Fever Pitch
Age: 10Species: Equus
Gender: MaleSpiritual Rank: Conceiver
Posts: 15 Stones: 156❂ Played by: Lashes
#1

And Echoed in the Well of Silence


He could not recall how he arrived here. His coat glistened in sweat, though his gait was listless.  Fever glossed cerulean eyes.  Muscles quivered.  He felt unable to rest, unable to cease the almost soothing motion of his endless walk, yet his body suffered by this disregard for rest.  His hooves were worn with minor cracks.  Briars and twigs clung to his hair, twisted into knots and matted to his flesh.  Cif'thar staggered forward, ears frantically searching every angle with rising paranoia.  He was in no condition to defend himself, and the scents of lupis lined endless stretches of land.

Yet, as he acknowledged this serene forest engulfing him, a soothing calm washed over his internal frenzy.  The stallion found comfort in the silk mist and open forest floor.  The consuming drive that persisted his gait across the Isle was stifled.  For the first time in days, the stallion's tension eased a faction.  

Enough for the thought of stopping to cause his misstep.  Right knee dug into the ground. Flesh scraped with a burn. A gruff whinny drove his stance upward.  No.  Water.  Head throbbed as he tried to source a sound of water-flow.  Thankfully the canopy created a blanket of blue and soothed his eyes.  He could not remember the last consideration of the sun, and wondered at the relatively quiet bird activity. Doesn't matter. He shifted is mane and persisted forward. 

Over a rolling hill, a brooke gurgled down its valley. An emerald composition of zig zagging river stone and small waterfalls.  This visual was all it took to crumble his resolve.  Legs buckled. He slid down the hill, leaning on massive roots as well as he could, until forelegs plunged into water. 

Don't fall asleep.  A demand, a reminder, a prayer, as he eased the savage burn in his throat and attempted to reorient himself.  He felt in a haze, as if he were entering zen through an undiscovered door.  Migraine raged in his cranium.  Cif tilted his forehead down and dipped into the flow with a weak sigh.  Cold consumed the top of his head.  Sweet grace.

Cif'thar
 


BY TASHA

OOC::  All welcome, definitely going to be a Syndrome shift, is currently in the early stages right now.  Let the forest magic begin

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Age: IVSpecies: Canis
Gender: MaleSpiritual Rank: Conceiver
Posts: 14 Stones: 148❂ Played by: Ally
Something wild calls you home
#2

OOC: OMG I'm sorry it's so long!




Loki Orpheus Anor
I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world



Since departing the gilded shores of this forsaken isle he had wandered, learning the world and its inhabitants by scent, sound, and sight as an audience observer only. He had glimpsed others, mostly wolves like and unlike himself, but there were hints of other creatures as well… He could not bring himself to seek them out, for to do so would too fully commit him to this place, force him to admit that perhaps he could not leave. The overlay of charcoal upon his pelt lent itself well to hiding amidst the shadows, but his aureate, wingèd mask still blazed with the sea of magic that he could touch but a trickle. 

Yet…there seemed to be a current to the magic of this land, a tug that had a central focus; less like a river perhaps than a whirlpool, and it dragged at him as surely as the tide that had yanked him to Eshteth’s shores. Was it there, in the eye of that vortex that he might find enough access to the enigma ether to cut a path to his next conquest? Loki was not usually so eager to depart a world, especially one so interesting, but the very fact that he could not, it rankled.

The young wolf felt the shift in the air at almost the same instant as his nose caught the scent of softwood and hardwood alike; pine, fir, hemlock and oak, all mingling in a bouquet with the crisp bite of waning summer to add that final garnish. It had a distinctly different weight than the oppressive jungle, and the difference was starling enough to give him pause. One forepaw remained half-raised, ears swiveling atop his his head in sonar scan but once again it was his nose that brought him the information that made his skin prickle along his spine. Sweat. Rain in a cloudless sky. Vegetation and sweet musk. Loki’s brows drew down over his golden eyes, and as his head lowered to the soft loam of the earth, the uneven hoofprints shambling across the terrain became painfully obvious. Lips wrinkled forward in a canine frown as he studied them. They were not the cloven feet of deer or elk--the round, solid print was far larger, and yet there was something of the prey animal about the scent. There was also something else...pollution in the stormy scent, acid rain that wrinkled his muzzle further. Sickness. 

Leave it alone, he warned himself, trying to force his body to turn, make his paws carry him away from the trail of the unknown other, but he could not. Gaze strayed back towards the haphazard disaster that carved a path through the undergrowth. Tail swished, but otherwise he held himself in frozen conflict. Until…Pure curiosity, he tried to convince himself as his paws pulled him into a mile-eating jog, seemingly of their own accord straight down the path left like a blazing beacon before him. It was so carelessly created that he didn’t even need to slow his pace to follow it. Curiouser and curiouser, Loki mused, pushing aside the little tendril of...compassion?...that kept trying to wriggle itself around the knot of apathy that he had twisted into impossible tangles. 

It didn’t take him long. Cresting the same hill, following the landslide of a large, stumbling body down into the valley towards the water, Loki came upon the great bay stallion collapsed with ragdoll bonelessness half-in, half-out of the water. The sickly scent of fever, sweat and over-ripe fruit, was heavy here, only mildly dulled by the glacial bite of the pure stream. A flicker of recognition at the form of the beast tugged at him and he pinned his ears back in consternation. The scent was prey...and it was not. Loki eyed the big, heavy body, the feathered hocks with flinty hooves and knew that any wolf stupid enough to try to make a meal out of him would face far worse consequences than an empty belly. The head was half-submerged, but the long, slender ears were still available. The wolf cleared his throat. "You seem ill," he spoke just loud enough to be heard over the gurgling of the stream, his coarse tenor pensive. It was, he reflected, a bit of an understatement.

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@Cif'Thar

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Age: 10Species: Equus
Gender: MaleSpiritual Rank: Conceiver
Posts: 15 Stones: 156❂ Played by: Lashes
#3


Words and Lyrics Here

YOU MUST TAKE ME WITH YOU CIF.  HUSHED ALTO PINNED HIM TO THE DARK.  HALAVINE STOOD BEFORE HIM, NOT THE STRAWBERRY ROAN HE REMEMBERED, BUT AS A TWO LEGGED BEAST.  A WOMAN, THOUGH HE DID NOT UNDERSTAND THE TERMINOLOGY THAT CAME TO HIS MIND. HE, TOO, WAS THIS UNUSUAL BI-PEDAL CREATURE, YET IN THIS VISION, SUCH A FORM FELT NATURAL.  UNCOMFORTABLY SO.  I WILL GO MAD IF I STAY HERE. SHE CONTINUED TO PRESS UPON HIM, A STRAIN OF DIRE DESIRE IN HER VOICE.  SHE WAS NOT LYING. HER SPIRIT WAS A COLUMN OF FIRE THAT MADE THE SHAMANS UNEASY.  YET, WITHOUT AN OUTLET, THE FIRE TURNED ON ITS MAKER AND CONSUMED HALAVINE INSTEAD.  WHEN HE RETURNED FROM A THREE MONTH JOURNEY, SHE WAS IN THE RECESSES OF THE LIBRARY, SO FAR WITHIN THAT THE SHAMAN MOTHERS BELIEVED THE SPIRITED WOMAN HAD RUN OFF.  WHEN CIF'THAR FOUND HER, SHE WAS IN WRETCHED PHYSICAL CONDITION, RECITING ANCIENT POEMS AND SCENES FROM BATTLES LONG SINCE FADED. 

I will try.  AND HE WOULD.  IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE OUTLETS BECAME MORE EXTREME.  HE MUST PROTECT THE HERD FROM WITHIN, AS WELL AS OUTSIDE ITS BORDERS.

A NEW SCENT BROKE THE SCENE APART IN A THOUSAND GLASS FRAGMENTS.  COLD WATER GURGLED PASSED HIS FOREHEAD, AND MOST OF HIS MANE CONTINUED TO SWAY BACK AND FORTH IN THE CURRENT.  NOSTRILS FLARED.  HOT-BLOOD, THICK FUR, A PREDATOR.  NOT JUST, BUT ONE OF THE ELUSIVE BEASTS CIF SCENTED ALL ACROSS THIS ISLE, YET WAS UNABLE TO LOCATE.  IT WAS TRUE HE ASSUMED THEY WERE AS COGNIZANT AS HE, AND IT WAS TRUE HE HELD NO BASIS FOR THIS ASSUMPTION.  EAGER WAS HE, EVEN IN THIS BUILDING DISCOMFORT AND PRESSURED FEVER, TO LEARN IF THIS WAS AT ALL TRUE.

THEIR STEP WAS GENTLE.  SOFT.  FAR MORE CONCEALED THAN HOOVES COULD MANAGE. TESTOSTERONE AND A SPICE OF FUR HE WAS UNUSED TOO.  EARS PRICKED TO FOLLOW MOTION, BUT HE DID NOT YET LIFT HIS HEAD. HE FELT WEIGHTED, AND EVEN CONSIDERING THE STRENGTH IT WOULD TAKE TO LOOK FURTHERED HIS EXHAUSTION.

YOU SEEM ILL.  THIS FOREIGN VOICE QUERIED CIF'THAR'S WEARY BOW INTO THE STREAM.  AT LAST THE EQUINE LIFTED HIS HEAD, JUST ENOUGH FOR VIVID EYES TO CONSIDER THE BLACK CANUS BEFORE HIM.  THE BEAST WAS POWERFUL, THOUGH SMALLER THAN CIF IF THE EQUUS CHOSE TO STAND.  MOLTEN FIRE STARED BACK AT HIM, CONSIDERING HIS SITUATION WITH PENSIVE CONCERN AND MILD APATHY. HIS FACE WAS DECORATED IN STREAKS OF GOLD, THE ONLY DISPELL OF THE BLACK THAT COLORED THE REST OF HIS PELT.

HOW..BEAUTIFUL. A BROKEN THOUGHT, WITH FAR MORE UNSPOKEN EMOTION THAT CIF'THAR DID NOT QUITE UNDERSTAND.  

Do not come closer. BARITONE SHIVERED, THICK WITH FEVER.  SWEAT GLEAMED ON HIS HAUNCHES, THOUGH CIF COULD ONLY FEEL THE INTERNAL SHIVER OF HIS SICKNESS.  I came in contact with one..who showed these symptoms..I believe it came from them...I do not know..if it is contagious to your kind.

HIS JOINTS SCREAMED.  HE COULD NOT BEAR THIS POSITION ANY LONGER.  PERHAPS IF HE COULD MANAGE TO MOVE HIMSELF TO A MINOR CLEARING, SURROUNDED BY GRASS.  PERHAPS THERE HE COULD SUCCUMB TO THIS FEVER ATTEMPTING TO DRIVE HIM BACK INTO THE GROUND.  WITH A GROAN, CIF CAREFULLY PLACED HOOOVES UNDERNEATH HIM, AND FORCED HIMSELF TO STAND.  LEGS QUIVERED, KNEES KNOCKING TOGETHER, BUT BEYOND AN UNSTEADY SWAY, HE DID NOT LOOSE HIS BALANCE.  EYES FOCUSED ON THE CANUS AGAIN, CONSIDERING HIM.  AN INSTINCTUAL EDGE WAS AT CIF'THAR'S SPINE AT THE SCENT OF A PREDATOR, BUT THE EQUINE HAD BATTLED MANY BEFORE, AND COULD TELL WHEN A BEAST WAS MOTIVATED BY AGGRESSION.  THIS WAS NOT THE CASE FOR THE BEAST IN FRONT OF HIM.

I am Cif'thar. ..I have been on this Isle for a month, perhaps..do you hail from these strange grounds..? or a visitor yourself?  How strange it may have been to attempt conversation now, but he needed to have some constructive thought so he was not so consumed in the ails of his body. Hopefully it was merely a fever, and by dawn will have broken
  

Words
 


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Age: IVSpecies: Canis
Gender: MaleSpiritual Rank: Conceiver
Posts: 14 Stones: 148❂ Played by: Ally
Something wild calls you home
#4


With all the strength of a raging fire

Mysterious as the dark side of the moon


He was acknowledged, first by the swivel of tapered ears and then by a shockingly sky-colored eye as a head nearly the length of his rib cage was lifted from the water. Loki raked his memories to pinpoint the familiarity, and came up with a similar looking beast, though slighter of build and cloven of hoof, with a single spear-like horn in the center of its brow where this copper-colored stallion had only a tangled forelock. Those others had been more like deer or antelope, and he had made the grave mistake of treating them as such. To be fair, he had been starving; a scraggly adolescent stumbling through one of his first planeswalking adventures, and how was he to know that they had a...a protocol for dealing with hunters? The lead stallion of that band had threatened to skewer him and roast him for the vultures to feast upon, and he had nearly done it, too. The ghost of a smile for the ghost of a memory turned up one corner of his ebony lips.

Do not come closer, the copper-colored equus warned, but not in the desperate way of a cornered animal trying a last, hopeless effort to ward off a hungry predator. Loki cocked his head in curiosity, nostrils flaring as he once again took in the sour-apple tang of fever sweat. Sickness had not been something that touched him often...for most ailments he could simply heat his body, make his own blood and organs so inhospitable that no virus nor bacteria could survive long. You can’t do anything else here, what makes you think that will work? The caustic irony was so...Rya. Mother. He snorted.

The little forest stream protested with a sucking sound as the large body heaved upward, and the onyx-cloaked wolf took an uncertain step backwards, eyeing the sharp hooves with healthy respect. The stallion seemed almost on the edge of delirium, and Loki would hate to be caught unawares if some true madness took him. It made his next words, conversational and polite, all the more surprising and it took the young wolf a moment to find the right answer.

“I am Loki Anor,” he answered, caught up in the oddly formal exchange of pleasantries and offering both given and surname despite himself. “I am a visitor as well...as is the only other besides you I’ve encountered. I’ve been here less than a fortnight…a quarter-moon, maybe,” Brow furrowed. Had it already been so long? He had hardly ever remained in one place for more than that. It made an itch squirm between his shoulder blades, one that, at the moment, he could not scratch.

Since there was nothing to be done for that he pushed the puzzle of his unwilling residency to the back of his mind, and noted how unsteady the stallion seemed on his feet. Cif’thar seemed to want to go somewhere, somewhere other than this stream, but he seemed vague as to where, peering almost near-sightedly at Loki, as if he struggled to focus. This sickness must be something terrible, to affect him so.  “I don’t fall sick so easily,” he said, both to act counter to the voice of reason in his head that spoke with his mother’s voice, and  to justify his next words to Cif’thar--who else would help him? “Might I assist in some way? I promise I won’t eat you,” this time he did grin, the flash of fang against his dark countenance startling in its clarity...a little wolf humor, that was. He wasn’t hungry anyway.  


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@Cif'thar

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Age: 10Species: Equus
Gender: MaleSpiritual Rank: Conceiver
Posts: 15 Stones: 156❂ Played by: Lashes
#5


Words and Lyrics Here


His mind brimmed with relentless visions. Flashes of metallic structures - metallic? - that disbanded in another beat of his heart to the warm tones of the forest.   These strange interferences unnerved him.  The fever he could explain, the subsequencial weaknesses that frought his body he could comprehend.  But these flashes of scenes and creatures he's never in his life witnessed?  This brought the knife edge of fear to his throat.  Enough so the concern of a lax predator did nothing more than linger in the back of his head, unimportant to this puzzling occurance.

I am Loki Anor. Youth tones wove between Cif's thoughts.  Ears flicked first, eyes and nose following to peer at the dark prince.  A quarter-moon, with no other contact besides he, a sick and stumbling stallion.  The irony made him want to smirk, but he held no such strength for bodily expression.  Truly he just wished to lie in long grass under sunlight and sleep until he no longer felt such a smother to his conscious. 

I don't fall ill so easily.  Loki spoke with the matter-of-fact tone bred of experience, and Cif felt a bit of tension leave him.  If this wolf held mechanisms for his own protection, well perhaps Cif didn't have to spend the extra effort considering how to prevent this nauseating sickness from spreading.  Might I assist you in someway?  I promise I won't eat you.

Despite the vertigo spin of his fever, Cif'thar laughed at the morbid humor.  He followed this with a nod, though that ended up worsening his stability.  Assistance...would be welcome...If you could lead me to an open section of these woods?..I do not trust my sense of..anything..at this moment. He said the last with a darkened tone and a frustrated snap of his tail.

Where I am from...I always found your kind..wolves...to be far to logical..to spend effort on me..My scars have always come..from felidae...emotional, ruthless creatures, them.  Cif tossed his mane to the otherside, sighing as matted fur enjoyed cooling wind.

  

Cif-thar
 



@Loki Anor

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Age: IVSpecies: Canis
Gender: MaleSpiritual Rank: Conceiver
Posts: 14 Stones: 148❂ Played by: Ally
Something wild calls you home
#6


With all the strength of a raging fire

Mysterious as the dark side of the moon



His joke had made the stallion laugh, as Loki had meant it to, and it made the young wolf’s tongue loll briefly from the side of his mouth. Despite the ripe tang of fever-sweat, if Cif’thar was still capable of such reasoning he was not so far gone. However, the swaying instability that followed his acquiescence made the charcoal prince start, caught between moving towards and away. What did he think he would do, catch the bay equus if he were to fall? “Easy,” he murmured instead, sun-gold eyes keeping a wary watch as the stallion regained his balance.

An answering nod, the canid’s mind flicking through his sparse knowledge of the place, searching for some locale that might match with the other’s desires. Nothing immediate came to mind...and then that pull, that current of ether swirled around him and tugged at his ruff, his ears, his tail, adding whispered promises of surcease from pain to its already-powerful allure. The accommodating nature of the magic set his teeth on edge rather than soothing him, but Loki still lifted his muzzle, tipped his skull, considering. He had been going that way to begin with, hadn’t he? 

Cif’thar’s last words drew him back, and momentary surprise flashed across his face. Felidae. His brain dredged up memories of long, lithe bodies--spotted, striped, and solid alike--and infuriating smugness and superiority. He chuckled. “Indeed they are,” he agreed. Finally the insistence won out and Loki took a few leading steps, his body angled towards the center of the invisible vortex of magic that pulled at him. “This way,” he urged, more confidently than he felt, less surely than the invisible strings pulling at him wanted.

Ash-tipped paws took them deeper into the forest and Loki paused every few feet to look back towards the bay stallion, to make sure he was following, circling around occasionally to his flanks to nudge him back onto the path. They passed a myriad of flora, some with flowers, some with tubers below the rich earth, and Loki’s pace slowed, thoughtful. “I’m no healer,” his tenor slipped down towards baritone with uncertainty, “are there any herbs or such here that might ease your symptoms? I’m sure I could find them if you know of any.”


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@Cif'thar

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