ORIGIN

(talys is trying to figure out how to tan hides)

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Talys was sitting on one of the shorter rock cliffs, his legs dangling perhaps three or four feet off the ground and his tail laying behind him. He was working on skinning a Windhopper he'd caught in a simple snare earlier, trying to preserve the pelt as best he could in the meantime. He was trying to figure out how to tan hides. He'd had several failed attempts thus far, all of them starting to rot, but he had a feeling he was getting closer. Mostly, he just needed to figure out some kind of preservative for the skin itself -- an oil of some kind that would make it stop decaying. Animal fat hadn't worked very well, but he imagined that he was on the right track.

He had already gutted the poor thing, mostly because he didn't care for the viscera at the best of times and didn't want it stinking up his workspace. As it were, Talys was able to eat raw meat (though it wasn't exactly pleasant) and didn't feel like getting up to stoke a fire, so he broke off a leg and took a bite out of it. He wiped the blood off on the back of his hand and continued to work at the pelt -- there was a delicate balance to strike between removing all the muscle from the skin and cutting it.

Despite all the time that had passed since he last saw his brother, he was wearing the same dirty cloth, and had the basalt dangling from a grass cord around his neck. Certainly, despite being nearly as tall as Selenite now and bearing a spiked cluster of diamond on his cheek, he was recognizable.


@v-selenite-one

While Talys worked, four eyes glistened at him from the canopy.

Reasonably, something at the scale of a particular Selenite should not be so perfectly suited to and silent in the branches. It bore two limbs too many, it was covered in a great deal of chitinous armor, and was just… plain large; hunching over a sturdy branch (and clutching an improvised gem-shard knife in one hand) wasn’t a comfortable position for it. A number of creatures’d gone into its hybridization, but "arboreal primate" was not among them.

But, of course, it defied nature because, really, what was natural about this Cave?

Not long ago, the humanoid monstrosity had been in hot pursuit. A botched ambush had it scrambling after a Lesser rabbit on foot, and the poor thing had fled into the noose knot. It was a simple, noiseless trap, but the creature’s abrupt squealing and thrashing had sent it into a bit of a… well, frenzy.

At first, Selenite clambered up the nearest tree, unsheathing talons barely scraping the bark with its brevity.

It went back down after a time spent staring at the windhopper breathing its last. Carefully, warily, it’d padded for the fresh corpse—checked it over for any particularly visible stone—and pancaked itself against the tropical forest floor in order to sniff at it. Deft fingers prodded at the snare’s production as it did so, nostrils flaring (and wasn’t that scent… familiar? Like the same as the creature it’d come for?)

It’d thought that the owner of such a trap might return for their catch, and, amid higher-up leaves, its suspicions were proven correct.

Now, while the (fully-grown, it noted) elf worked to skin the rabbit, V-Selenite-One was caught in a sort of… dilemma. Tail lashing cattishly, it pondered, turning a particular thought over and over in its palms: how do I approach?

The polite route would be to creep away some, drop down, and stride up with its ordinary bipedal stance—offer an outstretched palm and a "how do you do?" like a dandy sort of neighbor down South.

The route that the hybrid chose was far less appealing or endearing, and sure to not at all be fun for Talys:

It stalked through the branches, leaning forward to test its weight before each grab—slowly, purposefully, so as to not make a single sound. The treeline ended several feet before the ground dropped off, but Selenite supposed it could leap farther than that (and wasn’t that a horrifying thing to be confident about?) Glistering gaze set on the distance, it squatted flush against its current perch. Toes curled into the bark, steadying while it… basically wiggled on its haunches, shifting minutely with calculated movements.

This wiggling, of course, made a fair bit of racket. The branch completely breaking beneath its shuffling weight made even more. Selenite's startled cry as it fell made the most noise. It twisted and writhed to set its limbs straight out, but managed only to land chest- and face-first in the soil. A diamond shard, knocked loose from its hands, clattered up to Talys's side.

Lying there in a daze, the hybrid... giggled?

It rolled onto its back, then back to its stomach, clucking in some mockery of laughter with a screwed-up grimace for a face. The monster shoved up to its elbows, and stared right at the elf; its expression sobered somewhat, though its "hello?" was no less eager and familiar.

@Talys

Talys was the type to become deeply engrossed in a task when he worked on it for a time. Therefore, he was quite engrossed in this one, to the point where the snapping of the branch -- clearly audible, and loud enough to catch his attention -- startled him so badly that he fumbled the knife and nicked himself. His knife was rather freshly sharpened, after all -- luckily, it was sharp enough that the cut wasn't too severe. "Ah!" he said, less of a scream and more of a sound of surprise, eyes wide as he looked over towards the large, black-and-cyan figure before him.

It took him a moment, seeing as he was bleeding and he hadn't seen the other creature in a few cycles. It was like seeing a ghost, for a second, and then his eyes lit up. "Selenite!" he declared, launching himself off of the rock and stopping short of a hug (mostly because he decided at the last second that his brother would probably think he was trying to attack him, and didn't want to impale himself on any of those quills). His relatively minor wound forgotten, he looked the hybrid over wide-eyed. "Selenite! You got huge! Look at you!"

His expression softened and he held his (uninjured) hand out, palm up. "How have you been? I've missed you, brother."


@v-selenite-one