trans_9 | A City of Bleached Bones (open)

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A City of Bleached Bones (open)

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.)

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"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."

"No life is not a thing to sing about," she responds, looking off at the empty streets and the hollow buildings. "It is," she says, "An ill omen."

"It makes me wonder how many people this place was expected to have," Roxie says, following Sharp Tongue's gaze down the row of streets. "There's enough space here for... at least a hundred thousand people, probably a lot more. But I can't even tell if it's supposed to be for people to actually live in or not."

"You can fit that many humans in this piece of territory? How do they feed?" Sharp Tongue manages to hide the depth of her surprise. She knew humans could pack themselves into small spaces like the settlement and the vision-city, but so many is nearly unimaginable to her. Raptors are viciously territorial and require wide hunting grounds to sustain a tribe.

"Factory farming and cross-country shipping." Roxie looks around a little. "Some of this is out of date, but the principle's basically the same. Grow plants and raise animals one place, process and preserve them, and send them someplace else."

"That sounds like a great deal of work, it is simpler and more honorable to hunt," Sharp Tongue replies. "I do not fault humans for this... ingenuity (it practically pains her to say it) in being able to breed so many young and feed them all, but your kind feels no joy in the hunt."

Raptors could farm if they wanted to. They're beyond smart enough. It's just not any fun killing something domesticated.

"Many of us don't," Roxie says, as if that might not apply to her. "It's a lot harder for us, anyway, since we have to cook everything to make sure we don't get sick."

"Cooking is not difficult," Sharp Tongue replies. Then again, her experience with cooking is limited to burning things over the Sacred Fire.

"But you don't have to do it for for any meat you've ever eaten," Roxie rebuts. She's assuming, but she's also assuming it's a good assumption.

"Some things we do," she says with a slight stiffness from indignation. "It is not something known only to you pinkskins."

"But think of what it would mean for everything." Roxie looks out at the buildings again. "If you always have to cook meat, then why not cook other things, too? And at that point, there's no reason not to stay in one place if you can rotate crops, since it means you can build up some walls to protect against enemies." She adjusts her glasses.

"There is no honor in hiding behind walls," Sharp Tongue replies, trying to explain this. "If we walled our dens, perhaps it would keep our enemies out. But then our warriors would grow soft, and when they grew soft someone else would come and push past the walls and we would be destroyed."

Sharp Tongue wonders what the object the girl wears on her face is for, but does not comment. It's another Weird Human Thing.

"But even the hardest of humans are already soft, compared to you," Roxie observes. "Wouldn't that change things?" She fiddles with her glasses again for a moment.

"Humans have walls," she dismisses it. Were she human, she'd shrug. But she's not, so there's a small tail swish here and a clawtap that together would convey the same feeling if Roxie spoke raptor bodylanguage.

"Raptors do not. So is the world that Scravis gave us. We may do new things sometimes, but not new things that are stupid."

"Umm... how advanced are the humans you're used to?" Roxie asks.

Her potential thought-maps of the sort of world Sharp Tongue are all very weird as of yet, even with what little she knows.

"Well..."

Sharp Tongue considers. "They carry gun weapons and ride on the backs of carnosaurs and triceratops. They do many strange things I will not pretend to know of."

"But they could never build a thing like this."

The raptor jerks her head skyward, more indicating Stacy than just the city.

Roxie looks upwards. "We've already got genetic manipulation where I'm from. It'd be quite an advance to get to the level of making something like this ship, but I don't see why it wouldn't eventually be possible. Not that I really see the point. Something with metal would be much easier to repair or upgrade."

Sharp Tongue blinks once. Slowly. Those words, some of which she doesn't know, in that sequence make no real sense.

"Things that live are not made. They are born."

"But if you have the right tools," Roxie says, holding up a finger, "you can change how something will grow before it's born. You could even turn one kind of life into something else altogether with enough time and effort."

"But in doing this," says Sharp Tongue, "you defy the natural order of things and the will of Great Scravis."

Raptors don't necessarily slave for the natural order of things. They consider themselves above it. They are, however, very careful with this "superior" status.

"You do, maybe," Roxie says, adjusting her glasses a little, "but I serve somebody other than your Scravis. And he wouldn't care much about genetic manipulation even if we had the time to do anything with it."

"If you defy Scravis' will, then this is your own problem." Sharp Tongue can't be bothered to debate her religion, it's the truth.

"Just don't make a mess of things. Scravis is wise."

Roxie points upwards. "Somebody's already made a mess of everything, if you didn't notice. I was just saying that it was possible."

If her voice wasn't so cool, she'd almost seem a bit defensive.

The raptor looks upward, but seems to agree. She doesn't nod though.

"Many things are possible. But not all possible things are correct."

Roxie lets out a little 'huh' noise. "But not everybody defines 'correct' the same," she insists. "How do you know that Scravis would think it was wrong?"

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