the Rift


[OPEN] Sour-puss

Albrecht Posts: 249
Aurora Basin Impersonator atk: 6 | def: 8.5 | dam: 2.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.1hh :: 19 (Orangemoon) HP: 60 | Buff: NOVICE
Strom :: Suma Ball Python :: None Townsen
#1

The only good part of Frostfall is that the bitter cold thins the air to near nothingness and except in the case of snow, prevents cloud cover from forming in anything but the sheerest of films between land and sky. It makes the sun seem more vividly colored somehow, if still impotent against the season, and the stars seem to pierce through the cover of night with an unusual, gleaming vigor. Most of all though, it allows the auroras to unfurl across the Basin like massive, multicolored tapestries being shaken free of cosmic dust by the gods themselves.

The old stallion stands watching, his ears cupped forward with interest. His emerald eyes follow the sway of the lights, sharing his view with the young companion at his chest, still resolutely swaddled in the warmth of his scarf. Though the snake has an incredibly effective method of mapping the world around him through scent and thermal imaging, his regular vision is just shy of completely useless, preventing him from seeing anything but the blackness of low light and low temperatures when he tips his pear shaped head up toward the distant heavens. It's not until the image of rippling colors plays back to him through the shared bond of snake and horse that the python begins to understand his bondeds fascination.

'Pretty.' He comments and is immediately answered by the stallions teasing, "Pretty enough to speak to me?" Which promptly shuts him up again, though he keeps the channels of their mental connection open wide to watch the display.



"Alby talks" 'Strom talks'
OOC // @Larue

albrecht & strom
kaneryuu!
           
[Image: 56c616e54affc]Rated M, R, NC-17, AO, 18+, NSFW
Tag dat azz!  @Albrecht
Violence & Magic okay.
Wish - Away - OOC


Larue Posts: 45
Absent Abyss
Filly :: Unicorn :: 13 hh :: 1
smitty
#2

Larue...
He was her target, her mark. Ever since he had landed that kick on her side and skulked out of her cave, the lemon drop had marked him. It was the first time she had even had a particular victim in mind for any of her pranks. Usually it was any unfortunate soul that happened to cross her tricks that day. But this… this was the first time an hint of malice had creeped into her antics.

So, stealthily, ever since the idea had come to her during the foal games at the Basin’s Festival, she had hatched the plan in it’s entirety in her mind. The plants she had stumbled on the beach—the ones that grew on the dunes—while watching Kisamoa; they were itchier than even the vines she had found in the Basin. Her small, pink mouth was testament to that for it had been painfully itchy for days after gathering leaves to bring back home.

And so she prowled around, searching for the sleeping place of the cantankerous old stallion—only to have failed multiple times on this front. So, instead, she had (with the reluctant help of Jellybean) strung them up in the branches with a precarious set of dry, old vines. Thus she had given up on her target and, instead, would use the itchy leaves on some unsuspecting bystander before they withered and shriveled into nothingness.

But, alas, either karma smiled on the filly or was amused by her, because it was none other than her mark that stood beneath her rickety, drying contraption, watching the Northern Lights with his snake companion and scarf. She had to tightly bite her lips to stop from squealing with glee as she edged forward in the snow. Her rose thorn hoof rose to strike at the dried vine tied to the low, dead branch—the thought that her prank may not work due to the season not even crossing her mind.

...pucker up
image | bckg'

@Albrecht I struggled with how to set this up, so feel free to have her prank work/not work/partly work. But, basically, all these itchy leaves are tied up in the tree and she can hit a 'tripwire' vine to make them fall on him!


Please tag in all posts.


Albrecht Posts: 249
Aurora Basin Impersonator atk: 6 | def: 8.5 | dam: 2.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.1hh :: 19 (Orangemoon) HP: 60 | Buff: NOVICE
Strom :: Suma Ball Python :: None Townsen
#3

One ear begins to flick backward at a muffled snap of some twig or vine in the trees behind him, but quickly abandons the movement as a cocophony of crinkling, fluttering, and flapping breaks out overhead. Both ears instantly flatten and his emerald eyes go wide, his body jerking into a defensive crouch, ready to spring off any direction but unsure which way to go until the threat is identified. He spins toward the original snapping sound just as the first dried leaves brush across his spine, skittering down his shoulders and over his hindquarters in a wave of imagined maliciousness.

Instinct reacts before logic and sends the black pitching forward onto his front legs, his hindend kicking up and out with a vicious force. His dropped head and neck curl to wind up for another buck, but the loud pop of his hips jerking so suddenly into action gives him painful pause. His head comes back up, eyes scanning wildly around him, finally catching sight of the brown, dried leaves falling harmlessly from his sides. He stills with a grunt, muscles quivering beneath the surge of adrenaline.

"What the fuck?" He snarls at his tiny, would-be attackers, stomping his hooves and sidestepping in lunges to dislodge the rest of their unsettling scratchiness from his back. Through all this his young companion has sat petrified and helpless, coiled as tight as possible in the folds of his scarf, nearly whiplashed from the violence of his bondeds reaction, but now he steels himself to peek out at whatever monstrosity is attacking them, confused (as seems to be his most common state) to find nothing nearby. As the stallion heaves in a few shaking breaths the serpent telescopes himself farther free of his wool confines, tongue flicking wildly to identify the danger.

Dead leaves are virtually scentless and immediately ruled out as environment instead of a potential threat. They also give off no telltale heat signature, so he passes them over without thought, pinpointing instead a mass of reds and oranges in the cool blues and blacks of the forest nearby - a body - a culprit? The stallion blinks, focusing on the area his companion points out to him with his own vision and immediately recognizes the fluff of yellow standing there, stuck out like a lightning bug in a field of moonlight despite the thick trunks obstructing part of her body. He might have recognized her even sooner from her citrus scent if he hadn't been so desperately trying to catch his breath.

"You!" He gasps, any remorse he'd harbored for kicking her in the ribs evaporating with the rising heat of anger. "You little son of a bitch!" Furious, he rushes forward, mouth agape and brandishing uneven, yellowing teeth.



"Alby talks" 'Strom talks'
OOC // @Larue Sure, he's mad now, but just wait until the itching starts. XD

albrecht & strom
kaneryuu!
           
[Image: 56c616e54affc]Rated M, R, NC-17, AO, 18+, NSFW
Tag dat azz!  @Albrecht
Violence & Magic okay.
Wish - Away - OOC


Larue Posts: 45
Absent Abyss
Filly :: Unicorn :: 13 hh :: 1
smitty
#4

Larue...
The lemon drop couldn’t muffle her delighted shriek as her contraption worked, itchy Sandivy leaves raining down on her victim in the cold, inky night. However, her shriek morphed from delight to surprise as wind whipped by her, Albrecht’s vicious bucking kick just narrowly missing her head.

Small, candied, rose-thorn hooves scramble in the icy snow, hustling backwards and away from his flying hooves and snarled curses. “Crap,” she yelped to herself as her small, lemony haunches smacked into a thick, gnarled, rough trunk. She was trapped by the very tree she used to make her contraption! Karma is funny that way—one moment giving the lemon drop her victim, but the next blocking her escape. Bright teal eyes widen in fear as the old bag’o’bones furiously rounded on her, rushing at her with an angry, open mouth.

“WAIT! Wait!” her high-pitched, scared squeals split the night, “If you hurt me, I won’t show you the cure!” was her panicked, off-the-cuff bargaining. Though not entirely truthful, the hot spring’s smelly mud did provide some relief from the leaf’s persistently painful itch. Sure, the mud needed to be re-applied often in order to continuously feel the relief, but it was something. And something was better than being pummeled to smithereens beneath the old hag’s boney hooves and gross, yellow teeth.

All the while, her wide eyes darted around, searching for and escape—or for a witness. Surely this old hag couldn’t kill a sweet little tartlet if there was someone else around? Her large nostrils quivered as her young, panicked mind tried to think. She never was actually caught in any of her pranks. Until now.
...pucker up
image | bckg'

@Albrecht


Please tag in all posts.


Albrecht Posts: 249
Aurora Basin Impersonator atk: 6 | def: 8.5 | dam: 2.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.1hh :: 19 (Orangemoon) HP: 60 | Buff: NOVICE
Strom :: Suma Ball Python :: None Townsen
#5

The fillys high pitched wail cuts into his senses like a sharpened blade, sinking into his flesh with little resistance and shocking him into breaking off the assault. His teeth clack together on empty air while his hocks flex painfully beneath him in an effort to slow down, front hooves propping against the cold hardened earth. He jars to a halt nearly on top of the girl, neck arched to stare down at her panicked expression, her tiny body braced for abuse, the belief of its inevitability shining white around her eyes. Only now, at this intimate distance, does he realize that they’re a deep blue-green.

His brows pinch, heat rising on his skin. The filly can’t be more than a few months old, a child, her mane and tail still more fluff than hair. He opens his mouth to speak, the flame of his anger abruptly extinguished, snuffed out by a reflexive, instantaneous repentance, but the words are jumbled and fumbling before they even gather on his tongue, nonsensical defenses that ring hollow even in the greater emptiness of his heart.

He wants to say that he wouldn’t have hurt her, that his aggression wasn’t serious, that he’s not some monster to prey on the young and the vulnerable – but wouldn’t he? Wasn’t he? Isn’t he? Hasn’t he already? And he very nearly had again, without even a moments hesitation, and the reality of that truth galls his sensibilities far more than the vines poisonous sap does his skin.

“Okay.” He manages to rasp around his turmoil, feeling stifled and ashamed of himself for a second time in regards to his treatment of the candycorns daughter. Maybe a modicum of his conflicting, whirlwind emotions flickers across his grizzled face as he stares down at her, as his ears waver between forward and back, or maybe she interprets the change as simple gullibility on his part, a feeble old mind reaching for the proffered olive branch.

He wishes she’d tuck her little tail and run, leave him alone so he can drag his emotions back to their corners in relative peace, or at least without witnesses. The snake at his chest peeks out of his scarf, peering up at the black and auburn mass of disquiet that is his bonded, unable to stabilize the wild flailing of emotions he can't even yet grasp the full meanings of, though the tone of those emotions is discernible, and overwhelmingly, devastatingly sad.



"Alby talks" 'Strom talks'
OOC // @Larue

albrecht & strom
kaneryuu!
           
[Image: 56c616e54affc]Rated M, R, NC-17, AO, 18+, NSFW
Tag dat azz!  @Albrecht
Violence & Magic okay.
Wish - Away - OOC


Larue Posts: 45
Absent Abyss
Filly :: Unicorn :: 13 hh :: 1
smitty
#6

Larue...
Relief is swift and sure through the lemon drop’s tiny, yellow freckled body. Her teal eyes, which had squeezed shut at the impending doom of Albrecht’s rapidly approaching hooves and teeth, slit open and peek up at him. She squeaks as she finds him this close to her, realizing that she had just barely missed a beating—or, at the very least, being crashing into by the large, bony old stallion.

She wasted no time in sidling to the side, releasing her haunches from being trapped against the gnarled trunk. “Okay,” was his reply—though the dark rasp of his voice makes her relieved candied eyes dart up to his angular, horned face. A slight frown crosses over her pert brow—though any further investigation of the man’s intense face was halted by her survival skills (hah).

So, with a quickly flicking, dark flaxen tail, a jumble of words left her lemony lips, “The hot springs, the mud there! If you smear it on, it stops the itch!” And, not wanting to stick around any longer than necessary and risk her candied, sour hide, she turned tail and ran, thankful for her escape.
...pucker up
image | bckg

@Albrecht sorry this took me so long! Since this is older, I thought it would be a good place to end it!


Please tag in all posts.



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