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Post by Noa on Dec 4, 2019 19:29:00 GMT -6
They heaved, separately at first, and then the gargoyle noticed that Aster was there, almost like an afterthought. But from there, the gargoyle went slack for a moment, and making eye contact with Aster, came to an agreement to start pulling together, on its signal. As soon as Aster saw the gargoyle's wings flapping again, he began pulling as well, ard after a couple of truly heroic yanks, they finally heaved a huge stone free of where it had been lodged.
Aster fell away with the stone, and let go of it just before it had a chance to trap his fingers somewhere, but the gargoyle cut loose as soon as the rock was free and went diving back for more. There must have been something it was going after if it was taking such a single minded approach to all this, enough to make Aster wonder what it thought it sensed.
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Post by Noa on Dec 4, 2019 19:31:30 GMT -6
Aster sat up just in time to see a fine debris of smaller rocks being thrown up from where the gargoyle was digging, and sat there for a moment, catching his breath. The big obstacle was out of the way, and as far as Aster was concerned, his job here was done. Whatever the gargoyle was going after, he was sure it was well able to dig it out by itself with the way it was going. Those claws were no joke, especially when it was doing its man on a mission impression like it was doing now. It was usually so much milder than Cinna that Aster forgot how it was capable of this. Or rather, intellectually he remembered, but it was always different seeing it in practice, and he had to re-evaluate his impression of the gargoyle all over again. Acquaintances could be a little funny like that sometimes.
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Post by Renathan on Dec 4, 2019 19:32:36 GMT -6
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:14:06 GMT -6
For his part, Aster was glad of the chance to take a breather. It had been hard work, first digging at the wall of rock with his pick, and then dadging out of the way when the whole thing came down. Not to mention helping the gargoyle shift that massive rock afterwards. If the gargoyle still had energy to spare on pursuing whatever it was it had found, then power to him, but Aster was just as elad not to have to do anything more himself. He was sure the gargoyle would hail him down for help it it really needed the help with what it was trying to dig out right now.
Just as Aster was thinking this, the gargoyle burst out of the rubble once more, holding something in one of its claws. Aster blinked, and surreptitiously looked the gargoyle over for any sign of visible damage to its body.
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:14:16 GMT -6
He hadn't thought that it was very likely to be damaged, but it was better to make sure... And he hadn't actually seen the gargoyle's head since the rock fall began, after all. But as far as he could tell, the gargoyle looked well, and in fact seemed to be quite thrilled with itself over its find. Or maybe it was just thrilled about its find in a general sense, whatever it was.
Seeing that the gargoyle seemed to be no worse for wear, Aster turned his attention instead to the object that it was holding. He was pretty curious about what had gotten the gargoyle worked up like that, to the point where it seemed to forget everything else around it for a while. Maybe this was even what it had been sensing when it had instructed Aster to dig in this general direction, though Aster hadn't seen signs of quite this level of excitement then.
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:14:52 GMT -6
"what do you have there?" Aster said, getting to his feet and approaching the gargoyle, and hoping that the gargoyle wouldn't fall to a sudden fit of possessive jealousy over the thing. So far, it hadn't done that with the gems, but Aster had never seen it get this enthusiastic for anything short of a crystal either, so all bets were off, he supposed.
He needn't have worried in this instance, however. The gargoyle was perfectly willing to show him, and in fact, even seemed eager to do so. It didn't quite meet him half way in terms of distance, but it did take a few steps in Aster's direction, thrusting the object at him with evident excitement.
Aster stilled so he could take a closer look at it, then frowned in confusion as he tried to figure out what exactly he was looking at once he couldn't immediately identify it.
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:15:15 GMT -6
At first, he thought he wasn't seeing it properly, maybe because of the low lighting, or because he was still moving about. But even when he brought his torch close to it, and held as still as he could, it resolved into a shape that baftled him. It was a.. Tumpy sort of shape, and a beige sort of color, though caked with dirt and somewhat stained darker in places. It certainly didn't look like any gem that he had ever laid eyes on, even some of the more unusual ones he'd found here over the years. Aster frowned. "What is it?" he said to the gargoyle, feeling at a loss for answers.
His reaction was not what the gargoyle must have been hoping for. The gargoyle looked slightly crestfallen to see that Aster didn't take as much pleasure as it seemed to do in the object, even after it had shown him.
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:15:28 GMT -6
The gargoyle looked at it again, and its expression shifted, as if it were thinking hard about something. Then it held the object up again, but this time it moved around Aster so he could hold it up to Aster's back, as far as Aster could tell, It was a little harder to see what the gargoyle was doing now that it was behind him, though when Aster tried to turn around with it, the gargoyle reached out with a hand to hold Aster in place. That message was clear enough. He was supposed to stay still. But to what end? What was it that the gargoyle was trying to show him with this?
And then Aster felt something being shoved against his back, which was a really funny sensation even if you were expecting it, as he half was, since he could at least crane his neck around to look at the gargoyle.
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:15:44 GMT -6
It wasn't the best angle, but it kept him from being taken completely by surprise when the gargoyle made its move. He didn't know what he would have done if he hadn't even had that small mercy of being forewarned. As it was, he had to suppress a yelp, and instinctively tried to sidle away from the contact. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was ticklish in a curiously insistent way.
Had it always felt like that? No one had touched him in. No one had any occasion to touch him in years, aside from his own creatures, and even then it tended to be different. Even his own creatures tended to have certain.. He wouldn't have called it rituals, but there were certain patterns that they generally obeyed. He didn't feel the same revulsion to touch with them, but he wondered if he would have felt startled if they deviated significantly from those known patterns.
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:16:19 GMT -6
Summer generally sat on his shoulder, for one; and Rhys tended to do the same, or lie in Aster's arms as he carried the Felusine around. Avander would nudge his nose into the blade of Aster's shoulder, or the meat of his upper arm.
Generally, with his larger creatures, it was Aster initiating the contact rather than the other way around, probably in part because the difference in size was so great, and the difference in strength was pretty significant too. It was a lot eäsier for Grunty to throw him around than the reverse.
Whatever the case was with that though, he felt as though it had been a long time since someone had touched his lower back like that. He certainly didn't remember it feeling quite so ticklish before. It was so startling that he almost forgot that the gargoyle had a point to make about its strange find.
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:16:42 GMT -6
It was only when the gargoyle did it again, this time without touching him. that Aster was able to focus again.
Right. Pay attention. "What is it? You want to shove it into my back?" he said, frowning. That couldn't possibly have been it, but at the same time, he had no other answers. The gargoyle seemed just as perplexed by the conclusion he câme to, its expression somewhat mirroring his. Then, seeming to come to some sort of decision, it began an elaborate pantomime, which included it acting out Its own death… No, his death, rather, given that it had pointed at him before it began the motions of choking and dying.
And then it pointed again to Aster's back, and to the strange thing in Its hand. This time, however, it went the extra mile of taking a bunch of smaller rocks and lining them up, then pointing to Aster's back again.
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:18:02 GMT -6
At which point it finally got through to Aster what the gargoyle was trying to convey to him. Now that he had thought of it, it felt more obvious than before. The thing in its claws. "Are you telling me that's a vertebra?" he said.
It was the right sentiment but the wrong approach. The gargoyle inclined its head, clearly not understanding the word. Aster wanted to kick himself. Of course the gargoyle didn't understand. Its vocabulary had expanded considerably, but it still couldn't have known words it hadn't had an opportunity to hear, or hear often. And how many times did the word vertebra' come up in conversation? Aster sighed, shook his head, cleared his throat, and tried again. "The bones in my back," Aster said, motioning to his own spine much as the gargoyle had been doing before. "The little ones, all in a row like this. Is that what that is?"
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:18:21 GMT -6
He indicated the lumpy looking thing that the gargoyle was holding as he finished this speech.
The gargoyle's face lit up with recognition after Aster simplified things for it, and it nodded several times in enthusiastic succession. That was that, then. But now that he had that in mind while he looked at it, Aster could see the resemblance too. There was a portion of it that looked sort of cylindrical, while the rest of the mass was projections out from that cylinder. The color made more sense too in light of that, the dull off white of bone, tainted by age and too much time spent underground and in the dirt.
It might well have been truly fossilized and turned to stone itself, but even if that were the case, it was still valuable... Probably all the more so in the right hands, of educated people interested in learning about that kind of thing.
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:19:06 GMT -6
He didn't know any immediate buyers fitting that description, but he was sure some could be found, or at least a buyer who would know how to sell it on to interested parties. Which was to say, if he really wanted to get rid of it for money, it wasn't impossible.
Or it could make a nice little trophy for his personal collection. He didn't think that the shopkeepers who traded exclusively in gemstones would give him anything for this, but one or two fossils in with the rest of his stuff couldn't hurt anything, if he was just keeping it to have. It really hadn't occurred to him to think of bones, but now that he was thinking about it, that wasn't so unusual either. He'd found fossils on occasion down here before, though generally they were more obvious about it, being either shell like or more obviously bones, the long kind that came from limbs.
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Post by Noa on Dec 5, 2019 21:19:34 GMT -6
He'd never found a vertebra here before, in all his years of searching, but he supposed that if they could find leg bones, then whatever things had died and been buried must have had other bones, in which case a spine really shouldn't have surprised him as much as it had.
The gargoyle's reaction to it though, that had been pretty remarkable. "Do you like things like this?" Aster said, still a little puzzled despite himself. It was clear that the gargoyle had been excited by the find, but Aster still wanted to narrow down the exact reason for the gargoyle's excitement.
At his words, the gargoyle inclined its head. Aster pointed at the vertebra. "This," Aster said. "Do you like. fossils? Do you like bones?" He had realized after he'd said it that fossil was probably a foreign word to the gargoyle too, and quickly amended it by using a simpler word.
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