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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:43:48 GMT -6
It could not see the sharp teeth she bared at the sign any more than she could pick it out of the sky, its cluster of stars rendered nearly as invisible as the true ones that fell before the light of the city. It could not even see her, for it drifted nearly half a mile away, content that it was close as it felt her emotions, the fury burning its way down its antennae and into its mind. It floated closer, unsure of the rage that burned so painfully, mildly worried about the member of its pack that crawled upon the ground.
It still did not see her as it felt the rage build itself up, blazing so bright that it was an inferno that threatened to send the scrap of night swooping at some wandering two-leggers stalking the earth beneath it. It knew the hate, knew the need to attack something.
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:44:07 GMT -6
Then it was gone, the afterimage of the flame nearly blinding the beast to the sudden lack of emotion. It rippled its way through the sky, swimming ever closer to the last place it had felt her, antennae flicking around its head as it sought the correct signal. It felt others first, those far nearer that the one it had followed, trails of emotion swooping above it so closely that it almost panicked.
Then it found it had not lost the link, but that the panic was a part of the one it sought. It was a prickly, twisting feeling that might have made it ill if it had been capable of such things, and the emotion blanketing it helped ease its mind further. A feeling of an end, of things solved and work finished, though it knew not of work or an end. What it felt was a tiredness that smothered the panic, that permitted the previous rage to only smoulder rather than burn as brightly as it had earlier. 3
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:44:30 GMT -6
Thankfully, it had no need of such a powerful beacon of emotion to find the one it followed as it fell through the air, a slow dive that was more like a falling feather than the dive of a wiurn. The one it sought continued to feel, the emotions parading through it as it drifted ever closer, all failing to throw off the sagging weariness as it finally glanced its quarry. She was there, covered in the things she had put on earlier, the things that had brought a brief spark of pride to warm the floof as it watched.
It had not understood the thing it was kept in, the way it could see through the gaps yet never fit itself through them. It had understood the feelings when she had approached it, making noises that made no sense as the panic had first twisted its way inside of the beast. It had been hard to tell then whether the panic came from her or itself. 4
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:44:44 GMT -6
It pressed itself against the back of the cage, then floated free as it could not bear to land, then landed again as it tried to feed part of its wing through a gap. The cage door had opened, the panic that was not its own being choked down with fatigue and hate, but its own panic failed to disappear with the sudden lack of her own. She had spoken to it again, gestured, but it had not left the cage, not even when the noises turned gentle and soothing. The feelings behind the voice were unkind and cruel, and it knew as surely as it knew of the sky it had never floated in that there would be no safety outside of the box.
Eventually disgust had taken over, and the lizard had walked away with buzzing annoyance. Something was scratched onto a piece of paper as it watched her, still hanging from the cage like a forgotten bit of washing. 5
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:44:56 GMT -6
Then she had left it, and it had followed.
It had not been its original thought. It had planned to stay clinging to the cage, mouth gaping as it sucked down the pollutants in the air that it greedily fed upon. But there had been something wrong, something different as the last piece of armor was tied into place, a sort of piece it had not felt at the kennel. So it had followed, a scrap of night sky that was invisible to all but those who flew near it, drinking in their sudden shock and confusion as they hovered somewhere behind it, eyes trying to pick out a single patch of stars.
It never gave up its connection to her though, not when something full of hunger and unrestrained joy swooped so near that she felt the wind currents force her towards the ground. She had spun gracefully with it, as graceful as a forgotten pamphlet on the wind, and continued after the feeling of peace. 6
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:45:09 GMT -6
It hovered near her, far nearer than it strictly needed to be. Floofs did not need sight to track one another, only the feelings that coursed through them and allowed them to speak without seeing one another. But the lizard was no floof floating on the breeze, and it had known her long enough that it knew risking a single sent emotion would only cause it pain, cause it to be netted and held against the earth so that it could only silently call out its terror.
Yes, it knew her. But it did not hate her, did not fear her as perhaps it should have. It was curious, and that curiosity was enough to anchor it against the instinct to float higher into the sky, to lose itself among the stars. It only watched and sifted through the emotions radiating off of her like smoke from a fire. It had not known her to feel such peace, such tiredness. 7
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:45:31 GMT -6
A soft-skin god. Not one of the godlings they danced for and offered their children to, but a god nonetheless according to whoever had written the notice. A god to the cursed house, something as worth celebrating as the numerous other soft-skin holidays she had seen. The mansion looked like nothing more than a common soft-skin home, a warren of wood and metal, surrounded by the prettiest things it could find. Anything to make itself look more natural. To make it look better, to hide what it was like a painted shell might hide a rotten yolk.
She did not know of the thing a short distance behind her, not even as it flinched from the burst of hate she tried to call forth to strengthen her. She had heard stories of the lead scientist, the one who had blighted the world and his followers that would never stop growing until they had choked the life from all natural things. 8
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:45:46 GMT -6
There was no good way to kill a choking vine. To salt the earth would leave it free to spread across the canopy of the trees, to burn it risked reducing many trees and the one fighting it to ash. Cutting out its heart let the remaining vines grow new hearts, spreading themselves further even as they strangled the live from the weaker strains. One could learn to live with the choking vines, know when the leaves shake and track those foolish enough to think prey hid within them, know when they would lie inert with bloated things hidden beneath their foliage.
But she was tired, and those as tired as she rarely cared about whether the vines struck or slept.
The tiredness smothered the disgust the floof felt, but the spark of pride nestled safely under it all. Haix ran her fingers over the hilt of her dagger as she stared at the mansion beyond the fence, willing any emotion to strike and overturn the weariness. 9
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:46:00 GMT -6
Though she searched for several minutes, thoughts combed over in her mind as finely as she could, she found none. The floof felt the tiredness shift, changing into something not quite the same as Haix traced a finger over the holiday of the month, over the name of the god associated with it. Then, with a sigh that the flood felt rather than heard despite its closeness, Haix pulled open the gate and stepped inside.
She had come at night, for the mansion had preferred the night last time, plunging her into a think murk of darkness regardless of how bright the sun had shone down on her scales seconds before. She had thought it might appreciate the gesture, or prove to have a contrary nature that changed night into day as it had turned day into night. But now the grounds of the demon house were no brighter than the world outside had been. 10
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:46:24 GMT -6
It hesitated, and that was almost enough to cost it its chance to follow her.
It could see her as the gate started creaking shut, feel the emotions that stormed beneath the calm. Had it the ability to think so far ahead, it should have reasoned that it would not lose its connection to her any time soon, that it could just float over the barb-tipped fence that surrounded the property. But a twinge of unease filled it as the gate squeaked closed, its attachment to the feelings of the lizard seeming to grow weaker as the gate continued to slide shut.
With undignified speed, its ends rippling as though it was caught in a storm, it swam after her, turning to slide past the nearly closed gate. The emotions grew in strength as it passed through, the door clanging shut as the weakening bond was restored as if there had never been a sudden loss of strength. 11
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:46:40 GMT -6
Animal instinct had told it to follow her through the gate, that the area above the fence was nothing less than the jaws of some creature ready to snap it in half. Animal it might have been, the floof was not stupid. As soon as it was in, the gate closed behind it, it shot upwards. There was another emotion here, not its own of the lizard it followed, something that sawed at the edges of its mind but gave no indication of something it knew.
It blocked out the sensation the best it could, focusing only on the strange lizard and the emotions boiling within her as she walked towards the house. She never looked behind her, and the floof felt relief that was all its own as she continued on her way. It did not know this place, did not know what to do outside of the cages and the nets. But it knew it could not lose the only other member of its pack. 12
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:46:51 GMT -6
It hovered in the night sky, the white pinpricks of light in the sky seeming more numerous than before. It hung there, never going so high as to press itself against the sky as its instincts begged it to, some stronger instinct of fear keeping the sky from feeling as safe as it should have been. Or was that the feeling of the one walking the earth below it? There was no need to make such distinctions now. It kept as close to her as it dared, keeping her in sight despite the emotions that poured off of her like an invisible beacon.
It would watch, it would remain with its small pack, and it would not be alone. That final part was the important one, the most important part. To be alone meant death as surely as if it landed upon the ground and waited for the things that hungered on the surface to find it. 13
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:47:06 GMT -6
Haix was unaware of the scrap of night that had followed her into the haunted grounds. Nor did she see it as she looked around the courtyard, feet as firmly planted to the ground by the gate as the new plants seemed to be in their planters. Hundreds of brightly colored flowers stood in various stages of bloom, yawning towards the open air as though they were mouths waiting to snap up any foolish insects that drew near. Their leaves were just as varied as the shapes of the flowers, some bearing the same blade-like shapes, some broader than she was tall, and still others that put their dull-looking blooms to shame with leaves the color of a clear morning sky.
Her distance from them hid many of their finer details, but she thought she recognized a few here and there. A rounded bowl of yellow that was commonly spotted in the yards of tiny soft-skin huts, a massive sheaf of pink petals that pointed into the air like a blade that reminded her of her home. 14
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:47:23 GMT -6
She slowly exhaled as she forced her fingers free of the hilt of her dagger, shamed that she had grabbed at the weapon without realizing it. Of course the damned house of demons knew. It wore the guise of the labs, claimed that the soft-skin who was said to have founded it as a god to be celebrated by it. It would know what happened in the city beyond its fence. Or perhaps it infected those foolish enough to have wandered in like a parasite, burrowing deep beneath the scales so that one could never truly escape it.
It did not matter now. She freed the dagger from her grapes, leaving it to rest in its sheath as she began to walk through the garden, noting what plants she recognized. The floof continued to watch as it hung in the open air behind and above her, but she never glanced up at the sky. 15
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Post by Alma on Nov 8, 2020 13:47:38 GMT -6
She had never met the lead scientist of the labs. She had heard enough stories of him to know he was of the human-breed, that he was apparently a male, and she had seen how little he cared for what he destroyed. She might have admired him for that strength and wit, but her home was gone now, and her flaws far too deep to laugh and toast the rise of those stronger.
The floof twitched in the air.
So she instead had watched soft-skins that wandered the labs, wondering which was him, deciding in the end that it did not matter. The soft-skins were a twisted breed, though she could never know if the scientist had changed those in the hive or if they had always been that way. The scientist was the people, and the people were the scientist. Their god was little more than an extension of all of them to her. 16
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