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Description
Winter's cold seemed to seep into the joints of her troll, rife as any aggressive illness, and where there was snow, Urythk would sleep more than wake. Olifaye busied herself with foraging out to the east, downhill in the treeline, digging through snow and ice for edible morsels. The Rukaan was clever with age and with the tutorship of her troll, and didn't go hungry.

More often than not, beside the Rukaan waddled the great pale dragon, the thing with a wrinkled snout and winking black eyes down its neck. It leered at the Rukaan, but never tested her tines with its teeth. Urythk had bade it not hunt her nor any of the troll's other protected tenants, the cows and sheep and ornery little chickens, the hodgepodge menagerie liberated from whatever farms or stock-pens the troll had taken issue with over the years.

The dragon's name went unknown to Olifaye for months on end, because Urythk spoke more by whistles than words, but one day it garbled heavily out of her troll's throat. Merrimac was as sleepy a creature as Urythk was, in the cold. When not hunting or on guard, the dragon slept winter away in contentment, a mound of fur nigh indistinguishable from the mounds of snow around it.

It was spring now. The windy alpine tundra, where Urythk's half-buried home squatted in the shade of the mountains to the west, blazed over with flowers and scrub. The wind was in the south, and ushered in a slow tide of rising warmth. Winter departed Olifaye's turf with demure grace and one final curtsy with her ice-sewn stockings.

Olifaye dropped her bronze crown, hooking the curved tines into the wall of her sheltered stable, which the troll had stacked up and puzzled out of an old piece of wall-made-roof, a measure of rope comparable to a yarn-ball in immense rocky hands, and rough boulders.

Urythk used her house like a seat when at natural size, sitting there on the little hill-covered-hut and turning still, still as stone, still as death, indistinguishable from the boulders that formed the roughshod walls, especially when satchel and hood had been taken off and stored away from winter weather. In the dearth of winter the troll had only moved when Merrimac had flapped overhead and dropped the still-bleeding haunch of some wild creature or another who hadn't been fast enough. But it was spring, and the flowers had arrived, and Olifaye leapt and capered there at her troll's feet as breakfast was eaten and Urythk pulled satchel and hood out of storage. Urythk only had so much material to spare, but clothing was rather necessary to walk among humans, even if it ruined Urythk's natural rocky camouflage.

Spring brought blooms and buds, and opened passes, and freed traders from winter holds. Urythk took up gold and little leather workings, and the troll and the Rukaan and the dragon all walked east. (There was little north of here indeed, of any interest to Urythk anyway, and crossing the western mountains this early in the year would be too much effort for too little gain.) Merrimac's purpose was to follow like an annoying child, apparently: darting back and forth along the ground, headbutting Urythk, swooping up and over in over-dramatic loops through the air. But Merrimac did that which Olifaye couldn't; Merrimac flew away, here and there, for an hour or two, and returned to rain meat from above. It was gruesome and grisly, and Olifaye generally attempted to look steadfastly in the opposite direction of the wet squelches and dull crunches.

When the party came to a crossing, Urythk whistled to Merrimac, and the dragon swirled down and in one smooth motion curled on the ground into a ball of white fur and leather and long webbed tail, safely camouflaged in the shade where equally white snow hadn't yet melted. Olifaye and her troll continued on, leaving the dragon snoring in the snowbank. By now, Urythk was well-fed and warmed to wakefulness, and moved with purpose. Olifaye was journey-hardened, and could trot alongside for hours without need for rest. So they went southeast from the crossing, and arrived in such a town so crossbred that here, Urythk's gargantuan size earned more stares than the part where she was a troll.

Urythk went left, lumbering towards the merchant's quarter with a satchel of goods to sell and gold to spend, and Olifaye scanned the area and the faces therein. This town was wiser than some other places Olifaye could recall; the older ones knew better than to try and take a troll's claimed creatures, and the younger ones were mostly all occupied by afternoon chores. Beyond murmurs about the troll's size and stench, none were nearly bothered enough to leave off their work to go causing trouble.

Olifaye went right, exploring at ease. This was how the black doe found the pasture where spring's first calves were trampling the last of the snow there, gallivanting around their equally excited mothers. The stablehands were across the way, at work in the yard where riders practiced, and didn't notice or didn't mind as Olifaye greeted the young calves and their wary but quickly-warming mothers. Olifaye was battle-scarred, but remained cordial as ever, though it'd been a long while since her last conversation with another Rukaan that didn't amount to an exchange of insults and a clash of tines in the night. It was very refreshing, all told.

Olifaye ran up and down the fence, and a gaggle of calves ran on their side of it, laughing and bugling until the game stretched out long enough for them to tire. The herd of tame Rukaan settled down, and Olifaye stood on her side of the fence and watched over them. For an hour or so, all was quiet and peaceful.

As it often goes, all hell broke loose at once. It began with a stablehand, jogging over the grass to the Rukaans there and cursing as he went for all the effort of running a half-mile out to reach them. He called and fussed and made a stink, and when he got closer he squinted at Olifaye, with her naked, tackless body stood on the wrong side of the fence. But her blazing white stripe was distinctive, and he didn't know her. He harrumphed and turned back to the does and their calves, shaking his hands and getting them all up and walking barnwards.

"Oi you!" he said suddenly, rounding on a calfless liver doe with pale stockings. "This is where you've been hiding all day, fat Loel? Bugger, and you've got yourself out of training and all, what gives? Get up, get going. You're not pregnant, you're a fat lazy work-shirker is what you are! Get on!" He nailed the doe with a kick in the bum and got her moving.

A whistle cut the air, distant but clear, the sound of Urythk finished with bartering and ready to head out. Olifaye leaned back as if to follow it. Loel got up, ears drooping, putting up no argument as she was pushed after the others. The stablehand had paused, looking back towards the whistle, before grumbling some more and giving Loel another slap. "Get trotting, you overgrown barn rat, get!"

And Olifaye lunged forwards, threw her full considerable weight into the center of the wooden fence, and snapped one bar in two and jarred the other out of its socket.

The stablehand had enough time to blink and go, "Hey, I've got to fix tha-" before Olifaye's tine-bare skull cracked into his at a full gallop. The beanpole dropped to the grass, dazedly yowling a bemoanment of the cruelty and unfairness of the world's evils upon hard-working citizens, and Olifaye turned to regard Loel, who had stopped dead and was blinking in confusion at the whole scene.

Therein followed what was, all considered, a very calm conversation, ignoring the stablehand holding both hands over his new headache and rolling in the grass like an overturned beetle.

"Is it always like this?"

"Oh... um... well, you know. I am. Fat, that is. My fault, truly. To tell the truth, I really just didn't want to deal with those jumps today, and Marvin - different stablehand, that one's Luther - Marvin can't tell the difference between me and any other liver Rukaan, spots or whatever. So I, ah, well, gave him the slip this morning."

"But Luther here, is he always talking down to you like that? He should know better. We're not horses, are we."

"Gracious. Well, I know some very nice horses. Although they certainly aren't as self-sufficient as we can be, I'll admit. But yes, Luther's like that. All the time. You just go along with it, you know, after a while. It gets more boring than upsetting. It's not a big thing..."

"I'll say it is! He ought to-"

But Olifaye didn't get around to saying what the stablehand ought to do, because just then there was an absolutely delighted bleat behind her, and she turned to the hole in the fence and the calf who'd just bounced over the fallen fence bars and was currently hightailing it up a side street into town.

"Ooh," said Olifaye, realizing that she may have just initiated a slight bit of a bedlam. A moment later she went, "No, no, don't-" but it was too late and the rest of the calves had climbed aboard the mayhem bus and all bounded over the broken fence in a wave of pure glee.

"Oh dear," said Loel. Unhelpfully, the doe called after: "I'll just, ah, stand here, keep watch, right! Good luck! They're all rascals, so you'll need it!"

>> Next

___________________________

Link to Import: R-0268 Olifaye

Link to Rune Mark Tracker: www.deviantart.com/comments/1/…
Rune Mark Points and Bonuses: Headshot, Colored, 1616w Story, Completely by Owner, Includes Merrimac , Handler Training Certificate
Quest Bonuses: N/A
Quest Type: Defense
Quest Prompt: Bully
Quest Tracker Link: www.deviantart.com/comments/1/…

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Prompt: Battle Training 3

Handler: Urythk

Description
Winter's cold seemed to seep into the joints of her troll, rife as any aggressive illness, and where there was snow, Urythk would sleep more than wake. Olifaye busied herself with foraging out to the east, downhill in the treeline, digging through snow and ice for edible morsels. The Rukaan was clever with age and with the tutorship of her troll, and didn't go hungry.

More often than not, beside the Rukaan waddled the great pale dragon, the thing with a wrinkled snout and winking black eyes down its neck. It leered at the Rukaan, but never tested her tines with its teeth. Urythk had bade it not hunt her nor any of the troll's other protected tenants, the cows and sheep and ornery little chickens, the hodgepodge menagerie liberated from whatever farms or stock-pens the troll had taken issue with over the years.

The dragon's name went unknown to Olifaye for months on end, because Urythk spoke more by whistles than words, but one day it garbled heavily out of her troll's throat. Merrimac was as sleepy a creature as Urythk was, in the cold. When not hunting or on guard, the dragon slept winter away in contentment, a mound of fur nigh indistinguishable from the mounds of snow around it.

It was spring now. The windy alpine tundra, where Urythk's half-buried home squatted in the shade of the mountains to the west, blazed over with flowers and scrub. The wind was in the south, and ushered in a slow tide of rising warmth. Winter departed Olifaye's turf with demure grace and one final curtsy with her ice-sewn stockings.

Olifaye dropped her bronze crown, hooking the curved tines into the wall of her sheltered stable, which the troll had stacked up and puzzled out of an old piece of wall-made-roof, a measure of rope comparable to a yarn-ball in immense rocky hands, and rough boulders.

Urythk used her house like a seat when at natural size, sitting there on the little hill-covered-hut and turning still, still as stone, still as death, indistinguishable from the boulders that formed the roughshod walls, especially when satchel and hood had been taken off and stored away from winter weather. In the dearth of winter the troll had only moved when Merrimac had flapped overhead and dropped the still-bleeding haunch of some wild creature or another who hadn't been fast enough. But it was spring, and the flowers had arrived, and Olifaye leapt and capered there at her troll's feet as breakfast was eaten and Urythk pulled satchel and hood out of storage. Urythk only had so much material to spare, but clothing was rather necessary to walk among humans, even if it ruined Urythk's natural rocky camouflage.

Spring brought blooms and buds, and opened passes, and freed traders from winter holds. Urythk took up gold and little leather workings, and the troll and the Rukaan and the dragon all walked east. (There was little north of here indeed, of any interest to Urythk anyway, and crossing the western mountains this early in the year would be too much effort for too little gain.) Merrimac's purpose was to follow like an annoying child, apparently: darting back and forth along the ground, headbutting Urythk, swooping up and over in over-dramatic loops through the air. But Merrimac did that which Olifaye couldn't; Merrimac flew away, here and there, for an hour or two, and returned to rain meat from above. It was gruesome and grisly, and Olifaye generally attempted to look steadfastly in the opposite direction of the wet squelches and dull crunches.

When the party came to a crossing, Urythk whistled to Merrimac, and the dragon swirled down and in one smooth motion curled on the ground into a ball of white fur and leather and long webbed tail, safely camouflaged in the shade where equally white snow hadn't yet melted. Olifaye and her troll continued on, leaving the dragon snoring in the snowbank. By now, Urythk was well-fed and warmed to wakefulness, and moved with purpose. Olifaye was journey-hardened, and could trot alongside for hours without need for rest. So they went southeast from the crossing, and arrived in such a town so crossbred that here, Urythk's gargantuan size earned more stares than the part where she was a troll.

Urythk went left, lumbering towards the merchant's quarter with a satchel of goods to sell and gold to spend, and Olifaye scanned the area and the faces therein. This town was wiser than some other places Olifaye could recall; the older ones knew better than to try and take a troll's claimed creatures, and the younger ones were mostly all occupied by afternoon chores. Beyond murmurs about the troll's size and stench, none were nearly bothered enough to leave off their work to go causing trouble.

Olifaye went right, exploring at ease. This was how the black doe found the pasture where spring's first calves were trampling the last of the snow there, gallivanting around their equally excited mothers. The stablehands were across the way, at work in the yard where riders practiced, and didn't notice or didn't mind as Olifaye greeted the young calves and their wary but quickly-warming mothers. Olifaye was battle-scarred, but remained cordial as ever, though it'd been a long while since her last conversation with another Rukaan that didn't amount to an exchange of insults and a clash of tines in the night. It was very refreshing, all told.

Olifaye ran up and down the fence, and a gaggle of calves ran on their side of it, laughing and bugling until the game stretched out long enough for them to tire. The herd of tame Rukaan settled down, and Olifaye stood on her side of the fence and watched over them. For an hour or so, all was quiet and peaceful.

As it often goes, all hell broke loose at once. It began with a stablehand, jogging over the grass to the Rukaans there and cursing as he went for all the effort of running a half-mile out to reach them. He called and fussed and made a stink, and when he got closer he squinted at Olifaye, with her naked, tackless body stood on the wrong side of the fence. But her blazing white stripe was distinctive, and he didn't know her. He harrumphed and turned back to the does and their calves, shaking his hands and getting them all up and walking barnwards.

"Oi you!" he said suddenly, rounding on a calfless liver doe with pale stockings. "This is where you've been hiding all day, fat Loel? Bugger, and you've got yourself out of training and all, what gives? Get up, get going. You're not pregnant, you're a fat lazy work-shirker is what you are! Get on!" He nailed the doe with a kick in the bum and got her moving.

A whistle cut the air, distant but clear, the sound of Urythk finished with bartering and ready to head out. Olifaye leaned back as if to follow it. Loel got up, ears drooping, putting up no argument as she was pushed after the others. The stablehand had paused, looking back towards the whistle, before grumbling some more and giving Loel another slap. "Get trotting, you overgrown barn rat, get!"

And Olifaye lunged forwards, threw her full considerable weight into the center of the wooden fence, and snapped one bar in two and jarred the other out of its socket.

The stablehand had enough time to blink and go, "Hey, I've got to fix tha-" before Olifaye's tine-bare skull cracked into his at a full gallop. The beanpole dropped to the grass, dazedly yowling a bemoanment of the cruelty and unfairness of the world's evils upon hard-working citizens, and Olifaye turned to regard Loel, who had stopped dead and was blinking in confusion at the whole scene.

Therein followed what was, all considered, a very calm conversation, ignoring the stablehand holding both hands over his new headache and rolling in the grass like an overturned beetle.

"Is it always like this?"

"Oh... um... well, you know. I am. Fat, that is. My fault, truly. To tell the truth, I really just didn't want to deal with those jumps today, and Marvin - different stablehand, that one's Luther - Marvin can't tell the difference between me and any other liver Rukaan, spots or whatever. So I, ah, well, gave him the slip this morning."

"But Luther here, is he always talking down to you like that? He should know better. We're not horses, are we."

"Gracious. Well, I know some very nice horses. Although they certainly aren't as self-sufficient as we can be, I'll admit. But yes, Luther's like that. All the time. You just go along with it, you know, after a while. It gets more boring than upsetting. It's not a big thing..."

"I'll say it is! He ought to-"

But Olifaye didn't get around to saying what the stablehand ought to do, because just then there was an absolutely delighted bleat behind her, and she turned to the hole in the fence and the calf who'd just bounced over the fallen fence bars and was currently hightailing it up a side street into town.

"Ooh," said Olifaye, realizing that she may have just initiated a slight bit of a bedlam. A moment later she went, "No, no, don't-" but it was too late and the rest of the calves had climbed aboard the mayhem bus and all bounded over the broken fence in a wave of pure glee.

"Oh dear," said Loel. Unhelpfully, the doe called after: "I'll just, ah, stand here, keep watch, right! Good luck! They're all rascals, so you'll need it!"

>> Next

___________________________

Link to Import: R-0268 Olifaye

Link to Rune Mark Tracker: www.deviantart.com/comments/1/…
Rune Mark Points and Bonuses: Headshot, Colored, 1616w Story, Completely by Owner, Includes Merrimac , Handler Training Certificate
Quest Bonuses: N/A
Quest Type: Defense
Quest Prompt: Bully
Quest Tracker Link: www.deviantart.com/comments/1/…

Bank Name: MonochromeFox

Prompt: Battle Training 3

Handler: Urythk