Solo Hours of Lonely Musing

[Khida]

Fall 15, 512 AV On the first day, Khida thought to go searching. It wasn't the first day since he had gone missing; that day, she had scoured the city looking for him, and then waited another day to see if he would reappear. He had not, he who had been a fixture of every day before. When next the sun rose, this day, the falconess decided she was done with waiting for the man to finish with whatever human thing had taken him away (for surely it had been some human need). She would seek him out instead. She waited until Syna's golden light struck the very earth between the tents, when men and horses alike bestirred themselves and shed the quietude of slumber. Perched on the very apex of a tent's supporting pole, she could see a good portion of the city -- including what she thought was the tent of the stranger he had followed here. But neither he nor the stranger emerged, nor walked in the grassy lanes nearby... nor could be seen anywhere at all. When the day was well and truly begun, Khida left off lurking, launching herself from her wooden perch and climbing into the sky. As she circled ever higher, the city lay itself out below her, the network of its lanes at this distance resembling a spider's web -- or perhaps nothing so neat and symmetrical, but the chaotic canopy of a tree, with each tent as a cluster of leaves. From where she soared on the high currents of the air, the humans seemed little more than insects; their horses, near the size of rodents. The thick-coated herdbeasts tended by those in the city dotted the surrounding grasslands, attended by vigilant sentries. It was a view the peregrine saw many times each day, and today, it did not hold her interest; today, her business lay elsewhere.

[Khida]

But in departing the city's vicinity, Khida met with a quandry: she did not know which direction he had gone in. Nor did she know where his destination might lie, be it north or south, east or west; she had not a single clue by which to narrow her search. Yet she did not wish to stay, alone amidst these many humans. The Kelvic had forgotten, or chose not to remember, that only two seasons before she had set out for exactly that end: to enter a new place, with new people, and there continue seeking a bondmate. She had since found companionship (though not yet a bond) when not even looking for it, in the very midst of perilous wilderness. Its sudden loss left her feeling terribly adrift, unsure what to do with herself. So she flew, and she searched. The grass-covered earth below seemed like the very surface of the ocean: a gently curving expanse which reached from horizon to horizon in all directions, shimmering with the illusion of waves as grass stalks bent before the wind. But this surface was not as unmarred as the waters she knew from her youth; the falcon's eyes could pick out the spidery traces of routes traveled through the foliage, leaving bent and broken -- in some places entirely flattened -- stalks behind. Some might hearken to the passage of wagons days before, while others offered ephemeral record of a horse's swift strides. Those she could tell apart -- but Khida was no jackal, to scent the recent presence of a familiar person on either earth or wind. She could not distinguish which trail was made by whom without seeing them traverse it. Thus, as she moved outwards from the city of tents, she did so in a broad and ever-widening circle, covering all directions, hoping against all odds to see the man -- or even the stranger -- somewhere during her searching flight.

[Khida]

The falcon saw many horses that day, as she coasted high in the air, gradually progressing through a sunwise arc -- from east to south, south to west, west to north, and on. She saw horses with riders and horses hitched to wagons. Horses plodding through the grasses at a pace which could be kept up for hours; horses galloping at their riders' request, or for the sheer fun of it. Horses in groups, always, even the few she passed over who seemed purely wild -- save for one, once, ridden in pursuit of a woolly herdbeast. But as she studied the landscape, she realized it too had companions -- just ones further away, their humans dismounted and crouched amidst the grasses, waiting in ambush. She did not find his horse, the one Khida knew so well from the crater. Once, somewhere to the west of the city, the peregrine saw a horse which seemed familiar. Tall and proud, its coat was nearly black at the spine, black in the legs, lightening to a rich mahogany along its belly. Its mane and tail streamed as it charged over the plains, apparently to rejoin a clump of other horses further off. She veered aside for a closer look, swooping low over the great beast -- but though the coloring was similar, it proved not to be that steed. She continued on. At the end of the day, when Syna sank below the low horizon, Khida had found nothing in her searching. She had no more clues than when she'd begun, nothing to show for her efforts. Just a perch in the branches of a scrubby little tree, its sparse leaves shading to brown, out in the vast lonely expanse of the grasslands. There she slept, awaiting a new day.

[Khida]

Fall 16, 512 AV The second day broke clear and cool, wisps of early morning cloud gleaming in the predawn light. A brisk breeze blew through the grasses and jostled the tree's branches, slipping chill tendrils in past her feathers as the falcon parted them for preening. She groomed them all to her exacting satisfaction before Syna crested the horizon, then winged upwards into the sky even as golden light streaked across the plains. The landscape was just as empty this morning as it had been the previous evening. Not of life, as before Khida even reached her desired altitude she had spotted rabbits, grouse, a distant canid slinking through the grass, and small songbirds aplenty. No, what was missing were the humans and their horses, the tents they sheltered in, the trails their travels left: civilization, in a word. She swung through a long, slow circle in the air, turning about to face the location of the city where it lay beyond her view -- not back along the spiraling route she had traveled, but the straight-line course from here to there. She thought about the city: the panoply of tents, the stamping horses around its fringe, the hubbub of voices speaking foreign words. Khida could go back, could try and make connections with other people there. Or... she could move on, explore parts of the grasslands she hadn't seen, find other places and people to consider. There was little to hold her to the nomad city now... right? She found it a surprisingly difficult decision to make -- so she put it off instead. Rather than think about weighty things, the falcon turned her attention towards her immediate surroundings. She scanned the sky for other fliers, any silhouettes against the blue -- or the golden stalks below -- which might make likely targets. Yet for all that she tried to watch the heavens, with humans (and one human in particular) weighing on her mind, what Khida saw were the things scurrying in the grass: a flock of half-grown grouse that scuttled away from her shadow, finches and larks which ducked into the concealing stalks. She did spot a swallow, dancing through the air in the distance; but while she might catch such a one, it was a ways off, and success too chancy to appeal this morning. Frustrated, the peregrine climbed higher, caught the wind, and set off to survey other areas. Hunting without an earthbound partner was so much more work.

[Khida]

She flew a rough line into the west, continuing her journey away from the city that had served as her base for the season to date. Rough, because she varied it north and south, even northeast and southeast, according to her whim -- and her best estimations of where to find prey. But on average, the falcon continued away. Unfamiliar with this area, displaced from anything she might even vaguely consider home ground, it took her some time to find a promising hunting ground -- hours of tacking across the sky, scanning the land and fauna which passed below. She eventually happened upon a collection of low bushes and two spindly trees, their growth implying the presence of water some distance underground. The falcon's keen sight noticed first movement amidst the shrubbery -- the rapid, darting flickers of small birds flitting between branches, seemingly more of them in this place than she had seen in the grasslands at large. Closer study of the shrubbery revealed a number of small, round objects decorating the bushes -- nuts, presumably, now ripe or nearly so with the progression of autumn. Khida had no idea what kind they were; she was familiar with very few varieties. But whatever the nuts, with the passing of summer seeds and insects, they provided prime foraging ground indeed -- for small animals and their predators alike. Probably another hawk counted this their territory, but Khida saw no such creature. And until she was chased off, she fully intended to try her luck hunting here. Though an observer might have found her chosen approach odd, if any observer had been present to see; rather than take up a waiting position in the sky overhead, the peregrine swooped in to land on a tree bough, seemingly ignoring all the lovely feathered food items amidst the brush. Khida thought to sit there until they got used to her presence, perhaps preen or take a short nap -- then, when all guards were down, drop onto some hapless, unsuspecting quarry and finally eat. It was a fine plan -- except for the part where others objected to the raptor's presence.

[Khida]

Khida had no more than settled upon her perch than she was met by a raucous, strident scolding, hoarser and deeper than any she had ever given voice but eminently recognizable all the same. The scolder itself landed on the top branches of the bush nearest her, bold in its outrage, attitude matching perfectly its vivid red plumage and raised black crest. She wasn't familiar with the breed, but the demeanor... It was shortly joined by another, the second taking up station in the more twiggy branches above the falcon's head -- albeit on the other side of her chosen tree. The falcon was glumly unsurprised by this arrival, crouching and fluffing out her feathers as she glowered at both. She knew how this would play out: she could cling to her perch and their protestations would get louder, probably attracting more of their ilk, and maybe suffer through being dive-bombed; or she could bow to the inevitable and leave, mobbed by an 'escort' until she reached whatever distance they considered acceptable for predators to stay beyond. Either way, there would be no hunting here today. She might have persisted if there were only one antagonist. Given the presence of two, there were presumably more in the shrubbery and grasses below; Khida acknowledged the futility of her position, and dropped from her perch. The much smaller jays fluttered up after her, continuing to squawk all the while, weaving close attendance on the falcon. At times, they dove at her head or wings, forcing the falcon to swerve away or down -- or both at the same time. Which was a stupid waste of energy, in her opinion -- she was leaving, their point had already been made -- but they didn't care one whit for her thoughts on the matter. After what seemed like an age, but was really not more than a few chimes, first one and then the other little red bird peeled away, leaving the falcon to continue her solitary flight above the savanna. Khida spent the remainder of her afternoon more sulking than seeking further prospects, for all that she went through the motions of flying a survey, for all that her stomach continued to grumble an ongoing undertone. Her heart wasn't in it. If he had been there, the stupid little corvids wouldn't even have been an issue.

[Khida]

Fall 17, 512 AV Khida had been hard-pressed to find a roosting place the night before, finally setting for a perch on the side of an odd boulder jutting a short ways up from the rolling grasslands, looking for all the world as if the earth had eroded away around it, gradually exposing the stone to the elements. Though the weather had been fair overnight, she was happy to leave it behind come morning, taking to the sky as soon as it was light enough for her to see the shape of the terrain clearly -- even before the birds who sang farewell to the moon and greeted the dawn had stirred from their roosts. The falcon climbed high into the sky, watching the grasslands take on a subtle curvature beneath her. It was too early yet for her to quite make out prey, but she had plans of getting into position first, of rendering herself no more than a speck in the sky, something which any but the canniest of quarry might disregard as too far away to be of harm. Perhaps some of this summer's fledglings, still young in the ways of the world, not yet experienced with the velocities a stooping peregrine might reach. She could imagine the scenario clearly, setting her expectations firmly in mind: a medium-sized bird, perhaps a dove -- or one of those annoying red jays, Khida wouldn't mind seizing upon one of them at all -- which fluttered up out of the grasses. She didn't care why, really, whether it was alarmed or just decided to move to a new patch of grass. Just that it came up into the clear, at which point the peregrine would focus herself into an earthbound missile and strike it from the air, bearing it down into the grass where she could feed at her leisure. It wouldn't be a long leisure: she was quite hungry. Such was her plan, and Khida drifted idly through the sky with that and only that held in the forefront of her thoughts, patient as a hunter must be.

[Khida]

Syna rose into the sky behind her, casting amber light across the grasslands, illuminating stone, flora, and fauna alike. Khida focused intently upon the narrow slice of earth beneath her, that window in which experience said she might reasonably succeed in catching any prey she targeted. The land outside that space interested her not at all -- not, at least, at this particular moment. Food came first and foremost. She continued to wait as Syna climbed into the sky, reminding herself to be patient, to attempt only that at which she could expect to succeed. Khida still remembered her early education in hunting, those days when she had dashed after almost everything and in the end botched perfectly good chances out of exhaustion. She couldn't afford that waste now. Patience, on the other hand, would eventually be rewarded. Eventually, the falcon's moment came. A pair of doves fluttered up out of the grasses, and even as her mind registered their movement, her muscles acted almost of their own accord. Khida pulled her wings up tight and turned her head towards the earth, minimizing the cross-section presented to the air she fell through; she plummeted even as they rose, tiny adjustments made to line her up on their ever-evolving course. Her talons were fisted for a punishing impact rather than a rake or grasping with claws. The doves caught sight of the falcon bearing down upon them, and instinctively bailed in opposite directions from one another. Only able to pursue one, Khida angled her dive towards the bird on her right, letting the other escape into the sheltering grasses. Her world narrowed to the single dove which was her target, mirroring its attempts to jog right and left, the distance between them narrowing ever more quickly. She braced herself for the jolt which always came with a mid-air impact -- -- only to continue descending unimpeded into the grass stalks as the dove abruptly dropped beneath her line of attack, simultaneously wheeling away to the side.

[Khida]

The falcon faced a moment of disorientation as reality abruptly divorced from her expectations, flapping wings jostling the grasses and shaking loose ripened seeds. She pulled herself back up into the clear and indulged in a moment of frustrated disgust at the failure of yet another attempt. Khida hadn't been this resolutely plagued with ill luck in hunting -- -- well, since she had found the crater, and the man who lived within it. And that thought pleased her no more than the one which had led to it. Even when he was nowhere around, he seemed to be everywhere, his absence creating a persistent void in her environment. As she climbed back up into the air, though not so high as before, Khida mused over this strange development. He wasn't her bondmate; he was almost just another human. And yet... and yet. Was this like what her sire felt, he who had bonded and lost? Or more like what her dam felt, always searching and not yet finding? Neither were here for the younger Kelvic to ask, and she wasn't sure they would have been able to explain in either case. For all that they could speak fluently, some things words just didn't seem very capable of conveying. The peregrine sighed inwardly, and set her introspection aside. She turned her attention to the outward world, considering the vast sweep of savanna below, all that terrain beyond the narrow focus of her earlier pursuit. She thought there might be a line in the far distance, something which marred the sameness of rolling grass -- a road, perhaps, one of the trade routes followed by occasional caravans. If Khida were very lucky, perhaps she could find a caravan. Or maybe not. In any case, that was as good a direction to fly in as any other. The falcon came about to her chosen course and continued on her way, travel devoid of any concrete destination -- and still on the search for something to eat. this thread followed by The Hunters Chance

[Jackalope]

Character Name

Award

Skill	XP Earned	Lore Earned
Observation	+4	Searching for a Missing Human
Hunting	+2	Avoiding Risks When it Comes to Food
		Missing Your Mark

Witty Remark Here

Poor Khida! I want to give her food. Another good read, as always. Keep up the great work! If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, please send me a PM and we can figure it out.