A City of Bleached Bones (open)

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

Sharp Tongue's been avoiding the city since she woke up. It's instinctive for a raptor. The buildings, the streets, it's all very human and therefore not something that makes her feel welcome. To make matters worse, it's larger and far more sophisticated than the settlement she knew from the edge of her tribe's territory.

But still, it does demand her investigation if no one is going to stop her from poking around. She is a shaman and there are strange, unknown things. It's her duty to look.

The raptor stalks along the city's streets, claws clicking on stone and concrete and other forms of alien paving, head weaving back and forth in a wary fashion, and a stream of soft muttering going meant for her ears alone.

"Strange place. Very empty. No prey. No hunters. No plants. No life..."

It's not just broken. The brokenness of this place was obvious from the first step she'd taken into the city. No, this is all dead.

(OOC: Sharp Tongue's wandering all over the city. Feel free to dictate where you come across her if you want.)

Comments

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

Roxie has been wandering up and down the broad avenues for an hour or two, pausing here and there to look in particular buildings.

And then, around the edge of an intersection, she catches Sharp Tongue's murmuring.

It's almost an unconscious response, after such a while in the city's silence, that she speaks up in return—in soft, sing-songing voice, as her impulse dictates and the words spring to mind. "No life... it's neither pastoral, nor lyrical. You don't suppose that it's satirical..."

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

Sharp Tongue's head whips around on her long, slim neck. She recognizes that the human speaking, however, is a child. No threat to her. If an adult human has a difficult enough time hurting a raptor, she reasons there is no reason to fear a child.

"I do not believe it is," she replies.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Just density without intensity—no life." Roxie's soft (but clear as a bell) voice cuts out as she looks up at Sharp Tongue. "It's kind of funny," she comments, and the rhythmic pattern is gone. "The song almost seems to actually fit."

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

Sharp Tongue taps her claws against the paving once.

"You were singing?" she asks, looking down at the human a little dubiously. "I could not tell." Well, maybe a little. But it hadn't been enough for the raptor to notice very strongly, it wasn't fullblown song after all.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Just a little," Roxie says, glancing down at the claws and then back up at Sharp Tongue's face. Curiously enough, she doesn't seem at all scared by her present situation. A little weirded-out, maybe, but not scared.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"Why sing in a place like this?" the raptor asks, her tone even and steady. She's slightly bothered by the apparent lack of fear in the human, but not unnerved.

"There is no triumph here, this place is broken. There is nothing to celebrate."

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Who says singing has to be celebration?" Roxie asks, still looking evenly up at Sharp Tongue.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"It is usually why we sing," she answers simply. "Then why did you if not for that, hmm?"

Sharp Tongue is figuring out that these humans are weird. Not that she didn't already know that to begin with, buuuuut...

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Because I felt like it," Roxie says with a little bit of a shrug. "And there's a song I know named 'No Life'. You made me think of it."

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana doesn't like to train in the sensorium. There's something about the guarantee of safety, the artificiality of the sorroundings...It dulls her edge. Her reactions are a fraction of a second too slow.

Instead she's brought her little maker to the park with her. The sandworm is barely seven feet long on its diet of scraps and sickly from the humid environment. Even still, it rears back and snaps at her with impressive speed on the purple grass. Sheeana dodges back and twists side to side. Each snap of the tripartite jaws closes just a few inches from her.

There is something to this scene of a boy wrestling with his dog. It can be seen on the Dune waif's little crook of a smile.

She draws her crysknife. The bone-white blade is the tooth of an adult maker, and she tells her charge so: "Someday you'll have teeth this big too."

She feints playfully at it, careful to keep her arm from getting caught in it mouth with its rows of little daggers and blazing internal fire.

She doesn't realize she's not alone at first.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

Sharp Tongue finds the source of the sound and gives a soft hiss, dropping instinctively into a crouch at the sight of the strange life form. There's a familiar slandt in its scent, but Sharp Tongue's too busy trying to process something that has in no way ever crossed paths with her species to think about it very hard.

She says nothing, but straightens slightly and approaches with knees bent and claws up, watching the worm with great caution.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

The worm however, does feel the vibration and disengages from their 'play' to slither its way over to the 'raptor. There's a hissing-roaring-squeak before Sheeana turns over to the worm. "Sharp Tongue is no danger to us." It obediantly turns back and slithers through Sheeana's legs, regarding her without sight, head segement wrapped through and around her calf. She breathes deeply but there is no sweat on her skin, another aspect of her dual nature.

"This is Shai-Halud, the maker, from my homeworld." Its breath is pungent with the same flinty-cinnamon spell as the Spice. Will she figure out that's the source of it?

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"You revere this creature?" Sharp Tongue asks, bending slightly to inspect the thing at another angle from a safe distance. She doesn't trust this "Shai-Hulud" thing any more than she's trusted any other strangeness on the ship. Nothing bad's happened so far but it always pays to be wary.

That smell... she recognizes it but doesn't know why that would make sense. Mostly due to the word "spice" which implies an herb.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana can see Sharp Tongue's trepidation. She can sense minute changes in posture in humans, and to an extent it extends to other species. "My people do. I don't worship it...but I acknowledge its power. You'd understand if you saw an adult specimen. This one is still an infant."

It undulates out of Sheeana's legs and toward Sharp Tongue. It's too bad 'raptors don't keep pets or she'd recognize the behavior.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"How large does it grow?" she asks, curious now. Certainly no larger than a tyrannosaur. Nothing is bigger than a tyrannosaur. The world Sharp Tongue knows just doesn't work that way.

A raptor keeping a pet would likely be considered as wasting time protecting and just plain wasting a readily available (and most likely annoying) source of food, and would probably be relieved of the responsibility by a hungry tribemate behind their back.

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

"Historically, the largest were measured in kilometers. Before the reign of the Tyrant, we would ride them wherever we wished." Memory of her Fremen ancestors calls to her, telling her of glorious rides of long past, the assault on Arrakeen as they rode down the Harkonnen forces. At the mention of The Tyrant, the worm squeaks and burbles, almost apologetic sounding.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"Humans of Cretasus sometimes ride the the tyrannosaurs, or the smaller beasts," Sharp Tongue replies, referring again to her sense of "big" based on the largest predators she knows of.

"How big is a kilometer?" She's not familiar with that measurement. "And who is the Tyrant? Is it anything like a Tyrant King?"

[raptorwithagun.livejournal.com]

There's the faintest of clatters, and thenRed Snout appears, poking his nose out of an ally before slipping up next to his clutch-sister with a soft hiss.

"I do not like this place."

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"What have you seen, that makes you say this, Red Snout?" she asks, curious to know what makes him uneasy and compare their reasons. Both are raptors but he is a warrior and she is a shaman, they see the world through slightly different lenses.

[raptorwithagun.livejournal.com]

"It is dead. Most human settlements at least have some grass or trees...this place is just empty and lifeless. Nothing to hunt. No way to live." He shudders, unable to suppress the chills running up his spin (or the painful bruises from his fight with Wags). He turns his head, looking at the tall buildings and lifeless metal and concrete.

"It seems like a place to go to die, like a brontosaurus graveyard. Not a place you want to stay in very long. Like there are restless spirits or something..." He's never been superstitious, but in this place it's hard not to be.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"It feels like there should be things here." In fact, she knows there should be. From the vision of the ancestor. "Humans. Life. Something. There is nothing that grows but the strange tree, nothing for the growing things to feed, nothing to hunt what eats the plants."

She gives her head a slight shake. "I have not met any restless spirits but I do not doubt there are some here," she says. "Not raptor spirits. Maybe human ones. Maybe kinds that I have never heard of before."

It's not such a farfetched proposition on this ship, after all.

[raptorwithagun.livejournal.com]

"We should stick together. This place is unnerving and strange. Besides...what if something attacks you?" It's his job to protect those who are not as well equipped to do it themselves, after all! And she is his clutch-sister.

"I wish we were home every morning. And every night I hope that this is a horrible dream and we will wake up back at home with the sound of the creek in our ears and the little ones climbing all over us in the early morning and the hunting to do and Straight Tail..." He speaks wistfully, closing his eyes and then opening them again, mentioning a particular female he was rather affectionate with and whom he had just won the right to mate with before they had...left.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

Sharp Tongue chuffs slightly. "I appreciate your concern, Red Snout, but these humans seem no threat to a raptor." She hasn't met a Garou yet, she has no idea what one of those can do.

"I wish we were home also. Narrow Face grows old, there will come a time when I am needed to tend the fire and set bones and speak to the spirits," she says, agreeing with him. She finds her own troubles far more important than his, of course, but they're the only raptors on this ship and tribemates to boot. "I miss the way the healing den smells, and I miss the fire, and I miss kills. I miss my gathering herbs."

That's part of what drove her out here, Sharp Tongue instinctively wanders and explores looking for plants. She avoids tribal boundaries, but so far the ship has shown her no true danger and she feels free roaming it. She's sadly disappointed by the lack of life.

[raptorwithagun.livejournal.com]

"I do not like humans. They are too...different. They are soft and weak, but they also have cunning and use their things to compensate for their weakness. And this place is too...human." He mutters, claws digging futilely against the pavement.

"I want to hunt. A real hunt. I want to stalk and run and chase and kill. Hear the blood racing inside of me, feel it leaving the prey." He shudders in almost ecstatic pleasure at the thought. "I want to eat real food, not this plant-mush that we are feed. Still warm meat, fresh from the kill..."

Yeah, he's drooling a bit now.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"They cover their weaknesses with what they make," she agrees. "This is certainly a human place," she adds scornfully, "because it is not meant for hunting."

Sharp Tongue can't understand the human desire to domesticate things. She participates in fewer hunts, as a shaman, but she can't understand how people can find killing something domesticated and harmless a worthy challenge.

"The sensorium place can give you an illusion of prey, but it is not the same."

She eyes Red Snout for a moment, then adds, "You are salivating."