[Forest] Wander Wood [Open]

[Aydyn Blair]

The Fourth Cycle of Cryxatum
in the Season of Spring

After so many months in Jaedaxia, the soft feel of the soil beneath her feet--not quite, for she wore boots, but there was a distinct and comfortable difference between the cobbles of a Jaedaxian street and the welcoming ground in Arios--seemed to melt at Aydyn's concerns as she tilted her chin up and observed the trace work of branches slung overhead. The sunlight filtered through the leaves, illuminated them here and there. An old forest and decidedly different from others she had seen and walked. Wetter, certainly. What had the locals called it? A rainforest. She still wasn't quite sure what that meant, save that it must have had something to do with the fact that the place seemed eternally damp.

She had found a path and walked it now, not yet trusting herself in the strange environment to wander off of it and fully submerge herself in the wilds of the forest. On her shoulder was the smallest of her cats, a petite palm kitten named Speck with fluffy, cream-colored fur and wide green eyes that observed the land around him with evident curiosity. She would have liked to bring the whole lot of them with her--the flower weaver Daisy and her two alicats Whimsy and Sparrow--but they were more inclined to go darting off into the bushes and Carmelya knew the trouble Aydyn would have retrieving them. But Speck was content to cause trouble from his perch on her shoulder; she was surprised her ear didn't have any teeth-sized holes in it yet.

For all the world, Aydyn appeared to be a simple woman out for a stroll. In many senses of the word, she was. She'd been warned that the woods was a dangerous place, a place to be wary of for all the creatures that lurked within. That hadn't really stopped her, she who'd endured other horrors that had left her without a finger on her left hand and scarred in other manners that were apparent both on the outside and the inside. But she was not unarmed either--she had simply to murmur the name of her staff of arcana to find it in her hands, not to mention the peridot gems that were draped about her person--the necklace, the bracelet, the ring, all of them were beautiful, certainly, but useful, too.

Aydyn overturned a rock with the toe of her boot as she absently meandered along. At present she felt no need for the weapons she had at her disposal. She was just a woman out for a walk to enjoy surroundings she had missed dearly, whether or not she was familiar with them.

[Reinus Narcisse]

He wondered if getting lost was a skill for if it was, then Reinus Narcisse was surely a grandmaster. Wandering around the woods had its advantage, but it was always so confusing. And he had to never carry a map, when he desperately needed one. He was quite myopic, not thinking about the consequences when he once again decided to venture into the woods. Strangely enough, the elf never once felt the onus of having such a bad memory. No matter how many times his grandparents tried to pique him, they found themselves in melancholy instead. He was a happy fellow, despite the circumstances against him.

A walk in the woods was nothing. It was fun to get lost. The excitement and thrill of exploring unknown lands was there as he nearly always forgot where he had traveled.

There was a woman here as well as Reinus soon noticed. He walked up to her and tried a simple greeting, "Serale!"

[Aydyn Blair]

Aydyn looked up in surprise as a voice rang out through the trees. She shifted and glanced towards the source, a word on her mouth that was not exactly a return greeting. But she stifled it as she saw the individual who approached her--elvish and young. He looked...harmless. But then she knew better, didn't she? That the appearance harmless did not always mean harmless. Yet the word died away on her mouth, not fully spoken and she smiled pleasantly at the youth, absently reaching up to scratch the soft head of the cat on her shoulder. The small palm kitten rubbed up against her cheek, claws sinking into the fabric of her shirt and then her skin as he slunk under her unbound brown hair to appear on the other shoulder.

"Serale," she greeted him in kind, inclining her cheek a little. Aydyn was the sort that looked harmless as well--sweet and motherly in her way. "Enjoying a walk?"

She looked in the direction the youth had appeared from and say no one in his company. A lone elf, then, in the middle of the woods. Harmless.

She nurtured herself on that thought as she resumed walking at a somewhat slower pace, her body posture suggestive that a companion would not be looked upon poorly.

[Reinus Narcisse]

Reinus paused after his outgoing greeting. He noticed that the woman might be inspecting him and stood there silently. He scratched his cheek, blinking his eyes rapidly. "Well...I don't bite?"

He shrugged, trying to make a joke out of what he found to be an awkward situation. His mind had gone blank a few seconds ago and was now having a hard time to think of a subject to talk about.

He noticed the cat and frowned at it, not caring about what she might have thought about this strange action. Reinus had an odd habit of trying to beat cats at staring contests. He found it peculiar that cats appeared to never have to blink.

"Yep! I'm just hiking around hoping an adventure would pop up, which happens sometimes...I think."

He followed her, walking at her side, "Do I know you? Looks like I saw you before." That statement may have been incorrect. Reinus had a terrible memory. It was not unusual for Reinus to claim that he knew someone that he barely met.

[Z'kron]

"You know, after a while here, you don't need to sleep any more. It's astonishing, really. Something about the black dome, I suspect."
On a branch somewhere vaguely out of reach, sat a bird. Its species was hard to identify- it was small, greyish-brown and with a rounded beak; but all the other specifics seemed in a state of near-flux, almost like it was blurring as it was observed. And, perhaps more to the point, it was talking, gesticulating occasionally with its wings in a manner thoroughly reminscent of land-creature gestures.
"Anyway. Arios. Nice little island, this is. Which way are we walking, peoples?"
It shuffled along the branch, the feet taking little footsteps reminiscent, in a peculiar way, of Reinus and Aydyn's walking patterns. Clearly the little winged thing had some sort of a sense of humor.

[Aydyn Blair]

The boy was an odd one, make no mistake of that. As he stared blankly at her cat, her face screwed with a bit of her own confusion. What...was he doing? The palm kitten's face was half buried in her hair as he stared back at Reinus with wide, vivid green eyes. It didn't seem to like being stared at--the cat made a low, throaty noise and ducked its head back into her hair, settling behind her neck in such a fashion that Aydyn's shoulders hunched and her head bobbed forward slightly as to not dislodge the feline to the ground.

"You think?" she repeated with an amused smile, reaching up to scoop Speck out of her hair and cradle him in her hand. He fit in her palm, displaying exactly why that breed of cat had been named. "Doesn't your mother worry about you wandering around these woods?"

The second question caught her a bit more by surprise, but she shook her head. "No, I'm new to Arios. I only got here the other brightening. I'm Aydyn. This is Speck." She held up the creamy fluffy ball with a smile.

And then the bird... She turned her head towards the voice, expecting maybe a faery or some one else capable of sneaking up without a sound--there were probably plenty who could, especially here. But all she saw was a bird, unremarkable with its dull colors...but strange in that it almost seemed to blur--a fact that made her head swim a little.

Never mind that it was...talking.

She had stopped walking to observe this strange thing, brow furrowed with confusion. "You're either a very clever bird, or not what you appear," she pointed out simply. A druid, she was not unaccustomed to such oddities as others in forms that were not their own. "Do you have talking birds on Arios?" This to the boy that had joined her walk.

[Reinus Narcisse]

"I don't have a mother. I live by myself." Reinus proclaimed, still staring at the cat. He raised his hands in defense when the cat decided to voice its opinion. He continued staring into the eyes of the cat, refusing to lose. Still, it was hard for someone of his expertise in staring to win against a cat. He blinked and quickly massaged his eyes with the tips of his fingers.

"I guess I made a mistake then. Nice to meet you Aydyn. My name's Reinus." He gave a short wave with his left hand, moving it frantically in the air like a little child would when they saw someone they liked.

"Speck." He said it as if he were testing a vocabulary word first used. "Why is a fluff ball like it named Speck when it's so...fluffy?"

The next event sent Reinus to the ground. He pointed at the talking bird then at the cat. "Wait...I get what's going on." He raised a finger in the air, "I must be dreaming!"

[Aydyn Blair]

ooc: Guess we'll truck on without Z'k

ic:
She said nothing to his admittance to having no mother, but merely watched him with a puzzled expression as he continued to stare blankly at the cat. Staring contest? What else could it be?

"Nice to meet you, Reinus," she returned simply, with a slight inclination of her cheek. What an odd boy.

She chuckled at his question about the cat, reaching up to disturb his fur with a slight fluff of her hands. The cat arched against her hand, his purr audible. But he turned his attention quickly to her hair, nipping at it with a small mouth and arranging tendrils so that they fell across his back--almost as if he were trying to decorate himself.

"Because he's so small. He's a palm kitten--he won't get any bigger than this." He was about the size of a house cat's kitten, fitting snugly in the curve of her palm. She demonstrated by plucking him off her shoulder and cupping him in her hand. The cat mewed a little, rolled so that he wasn't on his back. Aydyn had to flash out her hand to keep him on her palm rather than in the dirt at her feet.

But already his attention had shifted from cat to bird to cat again. Aydyn frowned at the bird slightly, getting nothing further from it. "Dreaming? Here? Where people don't sleep?" She laughed a little. "I knew a bird that talked in Acumin...but he wasn't nearly as articulate." She cocked her head to the side slightly and studied the bird. "Some birds are just odd."