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[P] Pity Party; Private, Luna
Topic Started: Wed May 20, 2015 3:17 pm (323 Views)
Dale
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Dale awoke, clenching his eyes shut against the night. He was cold, the fire long since having lost it's grip on the wet wood around him. Trying to hide his bare toes from the bite of bitter cold, he brought his knees close and hugged them to him. The night was full of noises and still damp from the spring rains. It took him a long few moments to realize that one of those sounds was very close. Breathing. Something was very close, sniffing at the air. After a moment, trying to remember where his knife was, he realized with dread it was by his new furs, still dirty. He'd forgotten about it when he lay down.

Pulling the cloaks down low enough to peek out, he saw a boar standing by starlight. It's wire-haired backside was facing him, front busy investigating the pile of furs he'd been cleaning and had hung out. Dread caught his stomach and twisted. Those furs were his livelihood. If something happened to them, he'd be too poor to afford another week's rations. He could hunt alright, but finding other supplies wasn't a particular talent of his.

Panic kicking sense aside and standing in the doorway to his brain, Dale grabbed at one of the long, thick branches sitting partway into the fire. The smaller twigs had been burned away earlier, but the wood had been too green and the bitter cold had killed the embers. He scrambled up, throwing the edge of his cloak out at the beast. The cloak just caught the boar's haunches, slipping away as it turned around. Shouting, he brought the makeshift club around with all the strength he could muster. Something good about heavy kids- there was usually a good bit of muscle under all that fat. There'd have to be. He still had some of his, mysteriously. But then, more of his money went to food than it should.

The blow connected, but the boar was too big to be knocked aside. It took a single step and faced him fully, squealing loudly. Beady eyes glared at him, reddened around the edges, and his insides turned to water. His sudden rush of idiotism fled, leaving only complete fear. and rather than face this beast who was as high as his waist and seeming to get bigger as he watched, he ran.

It wasn't something he had ever been very good at. When a bunch of smaller boys were chasing, you had to stand and take the hits. He didn't go far before jumping up to grab onto a low-hanging branch. He swung his feet up, feeling it's bristly back hair on his sole as he swung just out of reach. He lowered slightly before he swung again, a tusk grazing the side of his calf before he hooked his legs on the branch and pulled himself up, shimmying along until he sat in the crook of the tree, watching with a sinking heart as the boar made loud, angry noises and charged through his encampment, tearing down the hides and trampling them as it gored his pack and everything with his scent on it.

Dale grabbed a branch overhead and snapped it off. “Hey!” He shouted, slapping the stick against the tree to catch the pig's attention. “Over here!” The night was just beginning to lighten as he leaned over in the tree, taking swings mostly in vain at an enraged boar, clipping it on the snout now and again only succeeding in pissing it off further.
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Luna Moore
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She snapped awake in the darkness, the ashes of another nightmare fading from the front of her mind as she blinked against the black. The night sounds of the forest were a soft susurration that wished to lull her back to sleep. She resisted the urge to drift back off with a venemous effort, trusting to the instinct that had woken her from her troubled sleep.

Luna sat up, the thin blankets she carried with her rolling off of her chest to pool around her waist. She shivered delicately, and coughed into her hand. Her breath plumed before her like smoke from a dragon. She still felt feverish and generally unwell, as she had for the last several days. It had been a fair stretch of days since the last time she had been in the company of another human being. In fact it had been several days since she had seen anything other than the abandoned ruins of old habitations. The wilderness was wearing on her more than she would like to admit. She wasn't old - not even close to it - but the years of constant pursuit (now ended, or at least reduced) were telling.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and then shook her head to dispel some of the cobwebs that had taken residence during her sleep. She looked around, unsure what had woken her. The trees crowded in around her, silent sentinels that were little more than vague shadows under the heavy canopy. The light of the stars and moon could do little to penetrate the leafy ceiling. Only the faintest of light managed to reach the ground.

Her camp was untouched. It was also small and hardly well defined. She was a wanderer by necessity, and carried her world on her back or....well, she carried it in any case. She didn't leave much of a mark in her travels, and when she did it wasn't necessarily a good thing.

There was nothing here to cause alarm, to account for-

-a piercing squeal ripped the torpid silence of the night apart, making her damn near jump to her feet. All thoughts of cold and discomfort vanished. All of her senses were intensely focused on the woods around her. The beast cried again, coming from her right at least a hundred yards away. She slowly got to her feet, swaying unsteadily, and gathered what few possessions she had, stuffing them into her bag. Then, moving quietly through the brush, she approached the source of the sound. A faint twinge of old smoke smirched the air, and she wondered at that.

The horizon, unseen, had begun to show the first palid signs of dawn when she came into another camp. Luna was filled with disquiet that someone could be so close without her knowing about it, a disquiet that was threaded through with a faint trace of anger. The memory of being a hunted animal was still fresh, and it still called her when she thought of all she had endured to this point. Her knee-jerk inclination was to raze the whole camp to ashes, take no risks. She was considering that still when she heard the thump of a branch smacking a boar in the face, and the beasts movements and roars of rage split the night again.

It was too dark for her to see just what she had found, but it wasn't too dark for her to see the boar. It was an old beast, wire-haired hide scarred and dusty. Its piggish snorts and squeals sprayed plumes of mist from its mouth as though it was breathing fire. She watched as it lunged up into a tree, trying to reach something.

Not something, she noted. Someone/. She opened her mouth needlessly to speak, but a sudden wave of dizziness had her stagger. She stepped on a dry branch, and the loud snap it made caught the boars attention immediately. It sounds around and faced her, mad piggy eyes focusing on her exclusively. She she straightened, it took a tentative step forward. Luna didn't hesitate; the animal was dangerous to her, easily bigger weight wise than she herself was. She had no physical weapons...but she did have other weapons.

Power flooded her in a measured flow. She had to take care not to draw too much - she had been unwell of recent, and any slip could be disastrous for her and anyone even remotely close to her. It felt like liquid fire flooding every vein and artery in her body, suffusing her mind with an ecstacy akin to being with a man, or maybe a little less. Either way, it was something she thrilled at every time she touched it.

In a moment, a split second really, and she was forming the flows with the dextrous mental fingers that had laid waste to many a for. The damned pig didn't have a chance, and even as it charged it died. Lightning split the aid like a heavenly lance, striking the pig squarely. The beast grunted and collapsed, sliding several feet before coming to a rest, already beginning to twitch in its wild death throes.

Luna loomed back to the tree. I don't know who you are, or what, but you can come down now.. The words were crafted by magic alone, and her lips did not move as she spoke. She stood ready, a hair-trigger ready to strike the unknown dead if they should prove hostile.
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Dale
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Dale felt secure in his hiding place, certain the boar wouldn't be able to reach him. Groaning, he rested his forehead against the knot of the branch in front of him. He lifted his head again, wincing as a dot of sap stuck to his forehead. Rubbing at it irritably, he took another halfhearted swipe at the pig. “Just go away already!” He shouted at the beast. It snuffled, butting the tree. “Gah!” he tossed the branch aside, almost missing seeing the woman approaching.

Dale hissed, waving his palms at her, trying frantically to shoo her from the danger. “Get out-·” he stopped speaking as the air felt odd, the hairs on the backs of his arms lifting. There was a deafening crack and he jerked, almost falling from the branch. Clapping a hand to his ear, he cried out in protest. Ozone filled his nostrils. Wiggling a pinky in his ear in a vain effort to clear his hearing, he looked down at the boar. It lay on it's side, a hideous burn in it's ribs. It wasn't breathing. Small sparks jumped as the energy settled over it.

Dale looked at the spellcaster uneasily, wondering if his predicament had just gone from bad to worse. “Um. If I come down, are you going to, ah...’ His gaze drifted back to the pig, “cook me?” A look of mild distress on his face, he dropped the branch and gripped the branch, swinging down to land with a graceless stumble. “Sorry, I'm not entirely used to ladies who can throw lightning as easily as I can throw a rock. It's... different. No mages where I'm from, but it seems like they're pretty common when you get out some. Am I babbling?” He flushed a little, scratching at his sleep-mussed hair. He hadn"t seemed to register the fact her lips weren't moving when she spoke.

“Sorry. Thank you, my name is Dale.” He tried to put on a smile, but the twist made it look more like a grimace. His attempt to look cheerful drained away as he turned and dashed for his pack. Rifling through the mess, he found a torn waterskin. everything was soaked. A few feet off he found his furs.

“Oh gods, no.” He leaned forward, resting his head on the single standing stick left of the frame. The furs had holes in them, some scuffed and losing hair from the trampling. “It'll take me a fortnight to scavenge enough to make up for these.” Sitting back in the middle of his scattered belongings, he threw the rabbit fur into the ashes of his fire. “Wouldn't mind just knocking me off right here, would you?” he asked gloomily.
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Luna Moore
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No mages where I come from...

She stared at the young man for a long moment, her eyes adjusting to the pale light that was slowly suffusing the forest floor. She saw now that she was in the middle of a camp of some kind, and that the hides and pelts of several animals lay upon the ground in disarray. She had a very cursory knowledge of fur trapping, and knew she was in trappers camp, albeit one occupied by only the one boy and no one else that she could see. The wild animal had done a very thorough job in despoiling the lad's take, though she wasn't entirely certain how much money the collection of pelts around her would have fetched before being destroyed.

She was not a trapper. She was an adventurer, albeit an unwilling one.

She shook her head in negation at his question, ruddy brown hair shifting against her back and falling across her face, where she brushed it aside. She had pallid features at the moment - dark eyes a touch bright with a fever at slow burn, a rounded face a slightly warmer color than that of campfire ashes. She wore a dress of pale blue, with the neck cut low enough to show her pronounced collarbone and little else. It fit her well, though there was little to display - a modest swell of breast, thin, clean limbs without a great deal of the oft-prized curves many men sought in their women. She stood, swaying slightly, watching him.

Here is a picture of me, when I was younger. The words sounded so old in side her head, and made her want to sigh. She was only twenty seven - still a young woman. But she had the experience of someone easily twice that number of years, forced on her by the cruel fates. Here before her was a lad who had probably only left his home a short time ago - a year, maybe two. New to the world and its wicked ways, with a healthy dose of naivety and innocence that hadn't been crushed beneath the harshness of a world that really didn't care. When did I become so jaded? It was a disquieting question, and one she had no answer for.

Seeing no immediate threat, she relaxed, and nearly fell as she released the source of her power, slamming shut a sluicegate in her mind. The mana drained from her very much like water from a tub with the stopper pulled, and the extreme burst of life and vigor drained with it, replaced by the malaise and chill it had been suppressing. She shivered, blew a plume of smoke into the cold, dimly lit air.

There are not many mages where I come from, either. A great bounty for you that you met me now, and not five or six years ago. The words seemed to form in the air without a source, their melody and lilt pleasing to the ear. She did not illuminate the meaning behind that statement - several years ago, she had been unable to control the wild surges of her power. Many people had died through her ignorance. Almost all of the control she now held was the result of the crucible of fire she had been thrust into repeatedly - a forging that would have left her either broken or dead, or else stronger. She stood before him, and was therefore stronger.

She hesitated a moment before replying again. She had been hunted so long and so hard it was difficult to freely give information, especially to a stranger just met. She swallowed the unease, and did it anyway. Luna. Luna Moore, of whom your bristly friend awoke with his racket. Look at it on the bright side: if you gut it right now, you won't go hungry come full dawn. Always a positive side to things. Said the lady who had made a habit of looking for the brightest possible spin on a situation, given how many horrible ones there were.

She heard his exclamation, and turned to watch as he went through his belongings. I wouldn't do that unless you tried to stick a knife in me, Dale. So if you really want it, find a knife. Otherwise....a fortnight? It must be worth a lot of money?
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Dale
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Dale grabbed the knife and started trying to wipe it off on one of the ruined skins. Flecks and gobs started coming off after a little while and a lot of effort. "Ah," He gestured to the knife with his free hand. "Not for you. For the..." He waved it at the pig. Gathering the courage to look her in the face, he finally caught on to something that had been bothering at him. Her lips weren't moving. He kept looking down at her lips.

"They don't like mages where I come from." His face flushed. "Not that I don't!" He lifted his hands. "I mean, I left for things like that." 'Of course you did.' the voice in his head rolled it's eyes. Somehow. 'Not at all because you were scared of not amounting anything. And look how that's going for you.'

"I met another magic user a few months back. I tried to use magic myself, but I couldn't manage anything. Every couple of weeks or so when I fire an arrow I know where it's going, but that's about it. And that was only after washing up in that river near Cascadia."

He set his hands on his hips, looking down at the scorched pig. "I suppose I could. Might be able to make something out of the hide, too. Not particularly pretty hides, but it makes for strong leather. My name's Dalen Pierce. Great to meet you, Luna. Sorry to wake you up."
She was pretty, he noticed after he'd allowed himself to look her in the face. Though he had little experience. She was clean, which was already a step up from most of the people he met. 'Keep dreaming, Dale. She's way out of your league. Shoot lower. Like maybe alone.' Color flooded his cheeks again and he scratched at his neck, nearly taking off an ear. Very slowly and carefully, he put the knife in it's sheath on his pack.

"It wasn't really worth much. That's kind of the worst of it." He sighed defeatedly. "I'm barely surviving out here. Can't salvage much and the winter's been a bit hard. Spent a good deal of it in Taras." He quickly shut up about that. Taras had been a disaster and a half. Quiet nights, keeping his thoughts to himself. Threatening strangers for money. Never personally, he'd stood in the back while the twins did the talking.

"Sorry I don't have anything to offer you in thanks. I can do a bit of cooking, if you want to stick around a bit. Looks like the pig didn't get to all my herbs. It's nothing special, but it's fresh."
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Luna Moore
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It didn't matter one way or the other whether he liked mages or not - there were plenty of places and plenty of people who didn't, and she learned to deal with it. And said as much.

Neither here nor there. If you don't like mages, its tough beans - I can't help but be what I am. And no truer word had she spoken in some time. Some people had to learn to wield sorcery to any degree at all. She'd had to learn how to not do it without meaning to. A lot of people had died before she gained any measure of control, her very own brother early in the list of the dead.

She hadn't thought of Dalen in a long time, and it tightened her heart in her chest, even now, even after all these years. Still, she had learned a lot more than just control of her abilities over the long years spent in isolation, wandering the world. Control of emotion was one such, and she let nothing of her inner thoughts ruffle the relative calm of her features.

She did, however, sigh wearily, and made an absetn gesture behind her. Power flooded through her, but she controlled it with a much more practiced ease than she would have even three years ago. A piece of a broken log shifted, and then dragged itself through the leafmould and undergrowth, making quite a ruckus as it did so. She almost fell over - she was pulling on something that weighed half as much as she did, and only just managed to keep her balance until it arrived. Then she sank down slowly, tiredly onto the barkless piece of wood. Company's good enough thanks. Except when I am in the cities, I don't often meet anyone else....and it can be a long time between faces.

She looked at the scattered fire limbs that must have been a fire of some kind, and shook her head. If you can gather some wood, I can make a fire. I am...not entirely well at the moment, and don't particularly feel like doing it myself. Then we can worry about food....and your story.
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Dale
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I do like mages. I wish I could do more. I think I can do some, anyway, but if I can, it isn't anything nearly as impressive as throwing bolts of the gods' own lightning.” He recalled fondly the other time he'd encountered a strange woman on his travels. She had been a magic user as well. Dale's cheeks flushed a little as he remembered the encounter and the utter ass he'd made of himself. She hadn't seemed to mind much. Smiling a little, Dale fished a few small pouches from his pack, too small to have been damaged. Sniffing each bag, he picked out a couple and put the rest back. He set the couple on top of the pack with the knife and a sizable cooking pan, one of the few things he'd allowed himself to spend his little money on.

Dale froze when goosebumps ran down his arms, aware of a change in the area. It was something he couldn't quite place, like someone gently dragging their fingertips over his mind. Magic that tasted the way sunshine felt on his arms. He watched her, riveted as she reached out with a single gesture and a sizable, smooth log began moving, dragging through the sticks and soil to a stop beside her. As if she hadn't just enforced her will on nature itself and won, she simply sat on it. He chewed a lip for a moment and nodded. “I... I can do that.” He set about gathering the mess of half-burned wood, along with a good armful of thick branches. He nudged the stones back into a ring with his foot and began breaking the wood down into managable pieces, clearing his scattered belongings away.

That should do it.” he finally managed. “And I know what you mean about faces. I grew up in a small village. Every time I went in, I could count on seeing everyone I knew. I knew everyone's story in and out, and when I left, I got to being pretty lonely. I've met a few people in the last few months on the road. You, another magic-user, and a ranger who showed me how to shoot a bow without breaking my own wrist and shooting myself in the foot.” He smiled, eying the bow hanging from the tree. “Cities were different. There were more people, but...” He bit off the end of that sentence. “It was different.” He glossed over the subject and picked up his knife, heading across the clearing to where the pig lay. Just out of sight, he began cleaning it and separating the hide. He cut out a couple of slabs of meat and carried them back.

So... you don't, ah, talk?” he asked, face reddening again. He hated that wash of heat, blushing at the drop of a hat. Other people made him nervous. Other people usually meant being berated for something, or something entirely more dangerous in the slums of Taras. That had been something he'd grown happy with in the wilderness. But he was still craving conversation with someone friendly. And the matter of magic...

So how did you learn to use magic? Did you go to the academy?
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Luna Moore
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She really didn't care if the young man liked mages or not. Ultimately, it didn't matter what he thought of her, though his constantly flushing cheeks spoke volumes of his awareness of present company. How often did he chance upon women in the wild lands between civilized parts of the world? Seldom, she imagined. Seldom probably described a great many of his encounter rates with other people.

She settled into a comfortable position on her log-bench, or as comfortable as could be had on a piece of hard, dry, sun bleached wood. The weight of exhaustion seemed to bare down a little more as she relaxed, but with a stubborn effort of will she managed to push it aside. Instead, she watched him work about his small camp, gathering wood and spices for food. Scarcely long after the wood had been laid out, she channeled a trickle of power I to the wet wood. It didn't matter at all that it was wet, for she drew the moisture out of the kindling and then set a spark of elemental fire I to its heart. The flames caught swiftly, rapidly spreading to take in the older firewood as well as the new. After a little time, while he butchered the slain boar, she ceased feeding iit power and let it burn on its own.

When he returned, he had a couple hunks of meat, dripping blood into the rich forest soil. She didn't even blink at the gore - she had seen far worse. His question was also not much of a surprise, and she had long since become accustomed to showing at least one of her flaws - the most visible. Wordlessly, she lifted her chin. The growing light from the fire mixed with the ashen light of dawn was enough to reveal the thin, long healed scar across her throat. I don't talk because I can't. she replied, lowering her chin. Her eyes, dark and luminous, regarded him from their hooded depths. A going away present from the firs to many...ah, fans. The last comment was decidedly dry and ironic. Fans, indeed!

She regarded the pan and the meat, and smiled brittly. Boar had an unpleasant taste to it that required a certain culinary skill to abolish or hide. She wasn't adverse to it in any case - food was food, after all.

She stiffened visibly at the question regarding the academy. They deemed me u trainable and dangerous besides. They would not, or possibly could not, teach me. I was an object of idle curiosity, no more, and soon forgotten by scholars who do little else but muse about the intrinsic nature of magic itself. She didn't sound very forgiving of the Academy. At all.

I was born with an affinity for magic that most of them had to train and study for years to obtain. It was not a blessing, especially at first. I.... She trailed off, her face showing a flash of pain and of loss. It was gone almost as quickly as it had come. Anyway, the only people that could teach me wouldn't, because of my tainted bloodline. I had to learn on my own - first, to control the wild flow that came and went as it wished. Secondly, and later, to make it do as I wished. Not an easy task. She looked at him with her hooded, too bright eyes. Watching, warily, for a reaction she didn't want to see but was prepared for nonetheless.
Edited by Luna Moore, Fri Jun 5, 2015 1:33 am.
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