"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
When the spring rolls in, with it comes an ancient creature.
It sleeps below the surface of a mound of freshly turned earth, sinking tendrils of its dripping roots past rock and fossil alike. Buried, but for a mane of dark, oval leaves that sprout up from that same mound and spread themselves wide for the love of their sun god and photosynthesis alike. It grumbles in its slumber, black earth bubbling on the mounds surface where its nose would be, one foot below, as though a team of ants are carving out a home that they will cherish for eons to come.
Those who would disturb it will learn the true meaning of regret.
05-24-2021, 08:59 PM (This post was last modified: 05-24-2021, 08:59 PM by Ophanim.)
When the spring rolls in, he rolls out. Of Silver Cove, that is. And only for today, he has thirty chicks to come home to. He uses his thin talons to occasionally paw at the dirt patches of the meadow in search of seeds. Or rocks, he isn’t picky. Either will fill his belly just fine despite what Starhen says.
When the dirt proves to be as barren as his beloved wife isn’t, he moves on to new things to peck and pick at. The tall meadow grasses are fine but flavorless, for the most part. Pollophie gives a few clucks and cranes his neck in search of his star-speckled lady. “Ba-gokgok?” he asks before clipping another bite of grass with his beak. He is distracted by a grumbling before their conversation can carry on further, though.
“Oh what the hell was that?” he whispers in a nervous hiss. The wide-eyed rooster struts up to the strange waves of grass that form the horse radish’s mane. He tilts his head this way and that so his comb fidgets from side to side. Then, so quick his love wouldn’t have time to persuade him otherwise, he takes an exploratory peck of the radish’s foliage. Interesting! He quickly gobbles a few more bites like the birdbrain he is.
The gourd rolls in. It's unclear where it came from or what its motives are. Can a gourd even have a motive? If it does, it's not talking.
Because it hasn't got a mouth.
Or a larynx.
Or hands.
This ain't no Hands Gourd, okay? It's just a regular gourd which has no brain as far as science knows. Maybe the plant it sprung from had a rudimentary awareness, but its fruit is just rolling around like a disembodied leg.
It should probably be worried about the chickens, but it's not really aware of them. It should definitely be concerned of the weirdly sentient horseradish, but it doesn't know about that either.
Because it's a gourd.
I'm not really sure why you wanted this. Maybe you just wanted to see the gourd get smashed. What is wrong with you?
and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
She followed Pollophie in somewhat of a huff, since she didn’t really feel like leaving the cove today but she didn’t trust him to go out on his own. Last time he went to the meadow he had tried to eat a bee and it took weeks for the swelling from the sting to go down. While she is sure he won’t try it again, she really can’t be too careful. He is beautiful, but a slow learner.
She was busy pecking and scratching at the ground, doing chicken things, when she hears the grumbling from the grass (plant thing?), and looks up at Pollophie’s nervous hiss. Fluffing up her wings she purposefully struts over, but is quickly distracted by a gourd. Had that been here when they first got here? Are gourds just dropping from the sky? Gourds belong in a museum, not the meadow.
She pecks at the gourd for good measure, making sure it knows she could eat it if she wanted to. She is distracted by her husband and his inspection of the grumbling grass, and she narrows her chicken eyes suspiciously at it. “I think you should step away from that...thing. We don’t want a repeat of you and the venus flytrap, remember?”
starhen
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted. ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
At first they are lucky. The creature snores, peaceful in its slumber, as the first chicken waddles across the mound of earth. There is only a small tremor, the blanched skin along its back rolling beneath the soil when a scrap of its mane is snatched, greedily, between the blunt edges of a yellow beak. It adjusts, lazily, and the mound barely shifts as the creature finds comfort quickly again. A second, low grumble, bubbles up through the dirt, but the soft snores resume, even as an off-season gourd rolls to a stop beside the hill of its earthy nest.
Such luck.
For a moment.
A third chicken arrives then, ruffling its feathers and shrieking in the shrill way that only nagging women can, and it’s this frivolous interruption that finally coaxes the creature's black eyes open. A third, low groan bubbles from its throat as it rises like an elderly man from a rocking chair; slowly, with the audible creaking of its aching joints likely uncomfortable for everyone. It yawns, sleepily, a beet red tongue lolling out between its toothless white gums as it shakes the remaining soil from its waxy, crackled back and stands to tower, eleven hands high, above the poultry and vegetation that had so abruptly aligned before it.
In the next, strangely swift, moment it lowers its great radish head before the three and inhales deeply in examination before exhaling remnants of soil, snot, and the occasional earthworm inches from their faces, and gourd shells. It wonders what to do with them, but first it will let them speak.
