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The old man’s somewhat expected potty mouth takes an unexpected turn, even for me, leaving my mouth hanging open and golden eyes looking at him with some measure of surprise. Was he really accusing Tembovu of, essentially, impregnating Helovia? Talk about the wrong place to be blurting out insults, I think, an ear tilting about for sounds of others nearby. Even Mavuto, who seems about as cultured as a yeti, or cave bear, sputters shocked remarks at hearing her General spoke of so rudely.
Why did I care if someone came and kicked his ass, anyway? It’s not like I said it.
Want to see him hurt again, Duir remarks coldly, and I glance over at him with a harshness that makes him step backwards once, twice. What did a magical deer know of power, of respect? He’d never even lived in a herd, like I had, and if my mother had been so insulted by this decrepit man as I (or currently Tembovu) were, she’d have punted him off the first cliff face she could lure him to, if she didn’t simply skin him alive with a salted blade first.
That I didn’t kill him when I could have is not enough to ease the anger Duir feels towards me; instead, shame and some other soft emotion reside alongside it, his thoughts thrumming to quickly for me to gather his aura with clarity. He simply quiets, falling back into silence and watching, and I return my focus to the jester and the dirt bag.
When the badger woman bares her teeth at me, however, the glowering expression my buck helped put there blooms into its own volatile arrangement. My ivories clack with a threatening bite on empty air, lion’s tail sweeping behind me in irritation; some might be intimidated by her aggression, others more keen on standing down to let the wild woman be untamed as was her nature. But me?
I dare her to show me her teeth again. I’ll rip her lip off and keep it as the ugliest, most horribly smelling, shriveled trophy ever won.
"Neither do I," lowly voiced, I am sure the point is validated by the hard light in my eyes. We are both warriors, woman. Stand down before we accidentally push the old guy over and break his hip.
When the ancient goat man begins his verbal tirade, all my anger and threats die out in an aggravated snarl. Looking to him with the full brunt of my annoyance with this uppity, dirt covered woman and all of his own preceding remarks, the answer he is given is clipped, and tense.
"A brother, and a son," I irately state, and one who didn’t want to babysit some psychotic thing all the way to the Edge and back, just to know his kin are safe.
Before I can say another word, however, the "psychotic thing" begins to violently shout and flail about in the general direction of the old stallion, overall reaffirming my current thoughts of her. It takes me a moment to begin to understand what the hell is happening, perhaps distracted by the large part of me that hopes she’ll bite out the geezer’s throat. As if her wild gestures and shouts aren’t exciting enough, a child appears, intervening between what seems to be irrational companion fear and an idiot who deserves it.
Driven to prevent any sort of disaster from befalling the child, who is obviously of unicorn heritage and somewhat familiar to me (though, surely, I haven’t a clue who she might be), my own magic is called on as she summons her strange, creature riddled fire. Though I don’t cast my spells as she does, merely balancing the spark on the brim of escape from the bonds of my body, every part of me is waiting for the dirt covered fiend to lunge at either the babe, or the snake. She won’t move a step past that… at least not those she’s chosen to make, anyway.
Never having imagined I’d be so grateful for the appearance of a nonsense spewing filly, I almost breathe a sigh of relief that the language barrier has been partially kicked down, as ironically, the peculiarly familiar babe also knows the gibberish. This time, in the general stream of nonsense, I find two words I either know, or have heard before: nyoka, which is what the filthy mare had shouted at the old man, and Tembovu.
Hey! She looks a lot like him, doesn’t she, what with those lines all over her face…
Albrecht, she names the ancient one. My grasp on my magic falters. Kiada, she says of herself, and my hold on my magic almost falls away all together. Her next question, however, makes my head jettison upwards even higher than its already haughty position. A maiden, no, a princess! Alone, with this bulldozing savage? I think not.
"Calor," I tell her, as I’d told who I believe to be her sire when he’d caught me in his wood, glancing over at the old man with a “fuck you” smile. I might have not lied if he’d been someone I at all cared to share anything with, but for a few cruel words. "Your folks know you’re all the way out here?"
I ask, letting the question lead me right into the next.
"They definitely will if you show up with some stranger," I continue, letting a smile come to life on my face as I share one of my own childhood adventures, "take it from the guy who’s mom still doesn’t know he made it all the way to the Throat from the Basin with his friends once."
[ OOC: ITS SO LONG I'm sorry for my novella smack me with it ;_; ]
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status: creature with which one does not fuck
