Boo
Jr. Weyrwoman 
booct[M:-425]
Shirath: THOSE aren't spirit fingers... THESE ARE SPIRIT FINGERS!!!
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Post by Boo on Oct 21, 2012 21:19:37 GMT -5
With the new puppy, Fel had decided to train the canine as much as she could. Although he was a rather cautious young thing she figured that with the proper training and love, she could bring out more confidence in the pup. He would hopefully be able to learn her tricks and be a well-behaved pup. Fel crouched near the tiny black canine and lifted him into her arms. It was early morning and the pup stirred slightly before waking and tentatively licking her. Fel looked over at Dhanuth who was sleeping with the three firelizards strewn about his head.
Fel turned to leave but noticed that a whirling blue eye was watching her.
Where are you going?
I’m going to train Ash. It’s my cause at the moment. Thread won’t fall today and I have a duty to him.
Be safe. Do not wander far. I will fetch you if you need it.
Don’t worry Dhanuth, I won’t go too far. Things will be fine. I will come back at lunch time.
Of course, she planned to head a little into the outskirts of the Weyr so that the pup could work on sticking close by her side even when there were so many different things that he might want to see. Fel smiled at Dhanuth and scratched his eye ridges before heading out of the Weyr. In barely any time at all, she was back down to the bottom. She had to also exercise her leg… It was the reason she was going for a walk and not just flying to a particular area. Fel placed Ash on the ground and smiled at the pup.
Since O’wen had turned up in her Weyr, she almost counted the older male as a brother figure. He was an odd one but she found that she actually rather liked him. He was fun to be around even though he was a little forceful at times. Purposefully, the girl strode towards the Weyr exit. A whimper made her turn. The black pup looked up at her mournfully.
“Come on Ash!” She called encouragingly, prompting the pup to break into a lolloping run to catch up.
They reached the edges of the forested area, Fel knowing that Dhanuth was close in her mind, and walked around the edges. Ash sniffed at the ground but Fel attempted to keep him somewhat on target and that target was following her. Everything seemed to be going well until Ash yelped a warning at the sound of snapping twigs. This yelp heightened to something of a howl as Fel rushed to quieten the pup, aware that if something was there, it may not be friendly.
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Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman
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Post by Azhdarchid on Oct 23, 2012 14:26:12 GMT -5
Ash's howl spurned a little demon out of the jungle, pretty though it was at a glance. A mass of scintillating white-blue feathers cut out of the canopy and pumped toward Fel's head, turning aside just a few feet off as if it was only then that the maddened gold eyes on the creature's front end had spotted her. As soon as it was no longer aligned with the girl's face, something leaner and less festive tore out of the brush after it and split it down the center, dropping its airy body like a rock. The only part of it to move while on the ground were the eyes, faceted and rolling. It gaped dumbly and expired. A whersport, whole body no longer than palm and fingers together, but a few of its undisturbed tail feathers twice that dimension. The silver head of a crossbow bolt gleamed from the join of its neck to its keelbone.
The hunter remained active and unannounced, using the not-bird's fall as cover to slide to the right of his new target. The bow-crank clicked in the brush. It was Q'sis' lean a few inches forward, parting the thick yellow leaves of his current cover with the nose of the crossbow, that prevented him from loosing the bolt. He had spent too many youthful hunts chucking axes at tempting but unfruitful saplings not to check his sighting. As one eye saw through to the details of this target, his tongue twitched up against the roof of his mouth at the recognition of a face. The 'bow remained trained.
In the flush of the forest, her skin whispered greater darkness than it actually owned. Her deep, dark hair was characteristic to most of her people, though Q'sis' mane had only attained similar gravity in the last Turn or two. Q'sis did not see her: he saw a sharp, lanky Him who had been warned more than once. More than once. Shouldn't have even required the once, considering His record. He'd been toothless that first day when he should have bit in, and after that- after that the traitor had stolen a dragon. Q'sis blinked, revelation of that point streaming into his eyes in time with a drop of sweat off his brow. A dragon. He lowered the crossbow.
New, differentiating characteristics on the target picked at him only after: the height was wrong, the eyes not laughing green but an olive similar to his own, and the lips were a little full, the chest too. It was not a pleasant new conclusion, and it left his first predatory alarm turning over in his guts. He stepped through the curtain-bush, its fragile Autumn strands cracking off his shoulders and hanging white-flesh-out like so many listing windchimes in his wake. He disarmed the 'bow- only to find he had already thumbed it over the moment he'd decided not to kill her -and headed for Fel, picking wet leaves off his jacket.
Not a word for the girl: he bent down in front of her, but it was so he could de-bolt the whersport carcass and pluck the quills of interest to him. He licked his fingertips and picked up the strays from the forest floor, and only then did his eyes rise to the puppy beside the blackrider. Q'sis first reaction was to glance at the naked avian body in his hand: the pup had roused it out of hiding, after all. But then he recalled Ash's owner, and his fist tightened possessively over the pallid blue tidbit. He got up.
"You're lucky you didn't step in one of my traps," he said in a voice that suggested he would not have minded seeing her footless.
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Boo
Jr. Weyrwoman
booct[M:-425]
Shirath: THOSE aren't spirit fingers... THESE ARE SPIRIT FINGERS!!!
Posts: 1,917
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Post by Boo on Oct 24, 2012 3:02:21 GMT -5
At the sound of the crossbow, Fel ducked, covering her head as Ash howled again. As soon as he seemed to notice where the sound had come from, he fell silent and ducked back behind his owner. Fel should have known better. She should have really brought Dhanuth with her… Or at least Megatron… The deceptively large firelizard was always good at scaring people away when she needed it to. At the sound of approaching footsteps, Fel looked through her arms at the figure.
At the realisation her heart dropped into her gut.
Fear was it? No. Fel would not be scared of this man. Never would she ever be frightened of him. He’d failed Weyrlinghood for Faranth’s sake. With as much resolve as she could manage, Fel stood, narrowed eyes following the movements of the tanrider Q’sis. The man approached the avian he had shot and picked up the creature in one large, strong hand. Fel’s eyes widened slightly but then narrowed again as he looked at her. Perhaps she was lucky he hadn’t killed her. She knew vaguely his opinion of her brother.
She wanted to run. She wanted to stay. Fight. Fly. Would he harm her? His anger towards Xiro must have been great but no greater than her own anger had been. Now, however, things had gotten better. Part of her liked to think that Xiro had passed on but the other part just accepted that he had left and she would likely never see him again. None of that mattered.
“I would have noticed it.” Fel replied with a cautious edge.
The girl then looked around the area thoughtfully, wondering where his dragon was. Could he too be out here alone? Maybe she should stir Dhanuth and get him over here.
I am already awake.
It’s all right, I’m fine. Just talking with an old friend.
The feelings she felt from the black told her Dhanuth didn’t believe her attempt at a diversion. Fel tried to force something of a smile.
“Nice shot…”
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Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman
azhct[M:-1490]
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Post by Azhdarchid on Oct 24, 2012 14:15:31 GMT -5
At Fel's semi-purposeful contact with her dragon, Q'sis raised his head as if he could smell the line of desperate thought flowing out of her head and back to the weyr. His observation was not as psychic as it seemed: he just read the momentary haze over the girl's eye. Still, he looked to be listening, and in a way he was. Dragonspeech was messy stuff, the poorly contained components- feelings, images, words -spilling over sometimes. But blacks had it down. They had silence down, and whispered across the Weyr day and night. They were stunted, spiny secrets and Q'sis might just care for them least of all among those travesties hatched into this new age of Pern.
No wonder Fel had snatched one off the Sands for herself. No wonder she just had to take hold of not just a male, but one of the opaque infants among fighters. Unath made bigger flame. But reduced and pathetic as they were, Q'sis held even broken blacks amove men and women and whatever Fel was. Just one dragon was worth more than any human, save the rider that kept him tethered. S'in had been the type to suggest bending that rule, but Q'sis wasn't there yet. Couldn't imagine it.
So all that old hatred got to stew on. His fingers caressed the hilt of the crossbow even though he didn't raise it again. He entertained the notion that Fel might be running traitor just like the rest of her Threadbait family, but found himself staring at the puppy. It wasn't some grown accomplice like Xiro'el's Lakeeti. In-training. Maybe getting him ready for the flight. He thought of the pup's errant howl, accidentally helpful, but not precise and lean like a trader's dog was supposed to be. Like all the other soft stonebreds here, Fel would probably keep it no matter how good it was for hunting. The gap in her cultural training, drawn no doubt by her age, briefly sapped off his deeper anger into a fierce annoyance. He had even thought about giving over to the pup just for being around and noisy at the right second, hadn't he?
"She's not here," he replied sharply to Fel's search of the nearby forest. "She's no good in places she can't even get a toe through. It's different from your situation: you fit, but you don't belong here. You want to wander off in the woods, take Dhanuth to one of the tendered forests the holders keep on the mainland. But you don't get in the way of my hunt." Strengthening behind the notion that not only was Fel out-of-element, but infringing on some territorial line he'd declared just by his presence, the tanrider pursued: "If you desire the exotics of this island, you get one of the worthwhile men on your side. In your case, though, I imagine you'll have to settle for another black, or a wherhandler. And of course you'll have to trick him that you're interested in something other than being a monstrosity."
Q'sis himself flinched when he said it. He had, in that word, recalled the pinch of fighter-thought he had known before Unath. There had been a point where he had forgiven girls and fighters as unfortunate accidents brought about by shoddy Candidate management. It had been a time when he had better recalled how fluid the creatures were. A time before Nadya and Ulma. "You don't need a canine. I have seen your flits. So get back in the Weyr and feed your dragon." He was starting to see Xiro in her again, sort-of superimposed like a living ghost. He recalled a much more sympathetic meeting with this girl, back when they had all been in the perturbing throes of Candidacy, strewn away from their kin like so many shells cast out of the sea onto shore-- except Xiro, who'd always wanted such exposure because he was twisted inside. He tilted his head, trying to see the leg that Fel stood upon firmly now, but that he knew hitched whenever prodded into motion. "What happened to you?" he wondered, though like any question that ever left him, it was a demand when it reached other ears.
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Boo
Jr. Weyrwoman
booct[M:-425]
Shirath: THOSE aren't spirit fingers... THESE ARE SPIRIT FINGERS!!!
Posts: 1,917
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Post by Boo on Oct 28, 2012 18:22:33 GMT -5
Fel’s hands fell loosely to her sides as Q’sis noticed her scanning the forest and her eyes turned back to the face of the older male before her. She supressed a shiver at the tone of voice the former trader was employing to speak with her. Since he had left, she had endured worse had she not? Perhaps… Some mutterings behind her back she could deal with. Her eyes looked down as he reprimanded her for not having Dhanuth tag along. She would have said she didn’t need him but that felt like dismissing the dragon all together. There was nothing she could say.
Monstrosity.
Fel’s head wipped back up and her eyes flashed with anger, all the rage building up and bubbling within her chest. Jaw clenched tight as her fist did. What could she do to such a man though? Yet still he continued. Fel, in her moment of anger, barely even noticed Q’sis’ own flinch at what he had said. The injustice she felt at even being compared to a traitor like her brother boiled hot and fast in her veins. At least now he had transferred properly but Fel was reminded that he’d only returned because of Tigreath getting injured.
“You don’t even know anything about me just because you knew… HIM… Doesn’t mean you know me. I am no more a monster than you are.” Fel eventually spat out, “So you care to know now what happened to me? Nothing that you would honestly care about. You demand to know answers but why? What do you care what I have to say about anything? Nothing so why even bother asking? You believe me a monster anyway!”
She would not cry. Unknowingly, however, she had stepped a little closer to Q’sis, hand emphasising her frustration. Even through all this it would be tears of frustration and anger that would reach her eyes… She had been intimidated by him before and would likely remain so but for the moment, she wanted him to know exactly what she thought about him and she would tell him in any means she saw fit. Even if it did seem irrational.
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Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman
azhct[M:-1490]
Totes.
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Post by Azhdarchid on Oct 29, 2012 13:44:21 GMT -5
Q'sis' lingering curiosity snuffed out as Fel answered him in a tirade. His lips uncurved and pressed together looked cool enough in reception of the girl's anger, but that last pained truth earned a predatory baring of white not readily distinguishable as grin or snarl.
"Blood tells," he hissed. "You should know that as trader and rider. And you prove it now. Your defiance is like his. Your will is toward chaos, as his is. You forget your family just to defend yourself, as if you are worthy of defense." He shunted the crossbow around behind him, storing it in the sling across his back. That left both hands free. Beside the right one, laced into the belt crossing his hip, was the bejeweled hilt of the knife he had always favored, and behind it a larger bone-knife for the pleasant morning's scavenge. "Get back in the Weyr, I said. If there's any part of you still feminine, obey. Lay down your useless words, return to Dalibor, fly the evil Thread and die to it. You are broken, but you can still do that much."
He tightened his own fingers toward his palm on the hand above the two knives. "Raise that again," he said, jerking his chin toward her arm. "And I will discipline you as fathers in our people have always taken to their errant daughters. That is a compliment: I will still treat you as a girl."
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Boo
Jr. Weyrwoman
booct[M:-425]
Shirath: THOSE aren't spirit fingers... THESE ARE SPIRIT FINGERS!!!
Posts: 1,917
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Post by Boo on Oct 29, 2012 15:40:44 GMT -5
Yes, she knew exactly how the traders treated their women or any of their children really. Her father had been one of the toughest around really. He’d never done anything horrible to Fel but to Xiro… He’d said he would kill Xiro. Q’sis here was not even a part of her caravan! He had nothing to do with her. Why ask a question like that when he honestly didn’t care to know the answer. He would rather leave Fel dead out here in the middle of the forest.
“He is not my brother. Not anymore.”
If she was filled with chaos what was he? The man who had Impressed a sub-queen. Who had failed Weyrlinghood and done countless other horrendous things she was sure. He whose dragon had killed one of her friend’s pets. Q’sis was the real monster here. Never seeing beyond his jaded hatred.
“I will never obey someone who is half a man. Even your dragon thought so!”
A look of almost infuriated triumph as she said the words she had been meaning to say. Now she was sure she hated him. Once upon a time in her younger years she had thought him handsome, strong and protective. Now she saw him as weak, cruel and sad. The tanrider had put away the crossbow now and this Fel noticed. He was a horror to perceive and in her anger, she flung herself at the giant of a man.
She was half his size, tiny and still weak on her bad leg. Since the fire her leg had gotten worse but her thoughts were clouded as she tried to punch anything she could reach. A roar reached her ears, not to mention the barking of Ash as he cowered back from Fel.
FEL!!
The calming waves Dhanuth was trying to send towards her did barely anything but she knew he would be coming for her. She just had to get as many punches as she could before Q’sis tried to harm her in earnest. Then she would snatch up Ash and run.
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Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman
azhct[M:-1490]
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Post by Azhdarchid on Oct 29, 2012 22:10:23 GMT -5
Unath lay on her back, wings crumpled under her like Autumn leaves. Her blunt snout pointed to the dim morning skies. Though her eyes lay open, her nostrils puffed in rhythmic, unperturbed breaths. An undercurrent of Q'sis lay in her always, up on the ledge with her as much as he was towering down in the dankness of the forest, under attack. At any moment he could have reclaimed his other muscles and flown his draconic avatar down. But there was no need. So Unath was left to her own inclinations about the business, which were blank and unconcerned even when the tiny sting of a flailing fist impressed upon their shared abdomen. She was busy instead with a waking dream, formulations about the cloudless heavens coming together and falling apart.
***
Fel might have thought her insult important, but Q'sis had weathered worse. Unath had not been a social boon, and neither had the One Before. But the brat continued to defy, and he did not make empty promises. If she was looking to throw herself upon the spit of his outrage, she would find instead a powerful arm with far greater reach than hers catching the first of her battering fists. The other went on, free to strike for the precious quarter-second it took him to wind back his other hand.
With the girl trapped close, Q'sis cracked the backs of his knuckles against the outermost high bone of her cheek, siting the impact there with all the precision of long experience. He let off her arm then, to fall if she would. Despite his accuracy, a flick of anxiety bubbled through his veins. The knives at his side were never to be used, not on another rider. But it had not been too long ago that he had learned how even a grown man could perish in a single blow.
Q'sis the Wary Pacifist had been a phase that ended well before Dalibor, and he had instead sought means of perfecting the swipe. Still, Fel was small. Still, he didn't even want so much as to take her out of the sky for a day.
He just needed her to listen.
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Boo
Jr. Weyrwoman
booct[M:-425]
Shirath: THOSE aren't spirit fingers... THESE ARE SPIRIT FINGERS!!!
Posts: 1,917
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Post by Boo on Oct 29, 2012 23:21:07 GMT -5
As he caught her fist, Fel tried to twist herself out of his grasp, so determined as she was to hit him. When one of her hands made connection there was a brief moment of triumph before, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Q’sis’ hand being brought near her face. Several things happened at once. The first thing she noticed was the sound of Dhanuth’s roar as the black screamed across the Weyr. The second was that she could not see…
Pain shot across her face and Fel crumpled to the ground, vision still blackened as it was. Her head felt heavy and she wasn’t sure what had happened. Dazedly, she brought a hand up to her cheek and felt liquid… Blood. What was more than that though was the pain shooting through her cheek and across her head. Even though she had only been hit on the cheek, she felt as though her whole body ached. With her bad leg she thrashed out blindly towards Q’sis with a scream of rage. The scream was louder than she thought before she completely crumpled on the ground.
Dhanuth landed protectively over his rider, forepaws between her and the man who had harmed her. The black dragon roared again, bearing his teeth at Q’sis. Normally, he was a stoic, calm black and tried to keep Fel from becoming so enraged but today was a very different day indeed. The animal, the pup was barking and had now come to cower behind Fel’s crumpled body, whimpering. He would have threatened the rider but did not want to dirty his mind with such a horrid person. Wings flared as he hissed and pulled Fel into his forepaws, gathering up Ash as an afterthought. The pup seemed unhappy about this but Dhanuth cared not.
The small but strong black dragon rose on his back legs and then turned, swiping his tail out at Q’sis, aiming to knock the man’s legs out from under him. Dhanuth would have done more but it was more important to get Fel away… Get Fel to safety. He could feel her slipping out of consciousness and couldn’t allow that to happen. She would not die and even if she did… Before he passed with her, he would kill the one who had done this to her. Dhanuth didn’t know how he would do it but he would!
With a thump of his tail, Dhanuth flared his wings and took off back to the Weyr, flying faster and better than he had ever managed in his life.
I will always protect you.
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Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman
azhct[M:-1490]
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Post by Azhdarchid on Nov 5, 2012 1:15:00 GMT -5
Q'sis ducked the tail, head twisting to his left at the tell-tale crunch of weak trees. Running at the launching dragon cleared him of the worst of the falling saplings, and though a gash of wind opened across the whole height of him, he crouched to keep from being toppled back into the collapsing woods. The hunter stayed like that, bent over himself with his left hand trailing lower till his fingertips brushed the soil, while the dragon cleared out. Fear mingled with excitement across his face, emerging from his forehead in a cold sweat.
Dhanuth's complaint had no doubt been heard, but the black was already on his way back. It would be up to Fel to find a good excuse for the Watch. She would cooperate with him in that much, the tanrider knew. In fact the way she'd immediately fallen, the way she'd kicked feebly in spite of herself, that had all been the way things were supposed to go with trader girls. He got to his feet and checked his belongings, the back of his bloodstained hand winking at him as he patted his belt.
He had lost a few feathers. Turning back into the new architecture of the forest, he shoved a few loose sapling halves back over themselves to expose the dirt. He found two of the lost frayed and chipped, useless. The last, gleaming cyan a bit like Devath's skin, rested alone and intact under a fallen branch. Q'sis fingered this last even till its quill-lines broke from their seam, then discarded it with the others before he even realized what he was doing.
But fortune winked red: under another pyre of branches lay the naked body of the whersport he had already taken, and beside it the flush of a fresh one with a broken neck. Fel's pup and Fel's dragon had both assisted him today. He could almost come out feeling pleased about it.
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