03 Amber | Downstream of the Boat

[hairsay]

[For once this lanky young woman does not look like she's trying to win a staring contest with a cockatrice when she activates her amber slice. She does look sweaty and tired, but maybe that's actually helping. Behind her the mist is close, a towering wall, but the chuckle of the stream gives away her location before she can even open her mouth.]

Hey, any of you happen to be strong and willing to lend a hand? Me and Evan, [And indeed, the gawky redhead struggling to roll and heft rocks behind her happens to be in the frame as she talks,] are putting together a fish trap. I don't know about any of you but the thought of real meat that we don't have to bargain for with stone doubloons is so tempting we've been building this thing for the last couple of weeks straight.

It could use refining.

[She swings the slice around to reveal a very crude weir along one side of the stream composed entirely of raised pebbles and smooth rocks; it doesn't block the stream because Jo has noted the boat at dock just upstream of her location, but she's making a fair play at funnelling any minnows into it.]

Once we're done we just need some bait and some lucky catches. I never learned spear fishing but I'll bet some of you super freaks has a leg up on that. Come on down, huh?

Comments

[donotmail]

"Yes, me." She doesn't know, does she? Oh Archetypes, say she doesn't know. Did he say? No, he wouldn't do that. Did she see him practicing?

He relaxes a little when she points to the rock pile. "Yes indeed!" he says, and strides off to investigate. He'd have no hope of moving them normally, but if she can roll them to the stream...

He picks one and pushes it along, rolling it in great thumps over the ground by pushing his whole weight against it. Kiarrs don't sweat, but he can feel his ears flush with blood. He's gasping and panting by the time he reaches the stream, but he still manages to stand up straight. "One rock," he says, before bobbing his head and lapping at the water. Hard work is thirsty work.

"A lever might do the trick in moving the rest," he says, looking back at the pile. "Or rollers?"

[hairsay]

"Smarter cat than us monkeys," Jo replied, duly impressed. She'd tried navigating the rock pile, but it had nearly caught her under another shift and roll as she unsettled the pile. She stepped around the rock now, glancing from the kiarr to the fishing hole they'd been trying to build. "Now sure how we could lever it into the water, though. That part's trickier. Wish we'd got that tool kid, we could build some kind of winch system if we had nails and a hammer!"

But that was neither here nor there. Jo attempted to roll the rock and managed to get it a little further, out into the lapping water. There she stopped, lips pursed. "Well, it's the thought that fucking counts." But then she'd been moving stones all day. She was exhausted even if she wasn't going to admit it. "We'll get it out there eventually. You go in water?" she asked, changing the subject.

[donotmail]

Monkeys. That's a good word. He's going to have to remember that one. His ideas were only things he'd read about, though. Deserts didn't have any need for such things, but he was aware that those species without the ability to manipulate rocks did employ such tactics. It would never have flown back home, but here... here he's possibly useful...

He eyes the water cautiously, but not for the reasons that Jo might think. It's been getting steadily cooler all week, and it doesn't look warm in there either. But if he keeps mostly above water... it'll be fine, won't it? And he's been doing useful things today. Does he want to stop now when he's doing so well?

"I can, yes."

((leaving an open slot for them to chatter more if you need, otherwise assume back to work!))

[hairsay]

"'Can's' not the same as 'am gonna'," Jo noted. "How about you work out a way to roll those big fuckers down here, and Evan and I will drag them out into the water together. He's got some buoyancy shit figured out... and you know what, before long we'll have fish lured in here and meat in our guts! Finally!"

Re: ((leaving an open slot for them to chatter more if you need, otherwise assume back to work!))

[donotmail]

He looks up at her with narrowed eyes for a moment... but turns away. It does feel very cold in there. He laps up a few mouthfuls (rock rolling is hard work!) and stalks back to the pile. "Good thing too," he says, figuring that the food topic is a safe one. "If I have to eat any more berries I may as well fall over and die." It's an exaggeration, but he hasn't tasted meat since his arrival.

He turns his attention to the stones. Levers and rollers sound simple enough in principle, but he's never seen any in action. But he's not going to be deterred as long as he can do something. The ground is littered with twigs, but they might as well be small logs for him. He takes one in his mouth and drags him over to the pile...

[hairsay]

...and eventually, Jo takes a break to join him in stacking logs. It's obvious that Arj is going to need a little help in that regard, though he's been doing admirably with just a mouth and four-footed power.

She doesn't mind taking the extra effort to get things moving along more quickly, it seems! in the meantime, she's been wondering about the strange not-cat. "Arj, you mentioned a lot of stuff about your people. You're all the same type, huh?"

[donotmail]

He's more grateful for the help than he lets on. Hauling what are practically logs across the ground is almost as hard as pushing stones, though he's sure it'll pay off in the end.

"What do you mean?" he says, looking up from laying down the next twig. "We're all kiarrs, if that's what you're asking. My clan are all Deserts, like me. Well, I suppose that part is obvious." It's a bit tough, trying to figure out what Jo means. Things that should be everyday knowledge suddenly aren't.

[hairsay]

"Deserts?" Jo asks, looking his alien, lanky body over. "You mean like you lived in a desert or...? Was it a blue desert?" She couldn't imagine any reason for the cat to be such a vibrant colour without a lot of hair die and very little taste. "Or are you poisonous or something? I mean outside of your bad jokes."

[donotmail]

Arj lets out a quiet snort. "Believe me, if I was poisonous, I'd be a lot brighter than this. I did indeed live in a desert. There were plenty of those, I can tell you." But he's aware that something of his explanation has gone over the human's head. "And I mean that I'm a desert kiarrcat. Don't you have different species where you're from?"

[hairsay]

"Well yeah, but we're the only one that talks and uses tools and shit," she raised both brows, taking a moment to wipe some sweat from her brow and some barky detritus from her hands. Even at this size she has a way of accumulating dust and debris like a pigsty.

"Humans are humans; I don't get in on that racist shit no matter what some fuckheads like to spit out." She's not exactly sure if Arj is doing that or not, but given the likelihood of cultural fuck-ups, she's not levelling a dirty stare at him. She's more curious about what the fuck he's talking about now than she was before!

[donotmail]

Arj pauses in the act of pulling a "log" into place, his head held to one side. "Did I say something wrong?" He has no idea what sort of places he's treading... though Jo's words do translate in his head to that way Father used to talk about anyone who wasn't a Desert.

"There are ten of us," he says. "I mean ten species. 'Ten lands and ten kiarrs' he adds, recalling the cub's story." He counts them out on his claws. "Deserts... that's what I am... Forests, Mountains, Polars, Waters, Airs, Savannahs, Grasslands, Rainforests, and... Caves, that's the last one. But we're all still kiarrs." He sits down and suddenly feels very small. "I've not met many people who weren't Deserts, though. Where we lived, it was a little... cut off."

[hairsay]

"Shit," Jo replied, thinking about that. "You must live in a small place. Where I come from all of us go by the name of the country we come from, I mean if you want to look at it like that. There's different religions, too, but fuck that. That sort of shit is what got me in trouble to begin with, better to go by human from this little chunk of Earth and then burn your bridges based on every other aspect of your stupid life."

...She might have been projecting a little, there, but then she's not very good at either being ambassadorial or entirely clear about her experiences. "Anyways, I don't want to talk about that part," she mantled, turning away a little from the cat that could probably detect her frustration and dejection in other ways.

(the translation filter must have a lot of fun with this guy...)

[donotmail]

"I suppose the Basin is a little small," he says. He was several days walk from his clan's lands when he was snatched up, but he's seen maps - he knows how big it is next to all of Ryll. He nudges the "log" back into place as he listens. Not all of her words make sense, but the sentiment behind them... that reaches in deep.

For a moment, he doesn't know what to say, and he's only grateful for the physical activity that gives him an excuse to be quiet for a while, rather than standing there looking like an idiot.

"Maybe you're right," he says.

It's obvious she doesn't want to say any more, even without her statement of the fact. Some things are simply blatant.

"So," he says, "do you think we could get this rock rolled down, now?" It's the most blatant attempt at a topic change ever.

(Undoubtedly. Feel free to have him not understand her. Nobody else does. X3)

[hairsay]

The more blatant, the better, in Jo's opinion. If she could get by on a lot of gesticulations and a series of grunts she would probably be in heaven, but that is neither here nor there.

She uneasily ogles the rock pile and then selects one that doesn't look like it will jumble all the rest down. "Easy does it," she announces.

The rock comes down an inch or so from their little rolling system. From up on the pile, Jo has to admit that it doesn't look like much... but then the fishing weir hadn't been looking like much for a couple of weeks straight, so that's no problem. "You shove, I'll move the rollers," she decides.

(a whole other world of lost...)

[donotmail]

"Indeed," he says, and gets to it. The mechanism isn't perfect, but he can feel the stone ease over the rollers as he pushes.

Jo's comments, meanwhile, have given him a lot to think of. Everyone else in the tree looks human (or his idea of human, which currently encompasses "anyone who doesn't walk on four legs"). It's more than a little confusing, and he's starting to feel a bit... conspicuous?

"What about everyone else in the tree?" he says, looking back at the great trunk rising over the roots. "They all look like you, but they're not from where you are?"

Hey Arj, want to go to Narnia? At least there be talkin' beasts thar!

[hairsay]

"Oh, fuck no!" Jo laughs, thought it has a breathy quality. She's been picking up log-sized twigs and running them to the front of the stone for a good distance now and she's been working hard for days. This is enough to leave her with some burn and enough sweat to fill a thimble. "You... you met Ivaera, for example? Whole other can of worms. She's not human, she's got pointy ears... sort of like you," she chuckles, feeling faintly embarrassed that she can't not notice them. "She and her big dog come from somewhere where magic's this big thing. Spells and shit, monsters boiling up... up..." she falters, then decides to skip that topic entirely. "The kids, too, I don't know if you noticed, but some of the ones that are half my size, higher voices, little shits? They have all sorts of magic."

She pauses to catch her breath. "That's not normal where I come from, or where Evan comes from. He and me... we're... we're almost from the same place. He's from... I don't know, he's from about fifteen or twenty years in the future and a few hundred clicks north of where I lived, but his place... I guess everything stayed sort of normal where he lived."

Another topic she doesn't want to compare between. Jo grimaces and runs back to catch another twig, wondering how everything in her life has managed to become a minefield. "So I guess you're just from the far end of thee bell curve. There's a few people from Earth, but most of them are sort of like humans but not, and most of them are from far out. Other planets, I guess."

What he really wants is a magic charismatic beast RP or two...

[donotmail]

It makes sense, in a strange way. If there are places beyond Ryll, why stop at one? Why not many? But his ears lower, just a tiny amount. Why should her strange pattern be the common one? He starts thinking of the chairs, the beds, the tables, all inside the Tree. And all made for someone who walks on two legs...

"So what you're telling me," he says, between deep breaths as he pushes the rock along, "is that there are many Ry- many worlds, and I'm from the strange one?"

He isn't going to ask what Jo means by normal. It's obvious that it's all part of the thing she won't talk about, and Arj is used to Things We Do Not Discuss In Company.

"But no magic, hmm," he says, a little quieter now. The words "then how do you get anything done?" line up in waiting, but he knows the answer. The same way they're getting things done now. The same way he gets anything done. He settles for: "That sounds most... interesting."

Neither of them are going to get around to discussing what's each bothering them the most. Suits him.

Pray for an 'everyone turns into animals' event and you'll get a four-footed Jo, Arj. 8)

[hairsay]

It looks like it's going to be a while before that particular hatchet gets buried; Jo is too caught up in the trauma of having her life flipped over not to use every rare opportunity to abnormalize her experiences and try to berate them, without going into any context about the details, and 'normal' is not a word she realizes means very different things to everyone here, not on more than a surface level.

She gives him a look as she pauses and stretches her back, heel of her hands digging into the lower part of her back. "Interesting or fucking annoying?" she asks. A month and a bit ago and she would have laughed at the idea of magic being an improvement to life. Now that she's seen how much easier a time the various people around her are having, she's finding herself very bitter about her own lacks.

bonus points if she's a bobcat?

[donotmail]

If only Arj would open up about his failings, then they could commiserate together. As it is, the conversation is straying dangerously close to those limits.

"It would be useful, wouldn't it?" He looks up at the "boulder" and down again at the rollers it's perched on. As much as it's easier than dragging the thing across the ground, he's seen first hand how much easier it could be. He takes Jo's cue and allows himself a long feline stretch, fanning his wings as he does.

"Hmmm. We seem to be close." Another blatant attempt at changing the subject, but Jo didn't seem to mind last time...

Well she's not gonna be a cougar, that's for sure!

[hairsay]

"Yep," she allowed, scratching the back of her head as her thoughts turned back to the task at hand. "I can' already taste fried fish... we should put this one out near the gap there, it ought to come up out of the water there."