06-21-2021, 02:02 PM
ILLUM
Home is something that he hardly recognizes anymore. Where once it had been just forests and fog and a layer of pine needles so thick the ground felt constantly springy, now it was something new and more, and in some cases, worse. He was not particularly fond of the canis araneae that seemed most heavily drawn to burrowing beneath the largest redwood trunks, in fact he had taken to avoiding those trees when he could. They reminded him too much of the misshapen creatures that had roamed in the dark, strange twisted things carved from nightmare and made only to hunt. These hybrids were not dissimilar in the way they were a contrast of body parts that hardly seemed logical, or the way they aggressively defended the same dens they built along pre-existing pathways.
It would be easier to kill them if not for the way they carried their odd mewling pups on their backs.
Perhaps the strangest changes of all are the changes to the place he haunts most frequently. It is an empty nook in a low area of the Taiga, a spot sunken as though at one point it had housed a giant tree that fell or burned and left a gaping openness in the ground where it’s roots had been. There are other trees around it that serve to blot out any unwanted sunlight, but the ground underfoot is green and grassy and lacks that acidic layer of sap and needles so plentiful in other places. Most noticeable are the crystal flowers that bloom and thrive and grow in the constant night that bleeds from his proximity. In the dark that always surrounds him, they would be as plain as anything else in this ancient forest. But the swarms of fluttering lunaflies that trail him like wayward stars illuminate the crystal blossoms with their delicate glowing bodies until this tiny meadow is like something out of a fairytale. Iy is a beauty wasted on someone like him.
Even without the shadows whispering against his awareness, he would’ve known that someone approached by the sound of clucking that accompanied them. Clucking. Clucking? There is the briefest moment where the gauzy, dark male frowns and looks about slowly, his face a mask of both wariness and incredulity in equal parts. In the quiet that greets him it is easy to wonder if he had imagined the sound in the first place, though he has not a single idea why his mind would drift to birds. He had no fondness for them, even despite having wings of his own. But then the silence is broken again, this time by the voice of a man he does not recognize. Someone who isn’t family, then. Curious.
He slips from his little meadow, from the flowers and the lunaflies, though the latter trails him and the dark night that surrounds him like a wide bubble. Despite that his home is feeling less like him, he is still unwilling to share it with strangers. “If they went on a quest,” he says, easing out of the dark to pause near the odd, muttering male, “then they likely came back changed, if they came back at all.” There is nothing cruel about the way he says it, though nothing gentle either. Then, with a frown on a mouth as dark and star-strewn as any night sky, he frowns and settles his gaze on the bird roosting between the males horns. “You have a bird on your head.” The night deepens around them, and he ignores the lunaflies that come to perch along the indistinct silhouette of his back. “I can knock it down if you would like.”
It would be easier to kill them if not for the way they carried their odd mewling pups on their backs.
Perhaps the strangest changes of all are the changes to the place he haunts most frequently. It is an empty nook in a low area of the Taiga, a spot sunken as though at one point it had housed a giant tree that fell or burned and left a gaping openness in the ground where it’s roots had been. There are other trees around it that serve to blot out any unwanted sunlight, but the ground underfoot is green and grassy and lacks that acidic layer of sap and needles so plentiful in other places. Most noticeable are the crystal flowers that bloom and thrive and grow in the constant night that bleeds from his proximity. In the dark that always surrounds him, they would be as plain as anything else in this ancient forest. But the swarms of fluttering lunaflies that trail him like wayward stars illuminate the crystal blossoms with their delicate glowing bodies until this tiny meadow is like something out of a fairytale. Iy is a beauty wasted on someone like him.
Even without the shadows whispering against his awareness, he would’ve known that someone approached by the sound of clucking that accompanied them. Clucking. Clucking? There is the briefest moment where the gauzy, dark male frowns and looks about slowly, his face a mask of both wariness and incredulity in equal parts. In the quiet that greets him it is easy to wonder if he had imagined the sound in the first place, though he has not a single idea why his mind would drift to birds. He had no fondness for them, even despite having wings of his own. But then the silence is broken again, this time by the voice of a man he does not recognize. Someone who isn’t family, then. Curious.
He slips from his little meadow, from the flowers and the lunaflies, though the latter trails him and the dark night that surrounds him like a wide bubble. Despite that his home is feeling less like him, he is still unwilling to share it with strangers. “If they went on a quest,” he says, easing out of the dark to pause near the odd, muttering male, “then they likely came back changed, if they came back at all.” There is nothing cruel about the way he says it, though nothing gentle either. Then, with a frown on a mouth as dark and star-strewn as any night sky, he frowns and settles his gaze on the bird roosting between the males horns. “You have a bird on your head.” The night deepens around them, and he ignores the lunaflies that come to perch along the indistinct silhouette of his back. “I can knock it down if you would like.”
@[Yanhua]