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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2020 20:14:58 GMT -6
It was a good thing that the gate was never locked, since he didn't know what he would do if he couldn't open it this way. Put the hatchlings down maybe--- again, the groceries metaphor coming to life here--- but unlike a bag of edible things, the hatchlings could easily wander off and away during that time. Granted, opening a gate that wasn't locked didn't take very long, so he could probably have done that, but why bother if it wasn't locked and he could just shove it open with a shoulder?
If it had been locked, that was a whole different story, but then the process of putting the whelps down would also have been dicier. Sometimes finding a key on your person could be a time consuming ordeal, and if there was one thing Aster had learned from his time working with whelps, it was not to underestimate the amount of time it took for them to get into a mess.
But now that he was in... It wasn't like he was going to be able to carry them this whole time. That was neither practical nor productive. He had brought them here to let the whelps get some air and have a little fun, theoretically speaking. How much fun they would get to have depended largely on how easygoing the mansion felt like being, and also probably what this trio decided 'fun' would be in this setting. If it was eating poisonous plants or something, then forget it.
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Post by Noa on Jun 18, 2020 20:19:52 GMT -6
Some things just weren't worth the bother, and if they acted out too much, it was nothing for Aster to simply take them home and try again later, when they had learned even a modicum of self preservation and discipline. Of course, that was all dependent on him having enough time to work with them, but even if he wounded up not having that, there were some things you just picked up as you got older. Even whelps who had been left mostly unworked picked up a few basic words, mostly 'no' and their names. Which, as he had learned with the last trio, could actually get you a lot of mileage if applied judiciously. They were no Avander, say, but Aster didn't need them to be... And Avander was the result of hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work anyway, so Aster could hardly invest that amount of attention into every Sarane whelp that came his way.
... He did sort of miss it though. His first hatchling, upon which he'd founded... not quite a dynasty, but certainly a lineage of sorts. And considering it had produced third tiers, that was nothing to scoff at either.
The whelps were placed gently on the grass just inside the gate. Aster closed the gate behind him without ever taking his eyes off them, wary of what would happen the moment they did. Though at first, nothing did happen. Apparently, despite their clamoring for freedom all this time, now that they had it, they didn't know what to do.
35 (I didn't get the bug net for my 20th post roll, so if I could get it this time please, I'd appreciate it!)
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Post by Jack on Jun 20, 2020 18:45:47 GMT -6
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Post by Noa on Jun 25, 2020 19:21:45 GMT -6
Well, that was in itself something of a blessing. It gave Aster enough time to shut the gates and get his own bearings too, before the whelps inevitably started causing trouble for him. You never knew exactly what kind of trouble it would be either, until after they were in it, at which point it was sometimes too late to do a timely intervention, or anything else really, except cleaning up the ensuing mess. Not always, thankfully, and as the years went on, he did get better at sort of anticipating what they were trying to do and putting a stop to it before things got hairy, but that was still only sometimes. And if there was one thing that babies, human or otherwise, were good at, it was thinking outside the box. When you didn't have common sense yet, anything was possible--- or anything seemed possible, anyway, so it was a lot harder to figure out what they were trying to do. You couldn't always apply logic to it, after all.
The three whelps seemed content with stumbling about and sniffing around for the moment. Aster wondered if it would be more practical to set up some sort of makeshift pen for them here... But he was hesitant to erect any sort of structure on mansion grounds, nevermind the transport aspect of it. How he would carry even a collapsible pen, and three whelps along with it, from his home to the mansion grounds, he didn't like to imagine.
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Post by Noa on Jun 25, 2020 19:25:39 GMT -6
It was probably possible, but it might not have been a very comfortable experience. No, scratch that, it certainly wouldn't be a comfortable experience. Maybe with the right spell, he could do it, but it was kind of a waste to use magic on something as mundane as this when he could just keep an eye on the whelps.
And they did look so small. At this age they didn't look like much at all, with their huge heads and their bug eyes and their cheeping. It was a little like baby birds, actually; and the whelps especially resembled baby birds at feeding time, where they would sit with their mouths gaping open, waiting for food. Not that they were necessarily fed this way in the wild, by their own parents, but Aster had taken to feeding them by dropping food directly into their jaws to cut down on fighting between whelps who were being penned together. Otherwise... Well, otherwise Roland would have been bullied a lot harder than he had been when he was still small. Now that he was bigger, he wouldn't be bullied, but if he got into a spat with Abelia or Alioth now, it would end in blood.
Those guys had been separated for their own good, but for these little ones, it was still more practical to have them all raised together. From the way they were moving around though, Aster could see that they hadn't formed into a cohesive little group just yet.
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Post by Noa on Jun 25, 2020 19:49:05 GMT -6
Now that he was thinking back on it, he didn't think the previous trio was cohesive from the start either. No, they definitely hadn't been; there was a lot of squabbling before they figured themselves out. But the thing was, they had a very clear pecking order establishment stage. The current lot hadn't even reached that yet. Aster frankly wondered whether they were going to, since he kind of expected it to happen... well, sooner than it did. As he recalled, Alioth started throwing his weight around and shoving at his sister, and then later Roland, pretty much as soon as he got within reach of them.
But then, maybe Alioth was the exception, not the rule. And he hadn't come out of that on top either, for that matter, so who knows how these things were supposed to go. Aster had experience enough raising whelps, but he didn't usually raise them in batches or trios like this. It had gone well last time, so he was trying it again, that was all. But considering the volume of them that he had now, and the rate at which he was acquiring new ones, he might have to permanently adopt this approach from here on out.
The three whelps that he had brought with him this time were now, finally, cautiously venturing into the new place they found themselves in. But this was what Aster meant by the fact that they weren't a cohesive group: each went off in its own direction.
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Post by Noa on Jun 25, 2020 20:58:21 GMT -6
It wasn't that they weren't aware of each other. Aster could see them sizing up the other whelps at feeding time, before they realized that food was being delivered directly to them, and possibly that no one seemed to be getting any larger a share than the others. Maybe it was just that they were all first tiers, and none of them had that intrinsic push to... do whatever it was Alioth and Abelia were doing. But even though they were aware of each other, they didn't exactly squabble with the same enthusiasm as the last trio.
... Did Roland ever initiate any of those? Now that he was thinking about it, he didn't remember. Roland was so well behaved, relatively speaking, compared to the other two that Aster didn't really pay as much attention to him, sadly.
The current trio though... "Hey hey hey, stay together," Aster said, trying to herd them all back to a manageable proximity before they wandered too far from one another. The whelps were still intimidated enough by Aster being bigger that they complied when he herded them, and if they didn't, he could always sort of nudge them where he wanted them to go. Rici, being the smallest, was the easiest to deal with. If things went the same way that they did with the last trio, Aster imagined she wasn't going to be the boss of this little group either. How much of that was her own size and temperament, and how much was just Roland breeding true?
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Post by Noa on Jun 25, 2020 21:02:57 GMT -6
He had been her father, after all, and... maybe in his case it was his circumstances, but even as an adult, even unbroken, he wasn't quite as much of a spitfire as Aster had come to expect from a drake. Even Dustdevil, that scarred and grizzled fellow, who had much more cause to have a lackluster spirit after so many losses in the ring, had more anger in him than Roland.
Most people did prize Sarane for their fighting spirit. Aster hoped he hadn't somehow acquired a dud. But then, in hens, docility might be more of a boon; they were less popular as fighters, though not unheard of either.
"Left you go," Aster said to Rici, and nudged her closer to Velvet. The white whelp was a bit slower off the mark than her fellows, and Aster was finding that she made an excellent anchor point, since she tended not to move around as much. It was too early to tell whether this was going to be her true personality, but thus far she had been a relatively sedate thing, as much as a whelp of this age could be said to have any distinguishing character. A tuft of fur was there at the end of her tail, the beginning of her breed's trademark.
She yawned as Rici was deposited at her side, and Aster left the two of them together to deal with the third whelp, who was steadily wandering further away from the rest of the little tour group.
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Post by Fiera Ferella on Jun 26, 2020 19:13:52 GMT -6
Looks like your sarane have found a neat fern!
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Post by Noa on Jun 26, 2020 20:41:40 GMT -6
That third whelp was Havoc, whom Aster was really hoping wouldn't live up to his name. It was, again, too early to tell at this stage whether that would be the case or not, but right now it was looking like he was at least going to be more trouble than the two girls, that was for sure. "Get back here, you little," he said, scooping Havoc up, mindful of the tiny fledgeling thorns that were starting to show on his tail. They hadn't been there when he had hatched, but now there was just the barest hint of them, little pinprick things that looked a little like pinfeathers or rose thorns.
... It had been a stupid idea, in retrospect, to name a drake something like that. What if it became self-fulfilling? But then again, drakes were already kind of hellions by default anyway, and at the time it had seemed apt, or maybe a little ironic, depending on how things turned out. And with so many whelps, maybe Aster was also running out of ideas. He had thought it was hard coming up with names for Avander's brood, but at least he had a starting point with all of them. These new guys... well...
Aster deposited Havoc next to the others, and was immediately greeted with the sight of Rici chewing on something. "Oh no," Aster said. So it began. Velvet looked rather interested in what she had in her mouth too, though not to the point of trying to steal it.
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Post by Noa on Jun 26, 2020 20:50:38 GMT -6
Or at least not yet, anyway. Aster didn't know if she would, in the end, but given enough time she might get there. Not that he was going to let her do that, or let Rici continue with what she was doing, because that definitely wasn't the diet he was trying to raise her on, and whelps were still delicate, in their own way. Despite their greedy eating habits and the claws and teeth, they were still babies. If Rici ate something bad, that really might be it for her.
... Or it might not, especially since Aster had Rhys on site at home now to treat any creatures there that were in a bad way. But it was still not something he wanted to happen if he could prevent it. So here he was, grabbing poor Rici by the jaw, and pressing on the hinges of it until she opened her mouth and he could fish out... a chewed up bug. Well. How wonderful. Just what he wanted to be doing with his afternoon. "After you guys, maybe a human baby will seem like a vacation," Aster said, throwing the bug to the ground and crushing it under the heel of his shoe before any of the other whelps could get any ideas about having a little taste test. They certainly seemed interested, if the way that Havoc and Velvet were crowding around his foot were any indication. There really was no accounting for taste, Aster supposed, looking at them.
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Post by Noa on Jun 27, 2020 17:26:28 GMT -6
He wondered how much of that was them being just babies, and how much of that was them being Sarane. He didn't think being Sarane had anything to do with it at first, but thinking back, he remembered Avander chasing bugs too when he had been a whelp, well past the stage where he should have developed enough brain cells to know better. It wasn't like they spent their entire childhoods without common sense, after all. And the last trio he worked with had even gone so far as to try and eat those little... candle things he'd found here, which had been well and truly bizarre, but fortunately the one that had managed to get ahold of one had backed off after realizing it tasted like wax.
So maybe it was an issue of species. Was it just that the whelps needed protein to grow, and were thus willing to get it in whatever form they could? Good meat and even carrion was one thing, but any pocketpet that came to hand was a little... voracious of them. But Aster supposed bugs, at least, were protein too, even if he couldn't imagine them being very palatable. And he had eaten his fair share back in the day, when there really was nothing better to be had.
Thus, he kept his foot firmly in place, to discourage them from trying to eat the squashed corpse of the poor bug. At least it had been put out of its misery pretty quickly.
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Post by Noa on Jun 27, 2020 17:32:03 GMT -6
It had been half chewed anyway, so it really hadn't been long for this world at that point. It had been a mercy kill. Normally Aster didn't think much about the quality of life of random bugs, but that really had been a pretty unfortunate one right there. He would have to keep an even closer eye on the whelps than he had thought.
Poor Rici, who had been the one who had gotten a hold of it, squirmed in Aster's grip. Aster didn't blame her for it either; the experience couldn't have been a comfortable one. He let her go, and she scrambled away from him. Fortunately she didn't get very far, stumbling over one of the other two whelps in the process, and the two of them tumbled over into a heap. Even more unfortunately for Rici, the one she bumped into happened to be Havoc. He hadn't been aggressive enough to go for her unprovoked, but now that she had apparently provoked him, he wasn't above giving her a sound swat over the head either, and then jumping on her as she squealed. It really wasn't Rici's day. At least she gave in easy, knowing, Aster supposed, that she was overmatched in this, and once she did, Havoc backed off. His win had been cemented, and his revenge had apparently been delivered, so that was that.
He did hiss a bit at Velvet afterwards, when he caught her watching, but she didn't rise to the bait at all.
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Post by Noa on Jun 27, 2020 17:43:14 GMT -6
It was probably for the best. Any more fighting and Aster might have felt compelled to intervene. And Velvet herself didn't look much more like a fighter than Rici was. She had recoiled slightly when Havoc had hissed at her, in a way that Aster might have labelled as 'offended' if it had been a more clever, older creature, and not a Sarane whelp who was really quite young. It was probably just a funny coincidence that it looked like such an anthropomorphic moment. But even so, the impression it left remained, and he was at least a little amused by the idea of Velvet finding it an absolute affront that she was being hissed at in such a vulgar manner.
Well, if she turned out to be an affronted lady type, then he had named her aptly. That hadn't been his intent, giving her a name like that, but if one of them was going to live up to their names, it was better Velvet than Havoc. Though there was nothing saying it only had to be one, so maybe they would both turn out exactly the way you would expect with their respective names... Wouldn't that have been something. Aster didn't know if it would be a good thing or not though.
Rici was still nursing her 'wounds', which fortunately seemed to be more hurt feelings than anything else. Aster gave her a cursory look over just to make sure she wasn't hurt, but didn't try to pick her up.
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Post by Noa on Jun 27, 2020 17:48:06 GMT -6
After the ordeal she had just had, first at his hands and then at the blunted baby claws of Havoc, being roughed over by the human again was probably the last thing she wanted. Well, it always was, considering they didn't like to be handled, but on this occasion it would have added further insult to injury. And she didn't seem to be bleeding, or moving about in a bad way, so Aster figured she was probably alright. He could give her a more thorough go-over once she had calmed down some, at the very least. Doing so now was just going to stress her out unnecessarily, and considering how young she was, he wanted to avoid that if he could.
It really wasn't her day though. And given how small she was, maybe she was also doomed to stay at the bottom of this pecking order, though it was a little too early to say for sure with these guys.
Havoc, having established his status as someone not to be messed with, was now back to wandering around. And considering the point of this outing was to let the whelps get some exercise, Aster opted to herd the other two along with where Havoc was going, rather than trying to keep them all in the same place like he had just done. If one of them was going to dictate the direction for their little adventures, it may as well be the most active one, at least this time around.
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