Eternity RPC Board
09-13-2016, 11:49 PM
“You’re pretty cryptic, whatever you are, you know?” Elke scoffed, too amused by the little silvan beast to be perturbed by a lack of a direct response. Cloyingly sweet plum juice seemed to now be matting the fur around its tiny forepaws and down its heaving little chest, and a clump of fruit pulp seemed to be clinging on to its whiskers, trembling ever so slightly as the tiny thing spoke. Realizing all at once that the entire scene was just plain cute, the mage-in-training quickly quelled the intensifying urge to poke a finger into the creature’s soft belly to feel that adorable little roll of warm pudge, desires of a teenaged girl’s pure curious bliss.
“But you’re right,” she added, shooing away her own silly thoughts. “Well, kind of rude, though; backwoods has some…” pausing to think for the right word, Elke went with, “negative implications. At least where I’m from.” Perhaps things were different here. Indeed, the way the forest all around them here seemed to be lazily dominating the tiny town, the way the people here labored purely under its yawning mercy, the way buildings of solid stone and forged iron crumbled like sandcastles when besieged by wispy taproots - maybe being backwoods was an appraisal of the luckiness of one’s circumstances here. Perhaps being backwoods meant one’s life had not yet fallen to the crafty green dragon whose leafy scales and thousand bark-armored legs gave it the most innocuous of appearances, allowing it to lumber into town under the guise of being a provider: shade-giver, fruit-bearer, wood-donor.
A whole army of treefolk, I bet! In her mind, the monsters in their perfect camouflage advance not even a quarter of a pace every day, slowly creeping in. A painfully slow shuffle followed by several hours’ repose, as if the effort was strenuous. A bustle so slow, so slight that the villagers either don’t notice or are able to put off the inevitable takeover in their minds. In another year or two, this whole village will probably be trampled by them and they won’t even know what hit them.
But then again, who was to say that this wasn’t the back of the woods? Perhaps the forest dragon-army-monster moved backwards, and not forwards. Maybe on the other side of this sprawl, the living forest was receding, leaving meadows, clearings and bogs in its wake. Maybe its gaping maw, disguised as an opening between two clusters of trees, spewed flowers and grasses over the decimated bits of civilization and infrastructure it crushed, returning the land to its former state.
Backwoods, then, suggested a blindness to one’s coming troubles. Or at least proposed that a person was too pigheaded to accept their inevitable vanquish.
Regardless of the directionality of the forest, backwoods was almost certainly an insult, though just a mild one.
Bringing herself back into the present moment - squirrel on finger, taunting suggestion up in the air - she focused her attention back on the quadruped.
“Anyway, you know Ne-- ah, this mage? You’ve heard of her? Can you take me to her?” Giddy grin growing wide across her face and feet nearly dancing in place with anticipation, Elke felt positive that she was on the verge of breakthrough. All her hard work - the vast expanse of land she’d put between home and here, the blistered feet, the wading through frog-infested swamps, the sleeping on prickly briars and getting bitten by a menagerie of insects - was all about to become worth it. But cautious to work with something that was beginning to feel much like the djinn folk she’d heard of - a race of wish-granters from a distal lakeland with a penchant for taking things far too literally - she felt the need to continue clarifying. “Will you lead me to her?”
And of course, as she’d already experienced in a quaint little haberdashery today, a little buttering-up never hurt.
“If you can lead me to her today, Little Red…” The girl crouched carefully, taking the picked-clean pit and setting the squirrel on the wood floor, then crossed her arms thoughtfully around her knees.
I definitely have to put this little guy in my journal. Look at those cute little feet!
“If you can take me to her, I promise I’ll leave you a much better treat than a half-eaten plum before my time in this village is over: the best pastry in this whole village, the juiciest berries, enough nuts to last you through hibernation - whatever you want!”
The logistics of obtaining such goods on her austere budget were of no concern in the face of such possibilities.
“How about it?”
“But you’re right,” she added, shooing away her own silly thoughts. “Well, kind of rude, though; backwoods has some…” pausing to think for the right word, Elke went with, “negative implications. At least where I’m from.” Perhaps things were different here. Indeed, the way the forest all around them here seemed to be lazily dominating the tiny town, the way the people here labored purely under its yawning mercy, the way buildings of solid stone and forged iron crumbled like sandcastles when besieged by wispy taproots - maybe being backwoods was an appraisal of the luckiness of one’s circumstances here. Perhaps being backwoods meant one’s life had not yet fallen to the crafty green dragon whose leafy scales and thousand bark-armored legs gave it the most innocuous of appearances, allowing it to lumber into town under the guise of being a provider: shade-giver, fruit-bearer, wood-donor.
A whole army of treefolk, I bet! In her mind, the monsters in their perfect camouflage advance not even a quarter of a pace every day, slowly creeping in. A painfully slow shuffle followed by several hours’ repose, as if the effort was strenuous. A bustle so slow, so slight that the villagers either don’t notice or are able to put off the inevitable takeover in their minds. In another year or two, this whole village will probably be trampled by them and they won’t even know what hit them.
But then again, who was to say that this wasn’t the back of the woods? Perhaps the forest dragon-army-monster moved backwards, and not forwards. Maybe on the other side of this sprawl, the living forest was receding, leaving meadows, clearings and bogs in its wake. Maybe its gaping maw, disguised as an opening between two clusters of trees, spewed flowers and grasses over the decimated bits of civilization and infrastructure it crushed, returning the land to its former state.
Backwoods, then, suggested a blindness to one’s coming troubles. Or at least proposed that a person was too pigheaded to accept their inevitable vanquish.
Regardless of the directionality of the forest, backwoods was almost certainly an insult, though just a mild one.
Bringing herself back into the present moment - squirrel on finger, taunting suggestion up in the air - she focused her attention back on the quadruped.
“Anyway, you know Ne-- ah, this mage? You’ve heard of her? Can you take me to her?” Giddy grin growing wide across her face and feet nearly dancing in place with anticipation, Elke felt positive that she was on the verge of breakthrough. All her hard work - the vast expanse of land she’d put between home and here, the blistered feet, the wading through frog-infested swamps, the sleeping on prickly briars and getting bitten by a menagerie of insects - was all about to become worth it. But cautious to work with something that was beginning to feel much like the djinn folk she’d heard of - a race of wish-granters from a distal lakeland with a penchant for taking things far too literally - she felt the need to continue clarifying. “Will you lead me to her?”
And of course, as she’d already experienced in a quaint little haberdashery today, a little buttering-up never hurt.
“If you can lead me to her today, Little Red…” The girl crouched carefully, taking the picked-clean pit and setting the squirrel on the wood floor, then crossed her arms thoughtfully around her knees.
I definitely have to put this little guy in my journal. Look at those cute little feet!
“If you can take me to her, I promise I’ll leave you a much better treat than a half-eaten plum before my time in this village is over: the best pastry in this whole village, the juiciest berries, enough nuts to last you through hibernation - whatever you want!”
The logistics of obtaining such goods on her austere budget were of no concern in the face of such possibilities.
“How about it?”