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+--- Thread: find your way (/showthread.php?tid=10331)
find your way - Cairn - Sep 30 2021
Another bout of exploring led her here.
It was difficult to not notice the Monarch when you lived in Eridanus. It was absurdly tall and in the dead center of the room, and despite that, it often faded into the rest of the background noise for Cairn. It was only now, that she was directly under the thing, that she acknowledged the existence of it. The cap swept very low (but not low enough for her to touch) and provided a blanket of shade over a meadow of moss and grass.
Cairn did what any child would do. She flew at full gallop in wide circles around the stalk-- so fast that she couldn't feel the beat of her hooves against the cave floor --and went leaping for the lowest edges of the cap with her arms outstretched as far as they'd go. She always failed. Sometimes she'd land on her hooves with a hollow thump! and other times she'd go tumbling across the moss in a mess of tangled limbs and flailing. She always got up.
It was a solid twenty minutes before she gave up; breathing hard and covered in little scuffs and bruises. She slowed from gallop to trot to halt, and then rolled over into feather-soft grass until she was laying on her back with all four legs hanging, relaxed, half-curled into her torso (the horse one) like a content cat. It... smelled nice, here. Earthy and dewy, but not uncomfortably hot or wet.
This place was nice, and it was quiet, and as the seconds ticked by, the adrenaline faded and left her muscles aching and her eyes slowly falling shut. Nothing said comfortable and at peace quite like surprise naptime under a giant mushroom.
RE: find your way - Ampelio - Sep 30 2021
The next step was in Eridanus. And I mean this in both a literal and metaphorical sense. The next person stepping... would be in Eridanus. And Eridanus, or whatever, or whoever was in Eridanus would be... I think you understand the point now.
Yes, trundling through the dense foliage of Eridanus were they, seeking something out. Or maybe it was routine. Stretching limbs was a smart idea after any lengthy nap, and checking out other gardens was an intellectual play before starting one. Not that Ampelio needed to start one. They had one. A big one. Not as big as that mushroom though. Nothing was as big as that mushroom. Pelly couldn't make anything as big as that mushroom. ....That didn't feel right. Anyways.
What they sought? What each step led towards? All one goal, but in the acute scheme of things: scents and smells. Pelly had... something of an idea, coursing through their mind. One that would carry all the others. It was like... less complex than you might think. A simple system of communication, simpler than letters, or even sounds, or whatever was probably going down underneath that mushroom. And not a form of public communication, more a private recording system. Like notes. A comprehensive... compendium... of notes! Notes about dreams. Eridanus was like Target. Pelly needed a dream journal.
Scents and smells, they had realized soon upon waking up and talking to their dad, were a good way to... remember things. Dreams were prone to forgettance, quite like a Tobie they knew. Thus, they sought to connect these pairs of dots in an intricate, sniff-based web, and that meant getting lots and lots of fresh flowers.
Hence the snuffling and the pawing and the perplexed looks and the trundli— hey why are we at the really big mushroom.
Pelly couldn't stop staring at it. Eventually their paws just twisted the path on their own, called the mushroom a "viable flower", and did not alert Pelly until they were stuck patrolling its perimeter, orbiting its circumference like a satellite. Little did they know, the giant already had a moon, tide-locked, set in that same path of motion. Only in the eclipse do the planets ever get... to talk, I guess.
Except Pelly did not want to make even the slightest peep when they saw the bundle of stripey, fluffy fuzz, only identifiable as "person" from the rise and fall of the chest, and the oddity of the figure. They don't make regular old rabbits like that. No, Pelly did not want to breathe loudly or speak softly, but they did want to smile! To giggle, even. It was a temptation resisted, for the snoozer's sake... Pelly's smile was not any form of pleasantry. Plus, they had an even better idea.
This other creature was like color in repose under the mushroom. It reminded Pelly of something, which then made Pelly think of forgetting, which then made Pelly think of flowers. Then: idea. Devious idea. Perhaps even... prank? Ohohohoho! Little moon, you know not what you are in for!!
They set to work, trundling back through the various *~legumes~* and flora and whatnot, giggling ever-so-quietly all the while (had to get it out somehow, such is the way of nefarious villeins). They gathered flowers of a certain ilk: white lilacs, bright yellow poppies, dandelions old and new, and for the finishing touch... a single purple agapanthus flower. They then returned, and swiftly summoned every increment of floristry latent in their genetics.
Prank... begin!
A few minutes of turmoil and tribulation passed before Ampelio dared to call it quits. They were perhaps too loud, too brash, too bold in their design, and in their movements. But a work of TRUE art finds value within every passerby, that is the only test, no other judgement will fair. Hopefully the critter would still be asleep long enough to later wake up and witness Pelly's artistry.
It was... well, kind of like how pancakes look when you're just starting to learn how to make them. Floppy, sloppy, mostly practical and nothing more, but the idea remains, grandiose and impending, retaining, despite everything, its dignity, and even... its beauty. Somewhere in that massive upheaval of petals that skirt the breeze like little speckles of ill-timed snow, somehow buried among those droopy bouquets of white and bright yellow, there is the phantasmal dream of a beautiful, golden pancake. And maybe an actual real one in there too, you never know (Pelly made quite a mess).
The unfortunate twister of stems and petals did manage to swirl around the creature in a way one might consider truly elegiac. Put a white lily in there and you're just about ready for a funeral, and not just for the ecosystem. Hopefully this one didn't have pollen allergies.
Placing the purple agapanthus at the food of the "prank", Ampelio stepped back and perceived, in its full glory, the message they had created. Maybe it was the Tobie or the Mercy within that made them so delighted, even by their failure. It was a prank! It was still a prank! It could still function as a prank. Or a message, much simpler than letters or sounds, or whatever was probably going down underneath their feet right now. A message, from the universe that watched, the universe that cared! A message that, once sneezed upon, unraveled, whatever... once opened, at last, it would read:
"Dear hay bale at the foot of the mushroom,
Pelly wuz here."
It left Pelly pleased enough to think: 'Yeah. That's a pro gamer move,' before finally turning away to ostensibly continue with flower collecting. In truth, they went to hide behind a rather conspicuous bush, and watch for a reaction.
@Cairn
RE: find your way - Cairn - Oct 06 2021
It was that sort of restless sleep that caught Cairn. The kind where the exhaustion was so deep it was difficult to get properly comfortable, and her body twisted and turned in the grass as an oddly-shaped spine tried to find a spit to relax. Desite the fitful rest, she did not wake as flowers were woven around her in an elaborate message-- and she did not wake long after the prankster had fled the scene of the crime.
Twenty minutes passed before a breeze rolled through Eridanus; perhaps the cause of someone practicing their magic not too far away. With it came some scattered leaves spiralling through the room, until it touched the petals of the boquet and rustled the pollen from stamen. Little specks of life fluttered along until--
Cairn sneezed.
She sneezed again, and again, and the centuar was rolling onto her hands and knees (as much as someone with a horse butt could do) to sneeze a final time before rubbing her itchy nose. It was around then, as bleary eyes looked around, that she noticed the colourful wreathe underneath the mushroom-- one that she was fairly certainly wasn't there before.
How long had she been asleep for? Pranks weren't something Cairn had ever participated in, after all-- there was no reason to believe someone was behind it all, only that she must have slept for a very, very long time. Which would be a lot more concerning if Cairn had any reasonable perception of time in the slightest.
The centuar's concerns were some that were very simple: that she was tired, and that her legs cramped from running and weren't getting any better with them folded like an unused lawn chair underneath her. In a smooth movement, she stretched out, unrolled her limbs, and fell into a pile of half-melted pancake-flowers.
Whumph, came a storm of petals and leaves and pollen as the foal collapsed into them; and following this came another sneeze.
And if she were any more observant, she might have noticed the white butt of another hybrid in a bush. But you know how kids are.
They're stupid.
@Ampelio
RE: find your way - Ampelio - Nov 19 2021
Much to Pelly's chagrin, their jape appeared to have sent the foal into a sneezing fit. "Ahh shoot." Without a second thought, they rose from their foolish little hiding spot and carefully approached the tumulting child. "Sorry!" Pelly called out to the kid, wanting them to know of the approach. "It was a joke. Probably not very funny for you though, pollen can really.... bite, i guess. Anyways, rise and shine! welcome to the waking world!" Were they allowed to come close enough, Pelly would attempt to softly straighten the kid out with a paw and perhaps direct them out of the fluttering flower piles. Shame the kid didn't have a scruff, they could have been out of this jiffy in a snap.
"Do you have like a parent? around? Or water.. might need some water to get the pollen off." The white-butted hybrid looked around with some freneticism for one or the other, intent on making up for their failed art crimes. Pelly knew of the lake as a consistent supply of water, but that was too far from the Shroom. The babbling brooks strewn about the floor made more sense, but those were something of a chance encounter. Perhaps Pelly could command serendipity to their side (although that's kind of antithetical to the point of serendipity, isn't it?)
Pelly trundled through, searching for at least one. Eridanus was a plentiful place, puddles weren't hard to find. Upon finding one, the lion-monkey would gesture a 'come forth'. "You can clean your eyes and your paws." Then, an offhand observation: "You've got paws like me, see?" Pelly tensed and released their fuzzy, padded grasping paws to demonstrate. They didn't mean to say that the paws looked the same, but rather that they were similarly dexterous. If the kid was up to it, Pelly would supervise a little wash, and try very hard to resist the temptation to start splashing. It probably definitely wouldn't be so polite to put a sleepy child through a prank gauntlet when you already failed to first prank.
@Cairn