[Flashback: Solo] A Life Owed

In which Caoin finally bonds with her strider.

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The Wilderness of Cyphrus is an endless sea of tall grass that rolls just like the oceans themselves. Geysers kiss the sky with their steamy breath, and mysterious craters create microworlds all their own. But above all danger lives here in the tall grass in the form of fierce wild creatures; elegant serpents that swim through the land like whales through the ocean and fierce packs of glassbeaks that hunt in packs which are only kept at bay by fires. Traverse it carefully, with a guide if possible, for those that venture alone endanger themselves in countless ways.

[Flashback: Solo] A Life Owed

Postby Caoin on November 2nd, 2011, 9:31 pm

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Date: Spring, Day 50, 507 AV

It was not because she had decided to take some early morning stroll that Caoin found herself wandering through the Sea of Grass. In the dark hours of the morning, with the dew still fresh on the grass, something had spooked her family’s herd and they had lost one of their best striders. The prized stallion had broken free of his confinement by jumping a fence, and he had taken off into the grasslands before any of the hands could calm or catch him. They were lucky enough that he was the only one who managed to get free, but not so lucky in that the family now had to venture out to retrieve him. He was too valuable and loved an animal to risk letting him remain loose. So the order had been given that anyone in the family that was gifted or knowledgeable in the arts of webbing or tracking was to help with the search, while everyone else was to tend to the rest of the herd and ensure that they were alright and taken care of.

There were not many in the family that could be spared for the search, and so, after much argument and persuasion, Caoin had finally convinced her father to allow her to search on her own, rather than being paired up with someone. This way they could cover more ground. She was almost twenty and she hated that, as the Ankal’s youngest child and only daughter, the family continued to baby her, but she was glad when he finally relented, with his one stipulation being that she take a few of the family dogs with her for protection, and she had gladly agreed. The dogs would provide her with some company and a bit of protection, and in addition to that, the dog’s tracking ability combined with her use of webbing might offer her a better chance at finding the strider. Her father had given her two of the family’s akinvas and with the two deerstalkers in tow, Caoin had made her way to the family stables where the strider’s yvas was kept; she had offered the tack up to the hunting dogs for them to get the scent of the lost horse. After, she was sure the animals had the strider’s scent she had taken them to where it had last been seen. The plan was to follow the dogs until they lost the stallion’s scent and then she would have to rely on her webbing to find him. It was a plan that would save her from tiring herself out early on by using webbing though.

At least, that was the plan that had led her to the edge of the Sea of Grass, following behind the dogs, and then deeper still into the dangerous wilds. She was confident though. She had packed all that she would need to survive if she got a little lost herself, and she already had her bow out, with an arrow knocked and ready to fire should the dogs alert her to the presence of a predator. Not that her own senses weren’t focused on listening for or seeing movement in the brush, though she was hoping that if she came across anything, it would be the strider, rather than a predator… or worse, an entire pack of glassbeaks. The last thing Caoin needed when she was trying to prove herself was to be torn to shreds by glassbeaks.

Caoin shook her head, clearing her mind of such distracting thoughts as she followed the deerstalkers through the grass. Her attention turned to the dogs, their noses practically dragging along the ground as they huffed and sniffed. Occasionally, one of the dogs would swing his head upwards to sniff at the long blades of grass that made up the sea or to investigate some other scent that lingered on the air, and then he would drop his nose to the ground again. It was clear that the dogs were following the scent of the horse, and it was confirmed that they were on his trail when Caoin inspected the ground to find his hoof prints.

As the dogs led her to the top of a small incline while following the trail, Caoin called for them to halt in their tracking. She was just high enough that she could see out over the grass and she took the opportunity to look around. She knew that the members of her family who were searching were all spread out to her left and right, and she could see the grass moving where the closest members to either side of her were (at least, she hoped it was them). Ahead of her, there were no signs of movement that indicated the horse was nearby, and she knew that it was likely that he had gotten farther they anticipated. He was a strider who was frightened, not only was his adrenaline pushing him to run faster, but he had the additional boost to his speed that the web provided for his breed. The deerstalkers weren’t made to be tracking dogs, and eventually they would lose his scent. But for the time being, Caoin indicated to them to take the trail once again, and the trio were off down the other side of the incline.

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[Flashback: Solo] A Life Owed

Postby Caoin on November 3rd, 2011, 6:54 am

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The ground leveled out quickly and Caoin fell back into a regular pace behind the dogs. She watched them cross eachother’s tracks, weaving back and forth through the grass as they followed the trail that had been left by the strider. The more she looked, the more she could see the signs that a large animal had been through the area, besides the obvious hoof prints, there were broken blades of grass and branches, as well as trampled underbrush. While Caoin was looking for these signs, she failed to notice that the dogs had stopped and were circling a small area, and so she almost ran into them. The young Drykas woman managed to catch herself in time, and stooped to see what the dogs were circling and sniffing at. Her hand ran over the muddied, trampled ground between them, her fingers tracing the outlines of the tracks there. There were the hoof prints from the strider and the prints that the dogs were leaving, but there was also a larger set of canine prints mingled with them, definitely too big to have been left by the deerstalkers.

Caoin followed the line of the larger paw prints back to where they had come out of the grass and onto the narrow trail, and then her eyes moved along the ground in the direction they had gone. The very same direction that the strider had gone, and that she and the dogs were going. The girl frowned slightly. In all likelihood, the tracks had been left by the animal that had spooked the herd that morning, it had probably been tracking the horse, just as she and her people were doing, and it was ahead of them. “Definitely canine tracks,” she murmured to herself, “Only a few kinds of canines run wild here… no telling which one it could be, but the size of these prints… could be a wolf.” If it was a wolf, she found it curious to see that there was only one set of tracks. They were pack animals by nature, and she couldn’t help but wonder if there were other sets of tracks in the area that weren’t within sight. It was likely that the wolves had spread out as well if they were trying to circle the horse.

Rising to her feet, Caoin urged the dogs to move on, pulling out a piece of leather that had decorated the strider’s yvas and letting them get the scent again. She’d brought it specifically for this reason, in case the dogs got distracted by something else. With the dogs back on task and moving off through the grass, Caoin started moving again, but with far greater caution and attention to her surroundings. The dogs too seemed more tense and anxious since they had caught the scent of their wild cousins (whatever particular species those cousins may be). The Drykas woman increased her grip on her short bow, she didn’t want it slipping out of her hand. The hand that she had used to inspect the ground found its way back to the arrow that she had out and she pulled it back against the string so that the string slid into the notch at the end. All it would take was her drawing it back, aiming, and releasing if something did come out of the brush.

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[Flashback: Solo] A Life Owed

Postby Caoin on November 15th, 2011, 3:27 am

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Those with experience in Webbing had spoken with her father before leaving, they had all walked through the process of identifying the strider’s thread together, locating and memorizing it so that they could find and follow it through the Sea. Caoin found herself sitting on the ground in the center of a small clearing with three of her family members, including her brother Ruith, trying to concentrate on locating the strider’s thread. Ruith stood closest to his sister, his gaze traveling from her to the surrounding grass. Another member of the family was busy seeing to lunch for the small group. The last was patrolling the edge of the clearing with the two deerstalkers that Toiseach had sent with his daughter. With Syna high in the sky, they had gathered for a meal in order to maintain their strength, and allow Caoin a chance to check for the strider’s thread since she was the webber who had gathered with that particular search group. Venturing into the web was dangerous in the middle of the Sea, if you were alone. It took a good deal of concentration, which meant that one who was immersed in the web wasn’t paying enough attention to their surroundings.

Caoin sat cross-legged, her eyes intensely concentrated on something before her that the others could not see. Her hands reached out in front of her and to those around her, it appeared as if she were plucking and pulling at the air, but for her, she was plucking and pulling at the bright strands of the web, weaving her way through them to find the specific strand that she sought, the strand belonging to the dun strider that had fled that morning. It was him that she wanted to track, it was his condition that she wanted to know. It was his thread that she needed to find amongst the many tiny individual threads that made up the great Cyphrus web. Carefully she picked through them until her fingers brushed against one, a distinctly familiar one, the very one she had spent time studying that morning. It was the strider’s thread and with it she could read all of the information she needed, the direction he had gone, whether he was safe or not. The thread told her these things, told her that he remained uninjured, though he was growing tired. In the darkness that was lit by the threads, Caoin felt a sense of nostalgia as she began to float back towards the real world. That sense of nostalgia tugged at her lightly, like the spidery threads, holding her, not wanting to let her go. But she pushed herself back to the reality around her with a deep, gasping breath.

She felt Ruith’s hand on her shoulder and the lip of a waterskin pressed to her mouth, tilted so that the water slid into her throat, refreshing and reviving her, waking her fully from the deep concentration she had been in. “Thank you, brother,” she spoke after she had swallowed. “He’s alright, but growing tired. Perhaps he will rest long enough for us to catch up.”

“Not before you’ve eaten,” her brother began, “and rested for a moment. You know the web can be taxing.” While her brother also knew webbing, his skills were not comparable to her own, webbing was something that she had a natural affinity for. It was a source of annoyance for her father, since Ruith was the one who would need to master it before becoming Ankal.

Caoin reluctantly agreed to waiting for the meal and she remained where she sat as Ruith and the one who had been preparing the meal passed her own portion to her. It was the simple, easy to prepare fare that one usually encountered when out in the field, nothing overly tasty, but a meal designed to provide one with the energy needed to traverse the land for long periods. “I could not find any signs of the predators in the web, but I may have missed them. There are so many threads in the web, so many things to sift through…” Caoin trailed off, wishing she had been able to find some sign of the predator that had spooked the strider to begin with, something to indicate whether the beast was still following the horse, or how far behind the horse it might be.

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[Flashback: Solo] A Life Owed

Postby Caoin on November 15th, 2011, 3:29 am

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Lunch had long been over and her small group had split up. Caoin had been following the tracks for hours and Syna was well on her way to setting as the sky began to grow dark. Soon, it would become harder to see more than her immediate surroundings and she would have to rely more on the senses of the akinvas than her own to alert her to the presence of danger. While that certainly wasn’t a comforting thought, the darkness did mean that the threads of the Web would be much brighter and easier for her to see. Perhaps she would be able to track the strider better if she could find and follow his thread. That alone was enough of a promising aspect to keep the Drykas woman from worrying about the failing light of day as she continued to trek through the dangerous grasses. That strider was important, and she knew that family members weren’t so far away that they wouldn’t be able to come to her aid. Yes, they had fanned out for their search, but they had all agreed to move in a straight line, keeping themselves within hearing distance of eachother, and certainly close enough that they could aid eachother. However, if the search took much longer and it got too dark, they’d have to regroup. The Sea was too dangerous in the pitch of black to risk even the shortest of distances between the searchers.

But for the time being, Caoin was relying on the two dogs with her, and her own skills. And those were both about to be put to the test as the dogs were losing the scent of the strider. The Drykas woman called for the dogs to stop as she settled herself on the ground in the middle of the grass. Her gaze moved to the ground in front of her and she began to concentrate on the threads of the web. She was looking for the thread that belonged to the strider again, sifting through all of the threads until she could find the one she needed. The dogs circled around her, alert to their surroundings as they waited for Caoin to give them further instructions. The girl was concentrating on the Web and it didn’t take her long to locate the thread she was looking for, since the Web was growing brighter in the fading light. She followed the line of the thread along the path as far as the eye could see, noting the spot where it disappeared from her vision.

The thread continued in the direction that she was heading, likely because the direction she was heading seemed to be following a game trail. It made it easier for the horse to move, and for her and the hounds to move as well. However, it also made it easier for predators to travel, and they were sure to travel a game trail that seemed as used as the one she was on. Breaking her focus and pulling herself from the Web, Caoin took a moment to rest. She sat on the ground with her bow next to her and pulled out her waterskin, taking a deep draught of water and offering some to the dogs as well by pouring small amounts onto her free hand and letting them lap at it. She produced some dried meat from her pack, and split that between herself and the dogs to help ease the hunger that was beginning to creep up on them. It was getting late and the time that dinner would usually be served was drawing close for both herself and the animals. If the search did move into the night, it was likely that the group would stop long enough to cook a small meal when they regrouped, but the meat would tide her and the dogs over until then.

Caoin was so relaxed, munching on the light snack, and the dogs were excitedly slobbering over their own treats. So careless, so very careless to allow herself to be distracted, to let her guard down. She heard the snapping of a small branch behind her, followed by a low growl. From her left came another, and another from her right. The grass around her rustled as it was parted by three salivating muzzles.

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[Flashback: Solo] A Life Owed

Postby Caoin on November 15th, 2011, 4:11 am

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The dogs at Caoin’s side growled low, their lips curling back as they looked up from the dried meat they had been eating. The young woman moved slowly, ever so slowly. One hand moved the bow she’d left on the ground, replacing the food in her hands with the grip of the bow. Caoin’s other hand slowly moved up and back towards the arrows that rested in her quiver. Her fingers touched feathers, and then everything moved so fast. The wolves made the first move, the three of them lunging from the brush towards Caoin the dogs, who were second to take action. One of the akinva’s leapt at the wolf that had been at Caoin’s back, and the other leapt at the one on her right, all of the canines aiming for eachother’s throat. Poor Caoin was a bit more sluggish than the animals, drawing the arrow from her quiver and notching it before turning to the wolf on her left. She was too slow as she felt the wolf’s teeth sink into her arm, she had literally turned into the wolf’s waiting jaws.

Caoin cried out, her grip tightening on the arrow that she held in her right hand. She couldn’t possibly shot at the creature now, and as she fought through the pain, she did the next best thing. Rather than trying to fire off the arrow, she let her hand drop, her body pushing forward against the wolf so that her arm was pushing into his jaws in an uncomfortable manner. She gripped the arrow tightly in her fist and brought it around, driving the tip as deep as she could into the wolf’s shoulder. ‘Caiyha forgive me for the harm I cause this beast in my defense,’ she thought to herself as she pushed hard against the wolf with all of her might. The arrow and the awkward pushing of her arm into its jaws, caused the wolf to yelp and leap back away from her. Caoin took the time to scramble to her feet. Her gaze traveled from one dog to the other, checking to see how they were doing, and both seemed to still be on their feet. It pained her to see them fighting, and it pained her to have to hurt the wolf that attacked her, but she also knew that that was all a part of life. Even Caiyha understood the balance of nature and that her children must fight to survive.

The arrow still stuck in the shoulder of the wolf, the animal was hurting and angered. The akinvas were holding their own against the wolves that they faced, she could hear the snarling and the yelping of fighting dogs and it was almost a distraction, because she wanted to pull them apart. Her focus fell on the wolf in front of her though, she needed to deal with that animal before she could worry about helping the dogs, or it would all be in vain. Her arm hurt a good deal, but it made her feel awake, alive. She was hyperaware of her surroundings now, as the pain drove her to action. Adrenaline could do a body good if you were fighting for your life. The wolf inched closer to Caoin, frenzied and hungry, it lunged at her again. This time, Caoin was more ready and she threw her weight to the side, rolling out of the way of the lunging wolf. She scrambled backwards across the ground as the wolf reoriented itself, turning to her again.

“Ruith,” Caoin finally screamed, calling out for help. He was supposed to be within ear shot, along with a few other members of the family. He had to hear her because she wasn’t going to be able to fight the wolf alone, and the dogs were too busy trying to fight off their own targets. The scream only seemed to excite the wolf further, probably because of the fear in Caoin’s voice. She looked the beast dead in the eye, and knew it was going to attack again. She reached for an arrow, and started to notch it as the wolf ran at her. She wasn’t going to make it. She wasn’t going to get it notched in time, she wouldn’t have time to fire it. She struggled to get the arrow in place, to draw back the string. The beast snarled.

Caoin heard the sound of hoof beats. For a moment she thought it the sound of her ancestors come to retrieve her, to take them with her into the great web. For a moment, she thought all was lost. And then she heard the challenging neigh of a stallion and felt the pounding of the ground next to her. Caoin felt the body of the strider pass by her. She watched the dark dun stallion rear up, hooves pawing at the wolf. The lupine drew up short in its attack, throwing itself up on its hind legs as it tried to get out of the way of the best. There, there was Caoin’s opening. She let the arrow loose and it hit the wolf square in the chest. The beast let out a gurgling yelp as it fell to the ground. “Thank you,” she muttered to the horse as she scrambled to her feet. The dogs were still fighting.

The young Drykas woman notched another arrow and turned towards the nearest pair of fighting canines, she let the second arrow fly, but her aim was too high. She watched it sail over the heads of the dog and the wolf, but it was enough to distract the wolf, which wasn’t used to such things. The dog however was using to being out hunting and the arrow was no distraction for him. As the wolf turned to see what had caused the motion, the dog took his own opportune moment, his jaws tearing into the wolf’s neck. The wolf didn’t stand a chance and fell, bleeding, to the ground. The end of the fight came quickly as the last wolf found itself facing two hounds, two against one was no contest. When the fight was over, all of its participants, save the strider stood bloody and wounded. None of them had gone unscathed. But it was a relief… or it would have been a relief to have the fight over, if the victorious moment hadn’t been ruined by the sound of howling that was approaching. There had only been three wolves, but wolves traveled in packs. Caoin hadn’t thought about asking herself where the rest were. Now she knew that they were approaching, and Ruith and the other searchers hadn’t arrived. They had no choice but to move, to run. But she would never be able to outrun an animal.

The strider stallion danced nervously beside her. He knew that trouble was approaching. He pushed at her back, tossing his head and snorting at her. Moving up next to her, he bumped her with his side, as if to say, “Come on, let’s go. We have no time to waste.” Caoin didn’t waste any time as she vaulted onto the horse’s back. The fingers of one hand curled tightly into his mane as the fingers of her other hand rose to her lips and she whistled to the dogs. Her heels squeezed tightly against the horse’s side, “Yah!” she called to the strider and her body jerked backwards, almost sending her tumbling to the ground as he took off. The small group bounded into the brush in the direction of her brother. Caoin held on tight, her body moving with the horse as she tried to maintain her balance while they raced through the tall grasses. They rode in the direction of safety. “I owe you my life,” Caoin whispered as she leaned against the horse’s neck.

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cause it's almost like
your heaven's trying everything
to keep me out
-- Far From Home by FFDP

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Caoin
of the Amethyst Clan
 
Posts: 164
Words: 142714
Joined roleplay: September 26th, 2011, 10:26 pm
Location: Endrykas
Race: Human, Drykas
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Medals: 2
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[Flashback: Solo] A Life Owed

Postby Stranger on November 24th, 2011, 4:12 am

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XP Award!


Caoin:
Webbing: +2
Observation: +4
Tracking: +3
Animal Husbandry: +3
Weapon [Composite Shortbow]: +5

Lore:
To Save and Be Saved (Bonding with the Beast)


Notes: Fantastic. No, really. You managed to accrue a nice slice of points there, but it was hardly boring. Lovely.
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