Re: QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 1: Godsworn Valley]
08-16-2012, 03:57 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Jacquerel.
Chaete had only become recently acquainted with the exciting world of breathable air but she was already hyperventilating, shuddering and coiled in the mud like a particularly forlorn piece of abandoned hosepipe. Three fairly long jumps on an empty stomach takes a lot out of a girl and it was fortunate that Amaranth's impromptu wall of flames had deterred any pursuit because she was really in no fit condition to deal with violent confrontation.
She was going to die on this wretched planet. She was going to starve to death or men would stab her with pointy metal sticks or the loathsome dirt would poison her or... her stomach rumbled again and cut off her train of thought. Why wasn't there anything to eat? She was so hungry!
Casting her eyes desperately around the clearing in case there was some miraculous outcropping of granite (or at least, as much as she could do so while minimising any actual requirement to move) she soon discovered that Amaranth had followed her through her portal and was... probably staring at her? Chaete could not actually see any eyes (did she see with those tiny holes?) but nevertheless got the distinct impression that she had more than a little bit of the woman's attention.
With a titanic effort she hauled herself off the ground, using her metal arms to prop herself up in an attempt not to look utterly helpless in front of a potential threat.
”What is it that you eat?”
Amaranth was still having a little bit of trouble reconciling the voice she was hearing in her head (loudly, Chaete wasn't aware that there was any need for volume control) and the monstrous being that was clearly broadcasting it.
On the one hand she was finding it fairly difficult to ignore that this was clearly a sapient creature at the end of its tether, it had just been chased across a forest by men with weapons and was as lost as she was (perhaps more). Ignoring someone so clearly in need didn't stick well with her, even if they did look a little strange.
But then again... she could remember it from The Outsider's bizarre presentation as one of the other “contestants” and with that recognition came the ominous knowledge that if she ever wanted to see home again (or more importantly, continue on her great mission) she would in some fashion have to outlive it.
On top of that, it was speaking into her head. Not only rude but frankly a little frightening, as its loud interruptions made it a little difficult to focus.
And then there had of course been the teeth. It was apparently a starving animal and this might not be a particularly safe place to be standing regardless of the fact that she'd just saved its life.
You don't need chewing tools like that as a herbivore unless you're going to eat an entire tree, and that was slightly worrying in another way.
It hadn't really shown any kind of predatory instinct at all when confronted with the oddly dressed aggressors they had just escaped from but...
“You wouldn't eat a person?”
It was a bit more blunt than she would have liked but this was a fairly important question.
For her part Chaete seemed to be too tired to be offended, or simply didn't process the fact that it could even be interpreted as a slight. Instead she shook her head violently in revulsion.
“No no I can't eat people, animals taste worse than dirt, full of tissues and fluids and poison. They always said you should never go to a planet with a sky, it is not safe to eat and it turns you wrong.”
She took another look at the clouds and her trembling intensified.
“I need rocks and stones and minerals but there aren't any, only chalk and dirt and plants everywhere. There is no food, I shouldn't be here and I am going to starve.”
She threw herself back to the ground, having worked herself into a state of panic and exhaustion sufficient that she no longer cared how much she was debasing herself.
All of her guardians' dire warnings about staying away from planets with biospheres had come flooding back (though they had really meant them as a warning for when she was fully grown, rather than living on the surface of one) and for the first time she actually felt totally certain that she was going to die.
While the answer was in some ways reassuring (she felt a frisson of guilt as she realised that if Chaete was really unable to eat anything here then that made this inhumane contest a little easier, before pushing it quickly from her mind) she had gone through her training and education with the expectation that she'd be sent out to deal with, well, adults. Obviously she'd been a child and at the time had known other children but she didn't really know how to deal with them during a panicked tantrum, especially non-human children.
To her credit she still gave it a try with some reassuring words and a burst of calming pheromones (neither of which really seemed to have any kind of effect) and when that didn't work she tried a different tactic.
“You eat minerals but not dirt? How far down did you try going? I can't be certain about here but where I come from the soil isn't usually more than a few metres deep.
Could you just dig underneath? You can dig, can't you?”
It didn't seem like too much of a stretch to assume a worm would be able to dig through the ground but she was starting to realise that she'd already made far too many assumptions.
This information didn't instantly snap Chaete out of it but she did at least stop crowding Amaranth's thoughts with anxious keening and tilt her head to one side so that she could look at her more clearly with nine of her eyes. There was hope!
“Are you sure? There was no dirt at home... it tastes so bad and there are bugs in it. They crawl on my teeth and I have to spit them out. What if that's all there is?”
If there's one advantage to mental communication it's that the sentence didn't have to be punctuated by hiccups and gross sobbing, though the empathic transfer of misery was an unpleasantness of its own.
There really was no way of knowing whether the bedrock of whatever planet this was could be digested by whatever Chaete was but Amaranth couldn't think of any other options. The pictures that had accompanied Chaete's word for “rocks” didn't seem that far from what she was used to using the word for (another convenience of psychic conversation though she still thought she'd feel a little more comfortable if the worm had just spoken).
“I think... it's certainly worth a try.”
Chaete gave her another fairly indecipherable look (her face really wasn't that expressive, she didn't even have any eyelids) then heaved herself upwards, folded her mechanical arms flush with her back and unfurled her teeth in a disconcerting whirl of knives and molars, plunging her head into the ground and vanishing within a handful of seconds.
Less than a minute later there was a satisfied squeal of glee and Amaranth was blissfully alone again in her own head. She waited a little while longer but the worm didn't show any sign of returning, evidently more interested in staving off starvation than talking more.
She wasn't sure how much she could blame it for that but it did seem a little ungrateful, there hadn't even been a thank you! There had been no reference to The Outsider in their short conversation so she wasn't even sure it had recognised her but it would have been nice to go over this whole strange situation with somebody, even if what interaction there had been had not suggested that it would make a very valuable ally.
When it seemed clear that it certainly wasn't coming back she dusted herself off and tried to decide which was the best direction to head in, she'd needed a bit of a rest after dealing with those men in the forest but she wasn't getting anything useful done here.
She obviously hadn't known the lie of the land before but moving through what she refused to think of as a wormhole had hardly helped matters. Flames still crackled on the other side of the circular rip in space but mercifully didn't seem to show any sign of passing through to this side. There was no sign of their earlier pursuers.
How far away from that site even were they now? It was probably most sensible to head away from the portal in case the fire caught up with her, hopefully it wouldn't burn for too long.
Mind made up she was about to set off when another possible heading loudly announced itself with a rolling boom louder than Chaete's unignorable wailing. Something lit up the horizon like a second dawn, turning the sky into a strobe light flashing with an intensity almost painful to look at.
She already knew this was a place of conflict and, as unpleasant as it may be, the battlefield was where her work could be of most use. If there was fighting going on then there were people, hopefully in a more recognisable shape.
Grimly, she collected her shield and- “Hey, lady!”
Chaete's voice sliced through her concentration again, though at least this time unaccompanied with a wash of unpleasant emotions. She bit back the urge to fire off a less than polite response before realising it would be pointless anyway, Chaete was still somewhere underground.
Resolutely she set off, trying her best to ignore the worm's frequent interjections.
“Hey!”
“Hello, hey?”
“Are you there? Hello?”
“I know you can hear me!”
It thankfully didn't take long for a noticeably happier (though slightly frustrated) Chaete to give in and tunnel her way across Amaranth's path. She coughed out a mound of earth and worms as she emerged and tilted her head in another fairly indecipherable expression... though her following words were accompanied by a muted feeling of resentment.
“Hey! Why are you ignoring me?
I already told you how bad this dirt tastes, are you trying to poison me? And what was that noise just then? The whole earth shook!”
Amaranth was starting to wonder what she thought she would have gained by further conversation in the first place.
“I can't speak to you when you're underground, I can only make sound using my mouth and you won't be able to hear it unless you are close by.
Do you really have to be so loud when you do talk? I almost can't hear myself think.”
”Oh.”
Chaete thought about this and then leaned her head further in suspiciously, though when she next spoke her voice was at least a lot less intrusive. More of an accusatory whisper than a dominating shout.
“Wait, you don't have a mouth!”
”I don't...? No, this is a mask! I have a mouth underneath.”
Chaete flexed her teeth experimentally but only managed to produce a sound like a woodchipper trying to eat a sheet of corrugated iron.
“That's weird.” was her solemn conclusion.
“Where are you going?”
She was still homesick for the voices of her parents of course but she was starting to realise that there were some advantages to their absence. She'd been told that humans were untrustworthy, dangerous creatures that would either kill her or lock her in a hold somewhere and despite her initial experiences this one had saved her life. Besides, the forbidden is always incredibly interesting to all children even if they're aliens.
Amaranth really wasn't sure this was the escort she wanted especially if she was heading back into danger again but didn't see the point in lying. If nothing else, the worm's teleportation would be useful for getting away if she had to and hopefully she would just stay underground most of the time.
“I'm going to go and find out what made that noise, it might be dangerous.”
”Can I come?”
Well that obviously hadn't worked, she sighed.
“What's your name then? I need something to call you and you have to do exactly what I tell you to do.”
”I'm Chaete. Are we almost there?”
This was going to be a long walk.
Chaete had only become recently acquainted with the exciting world of breathable air but she was already hyperventilating, shuddering and coiled in the mud like a particularly forlorn piece of abandoned hosepipe. Three fairly long jumps on an empty stomach takes a lot out of a girl and it was fortunate that Amaranth's impromptu wall of flames had deterred any pursuit because she was really in no fit condition to deal with violent confrontation.
She was going to die on this wretched planet. She was going to starve to death or men would stab her with pointy metal sticks or the loathsome dirt would poison her or... her stomach rumbled again and cut off her train of thought. Why wasn't there anything to eat? She was so hungry!
Casting her eyes desperately around the clearing in case there was some miraculous outcropping of granite (or at least, as much as she could do so while minimising any actual requirement to move) she soon discovered that Amaranth had followed her through her portal and was... probably staring at her? Chaete could not actually see any eyes (did she see with those tiny holes?) but nevertheless got the distinct impression that she had more than a little bit of the woman's attention.
With a titanic effort she hauled herself off the ground, using her metal arms to prop herself up in an attempt not to look utterly helpless in front of a potential threat.
”What is it that you eat?”
Amaranth was still having a little bit of trouble reconciling the voice she was hearing in her head (loudly, Chaete wasn't aware that there was any need for volume control) and the monstrous being that was clearly broadcasting it.
On the one hand she was finding it fairly difficult to ignore that this was clearly a sapient creature at the end of its tether, it had just been chased across a forest by men with weapons and was as lost as she was (perhaps more). Ignoring someone so clearly in need didn't stick well with her, even if they did look a little strange.
But then again... she could remember it from The Outsider's bizarre presentation as one of the other “contestants” and with that recognition came the ominous knowledge that if she ever wanted to see home again (or more importantly, continue on her great mission) she would in some fashion have to outlive it.
On top of that, it was speaking into her head. Not only rude but frankly a little frightening, as its loud interruptions made it a little difficult to focus.
And then there had of course been the teeth. It was apparently a starving animal and this might not be a particularly safe place to be standing regardless of the fact that she'd just saved its life.
You don't need chewing tools like that as a herbivore unless you're going to eat an entire tree, and that was slightly worrying in another way.
It hadn't really shown any kind of predatory instinct at all when confronted with the oddly dressed aggressors they had just escaped from but...
“You wouldn't eat a person?”
It was a bit more blunt than she would have liked but this was a fairly important question.
For her part Chaete seemed to be too tired to be offended, or simply didn't process the fact that it could even be interpreted as a slight. Instead she shook her head violently in revulsion.
“No no I can't eat people, animals taste worse than dirt, full of tissues and fluids and poison. They always said you should never go to a planet with a sky, it is not safe to eat and it turns you wrong.”
She took another look at the clouds and her trembling intensified.
“I need rocks and stones and minerals but there aren't any, only chalk and dirt and plants everywhere. There is no food, I shouldn't be here and I am going to starve.”
She threw herself back to the ground, having worked herself into a state of panic and exhaustion sufficient that she no longer cared how much she was debasing herself.
All of her guardians' dire warnings about staying away from planets with biospheres had come flooding back (though they had really meant them as a warning for when she was fully grown, rather than living on the surface of one) and for the first time she actually felt totally certain that she was going to die.
While the answer was in some ways reassuring (she felt a frisson of guilt as she realised that if Chaete was really unable to eat anything here then that made this inhumane contest a little easier, before pushing it quickly from her mind) she had gone through her training and education with the expectation that she'd be sent out to deal with, well, adults. Obviously she'd been a child and at the time had known other children but she didn't really know how to deal with them during a panicked tantrum, especially non-human children.
To her credit she still gave it a try with some reassuring words and a burst of calming pheromones (neither of which really seemed to have any kind of effect) and when that didn't work she tried a different tactic.
“You eat minerals but not dirt? How far down did you try going? I can't be certain about here but where I come from the soil isn't usually more than a few metres deep.
Could you just dig underneath? You can dig, can't you?”
It didn't seem like too much of a stretch to assume a worm would be able to dig through the ground but she was starting to realise that she'd already made far too many assumptions.
This information didn't instantly snap Chaete out of it but she did at least stop crowding Amaranth's thoughts with anxious keening and tilt her head to one side so that she could look at her more clearly with nine of her eyes. There was hope!
“Are you sure? There was no dirt at home... it tastes so bad and there are bugs in it. They crawl on my teeth and I have to spit them out. What if that's all there is?”
If there's one advantage to mental communication it's that the sentence didn't have to be punctuated by hiccups and gross sobbing, though the empathic transfer of misery was an unpleasantness of its own.
There really was no way of knowing whether the bedrock of whatever planet this was could be digested by whatever Chaete was but Amaranth couldn't think of any other options. The pictures that had accompanied Chaete's word for “rocks” didn't seem that far from what she was used to using the word for (another convenience of psychic conversation though she still thought she'd feel a little more comfortable if the worm had just spoken).
“I think... it's certainly worth a try.”
Chaete gave her another fairly indecipherable look (her face really wasn't that expressive, she didn't even have any eyelids) then heaved herself upwards, folded her mechanical arms flush with her back and unfurled her teeth in a disconcerting whirl of knives and molars, plunging her head into the ground and vanishing within a handful of seconds.
Less than a minute later there was a satisfied squeal of glee and Amaranth was blissfully alone again in her own head. She waited a little while longer but the worm didn't show any sign of returning, evidently more interested in staving off starvation than talking more.
She wasn't sure how much she could blame it for that but it did seem a little ungrateful, there hadn't even been a thank you! There had been no reference to The Outsider in their short conversation so she wasn't even sure it had recognised her but it would have been nice to go over this whole strange situation with somebody, even if what interaction there had been had not suggested that it would make a very valuable ally.
When it seemed clear that it certainly wasn't coming back she dusted herself off and tried to decide which was the best direction to head in, she'd needed a bit of a rest after dealing with those men in the forest but she wasn't getting anything useful done here.
She obviously hadn't known the lie of the land before but moving through what she refused to think of as a wormhole had hardly helped matters. Flames still crackled on the other side of the circular rip in space but mercifully didn't seem to show any sign of passing through to this side. There was no sign of their earlier pursuers.
How far away from that site even were they now? It was probably most sensible to head away from the portal in case the fire caught up with her, hopefully it wouldn't burn for too long.
Mind made up she was about to set off when another possible heading loudly announced itself with a rolling boom louder than Chaete's unignorable wailing. Something lit up the horizon like a second dawn, turning the sky into a strobe light flashing with an intensity almost painful to look at.
She already knew this was a place of conflict and, as unpleasant as it may be, the battlefield was where her work could be of most use. If there was fighting going on then there were people, hopefully in a more recognisable shape.
Grimly, she collected her shield and- “Hey, lady!”
Chaete's voice sliced through her concentration again, though at least this time unaccompanied with a wash of unpleasant emotions. She bit back the urge to fire off a less than polite response before realising it would be pointless anyway, Chaete was still somewhere underground.
Resolutely she set off, trying her best to ignore the worm's frequent interjections.
“Hey!”
“Hello, hey?”
“Are you there? Hello?”
“I know you can hear me!”
It thankfully didn't take long for a noticeably happier (though slightly frustrated) Chaete to give in and tunnel her way across Amaranth's path. She coughed out a mound of earth and worms as she emerged and tilted her head in another fairly indecipherable expression... though her following words were accompanied by a muted feeling of resentment.
“Hey! Why are you ignoring me?
I already told you how bad this dirt tastes, are you trying to poison me? And what was that noise just then? The whole earth shook!”
Amaranth was starting to wonder what she thought she would have gained by further conversation in the first place.
“I can't speak to you when you're underground, I can only make sound using my mouth and you won't be able to hear it unless you are close by.
Do you really have to be so loud when you do talk? I almost can't hear myself think.”
”Oh.”
Chaete thought about this and then leaned her head further in suspiciously, though when she next spoke her voice was at least a lot less intrusive. More of an accusatory whisper than a dominating shout.
“Wait, you don't have a mouth!”
”I don't...? No, this is a mask! I have a mouth underneath.”
Chaete flexed her teeth experimentally but only managed to produce a sound like a woodchipper trying to eat a sheet of corrugated iron.
“That's weird.” was her solemn conclusion.
“Where are you going?”
She was still homesick for the voices of her parents of course but she was starting to realise that there were some advantages to their absence. She'd been told that humans were untrustworthy, dangerous creatures that would either kill her or lock her in a hold somewhere and despite her initial experiences this one had saved her life. Besides, the forbidden is always incredibly interesting to all children even if they're aliens.
Amaranth really wasn't sure this was the escort she wanted especially if she was heading back into danger again but didn't see the point in lying. If nothing else, the worm's teleportation would be useful for getting away if she had to and hopefully she would just stay underground most of the time.
“I'm going to go and find out what made that noise, it might be dangerous.”
”Can I come?”
Well that obviously hadn't worked, she sighed.
“What's your name then? I need something to call you and you have to do exactly what I tell you to do.”
”I'm Chaete. Are we almost there?”
This was going to be a long walk.