[PRP] Superstition (Tyranny + Last Night)

[Baneful]

Tyranny was not a good father, this was not because of any wilful meanness on his part towards his offspring but the simple and natural way he existed in the world, nomadic to a fault, he tended to change territory with the seasons and lived on whatever he found along the way. He lingered with his partner as long as they would tolerate him before vanishing off into the swamp again, asking nothing more than they were willing to give. To most he came across he was cruel and rude, chasing them away before they could get close to him and attacking those he thought he had any odds of driving off but the doe he had met this time was frankly dazzling and everything that the cunning and slight Acha could have hoped to meet. He was not talkative normally, borne of so long spent without a tribe or without companions, but everything he had to say about her was positive and he had high hopes for the clutch.

Still, he was always fearful of the larger world, a traveller partially through fear as much as through necessity and everything around him felt like ill luck or danger simply lurking and waiting. It made him tetchy, more than he had ever been as he wrestled with the horrible dillema of wanting to protect something or someone(s) who was not himself.

He should have been with her really, but he knew he'd only get underhoof, so instead he did what he always did when he was stressed, he moved, all lean grace and a trailing tail as he patrolled the territory and kept out of Clot's way.

Amorpheous

Hope this is ok smile

 

[Amorpheous]

Last Night didn't ponder the merits or demerits of her performance as a mother. Her children were raised with more attention than she, and many around her, ever was--after all, it was not unusual for a mother in the Swamp to consider her job done once the sacs were laid. She felt little obligation beyond making sure that they were lain in safe place, above the water where they would not drown.

Nose-in-the-Air was different, he hovered over them, nervously tending to the sacs, imagining myriad ways to make them more comfortable that they probably never noticed. He watched over them until they tumbled from their sacs and then he cared for them in their helplessness, bring food and water, waiting for them to open their eyes, open their mouths, speak their names. For him, each child was a blessing and a chance at redemption (though Last Night would always tell him that there was nothing for him to redeem himself from). So he watched them guiltily while she went on, wandering as she always did.

She could not speak for Wards the Way, in the end, her knowing of him was fleeting. He cherished their children, she knew that because she had come across them walking together, but she could not claim to have examined his motivations the same way she had those of Nose.

Perhaps it was that she did not feels those obligations that she rarely sought out parents to bless them. If she wandered across them and they asked, she would, but the tug of a nearby soon-to-be never compelled her to change her path. So she felt him, she knew he was nearby that a few minutes walk would bring her to him, but a spider spinning a web was what she headed towards, her eyes following the movements of its intricate art.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Tyranny had the good keen senses of a kin used to being on his own and covering his own tracks, and it was this which led him to even register the presence nearby, catching a faint scent and lingering tracks in the undergrowth. He paused at first, one hoof raised off of the ground and he angled his ears this way and that, listening to see if he could hear anything, but found nothing.

He followed the scent against his better judgement, hoping that whatever lay at the end was something more friend than potential foe. Truth be told his nervousness made him a little more careless than he might normally have been and with his current levels of anxiety curiosity seemed better than what was no better than large scale pacing.

"Hello?" he called out, less expecting an answer and more to announce his precence as he lost the scent again. He wasn't too keen on creeping up on anyone at all.

Amorpheous

 

[Amorpheous]

Last Night, too, had a keen awareness of what was around her, not out of any desire to be alone or fear, but simply because her way was one of knowing. She did not react though, her attention directed elsewhere, until the voice came calling out. She turned away from the spider and followed the direction of the voice, graceful making her way through the water and over the roots, antlers held aloft.

She stopped in front of the Acha, head tilting and antlers drawing an arc against the sky, "Hello."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Tryanny's own antlers were small and looked as if they had seen more use than was good for them this season. He hunched naturally in front of the graceful form looking more like a cornered hound than an acha. He took her in and found his curiosity more seized than his natural aggression. He looked away but his ears remained turned towards her.

"I did not expect anyone else to be out here." he said weakly, unsure now he was on the spot how to explain why he'd felt so pulled towards her. "I just needed to walk."

Amorpheous

 

[Amorpheous]

Last Night nodded, a gentle smile on her face. Though she was there and her attention clearly turned on him, there was a distance in the way she held herself, in the way she regarded him, that some found comforting and others found unnerving--especially now that she had six eyes. Her moves were slight, a slow blink of her eyes, a quiet shift in her limbs. She was still, not in the way a hunter is still when it waits for prey, but as trees are still, nonthreatening and patient.

"There is no shame in wandering; we often feel needs that cannot be explained, movements in our hooves and bones that demand to be expressed." Her voice was low, soothing in the low light.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Tryanny did not seem upset by the blankness and far away edge to Last Night's manner, amongst those who found it comforting. As tense and vicious as he was, any hostility or even over-keenness in another kin would be seen as a potential threat. As it was the calmness seemed to extend to him, soothing a little of the hackle-bristling flightiness in him.

He nodded to her words. "I feel I was born with that written into me, hungry and insatiable." and as if it bubbled from him unbidden added. "And I fear I will leave them too, in the end, as I have done before." He didn't expect her to know who they were but it felt somehow right to mention the children and the unspoken concerns he harboured even now.

Amorpheous

 

[Amorpheous]

"We are who we are," she said, the words simple--obvious. Yet, sometimes the obvious needed to be spoken because the most obvious things are sometimes the most difficult to believe. She could give this buck little comfort; she too left her clutches, but she did not fear the leaving and her children had never resented her for it.

She was still there, in a way, a wanderer who sometimes appeared back in their lives as if drawn to them, but not forever. She would no more stay with them forever than a bird with wings that can fly would stay on the ground for eternity. "You might leave them now, maybe later, but it does not have to mean a severing of a limb, a permanent break in a bone. Things heal, if you want to return, you can return."

She tilted her head then, eyes somewhere over his shoulder, as if searching for some small comfort that she could offer him when she was not a creature of comfort, "May they know a wanderer's heart whether or not they own one so that they might grow to understand you without resentment."

Baneful

weep i'm sorry. i just wanted to jump in a try to wrap this up! >__< you don't have to respond if you don't want to since the blessing itself is complete.