07-21-2013, 02:06 PM
[THIS COMES AFTER CELDUIN'S STUFF]
Boy, isn't Erich-wolf just the initiative-taker today. During the first lull, after the Galliards with the best stories they were just bursting to tell have taken their turn, the not-very-shadow-lord-y Shadow Lord gets up and trots into the middle of the circle. His paws send up little puffs of dust from the parched earth. His tail is carried high but straight, purposeful. He sniffs around for a bone for some time before remembering --
oh. There's no bone in this part.
So then he flows upward from his four-legged form. He stands before them in bare feet, in old jeans, in a t-shirt advertising something called THROWED ROLLS, and he tucks his hands into his pockets. Looks relaxed-but-nervous, if such a thing is possible: his stance loose, but tension knotting across those sizeable Ahroun's shoulders.
"I'm not a Galliard," he says, almost like a caveat. "But I wanted to tell a story about some stuff that happened to me and my friends before we came to Denver." He glances at whoever the eldest Galliard is, almost for permission. And then back to the audience:
"So we were down in Baja..."
And so he tells them. About being down at the very tip of the Baja peninsula. About living on the beach in that funny little tinyhouse of his, that some of the gathered might have seen hitched behind his truck. About the little stormbeaten, sunworn shanty that sat at the end of the little stormbeaten, sunworn pier, against which only tiny little fishing-boats were ever moored. About the old man and his wife that owned that shanty. That grilled up fish and shrimp and chicken and beef by the bucket, and sold cervezas and orange sodas in glass bottles with names Erich and Charlotte couldn't understand, and rented surfboards out to them and taught them to surf, and kept his little shanty-shop open deep into every night so villagers from inland could drift out and have a beer, have a barbecue, cue up a song or two on the creaky old jukebox, laugh and talk and dance.
And -- about those men. The guys that would come out from godknowswhere every so often, stinking of bad things and bad thoughts, who'd take up half the tables at the shanty-shop, who'd scare all the villagers into quiescence and bully the boys and leer at the girls. Charlotte hated them. Erich
waited for them to make a move.
--
"So then one night," he says, "they're there again. And me and Charlotte just came in from an afternoon of riding the waves, and we're having dinner out in front of our tinyhouse, watching the last light go out of the west. Suddenly we see one of them like... out in the dunes? Just watching us with binoculars. And I'm like whatthefuck and Charlotte's like EW and so I go inside and grab my hammer and I throw it at him! But it kinda just clunks off the side of his head. And then they're like 'derp, did they see us? DERP.' And we're like, YEAH WE SAW YOU. ASSHOLES. NOW WE'RE GONNA KILL YOU.
"And then we charge them. Or... I charge them. And my sister Charlotte -- you guys see her right? She's over there, she's the skinny one that's turning all red and -- stop trying to hide, Charlotte! -- yeah, her. She PULLS OUT HER SLINGSHOT. And fires this little pebble at them and they're like LOL? and then her pebble goes KABOOM. Because it explodes. She thought of that herself. I bet you even some of the Elder Theurges in this Sept never thought of exploding pebbles and slingshots. Oh, you guys have? Bullshit, then why haven't I ever seen you -- okay, you know what, we can argue about that later.
"Back to my story. Now those guys are half-charbroiled, one of them is running around screaming 'cause he's on fire, and the rest are really mad. There's like four of them and they have guns and stuff, and they weren't right, some of them had flesh feeling off or slimy poisonous skin or ... I don't even remember. They were messed up.
"And Charlotte is -- okay, honestly, I lost track of what Charlotte was doing, because I was kinda busy biting them to small bloody pieces. And right after I tear one open, and I mean I tore him open, there were guts everywhere, and you know how that stinks -- I'm wheeling around to take on the one at my back, and all of a sudden!
"There's just this -- shiny thing popping out of his chest. It's a sword. There's blood kinda oozing down the blade, and he's making this gurgling noise, and then Ingrid -- can you guys see Ingrid? That's her, she's near Charlotte. No, not that one. Look harder. She's a Ragabash, you have to look really hard. No, guys, look where I'm pointing. Her. Yes.
"So it's Ingrid. And she pulls that sword out, kicks the guy over, he's just dead, and I'm like who the hell is that because I can barely see her and plus -- last I heard she was back in New York City, I didn't really expect her to show up in the middle of a fight in Baja. But between the three of us, we pretty much just clean up shop. I got the second-to-last one. Tore his arm off and he bled to death. Ingrid got the last one. I snapped at him and he turned around to run and Ingrid was just waiting for him and --
"Fwp!" Erich slashes a finger across his throat. "Decapitated. It was badass."
A pause. He blinks.
"And uh. Then we came here. That's my story."
Boy, isn't Erich-wolf just the initiative-taker today. During the first lull, after the Galliards with the best stories they were just bursting to tell have taken their turn, the not-very-shadow-lord-y Shadow Lord gets up and trots into the middle of the circle. His paws send up little puffs of dust from the parched earth. His tail is carried high but straight, purposeful. He sniffs around for a bone for some time before remembering --
oh. There's no bone in this part.
So then he flows upward from his four-legged form. He stands before them in bare feet, in old jeans, in a t-shirt advertising something called THROWED ROLLS, and he tucks his hands into his pockets. Looks relaxed-but-nervous, if such a thing is possible: his stance loose, but tension knotting across those sizeable Ahroun's shoulders.
"I'm not a Galliard," he says, almost like a caveat. "But I wanted to tell a story about some stuff that happened to me and my friends before we came to Denver." He glances at whoever the eldest Galliard is, almost for permission. And then back to the audience:
"So we were down in Baja..."
And so he tells them. About being down at the very tip of the Baja peninsula. About living on the beach in that funny little tinyhouse of his, that some of the gathered might have seen hitched behind his truck. About the little stormbeaten, sunworn shanty that sat at the end of the little stormbeaten, sunworn pier, against which only tiny little fishing-boats were ever moored. About the old man and his wife that owned that shanty. That grilled up fish and shrimp and chicken and beef by the bucket, and sold cervezas and orange sodas in glass bottles with names Erich and Charlotte couldn't understand, and rented surfboards out to them and taught them to surf, and kept his little shanty-shop open deep into every night so villagers from inland could drift out and have a beer, have a barbecue, cue up a song or two on the creaky old jukebox, laugh and talk and dance.
And -- about those men. The guys that would come out from godknowswhere every so often, stinking of bad things and bad thoughts, who'd take up half the tables at the shanty-shop, who'd scare all the villagers into quiescence and bully the boys and leer at the girls. Charlotte hated them. Erich
waited for them to make a move.
--
"So then one night," he says, "they're there again. And me and Charlotte just came in from an afternoon of riding the waves, and we're having dinner out in front of our tinyhouse, watching the last light go out of the west. Suddenly we see one of them like... out in the dunes? Just watching us with binoculars. And I'm like whatthefuck and Charlotte's like EW and so I go inside and grab my hammer and I throw it at him! But it kinda just clunks off the side of his head. And then they're like 'derp, did they see us? DERP.' And we're like, YEAH WE SAW YOU. ASSHOLES. NOW WE'RE GONNA KILL YOU.
"And then we charge them. Or... I charge them. And my sister Charlotte -- you guys see her right? She's over there, she's the skinny one that's turning all red and -- stop trying to hide, Charlotte! -- yeah, her. She PULLS OUT HER SLINGSHOT. And fires this little pebble at them and they're like LOL? and then her pebble goes KABOOM. Because it explodes. She thought of that herself. I bet you even some of the Elder Theurges in this Sept never thought of exploding pebbles and slingshots. Oh, you guys have? Bullshit, then why haven't I ever seen you -- okay, you know what, we can argue about that later.
"Back to my story. Now those guys are half-charbroiled, one of them is running around screaming 'cause he's on fire, and the rest are really mad. There's like four of them and they have guns and stuff, and they weren't right, some of them had flesh feeling off or slimy poisonous skin or ... I don't even remember. They were messed up.
"And Charlotte is -- okay, honestly, I lost track of what Charlotte was doing, because I was kinda busy biting them to small bloody pieces. And right after I tear one open, and I mean I tore him open, there were guts everywhere, and you know how that stinks -- I'm wheeling around to take on the one at my back, and all of a sudden!
"There's just this -- shiny thing popping out of his chest. It's a sword. There's blood kinda oozing down the blade, and he's making this gurgling noise, and then Ingrid -- can you guys see Ingrid? That's her, she's near Charlotte. No, not that one. Look harder. She's a Ragabash, you have to look really hard. No, guys, look where I'm pointing. Her. Yes.
"So it's Ingrid. And she pulls that sword out, kicks the guy over, he's just dead, and I'm like who the hell is that because I can barely see her and plus -- last I heard she was back in New York City, I didn't really expect her to show up in the middle of a fight in Baja. But between the three of us, we pretty much just clean up shop. I got the second-to-last one. Tore his arm off and he bled to death. Ingrid got the last one. I snapped at him and he turned around to run and Ingrid was just waiting for him and --
"Fwp!" Erich slashes a finger across his throat. "Decapitated. It was badass."
A pause. He blinks.
"And uh. Then we came here. That's my story."
BECAUSE OF LIGHT AND DUTY AND REASONS.