Nemaisare

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

Brilliance! :)

Heh, we can figure out ways to keep her around if Curdle were to get captured. Or, if there's something he could do or say that might convince her to help him? I could possibly have him do that. He's also capable of more magic than he realises just now to accomplish his goal, so if there is the chance that he'd get caught in or near the cart, he might show that and then realise for himself and new options appear for getting him and that urn out of the city.

Options that don't require Miria and then he can just kinda, walk up all sheepish like once they're outside the city. lol

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

I think there was mention of roads somewhere in our plotting, just not sure what for. Lol I like that idea of a caravan master with a jinni hardening the sand, that's a good jinn based business. :) lets go with that, it's fun. :P It keeps travel restricted to stars and counting dunes, but still allows for carts. Probably not too many, but I'm sure there's enough rich people who'd like to travel in style and in permanent shade, to merit it even if most merchants don't need it. Some would be bound to see the benefit of being able to carry more without having to feed as many animals.(me thinking aloud... typing out loud?)

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

Eeeheeeheehehehehehehehehehe! Fun times. Making stuff up is fun. It did occur to me, whilst writing that post, that a cart on sand dunes is an unlikely occurrence. Or, at the least, rather more a hindrance than a help, but this can probably be solved with wide wheels and maybe magic. Or something else... I've never actually tried carts on sand.

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

It was the drop in temperature that woke him, slight, but starting to fall towards night. He couldn’t see if the sun was gone completely or not, so he remained under the canvas, struggling anew with his options. Give himself up, or continue to try. What would they take from him if he did? What had he to lose? He didn’t know. Probably nothing. Nothing except the sun and sand that he was trying to save for his master. His dead master.

He should have never agreed to what she asked. Never. He should have known that only grief would come of it.

Too late by far.

And too late to find anyone leaving now. No point in walking away from shelter when you’d be stopping within the hour. Desert nights were dark.

Curdle let the ache of lying on hard wood half the day get to him then, it would be the last time he told himself he was too old for anything. Too much trouble, trying to prove otherwise. No, he’d just walk away, give up without any more hiding, without any defense. He was done.

Carefully, he began pushing the urn towards a corner, to tuck it in under another bag, apologising silently that it was the best he could do. If only he could believe that himself.

He was not a man who let things go easily, but this time, Renna’s walls were too high. This was, he felt, his only chance. He would need to hide it well, so it would not be found before they left the gate. And then, he would need to find somewhere else to be found, so that this cart would not be searched. No, maybe he could go back to Fiira’s house. They would be waiting for him there. That woman Ynip, always stopping by in the morning that she might be the first to know if the Lady’s spirit had taken flight during the night. He scowled and cursed her under his breath as he rearranged items to more cleverly disguise the urn’s placement, an awkward maneuver while lying on his side and trying to keep himself under the canvas. She should have been in Assryn still for three days. She should have caused no problems. Her return had surely been aided by the South Wind’s malice.

If it had not been for her!

….

If it had not been for her, some other obstacle would surely have risen to trip him. With no plan and no idea where to start, what could have possibly gone right? It was over top of his renewed grumbling that a stranger’s voice interjected, reminding the jinni that canvas did not make him invisible, and certainly not inaudible. A woman’s voice, firm and surprisingly lenient if this was her cart. Yet, somehow familiar… He found the connection when she continued, it was that edge, determined, maybe a little angry, that gave her away. The woman from the market, selling tapestries. West Wind’s bitter laughter rolled through his mind as he shut his eyes regretfully. She was being kind to a stranger threatening her very livelihood, and for that kindness, he might well betray her.

Curdle stayed hidden as he answered her, keeping his voice low, beneath hers, hoping there was no one else nearby. “Unfortunate, messi. I am sorry, but trouble I have already found.”

The apology was genuine. For all he’d earlier been looking for someone to help him, he’d had no desire to involve anyone else in his problems. Now, especially, when there was nothing to gain and he had decided to leave off trying. “If there are guards nearby, messi, best it be that they not see you sharing words with me.” Even better that they not connect him with this cart. The urn needed to be outside the city, within reach of the winds when it was overturned. Not dumped in a street where countless feet would smudge through Fiira’s ashes. “I will leave if there are none to see.”

He would. Of course, she might think it dangerous to admit to a lack of protection on her part. She might lie. There was no way for him to find out without risk. Tradition, again, might save him.

“Against the storm’s rage, messi, I set my word.” And the word of any jinni could not be broken once said aloud. Some did not believe such stories; even some jinn scorned the old tales. Curdle did not care. For him, his word was all he had. Even were it possible, and he doubted any rumours that excited more hopeful, or fearful, hearts, he would not have tainted it. “I will leave, and do nothing more.”

If he broke her trust now, he was sure, a sandstorm would swallow him whole. The flesh would be flayed from his bones. His blood would be drained from his body. His spirit trapped forever behind that leading edge of fury. To be torn apart. Literally or figuratively, it seemed an unappetising prospect. He had no desire to test the oath's bounds. What mattered now was whether or not she believed him.

Things you Google while writing.

I google just about everything. Sometimes it takes me longer to google something than it does to write the danged post. And of course you wind up with way more information than you needed. Like, you start looking for one specific type of, I don't know, spicy pepper, and you wind up with a bunch of recipes, a list of the spiciest peppers, and whether or not you can grow them where the rp is happening, but also in your own climate zone. Because hey, why not? I've used name generators, looked up popular names in specific years, regional or language appropriate names. Researched historical dates and events, traditional foods, sea creatures, land creatures, rock formations, the birds and the bees(yes the saying, I wanted to know where it came from, whether or not that was relevant to the post I was writing at the time I can't remember), region specific dialects and idioms, book releases, architects, dinosaurs, prehistoric beasties that aren't dinosaurs, thesaurus is a necessity because sometimes I want that word, y'know, the one that starts with a p? Looked up forts, national parks, maps, old calendar systems, alcoholic beverages, heraldry, dream significance, flower meanings, tarot cards, archery, anatomy, illnesses, mental troubles, historical diseases, historical reactions to health problems, old cures, mythology, children's rhymes, swears, ASL, swears in ASL(and other languages), dictionaries are useful.... Sometimes I'll look up punctuation, too. Also, fandomsmust be researched sometimes if my character knows more than me. Damn characters that know more than their creators, am I right? Googling is fun. Wikipedia is pretty awesome, and a time sink. Terrible, horrible time sink.

What tense?

For tense, I usually prefer past tenses, generally simple past. But it often moves into past perfect. Very rarely will I move into present perfect. I'm pretty sure the only time I use any of the other tenses is in dialogue. Simply because it reads a lot better when you say a character has done or did this as opposed to reading that they will do this, or are doing that, and expecting the other rpers to automatically convert that into, well, that's what the character did during that post. I actually find it rather strange when I read posts written in present or future, but future tenses are the weirdest to read. Although Clark's example of using present tense in a GM post makes sense, that I can get behind. But for character posts, it just feels weird. In present tense, everything's happening at once, despite the fact that there should be a clear sequence of events. And in future tense, it just seems like no one's sure these actions will actually happen, I always find myself wondering if there's a condition, like Character A will do this if ChAracter B does that, but Character A is supposedly reacting first and Character B's in the next post, following behind. And, yeah.... That's just how it reads to me.

blackbird claw, raven wing [ closed for El Taco Taco && Nemaisare ]

Yep, that's a thing, that is happening. Have a post of Matiir complaining and being a bother. :P

blackbird claw, raven wing [ closed for El Taco Taco && Nemaisare ]

The growl never stopped, though it had stuttered a few times when he tried to take advantage of a pause in her momentum, or a step. When he might throw her off balance or break away while she wasn’t paying attention. It never worked.

His arms were sore before they’d even made it through the gate. The shackles throwing him off his feet with every rush. As long as she held firm, he was caught. And he didn’t like it. Chained and caged, he had waited. Now he was so close to being free he couldn’t find the patience. But though he circled and snarled and tried to run, he never charged her. Never attacked. She’d used a word he recognised. A word that belonged to his home, to his territory. To the creatures he should not hunt.

He knew she wasn’t one of them, his nose and eyes said so. His instinct did not think she was safe. But if she knew the language, he couldn’t risk injury to her. At least, not by his claws. She could hurt herself however much she wanted and he’d not stop her there.

Still snarling, head low and muscles straining, Matiir was watching her as she turned towards the gate, letting him see her distraction. He yowled suddenly and broke from his stubborn, set stance, plunging forward past the human keeping him chained and down the hill, away from the fort and the closed wall where the humans stayed. He didn’t bother following the cart path, but ran for the forested slopes, where he could hide himself away and slip past the trouble that was building, dragging at the air, frightening him worse than he knew how to deal with. Of course, being beyond the fort changed none of the other facts. She still held his chain.

It snapped taut, his momentum carrying his heels up and over his head in a haphazard cartwheel as hands and feet exchanged direction. Mud wrapped around him for a moment before he raised his face out of the clinging wet, snorting and sneezing to clear his nostrils as he slipped a little farther down the slope. The rain wasn’t forgiving in offering easy purchase, and when he stopped sliding, he struggled to get up off his belly before she could get too close. She seemed more set on moving than threatening him though, and with the breath knocked out of him, the fight had been too.

Once she was past, he waited, mud-covered and wretched, until the tug came at his wrists, then he hobbled after her. Head hanging.

He limped. His arms hurt, his shoulders felt bruised. His wrists were strained and red. More than once he lost his footing, and a new cut was bleeding on his chin before they reached flat ground. The cold rain had numbed his skin though. Beyond the brief skull rattling, he hadn’t felt it.

Enough, however, was enough.

He wanted to sulk into the shadows and hide. Wait out the rain and the weather. Find somewhere safe and dark where nothing could see him. Where the air didn’t smell like danger. But she still held the chain. He couldn’t escape her on his own. But none of his kin lived here. No siblings or mother. No father. Not even a stranger. He would have caught their scent when he passed through before he found the chickens. If he had, he would not have been caught. Too late. Still, even knowing it was no use, he slumped onto his side, letting his arms stretch as the chain started dragging, and voiced a rumbling groan that didn’t quite match his earlier vocal protests. It didn’t quite match a bloodcat’s timbre either. His chest and throat were too different now. Close enough though, had any been nearby.

The plaintive sound travelled well, though it was muffled by the weather. And while he let her do all the work of moving him along, Matiir lifted his head to glance about, listening in vain for an answer before letting his head rest on an arm and turning his forlorn attention to his captor. He still didn’t know what she wanted of him, beyond that she obviously wanted him.

blackbird claw, raven wing [ closed for El Taco Taco && Nemaisare ]

I'm seeing one of those moments when a dog owner is trying not to be dragged around by their dog. Yes, yes I am. :P Oh Samaire. Hee!

blackbird claw, raven wing [ closed for El Taco Taco && Nemaisare ]

Sent. :)