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]

"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.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"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."

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"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.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"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.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

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."

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

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."

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"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."

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"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.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"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."

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"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."

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

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.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

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

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

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

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?"

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"Because it would not survive," she says with the ease of one who believes fully in what she says.

"Maybe not in a generation, maybe not in three, but it will whither and die if it is deemed so. That is the way of things. That is why I know to watch the land and see the things that grow and the prey that eats the growing things. So that we may know what to kill and what to leave to breed more prey for later."

Raptor shamans have a powerful innate sense of the ecosystem and environment, and it comes naturally to Sharp Tongue to notice these things.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

Roxie smiles a little—a sardonic, less-than-genuine smile, though. "The cho shouldn't exist, and they've hung on for a long time, where I'm from. They might kill the rest of us eventually if they're lucky enough. So, I don't think that rule really applies everywhere."

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"Then perhaps you are the mistake," says Sharp Tongue, not without a slight hint of mocking.

She doesn't much mind calling humans a mistake, even though that "Sheeana" one is interesting. She'd certainly find it no sore loss if the ones on Cretasus were to die out, except that their trade goods would be missed.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

Roxie's face tightens a little. "I know from talking with my god that that isn't the case," she says cooly, looking evenly up at Sharp Tongue.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"Spirits," she says after a moment's deliberation, "Do not always know the truth. The only god is Scravis, and he does not speak."

Then again, the "spirits" Sharp Tongue's used to are plant-induced hallucinations the raptors inflict on themselves ritually.

And hallucinations aren't always right, unfortunately.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Shyama is a god, not a spirit," Roxie says firmly. "I could introduce you to him if you'd like."

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

Sharp Tongue tilts her head forward slightly.

"Oh, can you now?"

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

The girl nods. "But it will have to wait until the next time you sleep. Shyama can only be met by the living in dreams."

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

Sharp Tongue snorts. "You do not even need plants to call your spirit."

She's derisive and condescending, clearly believing Roxie can't be right about this at all. Because the raptor way is the only way of course!

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Plants?"

Roxie fumbles through her pockets, retrieving a pair of brass coins and a single silver one. All three are of uncertain and ancient design, the faces of long-dead kings weathered into near-bluntness by the passing of ages.

[snarky-raptor.livejournal.com]

"Exactly," says the raptor. "What use are those?"

Except in trading, of course, but raptors aren't really all that great with understanding the "money" concept.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"They're how you get to Shyama's domain. You put all three under your tongue when you sleep... the two brass are for the ferryman, to and from, and the silver is for the actual admission."

If only Sharp Tongue wasn't a raptor, she could get possibly even more confused at the mash of mythology Roxie is invoking.