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Post by Briar on Jul 28, 2023 14:04:20 GMT -6
Perhaps they had been emboldened by the presence of their fellows elsewhere on the property. Briar did his best to keep them where they would remain out of sight, but these two also didn't look like the ones he was taking care of. They had a strangely shaggy appearance, and for a moment he thought that it was the same ones he knew, only sporting a winter coat. But as he approached them, they shrank back slightly. The familiar Kogumas would have been mobbing him for food by now. That was what he got for feeding them, but maybe Yeo-reum was right about him being soft-hearted. And, so he told himself, at least if he kept an eye on them, he could better ensure they stayed out of trouble.
By this point it had developed into a kind of procedure -- and the Galabex was familiar enough with the presence of the Kogumas to calm down as soon as she recognized what they were.
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Post by Briar on Jul 28, 2023 14:04:30 GMT -6
They were no threat to her, but neither were they of particular interest, and as long as they didn't go out of their way to bother her, she paid them no mind.
Briar went to his stash of vegetables -- the discards that were deemed unworthy for the table or the pantry, too small or too strange-looking to be presentable, but nevertheless edible and still good. It used to go into his own soup pot, but the Koguma liked it just as well, and now he kept some on hand to give to them when he ran into them in the garden. He had never run into this variety with the winter coats, but he figured it was worth a try to coax them the same way as their fellows. He left some of his offerings in the snow between them, then stepped back a ways to see if they would take them.
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Post by Briar on Jul 28, 2023 14:05:12 GMT -6
When he had been less familiar with them, he had gone further away, concerned that they might be too uneasy to take the food while he was still present. But now that he had seen them a fair few times, he knew better; they weren't quite so shy as that, and these ones had been hanging out in plain view. They looked at one another, almost as if they were conferring between themselves as to what to do. Then, one stepped forward and took one of the small potatoes, inspecting it for a moment before nibbling at it. That seemed to signal to its fellow that the food was safe, and the second Koguma picked up something gingerly from the pile too.
They didn't descend on the stuff like starving beggars, the way that the autumn Koguma tended to do, but it was clear they were enjoying themselves. And now that they had accepted the food, Briar began the process of leading them to the usual feeding station.
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Post by Briar on Jul 28, 2023 23:09:15 GMT -6
Over the next few days, Briar went out every day to check on the new Kogumas. It took a little time for the new ones to figure out that they were being fed in a specific place every day, and it took some managing to make sure they integrated well with the ones that were already established there, but after some initial hiccups, the new ones settled in with the rest.
The Kogumas weren't a particularly surprising sight in these parts. What did surprise Briar was the Lotine that he and the Galabex happened upon while trying to get the new Kogumas settled.
It was Briar that noticed the Lotine first. It stood to reason; they didn't move around much, at least not on land, and they weren't a threat that the Galabex would have recognized. If it weren't for the Lotine's striking body pattern, Briar might not have noticed it either.
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Post by Briar on Jul 28, 2023 23:09:26 GMT -6
It was almost the same color as the snow, but not quite, and when the light hit it at just the right angle, the Lotine's fur threw off all kinds of refracted light. Briar caught sight of the glint, and the two of them made eye contact -- and Briar knew that he had been caught watching. The Lotine didn't immediately flee, though it looked as though it might if he made the wrong move.
There had been a Lotine back at the gardens of his old masters once, some rare breed that they had put on display for a while and then tired of. Briar had the care of that one too, so he knew a little about them, but it hadn't been a long tenure, and he had been new to the gardens then. He did remember that they were clever, not quite as much as Yeo-reum but comparable to a man.
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Post by Briar on Jul 28, 2023 23:09:38 GMT -6
Food bribes to get it to stay in a certain part of the property probably wouldn't work, or at least not on their own.
Briar considered chasing the creature off. Honestly, that was probably the best and safest course of action. But he wasn't sure if the Lotine would simply learn how to avoid him, since they were smart enough to differentiate between individual people. As with the Koguma, it was probably best if he could keep an eye on it somehow...
Briar did his best to give the Lotine a proper amount of distance for now. The next day, he left a few small fish where he had seen it the day before. He didn't see it that day, or the day after, but he kept leaving his offerings anyway; and eventually it would wait for him there sometimes. This was a much more gradual process than with the Kogumas, but that was about what Briar expected.
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Post by Briar on Jul 28, 2023 23:09:48 GMT -6
It was too clever not to understand the risks that Briar presented, but at the same time, he had no way to concisely convey his intentions, so... It did come down to some food as bribe after all, but the rest was showing, over days and weeks, that he could be trustworthy. The Galabex did always accompany him, but at least the Lotine was clever enough to recognize that she posed no threat. Briar rather doubted it was the Galabex that the Lotine was concerned about.
And then, after several weeks of this, the Lotine began to relax. And once it had decided to trust him, it was like flipping a switch. Now it no longer seemed concerned at all that he was there, and although it wouldn't come right up to him or make physical contact, he could sense a quiet expectation when he appeared, as if it was demanding its daily offering of treats.
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Post by Briar on Jul 28, 2023 23:16:35 GMT -6
If it was willing to accept his food and his company, that was close enough to tame for Briar. He hadn't been hoping for much more than that anyway. He wasn't the sort that needed a creature to be cuddly with him, especially one that was smart enough to come up with perfectly good reasons to be wary. And the Lotine's tolerance for any strange or mildly unpleasant things he might have to do later, to keep it safe, was probably higher than a normal creature's, right?
He hadn't really meant to accumulate so many wayward charges when he first took over the garden. Objectively speaking, it was probably a bad idea. But they did keep showing up, and he did just feel more at ease if he could keep an eye on them... And maybe if he had the time, he could relocate some of them to a better situation someday. Until then, he would just have to do what he could for them here.
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Post by Nadia on Jul 29, 2023 4:05:29 GMT -6
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Post by Briar on Jul 30, 2023 18:03:50 GMT -6
Briar had had a lot of unpleasant experiences since he had first arrived at Gracehaven. Actually, that was probably an understatement, but so many of them had happened that he had... not grown accustomed to it, exactly, but... To a degree, he was likely desensitized, especially considering his previous masters hadn't been pleasant to serve under either. Not that this stopped Noa from being worse. One of the things Briar had learned in his short years here was just how much worse an unpleasant master could be.
But even this sort of unpleasantness did have patterns, and over time they had settled into enough of a routine that Briar could reasonably expect reprieve under certain circumstances. For example, the garden was usually his safe haven; it was his responsibility, but Noa didn't seem terribly interested in interfering with it, or for that matter, with how Briar was taking care of it.
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Post by Briar on Jul 30, 2023 18:04:00 GMT -6
The key word here, which Briar had almost forgotten, was 'usually'. Noa had never been a creature of habit. There were patterns, but he didn't rigidly adhere to anything like a schedule, and new ideas struck him every so often... Sometimes to Briar's detriment.
Right now, he was trying to decide if this was one of those times.
Not having expected this was, he thought, not that foolish of him. Noa hadn't wanted anything to do with the gardens in years. Sometimes he would ask for this or that plant, presumably for his research, but it didn't happen terribly often. Noa himself had said that he'd already done most of the work with plant-based potions that he felt worth doing, and that it had essentially proven to be a dead end. He'd mentioned something about how some species still had their uses as catalysts, but for the most part he only seemed to care about healing berries anymore.
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Post by Briar on Jul 30, 2023 18:05:15 GMT -6
And yet, the day before, he had seen fit to foist two new charges onto Briar: the first being a Trick Serpent, a creature that was, if not exactly pleasant, also not something Briar would have necessarily balked at working with.
The second, unfortunately for him, was this... fungal beast. Noa had rattled off a name that Briar wasn't sure he could have pronounced even if he still had his tongue, and Briar certainly didn't know the sign for it. If Noa did, he didn't teach it to Briar, but that was pretty par for the course for him. Briar was glad for it, really; even if he wanted tutelage of some kind, he wouldn't have sought it out from Noa, given the fact that he wanted to spend as little time in the man's company as he could get away with. They already saw each other too often for Briar's liking.
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Post by Briar on Jul 30, 2023 18:05:25 GMT -6
Apparently, this creature produced some sort of venom that could be refined and given to a creature to enhance its bite potency. That was how it had been explained to Briar, anyway. And now it was his job to tend to it and to harvest that venom, though that was about as much instruction as Briar had really been given. Noa had spoken all this in his usual bland, uninterested tone, but he hadn't given any more specific instruction than that.
Briar didn't know if Noa also lacked the knowledge, or simply didn't want to impart it. He wouldn't have put it past Noa's particular brand of caprice to withhold that information specifically to watch Briar struggle with trying to figure it out for himself. But either way, he was on his own, and clearly extracting this... thing's venom would be easier said than done. Noa had deigned to warn him that it wasn't to be touched with bare hands.
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Post by Briar on Jul 30, 2023 18:06:14 GMT -6
The warning had probably been a practical consideration, considering some of the other duties he had assigned to Briar as of late. Briar was, among other things, being forced to pick up archery, and someone with permanently damaged hands would probably not be as good a shot -- and therefore, as useful -- as Noa wanted them to be. Or maybe being mishandled would have damaged the fungal beast too, and interfered with its venom production. That was the most likely possibility.
The offending creature was currently sitting in a corner of the garden that Briar had set up specifically for it. More specifically, he had found a box big enough to contain it, and cordoned off that portion of the garden for good measure. He didn't want any of the Kogumas or... anything else, really, wandering in and coming into contact with this thing.
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Post by Briar on Jul 30, 2023 18:42:05 GMT -6
If Briar got hurt while taking care of this creature, that was one thing, but if any of his other charges hurt themselves interacting with it, that would be on him. And it was going to be a lot harder to treat them than it would be to treat himself.
He had been a bit apprehensive about whether this would be enough to hold the creature, so when he had come down this morning, he had left the Galabex in her pasture and come down alone. If he found it wandering the garden grounds, he could put it back in the box and try to figure out how it escaped. If a few plants had been killed or... devoured... by this thing, it would be an unpleasant loss, but he could always plant new ones. It was rather harder to replace the flesh on a living creature, not to mention the trauma.
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