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Description

Features Every Last Spice practicing Reptile and managing to be both parts of 100 themes - 39. Beauty and an Absolute Beast. Also featuring a very alarmed Fulkyn and three positively fascinated young travelers.

_______

She had returned at long last to her homeland, a changed Rukaan.

Who, in truth, could claim to be unchanged, after tasting the song held in Yggdrasil's roots? Who could go on as they had been going, once they knew that the Great Tree was greying and dimmed, and the whole world fading with it?

Fulkyn had returned home. She wasn't sure how long she would rest here, before venturing into the world again, to find out why Yggdrasil was dying, why the world was ending, why winter refused to leave.

Her abilities no longer relied on just hearing. That had been only the first step for her, the one she had taken before she understood what path she was walking. Now, all her senses were attuned to the power inherent in all things. She had come into her own. She was not a doe to be trifled with.

But for all that she was changed, she still mourned the loss of her herd, her poor foolish herd, terrified of the humans that could not hold a candle to Fulkyn's power. She had escaped them before, with tines and hooves to sunder their ropes. She had journeyed into the heart of their territory to take back that which was rightfully her own.

What was fear in the face of power? Nothing. Inconsequential. In all truth, outright irresponsible.

But Fulkyn still mourned, for all that she knew full well how her path would have strayed if her old herd had kept hold of her. She mourned, and so, she built a cairn.

Humans built cairns, here and there, but this was one built by copper hooves, carved by copper tines, kept whole and protected by Fulkyn's skill, and so it was not at all like a human's work. It gleamed in the sun and crouched in the night. It remembered names and faces, for that was the purpose of a cairn.

It did not turn away visitors, but Fulkyn was a covetous, prickly creature, and so were the works she wrought. The runes and wards on her cairn, woven around it to protect it her memorial from defilement, sent ripples of awareness washing over her, making the hairs down her back stand on end.

Grumbling, Fulkyn roused herself from her noontime slumber, and marched through sandstone walls to see who had impinged upon her territory.

-

Fulkyn stared.

The three Rukaans, well, that was alright. Unusual, because they were young enough to still have prickets for tines, and the few visitors Fulkyn did get here tended to be experienced travelers passing through, not aimless youths.

The... horse, though.

Well, it might be a horse. Fulkyn would not be surprised if it were something else entirely, though.

She was inexorably attuned to the life energy of living things, unable to go without hearing, smelling, seeing it. What she was seeing here was - bizarre. Confusing.

The horse breathed, and the world -

dipped.

If it was a spirit, currently taking the form of an orange-red-blue-black-green horse, with tufted ears and a tail the likes of which Fulkyn had seen on no creature she'd ever encountered, Fulkyn realized that her cairn may need more aggressive protecting than she usually needed to worry about.

Leery of the thing, whatever it was - very leery - Fulkyn abandoned her cover, straightened to her full height, and bellowed, "I am Fulkyn, and you trespass at my cairn, strangers! Sun be upon friends, but sand over foes. Which are you?"

The horse-thing looked at her, and -

Fulkyn did not want it to breathe in her direction. Just watching it was bad enough. Feeling it any more starkly was - no. No.

"Like it or not, I am a friend," said the horse-thing, with far too much joy, and spoken perfectly in the tongue of Rukaans. Horses could speak it, somewhat - hooved creatures were creatures of a kind - but to do so without even a hint of an accent was rare.

The world bent around that thing's head, drawn taut with every breath, shivering with each exhale. Fulkyn knew herself to be powerful. She knew the feel of power. She'd just never been so near a power so alien before.

As with many things, she loathed it at first glance. She loathed, especially, being threatened with friendship.

"I hope we haven't been disrespectful!" the horse-thing continued, merrily unaware of Fulkyn's rapidly souring opinion. "I knew this was a special place, of course. Anything so marvelously crafted must be. But I wanted to talk to my other new friends in the shade, you see?"

Fulkyn preened a little, and considered reconsidering her first impression. She... had never heard her work described as marvelous before, and it was a rather pleasant new thing. "Fine," she said. As long as her monument was afforded a basic amount of respect and distance, she did not mind who sheltered in the shade of her cairn, or the shade of the sandstone walls she had scavenged its materials from. "That's fine. I see travelers, sometimes."

"I'm glad!" the horse-thing said, laughing, and brightening. Literally. The strange markings on the thing - the places where shadows had been carved clean away, that Fulkyn suddenly realized were glowing for all that the noon sunlight disguised the fact - shivered, and shed little shavings of raw light. They floated and swirled on a false breeze, and Fulkyn gaped.

"Oh! I am called Spice," the horse-thing suddenly said. "And here are my friends! Mahvanah, Jedraltr, and Letuskrim."

Fulkyn dragged her eyes to the three Rukaans, properly noticing them for the first time. The purple one was gaping like a snake after a large meal. The brown one was grinning widely. The green one, who for some inexplicable reason had a polecat curled up in the small of his back, was staring at the motes of light that the horse-thing had just giggled into existence, and frankly, Fulkyn couldn't blame him.

"Spice," Fulkyn repeated, belatedly. "That's a human word." Unfortunately, she'd heard just barely enough of human blabbering to recognize the sound, which despite the horse-th - despite Spice's mastery of tongues, was certainly not a Rukaan word.

"Hmm," said Spice, unbothered.

The brown one - Fulkyn had faces, and names, and hadn't quite gotten enough information to match them all up - was still grinning, and inched forwards with plainly barely-restrained excitement. "You built this? You're a rune-crafter," he said, sounding awed. "You're the best one I've ever met. Nobody in our herd can make things like this!"

"I am." Fulkyn found herself preening again. These strangers, she decided, could rest in the shade until evening, if they wished. Much better to be traveling in the evening - and odd that they'd arrived at noon. The season wasn't the hottest, but the desert was never cool at noon, and with water so scarce, the heat was no small danger.

"Wow," said the brown one, plainly awed. The purple one nodded furiously.

The green one glanced at Fulkyn, but looked back at Spice. "You aren't." The young buck's tone was careful and considering. "A runecrafter, I mean. Are you... a weaver?"

"No," Fulkyn snapped, very firmly. She was a weaver, and a good one. Spice was most assuredly something very else.

"You could call me a dream-breather," said Spice, airily. "Oh, that reminds me! I haven't yet told you why I'm here."

Ah. They'd been talking before Fulkyn had shown herself. Apparently about goals and destinations. Fulkyn felt glad to have missed it. She'd been without a herd for a long time; she no longer had the patience for small talk.

"I wanted to study a new spell," Spice said, and Fulkyn's hackles went up. But - before she could start in on why that was absolutely not allowed here no thank you -

"A new spell? Like a new rune? Do you carve them? Or, no, you haven't got any runes on you. Is dreaming like weaving, then? Because you said you're using a spell to talk to us."

The brown one, previously climbing the ranks of Fulkyn's regard quickly, was now dropping just as quickly. Foolish buck, to encourage this - this madness, this unnatural, uncomfortable phenomenon, on Fulkyn's own doorstep, why -

Spice giggled. This time, instead of motes of light shaking free, tiny pale mushrooms wriggled up through fur, popping up all down that sunset-orange neck.

Against her better judgement -

Fulkyn was fascinated.

It was almost as if that alien magic came from sound, not wholly unlike how Fulkyn's power had in the beginning relied on perceiving and pulling through her ears. Or, no - the way the world moved around that dished head, in and out by a regular rhythm - not the sound of the laughter, but the motion of the breath -?

"I am," Spice said. "I think I could learn your tongue if I tried, but it's quicker this way. But the spell I want to learn, it's like the creatures that live here, in the desert."

"You mean like..." The green one turned to point his nose at the striped mongrel still comfortably snoozing in the small of his back.

"Oh! No, not quite. I mean snakes, lizards. But -"

Fulkyn forgot how to breathe.

Spice pulled in a breath, and the world bent, and crinkled, and there was a sharp, silent pop that Fulkyn heard on the tip of her tongue, and when the creature exhaled, it -

changed. Twisted, bone and muscle and hide. Warped. Shrunk.

The horse-thing was now a polecat-thing.

Fulkyn stood still, stunned, shocked, horror dawning slowly yet inexorably upon her, at this - spitting in the very face of nature itself.

The purple one's eyes were finally dragged away from Fulkyn herself, and the younger doe squeaked in glee. "Ah! How did you do that? That's incredible! You're so cute!"

It was still undeniably the same creature. The coloration had shifted in places, but only where the proportions had changed, so that it looked unmistakably the same. Spice scurried up the purple one's leg to reach her back, and the lingering motes of light blew after in its wake.

Fulkyn stood there, fairly certain she was having a heart attack, while the three youngsters bubbled with awe and excitement over the tricks of what was definitely a spirit oh by Loki's horns and tails.

Maybe this was Loki, and that was a possibility Fulkyn really, really wished she could dismiss outright. She knew exactly enough about gods to know she didn't want to tangle with any, ever.

"Mahvanah," said the brown one, with a dramatic roll of red eyes. "Seriously."

"Eee! Ha, Letuskrim! Now I've got a skunk too!" The purple one, apparently Mahvanah, stuck her tongue out at the green one, apparently Jedraltr.

Cool.

Fine.

This was fine.

"Polecat," said Fulkyn, her mouth moving on its own, given that Fulkyn was feeling far too poleaxed to string words together coherently.

All four of the strangers turned to her, and the green - Letuskrim, asked, "What do you mean by polecat?"

"Your..." Fulkyn frowned, trying to find a word. "small friend. Not a skunk. A striped polecat. Like a skunk, I suppose."

"Oh," said Letuskrim. He turned to look over his own back again, studying the little ball of fur. "A striped polecat," he repeated.

"They are nocturnal," Fulkyn informed him, "which is the only sensible thing to be in the desert. Why are you all traveling about with the sun so high?"

Much as she wanted them away, off her territory, and in particular away with the horse-polecat-spirit-Loki-thing...

"I told you so," Mahvanah said to Jedraltr, reproachfully. "I told you we should have stopped earlier this morning at the ruins we had found then. But nooo, you just can't ever be patient -"

Jedraltr bristled. "Oh come on! It's just a little hot, what's the big deal?"

"Water, Jed! Water is a big deal!"

Letuskrim was frowning at them both, but seemed disinclined to leap into the fray. The polecat - his companion? Seemed strange to carry it around like that, but then, other Rukaans always seemed so strange to Fulkyn - snoozed contentedly on, little claws anchored in green fur, long barred tail coiled tightly around it.

The other polecat, the one that was certainly not a polecat, breathed in again, and Fulkyn's attention snapped back to it.

This time, when Spice exhaled, allowing reality to straighten itself out as best it could manage around him, Fulkyn watched fur crinkle up as if it was wet, and then blur and smudge and turn shiny - into scales.

It was on Mahvanah's back. Touching her. How could she stand it? Fulkyn could barely stand to be standing near it. To feel it, to be touching that creature while it casually twisted the world to its whim -

Fulkyn shuddered, but could not simply look away. Mahvanah hadn't even noticed. She was too busy arguing with Jedraltr, although Fulkyn felt far too hassled at the moment to pay any attention to the words.

Letuskrim, though, leaned in closer to the creature, looking fascinated. "You... just do that? No carvings or anything? Are your spells all so easy?"

Spice laughed again, and moved to climb off Mahvanah, and that pulled the purple doe out of her argument. She extended a foreleg, as if trying to ease the wiggly little creature's passage, although Fulkyn seriously doubted it was necessary.

Fortunately, nothing too strange melted out of the laughter, this time. Perhaps this supposed new spell took too much concentration for such... casual displays.

Fulkyn swallowed hard, grimacing as Spice breathed once more, twisted the world, and twisted back outwards and upwards into the previous horse-like shape, all while keeping the scales. Fulkyn sincerely doubted that this creature was actually a horse. The gods only knew what this thing was, and that only because there was a chance it was one of the gods, and a god would probably know itself.

Fulkyn would certainly hope so.

Spice said, "Oh, no, not easy. Well, for me I suppose spells are easier than for some, but I - oh!"

This was the first time Spice's tone had been anything but joyful, and Fulkyn dreaded what might happen now that the creature had encountered a bout of dismay. Purely in an attempt to mitigate the damage, because by no means did she actually want confirmation, she asked, "Something. Hnng. Wrong?"

Spice had twisted around, fortunately in a slightly less world-breaking way this time, and was staring at that strange tail. Ah. Upon shifting back, the long horse-like mane and tail hair hadn't reappeared. The orange neck and too-long-but-too-short tail bore only more smooth short coat.

"My hair!" Spice said, dismayed.

Jedraltr laughed openly, booming and really very ill-advised - laughing at a distraught spirit/monster/deity could not be wise or healthy. Mahvanah, showing some real sense for the first time, lifted a foreleg to kick her companion in the side of his knee. "Stop that, Jedraltr!" she hissed.

Fortunately for Jedraltr's life, sanity, and current configuration of limbs, Spice had been quite distracted by the loss of those flowing night-blue-blood-red locks. And fortunately for Jedraltr, when Spice finally hummed and left the matter to lie there, bald as it was for however long it would be so, it was Fulkyn who recieved the pleasure of that reality-bending attention once more.

Fortunately for Jedraltr. Not for Fulkyn. Fulkyn wasn't so stupid as to say that aloud, though, which was a point in her favor.

Spice asked, "If you live here, do you have some of those very small people for your own, then? I haven't been able to catch one. D'you know what they're called?"

And Fulkyn immediately snapped, "I am not tame, I do not bow to humans, or tomtenissar-"

- and remembered the possibilities of who and/or what she may or may not be speaking to -

"-ah. As such. Not that I would impress my ways on others." Especially not certain horse-things.

Spice seemed unoffended. Fulkyn inwardly chanted praises to various gods, spirits, and symbols of luck, even though that closed-yet-gaping maw was still breathing, still gnawing at reality without once showing the teeth that were certainly there. As mildly as ever, Spice asked next, "This place is yours. But you share it with no one? Though it is built of walls, of bricks?"

Fulkyn swallowed down the instinctive offense, with effort, and reluctantly conceded, "The stones of my home could look like bricks, to searching eyes. But no humans have ever set foot here. My herd was always wild, from the very first founder."

Spice blinked slowly, and then nodded even more slowly. "So I thee."

Fulkyn watched as a tongue, long, longer, too long for comfort, slipped out of that alien maw, curled in the air, and casually split into a wide fork at the end. This, of course, was the cause of Spice's sibilants slipping. Fulkyn didn't say a word about it. Spice seemed, for a moment, content, licking the air, and - ah. And so now returned the luxurious mane and tail, even as the tongue and scales persisted.

Weird. Bizarre. Alien. Fulkyn despaired. She was very unprepared to even attempt to politely ask such a creature as this to please abscond from the premises, without offending it and getting herself cursed or worse in the process.

"Oh, your mane! Is that it? Have you mastered it already?" Mahvanah asked, clearly astonished.

Fulkyn would be astonished too, if she wasn't entirely occupied by being bone-chillingly alarmed. As it was, Fulkyn was a simple creature. She preferred only feeling one thing at a time, and much preferred that one thing to be meditative neutrality. These visitors were none of them good for her stress levels, frankly.

Spice laughed, and both of those tufted ears fell right off that sculpted head. All four Rukaans had the good sense to flinch at that. If Fulkyn had flinched hardest, and in doing so managed to teleport a full bodylength backwards, well. Spontaneous relocation was an important skill for an average, mortal prey animal to hone.

But Spice remained in good spirits (which was the only sort you ever wanted a spirit to be in), and the Rukaans calmed down. Well, the three youngsters loosely ringed around Spice calmed down. Fulkyn just turned her panic back down to subtle levels.

"A lil' more practith, I think," Spice chuckled. "A thew more dayth in thith land will do wonderth, I am thure. And thnakes are really very accomodating creatureth, tho long ath you athure them they aren't to be thtomped."

Letuskrim, frowning, asked, "Is there a way to learn this... dream magic of yours? It would be useful, talking to other creatures."

"Perhapth! I couldn't thay for thure. But I do know you'd be able to learn the long way, githen a bit more time!" And Spice winked at the young green buck.

Please, Fulkyn thought, a bit hysterically. Please learn the long way, green one. Please don't spread this thing's power. Please. Do. Not.

Letuskrim looked consideringly at the polecat on his back, and slowly nodded. "Perhaps it'll be even easier, now I know how you are called," he told the polecat. He looked to Fulkyn and bobbed his head respectfully. "Thank you for that, rune-master Fulkyn."

"My pleasure," Fulkyn gritted out. It was not, but she wasn't going to say that to Spice's face.

Spice licked the air, looking pleasantly at ease with the world. Fulkyn could not imagine that the world felt at ease with him.

"Rune-master Fulkyn," said Mahvanah, "May we rest in the shelter of your territory until the sun is low enough to travel?" Jedraltr opened his mouth and Mahvanah popped him in the gaskin with one hind leg, without even looking. Jedraltr shut his mouth, looking very displeased but also quite hapless.

No. No, no, no. Get that thing away from me, ew.

...but they were very polite travelers. And none of them tame. Spice spoke of humans but - how could a thing like Spice be tame? Simply curious about them, then. Little risk of - of corruption. Of that sort of corruption, anyhow - Fulkyn wasn't about to start flinging any assumptions about the power Spice so flippantly wrought.

But she truly didn't get compliments very often.

"...very well. You may. Rest until the sky pales in the west, if it pleases you. Travel southeast from here, then, and find an oasis at night's end."

"Thank you, rune-master," said Mahvanah, and she kicked Jedraltr again. This time he chimed in with an exasperated, "Thanks. Ow! Rune-master."

Letuskrim, who by chance was safely out of kicking distance, just bobbed his head once again.

Spice's tongue wound itself back up, fork melting together as it went, and the still-earless creature gave her a broad smile. "Yes, thank you, rune-master. This truly has been a most enlightening journey for us all, hmm?"

"As you say," Fulkyn said, and the doe promptly fled.

_______

Link to Import: R-0781 Fulkyn
Link to Rune Mark Tracker: [Link ]
Rune Mark Points and Bonuses: Headshot, Colored, 3474w Story, Completely By Owner, Lore Location - Vaeril Desert, Other ARPG (Beaurever )
Exploration Bonuses: N/A
Exploration Area: Desert
Proof of Tier/Area Unlock: Pathfinder Trait
Activity Tracker Link: [Link ]
Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Import Link: R-0936 Mahvanah

Rune Mark Tracker: [Link ]

Rune Mark points and bonuses: 2581w Story, Completely By Owner, Lore Location - Vaeril Desert, Other ARPG (Beaurever ), Sociable Trait

Exploration Bonuses: N/A

Exploration Area: Desert

Proof of Tier/Area Unlock: Pathfinder Trait

Activity Tracker Link: [Link ]

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Import Link: R-0937 Jedraltr

Rune Mark Tracker: [Link ]

Rune Mark points and bonuses: 2581w Story, Completely By Owner, Lore Location - Vaeril Desert, Other ARPG (Beaurever )

Exploration Bonuses: Ghost Whisperer (set at cairn), Companionable (Empty Companion Slot)

Exploration Area: Desert

Proof of Tier/Area Unlock: on import

Activity Tracker Link: [Link ]

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Import Link: R-0938 Letuskrim

Rune Mark Tracker: [Link ]

Rune Mark points and bonuses: 2581w Story, Completely By Owner, Lore Location - Vaeril Desert, Other ARPG (Beaurever ), Common Adder (Saharan striped polecat), Splaseau Sheep (1200+w story), Sociable Trait

Exploration Bonuses: Ghost Whisperer (Fossegrim's Song)

Exploration Area: Desert

Proof of Tier/Area Unlock: on import

Activity Tracker Link: [Link ]

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Prompt: (Quarterly) Broken - Fulkyn doesn't think these other Rukaans appreciate just how severely Spice breaks things. Obviously things are being broken, such as the laws of physics, but these youths really aren't getting the full picture, honestly.

Description

Features Every Last Spice practicing Reptile and managing to be both parts of 100 themes - 39. Beauty and an Absolute Beast. Also featuring a very alarmed Fulkyn and three positively fascinated young travelers.

_______

She had returned at long last to her homeland, a changed Rukaan.

Who, in truth, could claim to be unchanged, after tasting the song held in Yggdrasil's roots? Who could go on as they had been going, once they knew that the Great Tree was greying and dimmed, and the whole world fading with it?

Fulkyn had returned home. She wasn't sure how long she would rest here, before venturing into the world again, to find out why Yggdrasil was dying, why the world was ending, why winter refused to leave.

Her abilities no longer relied on just hearing. That had been only the first step for her, the one she had taken before she understood what path she was walking. Now, all her senses were attuned to the power inherent in all things. She had come into her own. She was not a doe to be trifled with.

But for all that she was changed, she still mourned the loss of her herd, her poor foolish herd, terrified of the humans that could not hold a candle to Fulkyn's power. She had escaped them before, with tines and hooves to sunder their ropes. She had journeyed into the heart of their territory to take back that which was rightfully her own.

What was fear in the face of power? Nothing. Inconsequential. In all truth, outright irresponsible.

But Fulkyn still mourned, for all that she knew full well how her path would have strayed if her old herd had kept hold of her. She mourned, and so, she built a cairn.

Humans built cairns, here and there, but this was one built by copper hooves, carved by copper tines, kept whole and protected by Fulkyn's skill, and so it was not at all like a human's work. It gleamed in the sun and crouched in the night. It remembered names and faces, for that was the purpose of a cairn.

It did not turn away visitors, but Fulkyn was a covetous, prickly creature, and so were the works she wrought. The runes and wards on her cairn, woven around it to protect it her memorial from defilement, sent ripples of awareness washing over her, making the hairs down her back stand on end.

Grumbling, Fulkyn roused herself from her noontime slumber, and marched through sandstone walls to see who had impinged upon her territory.

-

Fulkyn stared.

The three Rukaans, well, that was alright. Unusual, because they were young enough to still have prickets for tines, and the few visitors Fulkyn did get here tended to be experienced travelers passing through, not aimless youths.

The... horse, though.

Well, it might be a horse. Fulkyn would not be surprised if it were something else entirely, though.

She was inexorably attuned to the life energy of living things, unable to go without hearing, smelling, seeing it. What she was seeing here was - bizarre. Confusing.

The horse breathed, and the world -

dipped.

If it was a spirit, currently taking the form of an orange-red-blue-black-green horse, with tufted ears and a tail the likes of which Fulkyn had seen on no creature she'd ever encountered, Fulkyn realized that her cairn may need more aggressive protecting than she usually needed to worry about.

Leery of the thing, whatever it was - very leery - Fulkyn abandoned her cover, straightened to her full height, and bellowed, "I am Fulkyn, and you trespass at my cairn, strangers! Sun be upon friends, but sand over foes. Which are you?"

The horse-thing looked at her, and -

Fulkyn did not want it to breathe in her direction. Just watching it was bad enough. Feeling it any more starkly was - no. No.

"Like it or not, I am a friend," said the horse-thing, with far too much joy, and spoken perfectly in the tongue of Rukaans. Horses could speak it, somewhat - hooved creatures were creatures of a kind - but to do so without even a hint of an accent was rare.

The world bent around that thing's head, drawn taut with every breath, shivering with each exhale. Fulkyn knew herself to be powerful. She knew the feel of power. She'd just never been so near a power so alien before.

As with many things, she loathed it at first glance. She loathed, especially, being threatened with friendship.

"I hope we haven't been disrespectful!" the horse-thing continued, merrily unaware of Fulkyn's rapidly souring opinion. "I knew this was a special place, of course. Anything so marvelously crafted must be. But I wanted to talk to my other new friends in the shade, you see?"

Fulkyn preened a little, and considered reconsidering her first impression. She... had never heard her work described as marvelous before, and it was a rather pleasant new thing. "Fine," she said. As long as her monument was afforded a basic amount of respect and distance, she did not mind who sheltered in the shade of her cairn, or the shade of the sandstone walls she had scavenged its materials from. "That's fine. I see travelers, sometimes."

"I'm glad!" the horse-thing said, laughing, and brightening. Literally. The strange markings on the thing - the places where shadows had been carved clean away, that Fulkyn suddenly realized were glowing for all that the noon sunlight disguised the fact - shivered, and shed little shavings of raw light. They floated and swirled on a false breeze, and Fulkyn gaped.

"Oh! I am called Spice," the horse-thing suddenly said. "And here are my friends! Mahvanah, Jedraltr, and Letuskrim."

Fulkyn dragged her eyes to the three Rukaans, properly noticing them for the first time. The purple one was gaping like a snake after a large meal. The brown one was grinning widely. The green one, who for some inexplicable reason had a polecat curled up in the small of his back, was staring at the motes of light that the horse-thing had just giggled into existence, and frankly, Fulkyn couldn't blame him.

"Spice," Fulkyn repeated, belatedly. "That's a human word." Unfortunately, she'd heard just barely enough of human blabbering to recognize the sound, which despite the horse-th - despite Spice's mastery of tongues, was certainly not a Rukaan word.

"Hmm," said Spice, unbothered.

The brown one - Fulkyn had faces, and names, and hadn't quite gotten enough information to match them all up - was still grinning, and inched forwards with plainly barely-restrained excitement. "You built this? You're a rune-crafter," he said, sounding awed. "You're the best one I've ever met. Nobody in our herd can make things like this!"

"I am." Fulkyn found herself preening again. These strangers, she decided, could rest in the shade until evening, if they wished. Much better to be traveling in the evening - and odd that they'd arrived at noon. The season wasn't the hottest, but the desert was never cool at noon, and with water so scarce, the heat was no small danger.

"Wow," said the brown one, plainly awed. The purple one nodded furiously.

The green one glanced at Fulkyn, but looked back at Spice. "You aren't." The young buck's tone was careful and considering. "A runecrafter, I mean. Are you... a weaver?"

"No," Fulkyn snapped, very firmly. She was a weaver, and a good one. Spice was most assuredly something very else.

"You could call me a dream-breather," said Spice, airily. "Oh, that reminds me! I haven't yet told you why I'm here."

Ah. They'd been talking before Fulkyn had shown herself. Apparently about goals and destinations. Fulkyn felt glad to have missed it. She'd been without a herd for a long time; she no longer had the patience for small talk.

"I wanted to study a new spell," Spice said, and Fulkyn's hackles went up. But - before she could start in on why that was absolutely not allowed here no thank you -

"A new spell? Like a new rune? Do you carve them? Or, no, you haven't got any runes on you. Is dreaming like weaving, then? Because you said you're using a spell to talk to us."

The brown one, previously climbing the ranks of Fulkyn's regard quickly, was now dropping just as quickly. Foolish buck, to encourage this - this madness, this unnatural, uncomfortable phenomenon, on Fulkyn's own doorstep, why -

Spice giggled. This time, instead of motes of light shaking free, tiny pale mushrooms wriggled up through fur, popping up all down that sunset-orange neck.

Against her better judgement -

Fulkyn was fascinated.

It was almost as if that alien magic came from sound, not wholly unlike how Fulkyn's power had in the beginning relied on perceiving and pulling through her ears. Or, no - the way the world moved around that dished head, in and out by a regular rhythm - not the sound of the laughter, but the motion of the breath -?

"I am," Spice said. "I think I could learn your tongue if I tried, but it's quicker this way. But the spell I want to learn, it's like the creatures that live here, in the desert."

"You mean like..." The green one turned to point his nose at the striped mongrel still comfortably snoozing in the small of his back.

"Oh! No, not quite. I mean snakes, lizards. But -"

Fulkyn forgot how to breathe.

Spice pulled in a breath, and the world bent, and crinkled, and there was a sharp, silent pop that Fulkyn heard on the tip of her tongue, and when the creature exhaled, it -

changed. Twisted, bone and muscle and hide. Warped. Shrunk.

The horse-thing was now a polecat-thing.

Fulkyn stood still, stunned, shocked, horror dawning slowly yet inexorably upon her, at this - spitting in the very face of nature itself.

The purple one's eyes were finally dragged away from Fulkyn herself, and the younger doe squeaked in glee. "Ah! How did you do that? That's incredible! You're so cute!"

It was still undeniably the same creature. The coloration had shifted in places, but only where the proportions had changed, so that it looked unmistakably the same. Spice scurried up the purple one's leg to reach her back, and the lingering motes of light blew after in its wake.

Fulkyn stood there, fairly certain she was having a heart attack, while the three youngsters bubbled with awe and excitement over the tricks of what was definitely a spirit oh by Loki's horns and tails.

Maybe this was Loki, and that was a possibility Fulkyn really, really wished she could dismiss outright. She knew exactly enough about gods to know she didn't want to tangle with any, ever.

"Mahvanah," said the brown one, with a dramatic roll of red eyes. "Seriously."

"Eee! Ha, Letuskrim! Now I've got a skunk too!" The purple one, apparently Mahvanah, stuck her tongue out at the green one, apparently Jedraltr.

Cool.

Fine.

This was fine.

"Polecat," said Fulkyn, her mouth moving on its own, given that Fulkyn was feeling far too poleaxed to string words together coherently.

All four of the strangers turned to her, and the green - Letuskrim, asked, "What do you mean by polecat?"

"Your..." Fulkyn frowned, trying to find a word. "small friend. Not a skunk. A striped polecat. Like a skunk, I suppose."

"Oh," said Letuskrim. He turned to look over his own back again, studying the little ball of fur. "A striped polecat," he repeated.

"They are nocturnal," Fulkyn informed him, "which is the only sensible thing to be in the desert. Why are you all traveling about with the sun so high?"

Much as she wanted them away, off her territory, and in particular away with the horse-polecat-spirit-Loki-thing...

"I told you so," Mahvanah said to Jedraltr, reproachfully. "I told you we should have stopped earlier this morning at the ruins we had found then. But nooo, you just can't ever be patient -"

Jedraltr bristled. "Oh come on! It's just a little hot, what's the big deal?"

"Water, Jed! Water is a big deal!"

Letuskrim was frowning at them both, but seemed disinclined to leap into the fray. The polecat - his companion? Seemed strange to carry it around like that, but then, other Rukaans always seemed so strange to Fulkyn - snoozed contentedly on, little claws anchored in green fur, long barred tail coiled tightly around it.

The other polecat, the one that was certainly not a polecat, breathed in again, and Fulkyn's attention snapped back to it.

This time, when Spice exhaled, allowing reality to straighten itself out as best it could manage around him, Fulkyn watched fur crinkle up as if it was wet, and then blur and smudge and turn shiny - into scales.

It was on Mahvanah's back. Touching her. How could she stand it? Fulkyn could barely stand to be standing near it. To feel it, to be touching that creature while it casually twisted the world to its whim -

Fulkyn shuddered, but could not simply look away. Mahvanah hadn't even noticed. She was too busy arguing with Jedraltr, although Fulkyn felt far too hassled at the moment to pay any attention to the words.

Letuskrim, though, leaned in closer to the creature, looking fascinated. "You... just do that? No carvings or anything? Are your spells all so easy?"

Spice laughed again, and moved to climb off Mahvanah, and that pulled the purple doe out of her argument. She extended a foreleg, as if trying to ease the wiggly little creature's passage, although Fulkyn seriously doubted it was necessary.

Fortunately, nothing too strange melted out of the laughter, this time. Perhaps this supposed new spell took too much concentration for such... casual displays.

Fulkyn swallowed hard, grimacing as Spice breathed once more, twisted the world, and twisted back outwards and upwards into the previous horse-like shape, all while keeping the scales. Fulkyn sincerely doubted that this creature was actually a horse. The gods only knew what this thing was, and that only because there was a chance it was one of the gods, and a god would probably know itself.

Fulkyn would certainly hope so.

Spice said, "Oh, no, not easy. Well, for me I suppose spells are easier than for some, but I - oh!"

This was the first time Spice's tone had been anything but joyful, and Fulkyn dreaded what might happen now that the creature had encountered a bout of dismay. Purely in an attempt to mitigate the damage, because by no means did she actually want confirmation, she asked, "Something. Hnng. Wrong?"

Spice had twisted around, fortunately in a slightly less world-breaking way this time, and was staring at that strange tail. Ah. Upon shifting back, the long horse-like mane and tail hair hadn't reappeared. The orange neck and too-long-but-too-short tail bore only more smooth short coat.

"My hair!" Spice said, dismayed.

Jedraltr laughed openly, booming and really very ill-advised - laughing at a distraught spirit/monster/deity could not be wise or healthy. Mahvanah, showing some real sense for the first time, lifted a foreleg to kick her companion in the side of his knee. "Stop that, Jedraltr!" she hissed.

Fortunately for Jedraltr's life, sanity, and current configuration of limbs, Spice had been quite distracted by the loss of those flowing night-blue-blood-red locks. And fortunately for Jedraltr, when Spice finally hummed and left the matter to lie there, bald as it was for however long it would be so, it was Fulkyn who recieved the pleasure of that reality-bending attention once more.

Fortunately for Jedraltr. Not for Fulkyn. Fulkyn wasn't so stupid as to say that aloud, though, which was a point in her favor.

Spice asked, "If you live here, do you have some of those very small people for your own, then? I haven't been able to catch one. D'you know what they're called?"

And Fulkyn immediately snapped, "I am not tame, I do not bow to humans, or tomtenissar-"

- and remembered the possibilities of who and/or what she may or may not be speaking to -

"-ah. As such. Not that I would impress my ways on others." Especially not certain horse-things.

Spice seemed unoffended. Fulkyn inwardly chanted praises to various gods, spirits, and symbols of luck, even though that closed-yet-gaping maw was still breathing, still gnawing at reality without once showing the teeth that were certainly there. As mildly as ever, Spice asked next, "This place is yours. But you share it with no one? Though it is built of walls, of bricks?"

Fulkyn swallowed down the instinctive offense, with effort, and reluctantly conceded, "The stones of my home could look like bricks, to searching eyes. But no humans have ever set foot here. My herd was always wild, from the very first founder."

Spice blinked slowly, and then nodded even more slowly. "So I thee."

Fulkyn watched as a tongue, long, longer, too long for comfort, slipped out of that alien maw, curled in the air, and casually split into a wide fork at the end. This, of course, was the cause of Spice's sibilants slipping. Fulkyn didn't say a word about it. Spice seemed, for a moment, content, licking the air, and - ah. And so now returned the luxurious mane and tail, even as the tongue and scales persisted.

Weird. Bizarre. Alien. Fulkyn despaired. She was very unprepared to even attempt to politely ask such a creature as this to please abscond from the premises, without offending it and getting herself cursed or worse in the process.

"Oh, your mane! Is that it? Have you mastered it already?" Mahvanah asked, clearly astonished.

Fulkyn would be astonished too, if she wasn't entirely occupied by being bone-chillingly alarmed. As it was, Fulkyn was a simple creature. She preferred only feeling one thing at a time, and much preferred that one thing to be meditative neutrality. These visitors were none of them good for her stress levels, frankly.

Spice laughed, and both of those tufted ears fell right off that sculpted head. All four Rukaans had the good sense to flinch at that. If Fulkyn had flinched hardest, and in doing so managed to teleport a full bodylength backwards, well. Spontaneous relocation was an important skill for an average, mortal prey animal to hone.

But Spice remained in good spirits (which was the only sort you ever wanted a spirit to be in), and the Rukaans calmed down. Well, the three youngsters loosely ringed around Spice calmed down. Fulkyn just turned her panic back down to subtle levels.

"A lil' more practith, I think," Spice chuckled. "A thew more dayth in thith land will do wonderth, I am thure. And thnakes are really very accomodating creatureth, tho long ath you athure them they aren't to be thtomped."

Letuskrim, frowning, asked, "Is there a way to learn this... dream magic of yours? It would be useful, talking to other creatures."

"Perhapth! I couldn't thay for thure. But I do know you'd be able to learn the long way, githen a bit more time!" And Spice winked at the young green buck.

Please, Fulkyn thought, a bit hysterically. Please learn the long way, green one. Please don't spread this thing's power. Please. Do. Not.

Letuskrim looked consideringly at the polecat on his back, and slowly nodded. "Perhaps it'll be even easier, now I know how you are called," he told the polecat. He looked to Fulkyn and bobbed his head respectfully. "Thank you for that, rune-master Fulkyn."

"My pleasure," Fulkyn gritted out. It was not, but she wasn't going to say that to Spice's face.

Spice licked the air, looking pleasantly at ease with the world. Fulkyn could not imagine that the world felt at ease with him.

"Rune-master Fulkyn," said Mahvanah, "May we rest in the shelter of your territory until the sun is low enough to travel?" Jedraltr opened his mouth and Mahvanah popped him in the gaskin with one hind leg, without even looking. Jedraltr shut his mouth, looking very displeased but also quite hapless.

No. No, no, no. Get that thing away from me, ew.

...but they were very polite travelers. And none of them tame. Spice spoke of humans but - how could a thing like Spice be tame? Simply curious about them, then. Little risk of - of corruption. Of that sort of corruption, anyhow - Fulkyn wasn't about to start flinging any assumptions about the power Spice so flippantly wrought.

But she truly didn't get compliments very often.

"...very well. You may. Rest until the sky pales in the west, if it pleases you. Travel southeast from here, then, and find an oasis at night's end."

"Thank you, rune-master," said Mahvanah, and she kicked Jedraltr again. This time he chimed in with an exasperated, "Thanks. Ow! Rune-master."

Letuskrim, who by chance was safely out of kicking distance, just bobbed his head once again.

Spice's tongue wound itself back up, fork melting together as it went, and the still-earless creature gave her a broad smile. "Yes, thank you, rune-master. This truly has been a most enlightening journey for us all, hmm?"

"As you say," Fulkyn said, and the doe promptly fled.

_______

Link to Import: R-0781 Fulkyn
Link to Rune Mark Tracker: [Link ]
Rune Mark Points and Bonuses: Headshot, Colored, 3474w Story, Completely By Owner, Lore Location - Vaeril Desert, Other ARPG (Beaurever )
Exploration Bonuses: N/A
Exploration Area: Desert
Proof of Tier/Area Unlock: Pathfinder Trait
Activity Tracker Link: [Link ]
Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Import Link: R-0936 Mahvanah

Rune Mark Tracker: [Link ]

Rune Mark points and bonuses: 2581w Story, Completely By Owner, Lore Location - Vaeril Desert, Other ARPG (Beaurever ), Sociable Trait

Exploration Bonuses: N/A

Exploration Area: Desert

Proof of Tier/Area Unlock: Pathfinder Trait

Activity Tracker Link: [Link ]

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Import Link: R-0937 Jedraltr

Rune Mark Tracker: [Link ]

Rune Mark points and bonuses: 2581w Story, Completely By Owner, Lore Location - Vaeril Desert, Other ARPG (Beaurever )

Exploration Bonuses: Ghost Whisperer (set at cairn), Companionable (Empty Companion Slot)

Exploration Area: Desert

Proof of Tier/Area Unlock: on import

Activity Tracker Link: [Link ]

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Import Link: R-0938 Letuskrim

Rune Mark Tracker: [Link ]

Rune Mark points and bonuses: 2581w Story, Completely By Owner, Lore Location - Vaeril Desert, Other ARPG (Beaurever ), Common Adder (Saharan striped polecat), Splaseau Sheep (1200+w story), Sociable Trait

Exploration Bonuses: Ghost Whisperer (Fossegrim's Song)

Exploration Area: Desert

Proof of Tier/Area Unlock: on import

Activity Tracker Link: [Link ]

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Prompt: (Quarterly) Broken - Fulkyn doesn't think these other Rukaans appreciate just how severely Spice breaks things. Obviously things are being broken, such as the laws of physics, but these youths really aren't getting the full picture, honestly.