangled tree trunks. Harlan trembled in terror, overcome by the horror of the landscape around him. He didn’t want to go any further. He wanted to be away from here! He needed to escape!
Maybe the other side of the river is safer, he thought. It was a small, desperate thought. But he was a small, desperate Soquili (well, he was large, but that wasn’t important! He felt small, though, and he always had). It was the perfect thought for someone like him who really, really did not want to be here. The bridge seemed like the best bet. Even if the land on the other side of the river wasn’t better than the land here, at least he could shelter there and hide from hostile eyes.
The longer he slunk along the shore of the cursed river, the more he felt like there were eyes watching him. He hated the feel of it, the way he could sense them watching him. Who? He didn’t know. But he knew they wanted to hurt him, to eat him, or to curse him, or to do something awful, just awful, he could feel it—
Ahead of him and around him, the fog was getting thicker and thicker, until all he could see through the red mist was the bridge up ahead. It seemed like there were full-size trees growing out of it, trees that hadn’t yet crumbled like charcoal like the other trees around him. They were bare, their branches grasping like wicked talons at the deadly sky. Not a single leaf could be found among them, not a single needle or clump of lichen. More and more, Harlan began to wonder if approaching the bridge was a good idea after all.
He was so distracted by the trees on the bridge that he hadn’t even noticed the figure in front of him until he ran into it. His head whipped around to get a good look at it even as his body recoiled in horror. The being standing in front of him stood on two legs like a two-legger, but even though Harlan had only ever seen two-leggers from a distance, he knew that this creature was wrong. It had a head like an insect’s, with the long—what were they called again? Horns? Antlers? Antennae? growing from the top of its head, and it had talons like a hippogryph’s instead of the big, paddle-like feet of a two-legger. And growing from its back, making a sound like dead reeds rustling against each other as they unfurled, were wings like a moth’s. Something on them shimmered—scales? Moths had scales on their wings, right? But when he looked closer, they looked more like tiny feathers, or like shards of bones, or like the shimmery texture of charcoal that a fire leaves behind when lightning kills a tree.
The figure’s eyes blazed. Harlan didn’t know what the creature was, or what it wanted. He took an involuntary step backward, trying to make himself look as small and harmless as possible. He didn’t want the thing to touch him again, or hear it speak. It just kept staring at him, and the longer it did, the longer Harlan was convinced that this hellish landscape, this place of death and destruction, was the creature’s fault. It had made the world like this for its own sick reason, destroying it and making it dangerous and wrong. And that it would do this again, again and again. Even if the world could be fixed, this would happen again!
An uncharacteristic rage boiled up in Harlan, and he wanted to kick this creature, to claw its eyes out, for what it was doing to the world. “You…you…awful, awful, just…” He struggled to put the idea into words. “I hate you!” he screamed at it at last. “Why did you do this?! How could you?! Why would you destroy the world like this?! What is wrong with you?!”
The creature did not reply. It just stared at Harlan, its eyes burning but empty. There was an intelligence behind those eyes that Harlan did not understand, and could never understand, no matter how long he lived. It was just so strange and alien, unlike anything he had ever met.
Not that he ever wanted to meet something like this, not ever again. “You are such an awful creature!” he snarled. “I hope you fail! I hope you never succeed in whatever it is you’re doing here!”
Again, the creature did not reply. It just stared at Harlan, mocking him with its apathetic silence.
The anger in the Soquili boiled up, further and further, filling him with a white-hot heat that stretched his muscles and his skin and demanded that he do something with it. Make the thing that was making him angry hurt.
Avenge the world. Destroy the evil.
It was like a voice speaking from deep inside his heart. Harlan reared up on his hind legs, lashing out with his paws. Hidden behind layers of fluff his toes each carried, on their tip, a sharp claw usually used for gaining traction on ground when he ran away from threats. But they would do for weapons in a pinch. The creature was strange and evil and likely cunning in ways that Harlan would never be. But Harlan was bigger than him. And he was filled with a righteous anger for the world and everything that had been lost. He lashed out with his paws, aiming directly for the hateful thing’s big, stupid, red eyes—
Pain in his paws woke Harlan up with a start. He was staring at the inside of the hollow tree he’d fallen asleep in. His claws were stuck in the charred side of the hollow, where the tree bore a scar from the lightning that had hollowed its base out so long ago. It took him a second to pull his paw out from where the claws were embedded into the charcoal. That was what had woken him up from the nightmare, the pain of snagged claws.
His friend Brinley was staring at him sleepily. “You okay, Harlan?” she mumbled.
Harlan nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay. Just had a bad dream.” He looked out over the forest from where he was laying on the ground. The morning was foggy, with the mist clinging to the ground, just as it had in his dream, and the trees standing out above it like the trees on the…the thing. Whatever it was. Bridge? A bridge that had also been a forest? He didn’t understand. And as he sat there, the exact details of the dream faded away, leaving behind only the memory of his anger. He sighed and stood up, checking to make sure that his toy Monkeyflower was still with him.
He blinked.
Monkeyflower had a friend.
Sitting next to his beloved childhood toy was a stuffed creature, a puff of darkness with big, red eyes and big wings. It looked like a friendlier version of the creature from his dream.
Harlan hesitated. He remembered the evil thing…but this toy didn’t look evil. It didn’t smell evil, either. It looked…soft. And so gentle. He nuzzled it. It smelled like cedar.
Maybe this is a sign, he decided. That not all things that look evil are evil after all. He picked up Monkeyflower and the new toy and turned to Brinley. “Do you remember this being here last night?”
Brinley frowned and shook her head. “No. Where did it come from?”
“Dunno,” Harlan said. “I’m going to keep it, though. I think I’ll name it…Columbine.”
The bunny smiled and leaped onto his back. “I think that’s an excellent name,” she said. “Monkeyflower and Columbine. Two wildflowers.”
“Yes,” Harlan said with a smile. “To bring life back to the world in spring.”
WC: 1395
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Geyser Eelborn generated a random number between
1 and 3 ...
2!
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Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2024 9:20 pm
Quote: When you wake up, there's a beautiful dagger plunged into the ground beside you. You had to touch it, didn't you? Now that you've touched it the curse is activated. Write a minimum of 250 words about what happens with the dagger. After you stop the dagger's power, you can keep itl If you roll a 2: The curse is deadly. You have to find a way to neutralize the dagger. How?
Her twin sister laughed. “You just had to touch it, didn’t you?” Hrafna shook her head. “You know I have your back in this as you do in all things, Selda. But it was not I who touched the dagger.”
The worst part of it was that Hrafna was right. Selda had been the one who picked up the dagger, not Hrafna. She hadn’t had to pick it up. It had been her own choice, and now she would pay for the consequences.
The twins traveled everywhere together, their loyal companions at their sides. Sluagh had, wisely enough, chosen to stay away from the strange object Selda had found next to herself on waking. Drake, too, had chosen to stay away. Which left Selda to be the one to pick up the object and feel the dark chill that had flooded through her body upon picking the thing up. It was clearly cursed, which, as Hrafna had unhelpfully pointed out, was obvious just from the look of the thing.
“It’s just a knife,” Drake said nervously, shifting on zeir paws. “How can you tell it’s cursed?”
Hrafna snorted. “Just look at the thing. It’s wavy, and it’s got an eye. How much more obviously cursed can you get?”
“More importantly,” Selda growled. “I can feel the curse in it. It’s some kind of death curse. We need to break it before it kills someone.”
“Who?!” Drake squeaked.
“More importantly, how,” Sluagh said firmly. He tilted his head, staring at the object in Selda’s teeth. “Can you set it down?”
She tried, unsuccessfully. It stuck to her teeth when she tried. But she was at least able to transfer it to her claws. “Seems like it’s sticking with me until it hurts someone.”
Hrafna was staring at it appraisingly. “How can you tell it’s a death curse?”
“A feeling,” Selda said with a shrug. “Like I’m looking at the face of someone I know very well, and I can tell by looking at them they’re in a murderous mood. That kind of feeling.”
“Ahh,” Hrafna said. “Do you think it will kill you if we do not neutralize the curse?”
Selda nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I think it will. Something I can sense. So, any suggestions?”
“Well, if it wants to kill,” Sluagh said. “Why not give it something to kill?”
“Any suggestions?” Hrafna asked. “Because if it has to be a person—”
“Well, we can try a few things. Like a plant, to start off with. If that doesn’t work, some non-sentient creature, like a bug or a mouse—”
Drake flinched. “I’m…” ze said slowly. “Um, I’m—”
“Not you,” Selda said firmly. “You’re one of us, Drake. We wouldn’t kill you to save our own lives.”
“Damn right,” Hrafna said quietly. She stood over her familiar protectively, as if to remind Selda and Sluagh that Drake was under her personal protection.
“A non-sentient creature,” Sluagh said firmly. “My breakfast, perhaps. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll figure something else out.”
“Let’s get to work,” Selda growled. “We’ve got other things to do today than try to appease a hunk of metal and stone.”
Drake stayed curled up on Hrafna’s back while the other three worked, nibbling on seeds and trying to look as small and unobtrusive as possible. The plant idea did not work. They slashed a small tree sproutling, digging the seed out with the tip of the blade and stabbing the seed. No luck. Selda could feel the dark power of the cursed dagger thrum in her grip. Nor did killing a big beetle they found, crushing it under the tip of the blade. Or stabbing the non-sapient mouse they found. That hadn’t worked either, which at least answered the question of whether it was the slashing or crushing that had been the problem before, or the lack of blood. There was certainly blood, but the blood spilled on the ground had had no effect.
But at least Sluagh got to stop for breakfast. While he ate, his back turned so that Drake didn’t have to watch, they brainstormed some more. “It wants to kill a Soquili,” Hrafna said. “Selda, how much time do you have?”
“My guess? Sunset.”
“You can feel that?” Drake asked, zeir voice awed.
“No,” Selda said slowly. “Not really? But curses like times that are…significant. And the four most significant times of day are sunrise, sunset, noon, and midnight. If the curse kills in under a full day, the next time will either be noon or sunset, and noon doesn’t feel right for a killing curse.”
“Too much light,” Sluagh said, licking his lips and returning to the others. “Most people who curse blades don’t like light. They feel like noon isn’t…dark enough. Mind you, we could have days before the curse takes place.”
“Let’s not wait days,” Selda said. “I’d like to be able to walk and talk without carrying this around all the time, unable to set it down.”
“So,” Hrafna said heavily. “A soquili.”
“We don’t have a good target. No one we know around here deserves to die.”
“Maybe…” Drake paused. “Nope. Never mind.”
The other three turned to look at zem. “Go on. No bad ideas.”
“Unless it kills me or an innocent person,” Selda added. “That would be a bad idea.”
“Well,” Drake said again. “Maybe we could…make a—what do you call it? A thing that looks like another thing, but it’s made of something else? Like branches or twigs or whatever? And then you punish it because you can’t punish the real thing?”
They stared at her. “An effigy?” Sluagh said at last.
“Yeah!” Drake perked up. “Maybe we could build an effigy of a Soquili and we could stab it in the heart or whatever and then we’d break the curse?”
Selda, Hrafna, and Sluagh exchanged glances. “I mean, it’s worth a try,” Hrafna said.
“Unless it’s a waste of time,” Selda sighed.
“I think we should give it a try,” Sluagh said. “It’s better than killing an innocent.”
Selda sighed. “You’re right,” she said. “Of course.” She nuzzled her familiar and turned back to Drake. “We will try your idea. It is as good an idea as any other we have had today.”
It took them until late afternoon to finish building the effigy of a soquili out of twigs and pine needles. But when they were finished, it did, indeed, look like a Soquili, or at least a Soquili shape. They put the skull of the mouse Sluagh had eaten where a Soquili’s heart would be and Selda stood before it, shifting the dagger again into her mouth. “O blighted weapon,” she said, in her ritual voice. “O thing of deadly beauty, take this sacrifice and be sated in your hunger.” With that, she stabbed the effigy with the dagger. Or, she tried to. The effigy fell over, and she waited while Hrafna and Sluagh set it back up again. This time, they held the object still so that Selda could line up the dagger again.
“It thought it could escape,” Drake laughed feebly. Hrafna shot zem an encouraging glance.
“Indeed,” Selda said firmly. “See how your victim shies away from your justice, o crimson blade! See how it fears you, and drink deep its fear!”
This time, the blow was true, going straight into the effigy’s chest and finding the mouse skull inside. Instantly, she felt the cold bleed out of her body, and the dagger in her mouth felt like nothing but a piece of metal. There was a thrum in it, like a heartbeat forever frozen in time, or a breath forever on the verge of exhalation, but the sinister feeling was gone. When she opened her mouth, the blade released her, remaining in the effigy.
She shot Drake a smile and nodded to zem gratefully. “Well done, little one! Excellent idea.” She glanced at the dagger. “I wonder if we should leave it here…?”
“I think we should,” Hrafna said firmly. “No point in us getting cursed again.”
Selda nodded. “We’ll throw the effigy in the river. That way, we won’t have to deal with it again.”
Everyone else agreed, and they watched the thing, the dagger still sticking out of it, float away down river. Then they headed back into the woods for the night.
The next morning, Selda was woken up by a sharp cry at her side. She opened one eye to see Sluagh, his fur on end, staring at something in front of him.
“It’s back again,” he hissed.WC: 1439
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Geyser Eelborn generated a random number between
1 and 3 ...
1!
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Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2024 9:21 pm
Quote: You've gone treasure hunting in the vast desert. When you find a buried entrance, you can't believe your luck. However, when you go in, the door slams shut. Write a minimum of 250 words about what happens next. If you roll a 1: You are surrounded by scorpions. How do you escape?
So he was here in the desert to steal some of their artifacts. Something to make them think twice about making spurious claims about himself and his family. The trouble was, of course, that they had been ready for him all along. They had set traps for him, or for any of his family that came behind him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupidity all around. “I should have brought Kryzas with me after all,” he sighed.
Kryzas wouldn’t have been much good against the stone door slamming shut. But he might have been good against the scorpions that now surrounded Doc. He stared at them now and flicked his tail. “Go on,” he said. “Shoo, the lot of you.”
They stared at him. Of course they did, they were just mindless little creatures, waving their claws and brandishing their tails at him. They were really cute, in all honesty. They were so fierce and tiny, their beady black eyes watching his every move warily. Doc chuckled. “Never mind the scrolls I was going to steal,” he said. “Maybe I should take a few of you along with me.”
But that would still require getting out of here, and he had no idea how to open the big stone slab that blocked off the entrance. Maybe he would have go to further in to find a way out? But how? He was surrounded by a sea of scorpions. And any one of them could kill him with their deadly venom.
“Well, there has to be a way out,” Doc said. “How else would all of you be finding food if food couldn’t come in or out?”
The scorpions said nothing. They didn’t need to.
Like he’d said before. It was stupidity all around. To think that he and his brothers could be easily frightened off by venomous creatures or bugs in general. And to not put enough scorpions in here to block off escape. He bunched up his muscles and leapt over them, clearing the swarm easily, his wings helping him keep aloft for just a few seconds longer. On the other side of the swarm, he kept up a trot, keeping just ahead of the swarm, making his way through the underground complex.
He got lucky—as he’d expected, there was an extra exit further along the maze of passages. An old stone door had failed, cracked and broken apart by a flash flood along time ago. Unfortunately, that same flood had destroyed most of the artifacts, including the scrolls he’d come here to steal. Ah, well. At least he’d made it out of here alive. And he hadn’t come out of hear empty-mouthed, either. He’d found at least some treasure in here. A fine necklace depicting a scarab beetle (now really, that should have been sacred to his god, not theirs!) and most importantly, the tiny creatures that had clung to the end of his tail in the big leap and that even now were curled up on his side, enjoying the warmth of his body.
“You really are too cute for words,” he told his new scorpion buddies, who simply waved their claws at him as he fell asleep.WC: 611
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Geyser Eelborn generated a random number between
1 and 3 ...
3!
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Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2024 4:45 pm
Quote: You'll write 250 words (more is fine if you want, but the blurb must be finished) about how you find, obtain, receive (etc) the Cactus Cat. The cat is somewhere between "touchy" about you to outright grouchy or even distrustful.
He’d seen signs of them sometimes, though. The gashes left behind in the saguaro cactuses, and their pawprints left behind in the dust (although those could just as easily have been bobcat prints, to be honest). But seeing one in the flesh was different. He didn’t know how to react at first to seeing one standing right in front of him. He definitely didn’t know how to react when the cat, its eyes narrowed and long, thorned tail lashing, let out a snarl and leapt at his face.
Jumaane recoiled in shock, rearing up on his hind limbs and lashing out with his talons. He just barely missed the cactus cat, and it just barely missed him, landing on the ground next to him, its back arched and its teeth, as yellow as the spines on its back, bared at him in a hiss like a viper. “Go away!!” it snarled. “Go!! Big creature! This place! Is mine!!”
The Soquili settled back on his feet, but kept his distance, still eyeing it. He didn’t know why he was so shocked to hear it speak. “I’m sorry!” he said. “I didn’t know. I’ll leave you now,” he said. “Sorry. I’ll give you space.” And with that, he turned and left.
The cactus cat’s territory had been along one of his normal routes through the valley. Odd. He thought he would have seen it before. So its territory must be very new if he’d never seen it before.
Avoiding its “territory” would be a pain. It was near where the best, most succulent, tastiest cacti grew. Maybe it was a young cat, just now choosing its territory, and chose the best one. After all, both he and the cactus cat ate cacti, didn’t they?
Well, he couldn’t just let it have the best land. He needed to eat the cactus, too! It couldn’t just pick the best land as its own. In fact, the more Jumaane thought about it, the more annoyed he was. He’d lived here all his life, eaten here all the time, and now this cactus cat had moved in and tried to claim this land?!
No! It was his, not the cat’s. And it was a cat, couldn’t it just…eat mice or jackrabbits or something?!
The next day, Jumaane returned to the cactus grove, ready for an attack, and ready to defend his territory. And, just as he predicted, the cactus cat was back. It glared at him, hatefully, its tail lashing once more, its claws appearing and disappearing in its paws and leaving grooves in the rock. “I told you to go away!!” it hissed.
“This isn’t your land,” Jumaane said firmly. “It was my herd’s land before they went away. My family’s land, my ancestors’, from time immemorial. But you—-” He glared at the cactus cat. “Are new. If you want this land, you’ll have to fight me for it.”
The cactus cat hesitated, looking Jumaane up and down, taking in his sharp beak and wicked talons, his great size and the scales that lined his legs. It looked back up at his eyes, deadly serious in his intent. “Eh…truce?” it said at last. “Maybe we can share the land?”
Jumaane calmed down, and smiled at the cat. “We can do that,” he said. “We can do that indeed.” And he set off into the cacti, the cat following at his heels.WC: 646
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Geyser Eelborn generated a random number between
1 and 3 ...
3!
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Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2024 4:58 pm
Quote: You fall into an apocalyptic dream. The area is a wasteland. To the left is a bridge shrouded in fog, and you decide to head that way. Out of the fog, a mysterious being appears with glowing red eyes. There's a papery flap of wings and a low buzzing that seems to be aimed at you. You feel your skin prickle while a great sense of destiny seems to hold you in it's grasp. You have met the mothman. You can't understand anything the mothman is saying. The only sound you hear is the fluttering of wings and the buzzing. The only thing you can do is try to guess why he's here. Is he warning you or trying to save you?
Jon had to say, it was certainly an interesting omen of doom. The sinister feeling of death all around him. The fog rising up from the lake. The lake around—his family’s old burial place?! Yes—just through the trees he could see the bridge over the water leading to the island where his ancestors’ bones lay. He knew the place, but while a sense of dread was normal, this was a different kind of dread that he'd never felt before. It felt different, wrong, sinister. Normally it felt like all the world was alive except this one place, but in this dream it was the opposite—all the world was dead, but something on the other end of the bridge was alive, and in the worst way possible.
In spite of himself, Jon shivered. He’d had dreams like this, dark and sinister, and he was determined that that should make it easier. But it still took an effort of will to set off towards the bridge. He walked for a long time through the fog, the bridge somehow still visible through the mist, but no matter how long he walked, he never got any closer.
Something rustled in the darkness, like dry reeds rubbing together. And in front of Jon rose a dark figure wreathed in gloom. From this figure emanated the apocalyptic feelings all around him. It had the talons of an eagle and the wings of a moth. Its face was impossible to read, so dark that all that could be discerned were its glowing, red eyes and the antennae that rose above its head like a stag’s antlers.
Some kind of figure—like the master of the hunt from his dream last year? Or something different? Were the two connected? Why have I been having so many dreams like this lately?
Or was it a dream? It could be a vision, and that scared him in more ways than one…
Jon took a deep breath and, determined to show no fear, he said, “Greetings, o dark and ominous one. Do you have a message for me?” After all, his vision of the Wild Hunt had had a message for him. And so, too, had Ullita’s dream—well, vision was more likely—had a message for her, long before the two of them had met. What Ullita’s vision had meant they still did not know. But that was a worry for another time. He still had to deal with this one before he could deal with hers. Message first. Interpretation later.
The being opened its mouth—or at least, Jon got an impression of an opened mouth. It was impossible to tell with the featurelessness of its face. But a sound came out of it, like the buzzing of insects on a hot summer’s day. Its wings rustled, but not a word came out of its mouth.
“I don’t understand,” Jon said.
The being didn’t say anything. It just kept buzzing. But Jon got the distinct impression that it was trying to give him a message. It wanted him to know something, but what it was, he couldn’t tell. A warning? He thought so. It felt like the being wanted to save him, protect him. The longer he stood here, the more he could sense it—life returning to the dead woods around him.
It was a messenger. One that had come here to give him a message. But what it was? He could not tell.
Most dreams fade upon waking. But even weeks later, Jon could still remember his dream, and not just because of the soft effigy of itself the messenger had left behind…WC: 655
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