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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:44:00 GMT -6
Briar let himself into the makeshift corral, and approached the doe, who was grazing on the far side. He made sure to approach from her side, where she could see him, and although she picked her head up briefly when he got close, she didn’t make a fuss about it. Briar backed away, then returned with the blanket. Slowly, ever so slowly, he set it on her back, not unfolding it just yet.
Now she was interested, though not quite alarmed. It wasn’t, after all, very heavy. Briar waited to see if she would react badly, and only when it became clear that she wouldn’t did he gradually tug the blanket out so that it draped over her back properly.
Before he was quite done, she shuddered her hide, and when that didn’t work, she trotted out from under it. Briar sighed, picked up the discarded blanket, then waited for her to calm down and tried again.
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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:44:12 GMT -6
This time he brought a bribe in the form of some fresh berries. While he settled the blanket with one hand, he fed them to her one by one, mostly to keep her distracted. After the failures of the previous day, he figured it was worth trying a bribe after all, to see if that would make things easier. She wasn’t a dog, but she still had things she liked to eat, and if that helped her put up with any new strangeness, then so be it.
After the blanket was settled, he led her around the corral with the berries, which was more coaxing and less actually letting her eat than before. But her focus had already shifted to the berries, and she seemed almost entirely unaware anymore of the blanket on her back.
He didn’t give her the chance to escape it this time, and removed it himself before she could shake it off.
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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:44:31 GMT -6
Then they repeated the process twice more for good measure. By the third attempt, it looked like she was ignoring the blanket entirely. Of course, Briar was still providing a distraction, but it still felt like progress. And he didn’t want to try leaving the blanket on by itself just yet, since he wanted the doe to learn that he would take it off, just so long as she stayed calm and didn’t try to shake it off herself.
At this point he decided to try and introduce the saddlebags into the equation. After spreading the blanket on her back a fourth time, he added the saddlebags too. They were empty, so they were still fairly light, but it was a little more weight than just the blanket on its own. She felt the difference, but it wasn’t hard to distract her with the promise of more treats.
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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:44:41 GMT -6
Briar didn’t bother strapping them onto her properly just yet; he was satisfied if she would simply let them lie on her back for now. He coaxed her into a slow walk around the makeshift corral, then took everything off, and repeated the process again.
After that, he called it quits for the day.
Over the next few days, he repeated this training with her, to get her as desensitized to the presence of these two pieces of gear as possible. Once she was comfortable walking around with the bags, he strapped them on very loosely -- and then tighter and tighter, until they were at a proper tightness for staying on. Berries as a distraction worked well enough that they didn’t have any more accidents. The doe had come to associate this particular activity with the treats, so her patience with whatever new thing Briar was trying was a good deal greater now.
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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:45:35 GMT -6
Once the saddlebags were secured, he began putting things into them. He started light, then gradually increased the weight. Truth be told, he was a little nervous as the load began to approach his own weight, but by then they had done this so often, and the load had increased gradually enough, that the doe wasn’t fazed by it; and anyway Briar was not very heavy, in the grand scheme of things. But then, a Galabex doe was also not as sturdy as an Equillion, and if Briar had been much heavier, she wouldn’t have been able to carry him at all.
Now that she was used enough to it, Briar no longer gave her as many treats as he had done in the beginning, and sometimes he left her with the bags on while he gardened -- a few minutes at a time, and then for longer stretches.
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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:45:50 GMT -6
She was desensitized enough to their presence that she didn’t try to rid herself of them anymore, which was a relief for Briar to see. At first she did come looking for the treats, but after a while she accepted this new state of things without a fuss.
Maybe this wouldn’t be quite so difficult as Briar had imagined.
Of course, she still wasn’t carrying a rider just yet, but that would come easier now that she was used to having weight on her back. Now Briar introduced a saddle -- a light, minimal thing made of leather, just enough to put some padding between her back and himself, and give him a little easier a time not falling off… Or so the theory went, anyway. In truth, he hadn’t ridden anything himself, so it was going to be a learning process for the both of them.
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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:46:19 GMT -6
Putting it on went surprisingly easily, once he let her investigate it to her heart’s content. Having established that it wasn’t doing anything interesting and didn’t smell terribly appetizing, she let him put it on her back and tighten the straps. So far it wasn’t much different from the saddlebags, especially once they had a little weight in them.
Briar didn’t try to swing himself into it right away, even knowing she could tolerate his weight. Objects in a saddlebag weren’t quite the same as a living, breathing creature getting on your back, and while she was pretty tolerant of Briar now, he didn’t know how she would react to him trying to get on. He draped himself over it first, resting a little of his weight, and then more of it.
Her first reaction was to sidle away from him with a series of short, stuttering steps.
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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:46:37 GMT -6
Briar thought it had been a refusal, but then she came back to him, which made him reconsider. This time, he draped himself more fully on the saddle. It was impossible to distribute his weight evenly without getting on properly, but at least it no longer felt so much like a one-sided shove, or so he hoped.
She took a couple of fidgeting steps, then stood properly, and Briar breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe she had moved off that first time because she had thought that was what he had wanted. He let himself off, then heaved himself on again. After doing this a few times without incident, Briar gathered his courage and swung himself into the saddle, beating his wings a couple of times to help give himself enough lift.
And then… he was on. She was carrying him, in the saddle, on his back. It felt a little surreal, not to mention strange to be so high...
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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:48:44 GMT -6
He had flown before, mostly in short bursts to lower the risk of being seen while he did it, but that was different. Right now he was still, and close enough to the ground that somehow, it felt more disorienting. He blinked, and had to force himself to focus on the doe's head in front of him to keep from getting distracted by the slightly dizzying sense of being to high up.
Somehow it also felt too easy to have gotten on, and too soon, despite the fact that it had, realistically, taken weeks of work to get to this point. Maybe he just hadn’t really believed it would actually happen until now.
She still didn’t know any signals for him to direct her on where to go, but she was carrying him on her back.
He got off almost immediately, and only repeated the process of mounting and dismounting a couple of times before stopping for the day.
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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:50:29 GMT -6
But the next day he stayed on a bit longer, and then a little more. Eventually he stayed on long enough that the doe -- out of boredom or curiosity or for whatever reason -- took a few steps forward, wandering to another part of the corral. It wasn’t exactly a productive ride, but she had moved with him on her back, and that was more or less the real thing, right?
Now all he had to do was teach her how to go where she wanted him to go.
He didn't really know where to start with that, though he did know that he didn't want to do it with a bridle. He still didn't know Noa's exact plans, but Noa had instructed him to learn to shoot a bow, and not too long ago had presented Briar with a magicked one of a custom make -- another of his gifts.
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Post by Briar on Jul 21, 2022 21:54:30 GMT -6
Briar had taken it, because he had to, but he had stored it away in a chest somewhere in the servants' quarters and left it there to gather dust. It certainly wasn't the sort of thing he could train with, expensive and riddled with enchantments as it was, and even though he could feel no malevolence from the weapon itself, the fact that Noa had commissioned it had made him uneasy almost as a matter of principle. Whatever enchantments Noa would have asked for couldn't have been benign.
The only saving grace was that it wasn't as gaudy as it could have been. There were embellishments, including the addition of some unnecessary feathers, but the color of it wasn't some strange shimmering gem tone that would be visible and conspicuous from afar.
All that said, there was a very real possibility that he would have to shoot from atop the doe's back someday.
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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:49:12 GMT -6
That meant he had to be able to direct her without use of either of his hands, since there was no way he would be able to shoot otherwise -- not even with the magic he had now. It would probably be useful for other reasons too, but the choice had essentially already been made for him in that regard.
He had no idea how to go about it. He had never trained a creature to serve as a mount before, and he didn’t even know what the traditional methods were, for him to be discarding them here. A bridle was involved, he was sure, but he didn’t know beyond that fact.
Still, if the commands were going to be by touch, he would probably have to be in the saddle to train the doe to them at all. So the first thing he did was mount up, and then…
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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:49:40 GMT -6
Spurred on by some half-remembered detail, perhaps of one of his former master’s household riding an Equillion or some such, he dug both heels into the doe’s side -- not hard, not at all, but just enough that it would be felt.
It had to have been luck, but she did start moving -- or rather, she was startled into taking a few steps forward. And when she stopped, he hurriedly sat back more heavily into the saddle, which he had decided on the spot was going to be the signal for her to stop.
Gods, he didn’t know if this was going to work. But he had gotten here by trying things until something did work, so he suspected he was going to have to continue in much the same fashion.
After a small pause to give her some respite, he tapped his heels against her sides again.
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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:50:29 GMT -6
She was startled, or prodded, into another few steps. When he felt her slow down, he sat back heavily again, so that the motion came a little before she came fully to a stop.
Another small rest, and he started the process again. But this time when she moved off, it was definitely much less of a startle and more of a reluctant shuffle; if she didn’t get the idea, then soon the sensation of his heels against her flanks was not going to be enough to get her moving at all. And he didn’t want to kick her into it. But it was also a bit awkward to feed her treats from atop her back, and he wasn’t sure it would work the same way as it did with the Houluh anyway -- if she would properly associate the treat with the command and performance. A deer was different from a dog, wasn’t it?
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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:50:58 GMT -6
Sure enough, the next time he gave her the signal to go forward, she… didn’t move at all. Briar sat there for a long moment, trying to figure out what to do. Should he throw a berry into the grass to get her moving? Would it startle her? In the end, he decided not to risk it, since if she startled badly, she might move abruptly and injure him, herself, or the both of them.
So as graceless as it was, the solution he came to, in the end, was to… annoy her into moving. By kicking his heels against her flanks with a little more force, and repeatedly, until she did finally move.
Once she did move, he stopped doing it.
He was still sitting back in anticipation of her stops, in the hopes that she would come to associate that shifting of weight with stopping on her own.
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