Solo Target Practice, The Hard Way.

[Archailist]

14th Day of Winter, 513.

Continued from here.

His back hurt. That was the first thing that came to his attention as he slowly uncoiled his tail within the dark, and slightly damp little hovel that he'd found. Although he lacked a spine, there were still some positions that could be considered unnatural and that was one of them, not to mention the fact that he was cold. Not as cold as if he had been outside, but still more cold than if he'd just remained in the Safe Haven Hostel. Soon he was slowly pulling himself out of the hole and into the crisp and cold morning air with an audible groan to stretch his limbs, trying to adjust to his surroundings - except, he was still where he'd been yesterday. Although, he could see now, that he was almost near the very top of the tree.. with only a quite narrow branch for support. It creaked as he moved a little further out, and soon it was obvious that the base would be a much safer place to be.

A few little hops down, combined with some downward climbing - being a squirrel, he followed the same techniques as many squirrels, which involved climbing down head-first with arms and legs clinging to the main body of the tree tight enough to press the chest and stomach against the bark. Surprisingly, regardless of the awkward position that left him staring down many, many feet to the floor, it was the safest since he could see where he was putting his paws, instead of going down feet-first and having to work blindly. And once he'd reached the lowest branch, a surprise greeted him. "Hello?!" It was the boy, from yesterday, wandering through the forests with his hands cupped over his mouth and that same composite short-bow, almost distinct for the boy, over his back. The squirrel wasn't sure what he was doing, pushing aside some of the lower branches and constantly glancing up at the treetops. But he wasn't going to get too close to try and find out.. not after last time. When the human's gaze turned over to the tree that the clay squirrel was upon, Arch ducked and pressed himself so tight to the branch that his body distended slightly. Apparently the boy didn't see the squirrel, thankfully, and kept walking; calling occasionally and cupping both hands around his mouth as if it was going to make his voice any louder. Once again, curiosity nibbled at the squirrel - he could follow the boy.. but that would be rude, to spy on him, wouldn't it? "Mr Squirrel, are you here?" Oh. Maybe not.

He couldn't reveal himself yet, obviously - the boy was still armed with a short-bow and a set of arrows in his quiver, and the boy was a complete stranger - there'd be no telling what would happen if he revealed himself. Would he just be friendly, or could he try and capture what he thought was a magical talking squirrel.. maybe he just wanted to be friends. Whatever the reason, he quietly slipped between the trees and constantly watched the boy slowly venturing deeper into the outlands of Nyka, before turning back and sweeping over the way he'd came, always calling out in search of the squirrel that stayed just a few feet behind and underneath a few pines.

"Please, I just want to be friends!" Well, he could just slip down quietly and make himself known.. it wouldn't hurt that much.

"I won't hurt you, I promise!

"I'll hold you to that." The squirrel slipped down quickly from the tree, with his claws scraping along the bark until he touched the floor. The boy gasped, turned around and stared down at the small creature that stood on two legs, talked in a calm and collected voice.. yet, looked like a squirrel in every sense except for closer inspection, where it had no fur.. and its eyes were pupiless.

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

For the longest time, he simply turned into a statue - as if breathing would scare a Pycon. But then again, the boy didn't look very old.. who knew if he'd ever met any other species than human in this city. He certainly didn't see many other Pycons around the place - in fact the only few species that he did manage to find were Eypharians and they were sparse still. Seemed religion could often lead to a lack of diversity, if the buildings and all the red stone were to show, never mind the monks that filled them and tended to them nearly every bell of the working day.

"Are you one of those Kelvic things?" the boy asked with rapture but only got a scoff in reply as the squirrel nimbly hopped closer on all fours and suddenly grabbed at the boys trouser leg. He was visibly shaken, torn between shaking the intrusive thing off and staying perfectly still so that he wouldn't scare, or worse, harm the thing. Eventually natural instincts overtook his mind and he frantically shook his leg up and down to try and get rid of the squirrel, but he wasn't going to have any of that. All four paws clenched down tightly against the boys legs with their blunt claws, and he easily used the flapping material of his leg to climb up to the waist, and from there to the shoulder and perch in place. By now, though, the boy had gone into a full panic-mode, frantically waving his arms and his legs at the same time, swatting at Arch - who simply wouldn't stay still, and ducked underneath the hands, swung his body around from one spot to the next until he'd had his fill of excitement and hopped down.

"That was fun." It was, surprisingly - always fun to try his wits against a human, or rather, any species. It felt exhilarating to prove himself to be the more agile. In fact, he was willing to raise the stakes, regardless of the expression of the boy that stood opposite with still-widened eyes. "Tell you what. Why don't we have a little competition, hmm?" His pupiless eyes were glimmering with mischief now.

"Sure.. but I can't climb a tree as fast as you."

"Oh, no no.. it's nothing like that. You get out your short-bow and try and shoot me. Go on, try it." The boy seemed shocked at the very thought of the idea, but the Pycon was quick to reassure him. "Relax, relax.. you don't know what I am, do you?" It shouldn't have surprised him that the boy indeed didn't.. but he still laughed softly and began to reshape his little clay body. Claws melted away into fingers, muzzle faded and replaced itself with a nose, all of the squirrely features of his body seemed to disappear and reform as different parts until he stood as a little clay figurine, walking and talking with all of the same features as usual - clay hair, clay nose and eyes and mouth and toes and fingers.. something of a vague set of clay clothes melted into the body, but it was ambiguous anyway, so it didn't matter in particular. The boy seemed to be losing the will to stay conscious by this point, though...

"I'm a Pycon. I'm made of clay, so I can change my body to whatever shape I feel fit." Quite simple, really.. well, it would have been to most. "I just chose to be a squirrel because... well, I like squirrels." It was, obviously, much more complicated than that, but he wouldn't let the boy worry about such things. He was still trying to get his head over the fact that it was a squirrel made out of clay apparently, but he would wait for it to all click together, as they would say. And eventually, he started asking questions. As they all did.

"How can you move and talk if you're made of clay?"

"The Gods are responsible for that."

"Why are you so small then?"

"Because that's how we were made."

"But.. why are you here?"

"Because I want to train to be a Syliran Knight." That seemed to satisfy him.. because he nodded quietly to himself for several moments and stopped asking questions as abruptly as he'd begun asking them.

"I... see."

"So.. about that short-bow."

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

The short-bow was soon drawn, although quite hesitantly. Obviously, there were still a few more things that would need to be explained. Even if it was only for a bit of fun, from the squirrels point of view, not everyone would be happy to shoot at something they'd just met. "Won't you get hurt if I shoot you?" He shook his head at that though, and smiled in a way that only the face of a squirrel could possibly do. He felt completely confident.. it was a touch of faith, but more importantly, it was just ever-so-slightly life threatening. An adrenaline rush, something that he suddenly found himself craving like nothing else - it was to be his air to breathe, water to drink. The squirrel himself couldn't explain such feelings but there were few and far cases, in his experience, where this would ever be true. It didn't matter all too much anyway.

"You're forgetting, I'm made of clay. You shoot me, I can just seal the wound. Now, are you ready?" The boy nodded nervously, but looked up to the trees and pulled an arrow from his quiver. The squirrel was ready, too - claws dug into the ground, as he'd already taken the liberty of changing back into his squirrely natural form during their little conversation. With a single "GO!" they were off, and immediately Archailist realized just how good of a shot the boy actually was. The arrow nearly slammed through one of his feet as soon as he started, and another shot straight into the ground beside his ribcage shortly afterwards. He was already pulling a third arrow from his quiver, too. The Pycon was going to have a hard time actually evading the missiles.. but that would just make the rush even more heady. Even as he raced as fast as he could possibly manage up the stout bark of the trees, with the silence of the forest only broken occasionally by the thud of another iron-tipped arrow sinking into the tree trunk only a few inches off here and there, his mind was racing five steps ahead of the rest of his body.

Arrow zoomed at a lightning-fast pace, but the squirrel was faster. Out onto the first branch that he could come across, he managed to pass a glance down to the monk that was already aiming another arrow. When it flew, the squirrel suddenly switched positions and scrambled around the side of the branch so that he hung upside-down from it, laughing softly - partially to himself and partially to the boy. He didn't have time for it though. As soon as the first arrow had been launched, another had been readied and shot straight for the squirrel.. he jumped and the thing missed him by a hair's breadth, but he caught another branch further down that belonged to another tree and ran across it as fast as possible, with arrows chasing him. He could tell that the monk was aiming for where he was going to be, though.. so he had to switch it up, changing randomly from one spot to the next, jumping in zig-zags in the hopes that the monk wouldn't figure out any pattern.. but he did.

It escalated above a simple battle of body - it was a challenge of wits as the boy found new patterns in the squirrels attempts to run and escape, and the squirrel tried to find new ways to stay one step ahead of the arrows striking into the bark just next to his tail.

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

He slipped up a tree, along the branch, crossed from one tree to the next and down the tree again, over and over. The boy must have had about fifty arrows - sometimes he rounded back on himself and used the shafts, still jutting at angles from the wood, as platforms to extend his range between the trees until abruptly, the attacks stopped and the squirrel scurried up to the highest point possible on the tree that he'd occupied, panting heavily and grinning like a fool - just like the boy. He was out of arrows, with an empty quiver.. but the surrounding trees were filled with them. Some had missed the trees completely and gone into some of the trees further down.. but it was astonishing. He'd survived the onslaught. And couldn't help but feel a little smug for it.

"Ha.. ha! You cannot.. best the squirrel!" He was still a little out of breath unfortunately.

"Suppose not. Though, you do know I wasn't actually aiming for you." Of course he hadn't.. although he didn't want to. Suddenly his mood sunk as he looked down at the monk, confused and slightly annoyed. "What? Not like I'm actually going to try and kill the only talking squirrel I've met..." Well, he could concede for the reasons. But it still made his hard-earned victory a little sour.

"Guess I'd better start collecting up all of these arrows, eh'?" He didn't wait for an answer, just begun picking out the arrows from their shafts and letting them fall down to the boy below, who plucked them up and set them back in the quiver. As he went along, though, he counted them as more and more piled up higher and higher.. of course, he occasionally had to shift between the trees and move fairly high up to pull them out.. and therefore, be careful that he didn't accidentally drop an arrow on the boys head. The boy had been kind enough not to kill him, least he could do was return the favor. But there were so many! It'd take forever to pick them all out of their places.. and not all of them were so easy to remove with their metal heads jammed into the wood pretty deep. He had to put all of his strength into pulling them out.. and one in particular, on one of the highest branches of the particular tree, just wouldn't come out. "This one's stuck!" He gripped the shaft with both paws, braced both paws on the tree branch, and pulled as hard as he could.. until it suddenly came out. And he was falling alongside the branch.

"CATCH ME!" He was falling too fast. There wasn't a chance of catching the other branches of the trees, not without losing an arm in the process. His only hope would be the boy having enough sense to reach out with his hands and.. suddenly, he wasn't falling. But everything had gone dark. Was he dead? No, the boy had used his leather quiver to catch him.

"You alright?" A concerned monks face blotted out all the light flowing in through the top, and the squirrel grumbled before reaching up and gripping the edges of the quiver, easing himself out slowly and dusting himself off.. even though there was no dust.

"Haha, I'm fine.. that's twice you've saved me now."

Twice? When was the first time?" Seemed he didn't even know that the hawk he'd killed the previous day had been after a squirrel-snack..

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

It shouldn't have surprised the squirrel, but it still did, and left him staring at the man for several long, awkward seconds before he finally spoke up again. "Yesterday.. you remember that hawk that you shot down?" At the mere mention, the monks eyes widened and his mouth opened into an 'o' of surprise. It would have almost been comical if the squirrel wasn't being completely serious in the matter.

"Yeah.. how do you even know about that stuff?"

"That hawk was trying to eat me when you shot it down. So.. you kinda saved my life." Then there was more silence. The boy lowered the squirrel to the ground and stared at empty space for a time, trying to comprehend what was being implied.. before eventually he smiled and shook his head in sheer disbelief. Well, he had saved a squirrel.. twice, now. Once without even intending on doing it.

"Haha.. cool, I suppose. But that still leaves one question. What were you doing here? I mean.. you're from Nyka, aren't you? And you can't be a monk, you're not wearing any of their garments.. so you're a traveler?" The squirrel could only nod repeatedly as the boy voiced out his suspicions. Well, it was time to sit down and have a little conversation about all of this.. and an explanation, he supposed.

"Yep. My name's Archailist.. and I'm just out here because I like the out lands, and the wilderness.. it's comforting, sort-of. When it's not trying to kill me." Well, it was the out lands after all. What was he supposed to expect?

"Cool. My name's Eric.. and if you really want, I guess I could help you with a few things. I'm no expert, though." It didn't matter.. he needed help reinforcing the new little home that he'd been accommodating the previous night. Who knew - with a little extra stuff inside and outside, he might have a new place to sleep and whatnot.. when he wasn't in the Hostel though. That place would always be the preferred venue of choice for sleeping. But, hey.. it'd be nice to at least spend one or two nights trying out his luck in the outside world. He'd need to, if he was going to make it back to Syliras in one piece. It'd been a long journey from there to here.. but going back was going to feel even longer. After all, as soon as he got back, he was going to enroll straight away as a squire. A Syliran Squire.

[Archailist]

My Words | Your Words | My Thoughts

The boy, it turned out, did have something useful to know about protecting a hole from predators and making it inconspicuous. After several back-and-forth conversations on the best ways to reinforce the hole of the particularly small home, the monk removed a hunting knife from his pocket - apparently something that he'd picked up from the Bloody Hunter - and began scraping away at the bark of the nearest tree. He worked calmly and with the help of the blade digging methodically into the layers of wood, he soon had a rather large sheet of bark left handy. But he wasn't even finished there, oh no - he found smaller strips of bark on the same tree and cut them loose, winding them around the edges and handing them down to the squirrel. Now he'd be able to secure the area.. although it wasn't exactly the most sturdy thing around, it would certainly stop anything from trying to take the place by storm.. without his knowledge.

He tried it then and there, with the boy watching and shouting up snippets of advice occasionally on how to wind the bark around the neighboring branches and placing it at just the right angle.. and it was done. Perfect.. it'd remain safe until he chose to return, now. And he could spend more time filling it with leaves if he so wished, to make the thing much more comfortable. If he wished to, anyway.

Well, thanks for that!" He tried calling to the boy, but he was already moving off, back towards Nyka. "Where are you going?"

"It's getting late.. we need to get inside before the sun goes down." He'd heard all of those tales.. about the Aperture sucking people down after dark. All of the superstition.. he didn't believe a word of it of course, but it was always better to be safe than sorry, if it could convince an entire city of people of its facts. Not to mention the fact that since it was getting dark already, well.. he might as well have gotten back before the city gates closed up for the night and he'd have to spend another night in the new little hovel. And his back was going to be very, very sore after that.

So, he nodded - not that the boy would probably see it - and immediately crossed from one tree to the next via the relatively close branches, and from there down to a lower section, across to the next tree.. for the squirrel, it was as easy as descending down a staircase. When he finally reached the place he had been aiming for, he hopped down and landed straight on the monks shoulder. Much to Eric's surprise, and amusement. "How do you even do that? I didn't see you coming down..." Of course he hadn't. The squirrel had been using the trees and the branches for cover in the fading sunlight.

"Practice, of course!"

[Zandelia]

Archailist :

Skills

Climbing – 3
Observation – 4
Stealth – 1
Socialization – 3
Teaching – 1
Acrobatics - 2

Lores

Religion: A Lack Of Diversity?
Scaring For Fun
Pycon: Made of Clay
Pycon: Can Be What They Want To Be
Addicted To Adrenaline
Eric: Twice The Saviour
A Home In The Leaves: Bark Protected

Notes :

Again, another nice thread. If he carries on like this he’ll lose that leg one day

Any questions about my grade? Feel free to PM at any time. Keep Writing!