Uncertainty in a Brave New World

[Raptress]

There are a great many leaves that make up the canopy that casts a gentle shade and a hint of green over Skalkaar. One of these leaves does not look its best though. While the others were a vibrant green, the color of this leaf looked dull. Its edges were frayed, and it looked as if it might crinkle a little were one to crumple it in hand.

A slightly stiff breeze was the last straw for the leaf's poor, old stem. It gave way, sending the leaf into the air. Skalkaar was not known for sustained winds, so the leaf was soon floating downwards, traveling in a lazy spiral. It descended below the canopy formed by its brethren, seeming destined to join the rest of the fallen that covered the forest floor.

Before that came to pass though, the leaf settled upon the snout of a small hatchling dragon, snapping her out of her thoughts. A quick toss of her head sent the leaf on its way again. This time it found a more final resting place on the ground beneath the rocky hill that the hatchling was sitting upon. A spider stepped on it soon afterwards.

The dragon, a smooth-scaled blue with purplish whorls swirling over her hide, glared after the leaf as if it had deserved to be trodden upon by a spider. She was obviously not in a good mood.

Her milk-white eyes drifted to the spiders milling about just below her. They seemed either unaware or simply unfazed by the presence of the predator watching them from above.

Kaelara's first spider kill had been a thing of triumph a mere day ago, but now the thought that it had excited her at all left a foul taste in her mouth. Any and every hatchling to come through Skalkaar was capable of that feat; what did it say about her that she had been excited?

And now she had been tasked with her first mission against the Aegis - again, something asked of all hatchlings - and she was too afraid to go do it. Instead, she was sitting on Skalkaar again, a place she was sure that few returned to after learning its lessons. It was as if, in a way, she felt that she shouldn't be moving beyond it.

That creepy elf she had met earlier hadn't helped things either. Making fun of her for not knowing how to bind herself to a shrine... And making the Empire sound like it was more in theory than in practice.. that everyone was pretty much on their own... Not to even mention the thoughts of.. of.. Recall bifurcation that he had filled her head with.

She kept telling herself he had just said those things to scare her, but part of her couldn't help but fear it had all been true.

"Have you... ever seen half.. a zombie wandering around some deadland...?"

Kaelara shook her head fiercely to get the thought out of her mind.

I shouldn't have to be out here! she thought. I was perfectly fine just staying in Father's lair! I can't have been that much of a burden. For Drulkar's sake, Father was hardly even around to be bothered by me! He shouldn't have forced me out here!

A lot of phrases resembling "this is for your own good" had been tossed around. Was getting teased by a naka really good for her?

Father hadn't even given her any money or anything. He'd just shoved her out of the lair, told her to go to Skalkaar, then left with the warning that he'd kill her if he found her there upon his return.

Such a wonderful, loving dragon, he was.

Kaelara sighed. What good was it doing her to sit around thinking about all this - about her short-comings and her fears? If she wasn't going to face those fears, then she supposed she ought to at least try to do something else productive.

There was always crafting... She knew Kerian sold some formulas that were not just given out as part of the curriculum. Maybe there were new spells for her to learn. That might even help her once she was inevitably forced to fight those skeletons.

Yes.. that seemed like a good plan.

Finally inspired to action, Kaelara got to her feet and Recalled away to New Trismus.. though not without a moment's hesitation as the thought of only arriving half there reared its head again.

((Figure I'll give the whole writing-stories thing another shot; it's been awhile. I'm also hoping that it might help me connect to the character and make me want to stick around a bit more. I've been veeery off-and-on with this game for a long time.))

[LungTien Temeraire]

(Nice story here, well written. I am always open for RP, on local channel or on roleplay channels, if you want some.)

[Raptress]

II. Procrastination

So she'd crafted. And crafted. And crafted. For days, that was all she did. Kerian had been impressed with her, but that was probably only because she hadn't yet found out that Kaelara had been telling Avariatus that Kerian had given her a lot of tasks to do suddenly in order to avoid the one that he'd given her.

In fact, Kerian told her to slow down.

"I love your eagerness to create, little one," she'd said, "but perhaps take a day off? A hatchling such as yourself oughtn't be working stone all day. Take some time, explore the island! Meet some of the bipeds in town and see what you can learn about them."

Honestly though, Kaelara would have rather been bored in the sandstone field than talk to anyone in town at all, let alone enough to learn about who they were.

Kerian seemed to detect that the little blue was less then enthused. She paused, then canted her head to the side, having thought of something.

"You know.. I think there is a summer festival going on right now. That's where you ought to go. Yes, go and have some fun for a day! It will help show you that, despite the current war with the undead, things are not so bleak as they may sometimes seem." Kerian lowered her head and smiled gently. "You do always look so stressed, little one."

Kaelara hated that she seemed to broadcast such things. She always tried - or at least hoped - to appear calm and collected despite the fact that she was always worrying about something internally. Apparently she wasn't very good at that.

She didn't particularly like the idea of going to a festival either. Though she'd never been to one before, she had always heard that such things were crowded. With people. There might be socializing involved. This was not one of her strong points.

Kerian could see that Kaelara wasn't keen on this idea either. She didn't want to outright order a hatchling to go have fun - that would probably defeat the purpose. No, she'd have to think of something.. maybe... A sly smile spread across Kerian's muzzle. Oh, yes. A bribe should work nicely. It usually did.

"Now that I think about it, you might need some coin to pay for snacks or something while you're at the festival," she said, smirking as she saw the unmistakable perk of the frills that indicated an interested hatchling. "I've got five silver pieces here, but if I give them to you, they are only to be spent at the festival. I'll not be buying you a new cargo disk; that's the sort of thing you have to earn on your own. Understand?"

The previously perked frills drooped a little. Kaelara still didn't really want to go, but.. but.. but silver.

Silver won. Silver always wins with dragons.
--

The Pax Istaria festival had not really been what she had expected. Despite it being the very first such celebration she'd ever been to, even she could tell that it had been pretty hastily thrown together. The commissioner and his wife hadn't even made it a secret, asking her to run errands for them that really seemed like they should have been handled by.. someone that wasn't a completely random passerby. But they had given her pretty masks and a pattern for making a beautiful mural, so she was okay with it.

She was less okay with the naka, Ted, asking her for fish sliced to the standards of naka cooks. And not even once, but twice. She'd managed to get ahold of the bluegill, but the bass still escaped her.

Her favorite thing by far though had to have been the hedge maze. Her father would have scoffed at the way she followed the nakas' rules rather than climbing over the hedges or, more likely considering her father, burning a path through them. But she didn't really care. He wasn't around to judge her, and it was.. fun. Fun was not something to which she was terribly accustomed.

The prize tickets were almost a secondary reward. Almost. Kaelara was reluctant to spend them on the raffle. They had potential for worth, much like coins, and to hand them over to random chance just felt wrong.

She'd made herself do it though, and, after she got over the agonizing feeling of coin (equivalents) spent, decided the prizes had been worth it. She'd won several expensive-looking luxury items - a crown, even - as well as some valuable creature parts.

There had been some little bags of coins as well, but they almost seemed like booby prizes compared to the other things. They hardly contained a hundred copper each; Kaelara probably made more than that selling a broken grulet bone to that strange merchant near the vaultkeeper.

She sat now in New Trismus again, wearing one of the masks from the festival. It was blue and purple, just like her. She wondered if it was at all hard for passersby to see that she had it on. She would look up whenever someone went by, trying to see if she could tell.. whenever they actually looked at her, that is. She was tucked into an alleyway and had this habit of blending in with the background, it seemed. Not that she really minded.

She looked down at the treant roots she had set before her that she would study in-between people-watching. She had the roots of an oak and an enraged yew, and she had been trying to figure out what the difference was, besides appearance. As far as she had been told, they were used in vastly different enchantments, but she could not for the life of her figure out why that would be. They just looked like tree bits to her.

Something made her mind wander to the fact that some adventurer had had to bring down the huge tree-beasts in order for her to have these, and she frowned. That's right.. she still had to fight those skeletons.

She resolved to do it tomorrow. Only time would tell if "tomorrow" would actually translate to a number of days from now.

((Gah - it's been a month already? D: For whatever reason, I'm not terribly happy with this bit. I'm not sure what exactly there is to fix though, and I've been sitting on it too long already. So here it is!))

[LOVWYRM]

*A wave of protective instincts and motherly feelings make Lov stop gathering Tibur and look around. Whose thoughts she just picked up like a dream you do not remember?
Long lost feelings, since she forbid herself to care for each hatchling that cheeped or crawled under her wings.
Blue and purple?? Though she avoids to go to NT if possible..
She leaves her Disc on the ground and recalls.
A glimpse down from a roof..will harm nobody..*