Sunning...

[donotmail]

| characters | Arj and anyone!

| date/time | Wednesday, about midday

| location | Outside the tree

| rating | all ages

| summary | Arj takes the time to enjoy the weather. Cats like warmth, right?



The weather is perfect.

Most residents of the Tree wouldn't agree. But the blazing hot sun and clear skies feel like home for Arj. He's found a slab of bare stone that's soaked up enough warmth to be nice and hot, and he's lying sprawled out, skinny legs draped over the edges. It's quiet out here. Even the birds don't seem to have the energy to sing.

The kiarr is trying to get some rest. He's still not over the sickness that's been spreading through the Tree, and he's wingless again. His gem is safely tucked away in his leaf saddlebags, which he's left at the base of the slab. The sun shines on his back and takes away the chills. Only the occasional tickly cough would give away the fact that he's still awake.

That and, if you looked closely, you'd notice a shift of colour on his paws. Arj knows he should rest, but he isn't good at it. He's always got to do something. So he's trying out his illusions, bending the light around his paws so that they change colour, in ripples of green and red, waves that run up his forelegs and fade into his natural blue...

Comments

[tosaveyuu]

Honestly, there isn't much for Mika to do around the tree. Vampires don't exactly need to eat (at least not normal food) and given how he's been keeping to himself, well, suffice it to say that even he gets bored of brooding eventually.

Which is why he's wandering around outside, despite the uncomfortable weather. It at least means he's less likely to run into anyone else, right...?

The blue cat, however, catches his eye. Partly because, well, it's blue, but also due to the fact that it's roughly sized comparably to the rest of the tree's unwitting denizens, and so probably isn't a normal forest creature. In so far as anything here could be 'normal', that is. Needless to say, Mika pauses and watches... and only stares all the harder as he realizes the cats paws are changing color.

Can you feel the staring?

[donotmail]

Those big ears aren't just for show. Arj catches a tiny footstep in the dried plants, and one ear swivels in the vampire's direction. Blinking, the kiarr raises his head, expecting to see an insect creeping along the ground.

It's not - it's another human, or human to Arj's eyes, anyway. the shimmering colours on his paws turn into jarring zigzag patterns, then fade to natural blue as his concentration breaks.

Whoever he is, the staring is more than a little unnerving.

"Ah, hello!" he says. Anything to break the silence. "Good weather, isn't it?"

[tosaveyuu]

It talks? Of course the cat talks, what else did Mika expect? Still, though, he blinks--certainly at the sudden change and vanishing colors if not the talking blue cat part.

"I guess so." He shrugs indifferently. The weather was the least of Mika's concerns, being stuck here. "What were you doing?"

Though if the cat's particularly sharp-eyed, he might notice the vampire's upper canine teeth are noticeably longer and sharper than a human's. That, and his pupils are slitted rather than round when constricted.

[donotmail]

Is this someone new? Or someone he hasn't met yet? He's mostly used to stares, but they do remind him that he's an outlier, and he licks a paw in a typically feline gesture of self consciousness.

He looks up again, his own pupils just as heavy slitted in the strong sunlight. At least this human has normal eyes and teeth.

"Oh, well, practicing, of course," Arj says. (And enjoying the sun, though he won't admit to it.) "Must keep sharp!"

[tosaveyuu]

More like someone who's been around just a little longer, but tends to keep to himself, really. Though, once he's over his initial surprise at a talking blue cat, Mika relaxes a tiny bit. It's not like he's talking to a vampire or a human, so maybe he doesn't have anything to worry about. Or at least not as much as usual.

"Practicing...?" Mika frowned a tiny bit in thought. "Is that some kind of magic?"

[donotmail]

Either way, the secret's out now. Arj hasn't made a big show of his powers since arrival, apart from his failed attempt at impressing the mirror (which hasn't done wonders for his self esteem in that area). But he's been telling himself over and over that inside the Tree, nobody knows what he's supposed to be able to do. This is his fresh start...

"What, this?" He holds up a paw, and lets a shimmering band of red pass down the length of his foreleg and dissipate. "Just a trick, nothing more."

[tosaveyuu]

In a way, that just makes Mika more curious. And while he does have a distinct tendency to, at times, assume he knows more about something than he actually does, he's still plenty clever to justify some of that (over)confidence. Which is why it occurs to him that that response might be a little too dismissive... but would make sense for someone trying to keep their abilities a secret.

"Does that mean you can do something else that's more impressive?" he asks, being perhaps a little smart-mouthed. But rather than leave it just at that, he continues, "I've heard other people here talk about kinds of magic that can do things that shouldn't be possible..."

His own world has, if not quite magic, per se, certainly plenty of supernatural beings and powers and such, so the idea of magic being real isn't quite foreign to him. It's just the kind of magic that he's found strange so far.

[donotmail]

"More impressive?" Arj tilts his head sideways. Just his luck to have a peaceful sunning session turn into his powers on trial. Well, at least this is just another curious tree dweller and not a clanskiarr out to mock.

He thinks back to the silver half-Air form he wore in a last-ditch attempt to impress the mirror, but no, that's to private, too personal. Something a little more low key is the thing, here. So he crouches down flat on the rock, his ears pressed to his back to minimise his outline, and his colours begin to change again, this time all over his body.

It's not the simple substitution of one colour for another he was playing with before. This is a more complex change, guided by the tiniest movements. The blue fades, the black stripes vanish. Within seconds, he's a mottled, grey-brown shape, to match the rock he sits upon. It's not a perfect disguse - his outline is still visible atop the slab - but his limbs and head and shape are broken up by the random patterning, and if he stays perfectly still, he might look just like an oddly shaped formation at a glance.

"Well, what about you?" he says, still crouched in his rock-disguise. "Do you have magic?"

[tosaveyuu]

Mika hadn't really meant his remark as a challenge, exactly, but he doesn't have any objection to seeing a demonstration. If anything, he's fascinated by it, a little of which shows in his expression despite himself.

"So you can change your color...?" he asks. That seems the simplest explanation if it isn't 'magic' per se.

He shrugs a bit at the question, however. "Not really." Not unless one considered a vampire's inherent powers to be magic of some sort. "Though some humans still use some sort of spellcraft."

[donotmail]

"More or less," he says. He sits up, letting the mottled rock colours drain away to reveal his natural blue again. (Inside, he's thinking: the human was impressed! Of me! Impressed!)

But Mika's next words shock him out of that line of thinking for more than one reason. "Does that mean you're not human?" He tilts his head to one side, like a big blue owl.

[tosaveyuu]

It's not that Mika's never seen an illusion before, but, well, it's different when someone's borrowing a demon's power to do it, as opposed to entirely on their own. At least in his mind.

Arj's question makes him blink, though. Not because he's surprised by it, exactly, but because the last time he ended up telling someone what he is... Well, suffice it to say that the reaction had been rather poor, even if it wasn't unexpected.

"... I'm a vampire," he says simply, tensing slightly despite himself in an unconscious effort to brace for the worst.

[donotmail]

"A what?" Arj says.

It's no condemnation. Arj's voice, his tilted head, his perked ears, all these are the mark of someone curious. Someone who has no idea what was just said.

[tosaveyuu]

The distinctly catlike posture doesn't do much to help Mika's impression that he's talking to some kind of large blue version of a housecat. Not that he's actually seen a cat in the last eight years, but he still remembers what they're supposed to be like. Still, though, Mika's pretty sure that Arj really doesn't know what a vampire is. Which is hard to believe, but then again, what could a cat be expected to know about something like that?

"A monster that drinks peoples' blood," is all Mika replies, however, with his usual almost deadpan tone and expression.

[donotmail]

He's wondering if this is one of those strange human things that everyone but himself knows when Mika explains.

He grips the edge of the rock in his long forepaws. "Oh. Really? Well, it's a good thing we're all... friends around here... isn't it?" Arj pauses, and scratches behind an ear with his hindleg.

[tosaveyuu]

The apparent uncertainty in Arj's response isn't lost on Mika, though it's much better than other reactions he's gotten. He shrugs a bit.

"I don't have any interest in drinking blood," he says simply. Which technically is a lie, since he does crave blood rather badly, but he stubbornly continues to refuse to drink it for his own reasons.

He's not, however, going to be especially quick to label anyone as a 'friend' even so.

[donotmail]

"Oh." The kiarr relaxes a little, the motion obvious in his feline shoulders as he sits sphinx-style on the slab. "That's good. No offense intended of course. I'm just... rather fond of my blood. On the inside. You understand. I'm quite... attached to it."

(Inwardly, he knows the entire conversation has just plummeted down a shaft it should never have gone... or maybe that's just how he's handling it.)

[tosaveyuu]

Mika just shrugs at that.

"People usually are," he says, the cat's apparent lack of further concern puttiing him a little more at ease.

Not that he really would have wanted to try drinking from something covered in fur in the first place. Really, Mika doesn't think most vampires would. Assuming the blood of something not even human worked in the first place.

[donotmail]

Awkward as he may be, Arj is still a cat, and he practically flows from the scorching rock surface onto the cooler ground below, to properly face Mika. His nose is twitching. Most humans look alike to him, but they differ in subtle ways - in voice, and smell.

Except he has to remind himself that this one isn't, despite looks.

"I thought everyone was human, here," he says.

[tosaveyuu]

Watching the cat move does little to dispel the slightly odd feeling of talking to, well, a cat.

"Most of them probably are," Mika says. He's not exactly bothered to ask around or anything.