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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 6:12 pm
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Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 7:19 pm
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Don't wooooooorry.
Jakkoa shot his company a look, some combination of miffed, incredulous, and reluctantly hopeful. The man — Barihn’s — assurances were shockingly uncomforting at first blush, but Jak had few options at that point other than to do exactly as he was, wait, and hope that there was some merit to them. After Barihn scampered up the tree like a forest rodent, Jak braced his weight against the trunk to keep it off of his twisted ankle and looked up, and up, squinting at the other as he popped his head out again—and then dropped a rope.
Jakkoa frowned, eyeing the line with pensive uncertainty. Could he climb it? With only one leg and two arms, no braces? If it had been a rope ladder, surely. But as it was, he doubted it.
Or want me to tie you up again?
His gaze snapped upward, sharp for an instant before the corner of his mouth lifted in spite of himself. “Ha. Ha,” he answered. But then, because it seemed true in his particular state of misfortune: “I think you may have to, lord of the forest. Else wise you’d need to bring whatever it is you have down here. I doubt I’m fit to climb and not especially prepared to fall again if I fail besides.”
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Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 8:07 pm
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Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2016 11:07 am
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Jakkoa’s lip quirked, one eyebrow raising just enough to be notable at the words. I could tie you up in several ways. Perhaps he ought not have made anything of it. It was probably meant innocuously, but between the other’s expression and drawn out tone, Jak couldn’t help the alternate potential insinuations that came to mind at the words. Because they were not appropriate for the moment, however, he tucked them away, smiling instead.
“Tie me however you need to, I suppose,” he said, and then nodded at the suggestion. “The waist is fine. My other leg is also unhurt, so I ought to be able to brace without issue. Do you make a habit of inviting strangers to your home and then binding them up to carry into this…” His gaze flicked upward to the small structure—he hesitated to consider it a ‘house’—tucked into the tree, “…forest lair of yours? For the sake of your appetite if nothing else I hope you at least catch more beasts than men with your traps.”
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Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2016 6:45 pm
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Jakkoa held himself still, watching as Barihn secured him and then bracing himself and catching to the rope when the other pulled. In retrospect, it could have gone fantastically wrong in any number of ways, and had any of those potential slip ups transpired, he might have found himself in a far worse off state than he was—physically and otherwise, potentially.
But nothing went afoul.
Either by way of practice on Barihn’s part and effective cooperation on Jakkoa’s or sheer dumb luck for both of them, he made it up, and when close enough to do so, he caught at the bottom edge of the ‘house’ — or it’s floor — and hoisted himself in, adjusting his weight once over the lip to keep it off of his twisted ankle. His eyes flit about the place. Not large, not elaborate, and clearly lived in—but wild much in the way Barihn himself came off: civil, but not quite in touch with civilization any longer. If he had ever been.
“Have you lived here…long?” Jak asked. It seemed a relevant question among many.
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Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:59 pm
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Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 10:02 am
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Forced out.
Jakkoa stared, his miffed expression only seeming to exaggerate itself as Barihn drew his words out, and in the aftermath, for several moments that felt like all he could do. Stare. And wait. As though, if perhaps he just gave a little longer for the words to sink in, they would seem less obscure somehow, or Barihn would provide more explanation. They did not. He did not.
Eventually, Jak gave a quick, puzzled shake of the head, frowning at his company. “You just—fifteen, four years you’ve been…” He glanced around the small abode. “Maybe, ‘perhaps’ you have been here four years. That is no small amount of time, you know. Are you well?”
It felt a little odd to ask, he supposed, but after what had been said, he couldn’t help but feel at least some pinch of concern. Barihn didn’t look or sound especially distressed. But Jakkoa certainly would have been, under his circumstances.
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Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2016 5:27 pm
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“Nothing too dangerous…” Jakkoa repeated, almost more to himself than the other young man. After a moment, though, he shook his head, gaze moving instead to survey his surroundings again as he adjusted his position on the floor to better keep pain off his foot. “I am not certain being alive and present is the same as being well, but if you’re comfortable with your circumstances far be it from me to complain. They merely seem quite…remote. I’d be lonely.”
It didn’t look, either, as though Barihn shared the space with anyone else. It wasn’t big for starters—a tiny shake holed up in a tree in the deep woods. But beyond that, it also simply gave off the air of a one-man show. Still, out of curiosity.
“Do you share this place with others? Does anyone else…know you’re here? Even if you’ve not encountered anything dangerous yet, surely you can’t be entirely on your own.”
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Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2016 4:01 pm
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Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2016 9:08 pm
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There was something about certain assurances that had the unfortunate result of making whatever it is they assured seem less likely to be true. ‘I am not mad.’ ‘I don’t care.’ ‘I’m not stupid.’ ‘I’m mature.’ ‘I can handle this, trust me.’ The long, drawn, “I prooooomiiiise I know how to cook…” felt firmly within that category.
Jakkoa’s conviction on this point only further cemented itself when Barihn began to move about, fiddling and fumbling. His gaze trailed, wandering down the length of straight, mahogany brown hair and the line of his back as he worked, to his backside, and then gradually away again to other parts of the room. Because he had little better to do for the moment, Jak did make his way over to sit atop the other man’s bedding, and from there worked to carefully remove his boot, attempting to assess his own damage without worsening the situation before leaving it be.
Nothing looked or felt broken, he decided. Sprained at worst, red, and swollen. But otherwise nothing to be especially concerned about. He let his hands drop away, removed his other boot, and adjusted his legs to stretch and rest comfortably.
Though initially he had no intentions of actually laying down — to ‘rest’ or sleep or otherwise — the space was small with only so many places for his eyes to go, late afternoon was waning into early evening outside, and there was only so much Jakkoa would do while he waited. He only really arranged himself to a lower sit, and then a lean, and finally a lay for comfort, and had no awareness of drifting short of anything but full consciousness. A lifetime of migration and constant travel, however, had trained his body not only to conserve energy and take advantage of any opportunity for recuperation, but also to do so quickly, and regardless of how familiar or unfamiliar the given locale was.
It was a blessing and a curse to be fully capable of (and sometimes prone to) sleeping anywhere.
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