Welcome to Edensph- wait, WHAT?!
Characters: YOU! Confused new (or old) arrivals and current ES characters alike are all welcome!
Date/Time: Sunday, July 10th, all day
Location: All over the Sphere- if you need a refresher, please consult our handy World Map and the Events Calendar for a description of the current Wilderness! Remember, however, that new arrivals can appear ONLY ON ( Read more... )
Date/Time: Sunday, July 10th, all day
Location: All over the Sphere- if you need a refresher, please consult our handy World Map and the Events Calendar for a description of the current Wilderness! Remember, however, that new arrivals can appear ONLY ON ( Read more... )
Those wings look like dragon wings, his mind immediately supplied... but he didn't think the rest of her looked very dragon-like. It was hard to be sure, though... it was hard to be sure of anything right now, with his memory as lacking as it was. But, dragon or not, a cute little kit like her shouldn't be wandering around alone in a forest during a thunderstorm, surely?
When she spoke to him, he grinned widely, his eyes scrunching shut. Maybe she wasn't afraid of him at all; maybe she was just shy.
"Hi there," he said, his tone of voice calm and friendly in spite of the general uneasiness that continued to rest heavily in the pit of his stomach. "You wouldn't happen to know this forest well, would you?" His grin turned sheepish. "I think I've gotten myself lost." Very, very lost.
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But she couldn't give him a good answer to his question. She might have known the other forest well, but she knew no more about this place than she did about herself.
"I'm lost too," she said, deciding to take a step or two closer. "I just... found myself over there." She pointed back in the general direction she had come. "Um... what's your name?" Does he not know anything either?
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If she was in fact a dragon, of course, she might well be older than he was... but he still wasn't sure about that. She reminded him of dragons, but she also reminded him of young children, and that was all he was certain of at the moment.
He forced himself to smile again, though, when she asked his name. He wanted to put on a brave face for her, so at least she wouldn't be any more afraid than she already was. "I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. But give me a minute, I'll think of something!" He scratched the back of his neck, his tail twitching from side to side as he thought. What should she call him? What should he call himself?
[I guess I'm a fish out of water myself... Wait, did I just call myself a fish?] Words from that dream came back to him - his own voice, speaking in response to one of the stone statues. He chuckled a little, in spite of himself. "You can call me Fish, if you want to. How's that?" It was something he'd called himself, even if only in a dream, and that made it the closest thing to a name he could remember. "What would you like me to call you?"
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Fish?
...What a strange name. She had to smile just a little at his sheepishness and tail-twitching, and she was quite sure she had never known any humans named fish. But as for her own name, what should it be?
I was the dragon of Darkling Woods. How she knew that name and not her own, she couldn't say. But it was still something, and an important something. "Darkling," she said after some moments thinking. "Call me Darkling."
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And right now, the one thing Fish was sure they needed to focus on the most was finding shelter. The sound of thunder was growing steadily closer, and lightning was beginning to flash in the distance. In spite of his chosen name, he really wasn't at all fond of being soaking wet. He stepped a little closer to Darkling.
"Let's get a little less lost together, all right? I've got a pretty good nose," he tapped it twice with his index finger, "so if there's civilization around here, I'll be sure to sniff it out."
He debated briefly whether or not to hold out a hand to her, almost decided against it, and then did it anyway, smiling gently. "Shall we?"
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She looked up at the sky sharply when she saw the white flashes. Maybe this place was unafflicted by darkness, but that didn't meant it couldn't be dangerous. She decided to hold in an offer to fly up to see the shortest route to the nearest village.
After a moment of staring at his hand, Darkling stepped forward and took it. She nodded, but didn't speak, just curling her fingers around his.
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He picked a direction and began walking, keeping his pace on the slower side for the sake of her smaller legs. The idea of having her fly up above the trees to get a good look around had occurred to him, but he had immediately dismissed it - flying in a storm couldn't possibly be a safe thing to do. It was up to him. He stopped every so often, sniffing the air and listening to their surroundings, his ears swiveling this way and that. For the first little while all he smelled was the storm, and the forest, and the occasional woodland creature scurrying for shelter from the rain, but eventually he caught a faint whiff of something else. The residual scent of people.
The scent was faint enough that Fish didn't think anyone else was out here at the moment, but they must have passed by not long ago for the rain not to have washed it away quite yet. Maybe there was a path up ahead. He grinned down at Darkling and pointed with his free hand. "That way!"
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"You... can really smell something?" she asked, looking up when he pointed something out. "If it isn't... if it isn't too rude to ask, what are you?" Humans couldn't sense things that well, could they?
She clutched at her mantel with her free hand as a fresh feeling of unease came over her. Being around one person was fine, but what if they were going into a square with huge crowds? Darkling didn't know what she would do around that many humans.
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There was another word, he was certain... Cats were just one variety; there were also tigers, hawks, dragons... he'd seen them clearly in his dream. They were kindred, and there was a word for all of them, but it wasn't coming to him - his mind was, as with most other things, drawing a complete blank. But don't worry about that right now, he reminded himself. One thing at a time.
"What about you?" he asked Darkling. "Can I ask you the same question? You don't have to answer if you don't want to."
He noticed when she clutched her free hand to herself, seeming to draw herself in, and his brows creased slightly with concern. "Hey, what's wrong?" he asked kindly, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "Are you okay?"
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She looked up at him a bit nervously when he asked what was wrong--yes, what was the problem? But... so many... "I'm fine, but... I suppose I shouldn't ask you how many people are there, since you can't remember either." Still, she squeezed his hand in return. It was reassuring. "I'll just try not to get separated from you if there are too many."
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He supposed it probably didn't matter much at this exact moment, anyway. Once this spell or whatever it was wore off and his memory came back, he was confident that things would make a lot more sense.
"I don't think there's anyone out there right now," he said reassuringly. "It's a faint scent, like someone passed by this way not long ago. If we follow it, though, it should lead us somewhere." He hoped. Fish smiled down at Darkling once again; she must not be comfortable in crowds. "You're right, I don't know how many people we'll end up finding. But I won't lose you, I promise." With that, he continued forward, still holding her hand.
Sure enough, the forest gave way to a path, and glancing down it, Fish could see structures in the distance. They didn't look like typical village homes, or a fortress or anything along those lines, but where there were buildings of any sort there were probably people. And beyond the buildings... towered a positively enormous tree. Fish tilted his head back, gaping up at it, and up higher, and higher...
"Wow," he breathed. "That's even taller than..." He paused as, once again, his mind failed to supply him with information he felt should be there. "...Than something I can't remember," he finished, chagrined.
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She did trust Fish, though. And if something bad did happen, some trouble... she was a dragon. She had fought in the darkness; she wouldn't lose Fish and--
--and--
When she saw the tree, her jaw dropped. Enormous didn't even begin to describe it. "I... I'm sure I've never seen anything that huge," she said. "Or are we just that small?"
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And, as luck would have it... "The scent leads in that direction." He looked back down at Darkling, smiling encouragingly. "What do you say we find our way out of this storm and into some shelter?" His grin grew wider and more amused. "I must look like a drowned cat by now, you know?"
Never mind that it was a pretty lousy pun... if it helped keep their spirits up and took Darkling's mind off of her uneasiness for a moment, Fish really didn't care in the least - he'd gladly make more of them.
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