Re: The Dawn Chorus
It is well past noon. Asha sits in the watchouse mess hall, sipping tea and watching the watch come and go. Wahaa! Who watches the watchmen? 'Tis me!
The muckle of the watch vary. The watchouse is a large place, hewn of limestone -- but not at all grand. The mess hall is, essentially, a crossroads of five immense wings of the building. One has been walled off and turned into what could be called a kitchen. It isn't, though. It's a place where vegetables, coffee beans, fruit, whole animal carcasses, seaweed, foreign delicacies and low-fat biscuits are left for the masses to help themselves.
These are, indeed, turbulent times. Without a leader, the city of Sondossa is being blindly led by this myriad of creatures. Blindly, and with no more ambitious aim then to wake up tomorrow with a body left to wake up with. As she watched, a Choras embassy is announced and fed, before being led up a spiral staircase. A guard sat down beside Asha.
"Asha Boden."
"Hello Who're you?"
"Nice to meet you,"
"A pleasure! I'm called Kiro."
Here, the man called Kiro paused. Asha, realising her mistake, bit her lip. Responding to speech that hasn't been said yet can sometimes pass, but she knew small but important parts of Kiro's brain were going 'Boooooooiooooioooiooing' and bouncing away across the floor.
Furrowing his brow, Kiro turned onto genocide of sausage. Asha walked away, looking for her bear guide.
She disliked that bear. Something about it made her feel really uneasy. It talked like a stupid thing, misunderstanding common phrases and asking what words meant. But every so often it would come out with something so sharp, that it sliced this illusion in two like a razorblade through candyfloss. For a moment, it would seem like an extremely clever thing twisting you round its finger, and then it would go back to stupid so convincingly that you barely noticed it at all.
Arms folded, Asha leant against a pillar in the foyer, and waited.
-----
Kandred came into existence.
It asked itself: Why?
-----
Jhans pads through the street, his massive shoulder blades jutting out as he shifted his weight from paw to paw. As the building thin out and the cobbles melt into snow and pine needles below his feet, Jhans movs into the graveyard. It is a beautiful, peaceful place with massive trees and immense stone archways, ornate graves and dark ivy. Jhans approaches one of the trees, a massiev willow, and moves aside the curtain of leaves into the almost cavern-like space within.
The last time he'd made this journey, he's been blindfolded from here on in. But this was of no concern to Jhans. He closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply through his nose. He padded his feet on the spot. He remembered the feel of the willow curtain, the smell of elderflower, shortly followed by a myriad of small rocks flanking his footfalls.
Moving through the curtain, he looks -- and spots an elderflower tree, its flowers haning limply. Moving up to it, he sees a small scree of small stones from a statue of a muse.
Hmm. Next came a hollow into which my forearm stumbled.
Jhans spotted the hole, and the gap in the foilage. his probing paw fitted perfectly.
This was going to be easier than he thought.
Last edited by Lady Liberty; 07-19-2007 at 12:59 PM.