Seaside 3: A load of carp

[UncleWolf]

Near a Waterfall

Sorrow simply shrugs and tosses the plush with the rest of her gear, making it go off again in the process of doing so before turning just in time for Faithel to open the envelope. As soon as the wax is cracked, an icy northern gale blows through for a few heartbeats, making even the heat-laden Sorrow wince thanks to her naked state. "Not. Again." She mutters between clenched teeth as she awaits for her fiery aura to warm back up. The icy wind leaves quickly melting frost in its wake on the tropical plants as well.

Within, Faithel will find a folded sheet of paper, old and hardened by time. When that in turn is reopened, she'll find the entire page is filled with a shifting scrawl in a language she won't recognize. She might miss it this time around, but if she chooses to stare at it for a while, the first few letters will begin to form into whatever language she can read.

[Deathkeeper]

Weedy Shore

A soggy stretch of shore extends into the horizon, caught between much nicer beaches to one side and more unpleasant, marshy areas to the other. There's more dune grass than sand and more sand than rock, but more seaweed than anything else. The sky's grey and has unmistakable thunderclouds, though there has yet to be a drop of rain or a rumble of thunder. Yet.

And through this place canters a young centaur just into her prime, with raven-black hair and snow-white flank. She's wearing some fall clothes, a bit heavier than the light shirts and such she prefers, but still not quite as warm as one might expect in this weather. Her horse half is slung with a minimal-sized bag, and she does her best to cut through this place as fast as possible. She'd been promised to meet with someone out on the far shore, but had been stood up, it seems. Or he got eaten by raptors on the road. Whatever. Either way, the important thing is trying to get home before she gets drenched. It'll teach her to not pack an umbrella.
[closed scene]

[Slii Arhem]

Weedy Shore

A soggy stretch of shore extends into the horizon, caught between much nicer beaches to one side and more unpleasant, marshy areas to the other. There's more dune grass than sand and more sand than rock, but more seaweed than anything else. The sky's grey and has unmistakable thunderclouds, though there has yet to be a drop of rain or a rumble of thunder. Yet.

And through this place canters a young centaur just into her prime, with raven-black hair and snow-white flank. She's wearing some fall clothes, a bit heavier than the light shirts and such she prefers, but still not quite as warm as one might expect in this weather. Her horse half is slung with a minimal-sized bag, and she does her best to cut through this place as fast as possible. She'd been promised to meet with someone out on the far shore, but had been stood up, it seems. Or he got eaten by raptors on the road. Whatever. Either way, the important thing is trying to get home before she gets drenched. It'll teach her to not pack an umbrella.
[closed scene]

Weedy Shore

Well at least Willa doesn't have any bigger problems than being stood up for a date. Like being shivved in the ribs and left to die! After all, on such a cold, wet, miserable, possibly life-threateningly thunderous day like today, the only thing that could make it worse would be to be left alone without comfort or care, slowly bleeding out your last under a slate grey sky.

A small, unsubtle cough heralds a slightly louder groan of pain, nearly drowned out by the churning of the waves against the shores. It sounds like it came from up ahead, perhaps in the shelter of a few of those boulders that begin the breakwater down the shore a ways.

[Deathkeeper]

Weedy Shore

Willa turns in the direction of the cough, and trots over, looking for its source. Has someone washed ashore?
"Hello? Is someone there?" she calls.

[Slii Arhem]

Weedy Shore

Willa turns in the direction of the cough, and trots over, looking for its source. Has someone washed ashore?
"Hello? Is someone there?" she calls.

Weedy Shore

"Don't mind me." The voice is thin and reedy, a deep rattle marring its light and airy tone, "It's my turn, now, everyone." Though she tries to sound resigned, whoever is speaking can't keep the creeping, wavering notes of fear from her voice.

[Deathkeeper]

Weedy Shore

Willa, upon hearing the voice a second time, gets a better idea of where the source of the voice is and trots over to the rocks. She can't tell if the voice is actually talking to someone or being dramatic.
"Another day to regret not taking Libra's healing power." she mutters, worried. Though obviously she'd never really mean that, being quite happy with being part horse over a person in a cow suit.

[Slii Arhem]

Weedy Shore

Willa, upon hearing the voice a second time, gets a better idea of where the source of the voice is and trots over to the rocks. She can't tell if the voice is actually talking to someone or being dramatic.
"Another day to regret not taking Libra's healing power." she mutters, worried. Though obviously she'd never really mean that, being quite happy with being part horse over a person in a cow suit.

Weedy Shore

Behind the breakers, Willa finds a rather comely young woman wearing naught but a slip that's been torn on the rocks and thoroughly soaked. She's wrapped and covered in seaweed that's washed up over her, too wounded to even shift the damp mass, and through it Willa can see bright yellow sailing cord bound around both of her legs, looped there deliberately and wedged beneath the rocks.

Her face is pallor, tinged a sickly green, but the rest of her flesh is obscured by the caked blood stemming from a stab wound to her chest and the muck that the sea has washed over her. By the wheeze and painful hitch to her breath, it doesn't take a doctor to tell that one of her lungs has been nicked at the very least.

"Have you come to watch me die, then?" She looks up through sodden bangs, a last defiant glint in her eye.

[Deathkeeper]

Weedy Shore

Willa's eyes widen, and she goes over to the girl as best she can, though the rocks aren't good footing for hooves. She bites her lower lip as she looks the girl over, trying to think of what to do.
"Were you attacked by pirates? I'm uh, not a doctor but I can try to stop the bleeding..." she says, bending over to examine the wound, although the stranger will have to allow the centaurette to wipe away some of the muck and look at the wound itself. The rope is worrying but she only has two hands and the bleeding is a more pressing concern.

[Slii Arhem]

Weedy Shore

Willa's eyes widen, and she goes over to the girl as best she can, though the rocks aren't good footing for hooves. She bites her lower lip as she looks the girl over, trying to think of what to do.
"Were you attacked by pirates? I'm uh, not a doctor but I can try to stop the bleeding..." she says, bending over to examine the wound, although the stranger will have to allow the centaurette to wipe away some of the muck and look at the wound itself. The rope is worrying but she only has two hands and the bleeding is a more pressing concern.

Weedy Shore

"The blood stopped as the flesh died. Deep iron... I would give every second I have left to know how they found some, or how they afforded it on a sailor's wage." The wound is fetid and decayed, greenish, scabbed over flesh fading into necrotic black at the edges of the cut. Every breath rips it open microscopically wider, and before Willa's eyes the skin crumbles into a fine, ashen dust that falls into the wound.

[Deathkeeper]

Weedy Shore

Willa's eyes mimic their surprise earlier, and she busies herself by trying to untie and pull off the ropes around the girl's legs to avoid gagging, or worse.
"Deep iron did this? Are you some kind of demon?" she asks, though perhaps surprisingly does not stop her work. The question doesn't seem to have any indication of judgement, though perhaps there is a hint of surprise that this person isn't a normal human.

[Slii Arhem]

Weedy Shore

An abortive bark of laughter turns into a long, pained wheeze that lays the girl out flat while she regains her breath enough to speak. "I'm sure to them it seemed that way." That implies that Willa was wrong, but if deep iron was doing this much damage, she can't have been too far off the mark.

[Deathkeeper]

Weedy Shore

"So...you did something to scare them? Enough to want you dead?" asks the centaurette as she pulls off the last of the rope. Some sort of fey, maybe? Demons and angels and fey are the only real categories she knows of. Walter never really had a good magical education. And he stopped researching after the Man incident.
"I'm sorry, I don't think I can do anything." Nothing short of trying to summon an Aspect that could heal her but there's no way that would go well and the lady, whatever she is, doesn't have that kind of time.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" she asks, leaving out the implied, "in your final moments."

[Slii Arhem]

Weedy Shore

The girl doesn't elaborate further, just letting Willa think whatever she may. No telling how she would feel about the truth. Besides, "They left me out here to die by inches. After three days, it's only now speeding up enough to finish me off." That much is true. With every passing moment, the decay is spreading faster as the wound finds more surface to gain its deadly purchase on.

"But as it grows closer... I find I don't want to die. Please... help me?" A weak and trembling arm reaches up to run clammy fingers along Willa's flank.

[Deathkeeper]

Weedy Shore

Willa surpresses a shudder at the clammy touch and bows her head in pity.
"What do you need me to do?" she asks.

[Slii Arhem]

Weedy Shore

Willa surpresses a shudder at the clammy touch and bows her head in pity.
"What do you need me to do?" she asks.

Weedy Shore

"B-bleed into the wound, and kiss me. I will not survive the hour, but your blood will transpose my own, and give me some time and some strength. A kiss... to see me off of this mortal coil." Her hand retreats from Willa's flank, brushing her bangs away from her face. "I am Ashalene, and I would like to be remembered when I am gone."

[Deathkeeper]

Weedy Shore

Just for a second, Willa rolls her eyes. Of course this couldn't have happened to the twin who's actually into girls. But she can't go disrespecting someone's last wishes just on account for that, so she reaches down and picks up a sharp-looking seashell fragment.
"So you swing that way, huh? I guess I can oblige you, Ashalene." she says, pricking a finger after some effort and letting three drops of blood drip into the black wound. Willa looks away as she does this because the aforementioned wound is pretty disgusting.
"If that gave you some time, I guess the kiss can wait, but if you really want it now..." she says, going down onto her front knees so she doesn't have to bend so far down for her lips to reach the dying woman's. Just a quick touch, she wouldn't want this to get weird.

[Slii Arhem]

Weedy Shore

((With Godmod Permission))

The moment their lips touch, Willa can feel something pass from the girl into her own lungs. A last breath, perhaps, if one was feeling poetic.

But then the air in the centaur's lungs feels thick, weighty and sluggish. Almost like a brick sitting heavily on her chest. As breathing gets more difficult and her vision starts to swim, the last thing Willa sees is a gentle smile, and a hand reaching up to cup her cheek before she fades out of consciousness.

Sometime Later - High Tide

Willa can feel the cool ocean waters lapping at her feet, rousing her from a deep, fuzzy slumber.

[Deathkeeper]

High Tide

With a groan, Willa opens her eyes. For a few moments she merely takes in the sight of the sky, which is no longer threatening to pour, though it's gotten much darker. Then a number of things register, such as being on her back but not feeling the usual thousand pounds of equine on the ground, and having a sensation strongly resembling water touching her toes, which she hasn't experienced in well, over a year. She sits up, looking at, well, everything. What's wrong with her? What happened to the lady, is she in the same place?

[Slii Arhem]

High Tide

The dying girl is nowhere to be found. Or, more precisely, Willa is nowhere to be found. Where she was kneeling, her clothes and bag lie discarded in the rising surf, floating on the tide as the waves roll in and dragging on the sand when they recede.

But even more than that is off, as she can immediately feel the changes to her body even beyond the change from four legs to two. She's a bit less top-heavy, sitting upright like this, and her hair feels longer, her skin smoother. Her sense of balance is just slightly off, and she feels dry even in the damp, misty air of the evening.

And still worse is a change she can't begin to describe for its newness. Despite seeming fully human on the surface, she still feels as much like a horse as she does a biped. Somewhere deep within her, that imposed equine heritage still stirs, beating its hooves and pacing through her chest. She feels like... she could just let it out of its paddock to roam free the hills and valleys, just as easily as she could reign it back in.

[Deathkeeper]

High Tide

Willa snatches up the bag and the shirt, dropping them onto a higher rock to safety. She looks down at the ruined slip on her body.
"Oh, no. No, no no no no..." Well, she doesn't appear to be dying from a disintegrating injury, so that's nice. She pulls off the ruined cloth, uncaring at her nudity. This is not her chest, nor her legs. She wants her legs back. She wants her torso and face and all that back too, but she's not going back to stupid human feet after working so hard and making so many deals to make her hooves work out. She cries out in anger, letting whatever this strange, equine feeling is do its thing.

[Slii Arhem]

High Tide

The bag feels so much heavier now, but it's dragged upshore along with her clothes. And then Willa lets her horse side free, and...

The equine standing high on the beach is nothing short of magnificent. Even sodden with salt water around her hocks, Willa's coat shines and ripples in the failing rays of dusk. Her coat is a brilliant white, shimmering faintly green as the light bouncing off the horizon catches it, and her mane flows freely down one side of her neck in rivers of pure, lustrous gold. This is more of a horse than she's ever been before, and less of a human than she usually is, but she's getting the hang of this.

Probably.

[Deathkeeper]

High Tide

Willa lets out a cry that vastly quickens the process of figuring out what she's done to herself. Well, it's not a very different noise than what she could normally produce, but the feeling of one set of lungs working with that sort of thing is, telling. Her energy is boundless, and she does have to make a pair of laps around the rock just to work off her energy, but this is good. Yes. Good. Things can change. She just needs to reign back herself a bit.
She reminds herself to make sure Walter never knows she even thought that pun.
Come on, Willa. Hooves, hands, chest, face. You know what you look like. You just have to balance your feelings a bit, and do what you just did but with a better balance on things. No problem at all. Nothing at all.

[Slii Arhem]

High Tide

Hooves, hands, face, chest? Nothing comes of thinking those thoughts. But, with the horse out of the paddock and the human in the house... It isn't a stretch at all to imagine one riding the other, and letting both halves out free in the world working as one. For a kelpie, such thoughts would be next to impossible. But for a more civilized sort such as Willa, justifying her own mental self-image takes the work of moments.

With a shudder that makes her bones creak, her body shapes itself how her soul remembers being, with a few minor differences. She retains a single, dark green lock of hair among her bangs, as well as several less noticeable patches throughout its strands. And, though she's unlikely to notice this in the turbulent surf, she's more classically pretty than she used to be, with refined, flawless features that are impossible to hide no matter how much she focuses on how she used to be.

In short, she looks like herself, but a more perfected and greener version of herself.

[Deathkeeper]

High Tide

Willa sighs with relief, some semblance of balance restored, and she pulls on the clothes that she'd left behind. For now, get home before it's totally dark. And then take a bath. Yes, a bath sounds nice. Get all this salt out of her coat.

In a few hours, nothing but hoofprints will remain at the beach of what transpired here, and by morning, the wind and surf will wipe out even them.

[Murkus]

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were her to serve drinks."
Anchor leans in, actual elbows propped on the bar, and-turns to look up and over at the sky.
"Do you think it's goin' to rain today?"

"Smart. That you know better an' all," the 'keep says, grinning. "And no. Not a chance."

[Beach Party!]

"Rein?! Rei- gah!" Zhareen attempts grapple the crab with her both hands as she feels it pinching her. "Stop that, Mr. Crab! I wasn't going to hurt you!"

Zhareen certainly grapples a crab, but the hundred or so others aren't having any of it! They attempt to surge up beneath her like a living mudslide and carry the serpentine merperson bodily in the direction of the crab demon!

[Recaiden]

"Yeah, it's-"
At this point Anchor's shadow comes back and she breaks off to look at it quizzically.

"I guess my friends, I mean, those people, who -anyway, I oughtta catch up with them. Give me a call next time the beach is nearby."
She tries to hurry after Zhareen in the direction of smoke and crab-clicking sounds, but almost immediately trips over her own moderate drunkenness and falls.

[Shadowcaller]

Near a Waterfall

Sorrow simply shrugs and tosses the plush with the rest of her gear, making it go off again in the process of doing so before turning just in time for Faithel to open the envelope. As soon as the wax is cracked, an icy northern gale blows through for a few heartbeats, making even the heat-laden Sorrow wince thanks to her naked state. "Not. Again." She mutters between clenched teeth as she awaits for her fiery aura to warm back up. The icy wind leaves quickly melting frost in its wake on the tropical plants as well.

Within, Faithel will find a folded sheet of paper, old and hardened by time. When that in turn is reopened, she'll find the entire page is filled with a shifting scrawl in a language she won't recognize. She might miss it this time around, but if she chooses to stare at it for a while, the first few letters will begin to form into whatever language she can read.

Near a Waterfall

Oh no, text! Her mortal enemy!

...

Not sure what Faithel really expected there honestly, but reading was not her strong suit while she was drunk. She blinks a few times as she sees the letters start to adjust themselves before her eyes, suddenly feeling the need to sit down. She doesn't even seem to notice the sudden drop in temperatures. "Whoa, I'm even more out of it than I thought. I think this letter is trying to speak to me."

[Beach Party!]

That's a lot of crabs!

Zhareen presses the poor crab against the chest like a teddy bear as the tidal wave of crabs carry her fourth. "H-hey! Where are you going?!" She demands. She was on the verge of calling one of her guides, but how could she possibly hurt such adorable creatures?

[Murkus]

[Beach Party!]

"Okay, dude! Later days!" The tender wags a tentacle at Anchor, just grinning his foolish head off.


Meanwhile, the single captured crab struggles in vain against Zhareen's grip! This is humiliating! It pinches just about anywhere it can reach.

The remainder of the horde, meanwhile, carry Zhareen up to the foot of their slimy-looking demon master. The floppy-looking thing wiggles discordantly at the mermaid, appraising her with eyes on long and swaying stalks.

"Who is this that pulled me from my grainy tomb?" Asks the belligerent demon.

[Recaiden]

Anchor just flops on the ground for a couple of seconds. Ugh. This hasn't gone...some particular way.

Better get up though. And proceed slowly and cautiously towards Zhareen and the smoke-crabs.

[Shadowcaller]

[Beach Party!]

Zhareen is more concerned with the demon than the crab right now, yet when it pinches her she just smiles. "Aww..." That was how crabs showed affection, it meant it liked her!

But there was more pressing concerns, like that demon! "Oh king of crabs, you have been released from your prison. Aren't you grateful at your freedom? We have set you free." She pleas.