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Post by Briar on Sept 8, 2021 21:51:50 GMT -6
Yeo-reum huffed, a sharp note ringing high in his breath, and jerked his head. We should go, the gesture read; the fourth such iteration of the same sentiment since they had left their hiding place. The late afternoon sun was running out, and unlike Briar, the Tat-lung couldn’t see in the dark. Yeo-reum could afford precious little protection to either of them once the light was gone, and it was making him uneasy. But Briar shook his head, stubborn. What he was looking for was here somewhere, he was sure of it. If only he could retrace his steps... ... Except there were no steps to retrace. The last time he had been here, he had still been small, and the view he remembered had been from the air. His wings twitched and shuddered against his back, trembling with the temptation, but Briar stilled them with the discipline of long practice.
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Post by Briar on Sept 8, 2021 21:52:09 GMT -6
He hadn’t flown since the change. Too big to escape notice now -- and still too small to do any good. Even in the dark, it was hard to disguise a blur of his size.
Regret and frustration both filled him, but he consoled himself that the view from the air would be little better. How many years had it been? He didn’t know, but too many summers had come and gone. In this overgrown quarter, there was no telling how much had or hadn’t changed.
And so, with the same silent determination he had mustered over the past several days, he picked his way through the underbrush, quiet as a mouse. With a sigh, Yeo-reum fell into step behind him. Briar had asked him, once, to stay behind, but the Tat had only snorted at the suggestion, and ignored it wholesale since. It was a mixed blessing; his vivid scales were harder to hide in the brush, and he didn’t move nearly so quietly as Briar. But so far they had managed, and a Tat-lung’s presence provided some measure of protection, at least against the other denizens of the wood.
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Post by Briar on Sept 8, 2021 21:52:21 GMT -6
They came to the creek that Briar had discovered two days prior, then made their way westward along its bank. The sun slipped steadily lower in the sky, scattered golden rays ebbing away. Yeo-reum stopped and made another, more insistent sound.
-A little more,- signed Briar. The Tat-lung stared at his hands, understanding that there was a message there but unable to decipher it. Still, when Briar did not turn back, Yeo-reum realized that Briar meant to continue on. His head dropped, and he rumbled his displeasure.
Truthfully Briar wouldn’t have angered Yeo-reum if he could help it. Yeo-reum was wild and ill-tempered, but he was a friend where otherwise Briar might have had none. And what the Tat-lung wanted made sense, more sense than the fool’s errand that Briar had set himself on. This much he knew. It would have been better to hide, to wait out the inevitable manhunt in the wake of what he had done. What they had both done. Better, even, to flee the city outright, to put this place behind them and never come back.
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Post by Briar on Sept 8, 2021 21:52:33 GMT -6
The debt that Briar chased now was an old one, and it wouldn’t have surprised him if its owner had long since forgotten its due. But Briar remembered, and in a life that had shown him so little kindness, some part of him could not bear to leave it unanswered.
The sky was still paling shades above the canopy, but already the depths of the woods were dark. Briar’s sight shifted, bled of colors; shapes and textures came into sharper focus. He placed a steadying hand on Yeo-reum’s side, and the muscle beneath shifted in subtle acknowledgement. Briar crept forward, and Yeo-reum followed.
For a time there was only this: the leaves and dirt beneath his feet, the trees around him, and the steady forward progress of his steps, of Yeo-reum’s steps beside him. In the dark, it felt as though the forest might go on forever. But then, all at once the trees came to an abrupt stop, yielding to reveal a wall covered with ivy. Briar stilled, and felt Yeo-reum’s nose bumping into his back.
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Post by Briar on Sept 8, 2021 21:52:48 GMT -6
The Tat-lung stopped. Briar ran his hands along Yeo-reum’s jaw, then pressed his hand into the Tat-lung’s chest. Stay. He could only hope that Yeo-reum understood. Yeo-reum hissed a response, and Briar sighed, wishing there was some way for him to speak. At night, signing was useless to him even if Yeo-reum could understand it, which he couldn’t. Briar could only push back against Yeo-reum again, insistent, and watch as the Tat-lung subsided with a distinctly bitter grumble.
He wouldn’t be gone long, Briar promised himself. But then, Yeo-reum’s presence here was its own insurance, or perhaps its own threat. If he took too much time, then Yeo-reum was liable to do something rash in his absence.
He didn’t have much time.
Briar’s hands brushed over the stone, and he felt his pulse quicken with anticipation. He looked up -- the wall was a tall one, but he could climb it, he thought.
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Post by Briar on Sept 8, 2021 21:53:25 GMT -6
It was well made, but already the vines had staked their claim, and Briar found purchase aplenty among their woody branches. He was small still, light as a child, and with grim determination he scaled the length.
He had gone through disappointments enough these past few days to know not to hope for too much too soon. But as he reached the top of the wall and saw what lay within, Briar felt his breath catch. The shape of the treeline -- he remembered -- the roofs just visible over them, and the tower --
A sharp hiss from below dragged his attention down. Yeo-reum paced in tight circles below, tail lashing and uneasy. Briar glanced back one more time at the house that he could just make out, then slid down from the wall, calloused fingers catching branches to slow his descent. It stung, but he could bear it; he had borne far worse before.
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Post by Briar on Sept 8, 2021 21:53:37 GMT -6
As soon as his feet hit the ground, Yeo-reum closed in, snuffling him all over like nothing so much as an over-eager horse. Briar bore with it, until Yeo-reum was satisfied, upon which point the Tat-lung backed off, still cross.
Nevertheless, Yeo-reum followed when Briar ran his hand along the Tat-lung’s side.
As they walked away, Briar cast one last look back at the wall. A part of him -- a foolish part, the same that had insisted he come here in the first place -- was urging him to go back, to scale the wall, to fly up and up and up until he reached the tower, to dive in through a window as he had done so many years ago --
-- and to do what? No, better to return with the light of day on their side, to investigate the property, to form a plan before going in. If he was to have even the slightest chance of succeeding, he had to do at least this much.
Soon. Not now, but soon.
He could only pray it wasn’t too late.
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Post by Briar on Nov 7, 2021 22:26:01 GMT -6
----- Dawn was only just breaking over the horizon when they set out the next day. Briar had barely slept, seized by the knowledge that he had found the tower, that his desperate wish after all these long years might soon be realized at last. He knew the odds were not with him, and yet it was impossible to quell the quickened pace of his heart whenever the thought crossed his mind. Soon, soon, soon. Yeo-reum was cross, not for the early hour but for the venture, as he had been all along. Briar was growing used to ignoring his ire. At first, when he had seen the state of his old friend and learned what Yeo-reum had done, he had been seized with a quiet horror; when he had still been a fish in the garden pond, Yeo-reum’s disposition had been jovial and carefree, a far cry from the bitter and angry creature he had become.
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Post by Briar on Nov 7, 2021 22:26:16 GMT -6
But he understood all too well the kind of suffering wrought by his old masters’ hands. Briar could not begrudge Yeo-reum his anger, and could only learn to live with it, as Briar had learned to live with his own burdens.
And Yeo-reum steadfastly refused to leave Briar behind, or to be left behind in turn. So they began the trek through the wilds at the edge of the city, back to the place they had found the night before.
Finding the path was easier now that he knew the general direction, and although there had not been much light when they had set out, it was even now steadily increasing. Briar had done what he could to commit the way to memory, but he had lived most of his life within the bounds of a single estate, and more often a single garden; just as often it was Yeo-reum who pointed out where they ought to go, though the Tat-lung had even less occasion to put such a skill to use.
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Post by Briar on Nov 7, 2021 22:26:45 GMT -6
The sun was already well into the sky by the time Briar’s hands found the rough stone of the wall again, not quite mid-day but certainly mid-morning. Later than Briar would have liked, but now that he was standing in front of the goal that had driven him through so many long years, it felt as though every moment he spent outside these walls was a moment wasted.
There was a chance, too, that the masters of the house would be out on business. More likely than it would have been at night, when they would certainly have been home, if asleep. And with the daylight, he had Yeo-reum’s support, which was more than he could have said otherwise.
He scrambled over the wall once more, then back down on the other side -- falling the last half of the way, and rolling as he hit the ground to muffle the impact.
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Post by Briar on Nov 7, 2021 22:26:55 GMT -6
Once he was across, Yeo-reum simply leaped into the air, aloft for but a moment before landing with far more grace than Briar had managed. Briar half expected him to be smug; he had been a proud thing as a fish. But studying the Tat-lung a moment, Briar could only see a taut alertness radiating from him, tense and wary for any sign of danger.
At least Briar need not explain the stakes, he thought. But then, he could hardly remember a moment in which Yeo-reum had been relaxed since he had found Briar again.
The tower was not so easily visible from the ground as it had been from the top of the wall, the skyline too much obscured by the trees from below. But Briar was just as glad for the cover; if they had landed in the open, too close to the house itself, the chances of being discovered would have been much higher.
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Post by Briar on Nov 7, 2021 22:27:06 GMT -6
He remembered the direction of it, and with that he forged his way through the woods, with Yeo-reum following close behind. For a time, their trek remained much as it had been before they had crossed the wall, stalking through the woods with only the dappled sunlight to guide them.
And then, all at once, the woods gave way to a clearing -- and across it, Briar could see the house, looming like an island in the midst of the treeless space. The tower -- Briar felt his pace quicken, and there was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to fly up to the highest window and --
-- and what, exactly? He didn’t know. All this time, he hadn’t thought through what he would do once he reached the tower. Truthfully, in his heart of hearts, he hadn’t quite believed that he would ever get this far.
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Post by Briar on Nov 7, 2021 22:27:48 GMT -6
And now that he was here, the weight of everything he didn’t know felt almost suffocating. Would there be guards? Servants? And the masters of the house -- what kind of people were they, and what kind of hours did they keep? Briar couldn’t bear the weight of another person and still take flight, and Yeo-reum would refuse it out of hand.
Still, he was here. He had to do something. He stepped out from the cover of the woods before he quite realized what he was doing. Being out in the open after spending most of the last week hiding in the brush made him feel strangely exposed, for all that he had grown up on a property not much smaller than this one. There were some trees surrounding the house itself, and if he could just reach --
Briar didn’t have the chance to finish that thought.
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Post by Briar on Nov 7, 2021 22:28:24 GMT -6
There was a sharp cry from behind him, and the next thing Briar knew, he was on the ground. For a moment he couldn’t breathe. He had to get up -- he knew he had to get up -- there was another cry, shriller this time. And then something roared in answer, and Briar froze, staring. In front of him, standing low in a protective stance, was Yeo-reum. Facing down the Tat-lung was a great green dragon, teeth bared and rumbling, wings mantled in threat.
They had to go -- now. But as Briar scrambled to his feet, the dragon headed him off, moving with startling speed. Yeo-reum lunged, but the dragon darted to one side and lashed out with his claws. Yeo-reum gave a cry of pain and Briar watched as the dragon’s claws came away red.
The dragon didn’t give Yeo-reum a chance to retaliate. The next moment it was upon him, using all four legs to bear down on Yeo-reum until the Tat-lung was pressed down into the dirt.
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Post by Briar on Nov 7, 2021 22:30:04 GMT -6
Yeo-reum snarled and struggled, but the dragon held fast. It didn’t bother with roaring or any other displays of threat anymore, and there was a grim, almost methodical air to the way it incapacitated Yeo-reum. This was a trained beast who knew its work, and Briar's blood ran cold to think of what might happen next.
He had to do something --
“My my, what have we here?”
The sound of a voice made Briar’s blood run cold. He couldn’t make himself turn around to face it -- but he didn’t have to. The speaker wandered into his line of vision to stand beside the dragon, laying a casual hand on the creature’s hide. It turned to him, a deferential curiosity in its manner. Something must have passed between them, but if it was a command, Briar didn’t hear it. The dragon made no move to let Yeo-reum go.
Then the figure turned to face Briar.
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