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 Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 5:38 pm
It was not-quite sunset, and as the sun sank ever-farther toward the horizon, Brightling shifted back and forth from one foot to the next, in a combination of boredom and complete inability to sit still. At this point, she'd typically be flapping around from one group of early risers to the next, pestering whoever she could and avoiding getting murdered. But she had made a bit of a date, and since they had arranged a spot, she was obligated to keep her promises.
She had actually given Teak directions to her own home, on the outskirts of the Deep Woods, because it was easy enough for her to gain access to the typical implements of juggling (and also sleight, but she doubted that Teak would come anywhere near being satisfied with her juggling skills in a day, so she thought that the wooden medallions and feathers could be left alone).
She had, however, tied a bunch of gold feathers (her own, and Flickerwing's) to a branch in easy view to facilitate the other Sentinel's navigation. Brightling didn't hide, but her hollow was not, necessarily, the most conspicuous of homes.
Speaking of which...the flashy bard hopped along the branch and onto the rim of the bole, gathering and arranging the things she'd likely need to begin instructing Teak. She was using chestnuts, which were lighter than her bells, less unpredictable, and quite easy to manipulate. A good set of balls for a beginner (and tasty if ever the juggler graduated to something more awkward and wanted a snack). Idly, she tossed one of the nuts back and forth while she held the other two still under one of her feet. After a minute, she added a second chestnut, and then a third, readjusting to the more straightforward weight of these nuts and the rhythm of this particular (easy) style of juggling.
Passing the time, and getting in some much-needed practice. Always one for practicality, our Brightling.
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Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:45 pm
Yawning as she flapped clumsily through the trees, Teak seethed silently. She'd begun to regret the entire arrangement almost immediately after returning to her roost.
She didn't trust the bard.
Teak was almost certain the gaudy bird had exaggerated her abilities or had even been lying entirely for some ridiculous comedic effect. Typical bard behavior. Why would she want to meet this early in the evening, anyway? It's not like she had anything to do with the rest of the night besides pestering hard-working Sentinels and scaring away prey. No, she was probably accustomed to sleeping until the moon was well overhead and had arranged to meet so early just to test Teak's gullibility.
Bards using Will. Ridiculous.
She considered turning back, but remembered that she might be getting some business out of this visit and, more importantly, some food--if the bard could catch anything with those stupid things tied to her feet.
The drab crafter was chuckling quitely at the prospect of a worse hunter than herself when she spotted the bunch of garish feathers ahead of her and knew she had arrived. She dove in casually to alight on the decorated branch. As she sailed past it, she scrambled to grab a new anchor and ended up perched awkwardly and panting several feet away from her desitnation.
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Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 4:32 pm
In some of those aspects of Teak's thought, she could not have been more wrong. Brightling was accustomed to early rising, to put in time for business of her own (mostly hunting, because she preferred not to put a burden on Hunters in a time of scarcity) before her typical evenings of play. But she did indeed spend the majority of her evenings pestering folk. It was what she was good at, and why she fit in more with fledglings than with adults. But she liked the idea of teaching something to someone, especially an adult, so she couldn't think of a reason why not to.
Oblivious of anything but the chestnuts for the time-being, it took Brightling a good long time to notice another's presence, even though her Parus had alredy noticed and was cowering in Brightling's hole, watching the arrival of another pair of wings with dark distrust. She actually missed Teak until the Crafter sailed neatly past and landed awkwardly, earning a blithe expression that covered an inward desire to laugh hysterically from the Bard. Finally stopping the juggling and snagging two of the nuts in one foot and the final one in her beak, she nodded to Teak and smiled slightly. Transferring the nut in her beak onto the branch before her and placing her already-full talons over it, she gave a flourishing wave with one wing.
"Evening," she said lightly. "As the sun's fire sinks, our kind wakes, and it looks indeed as if you have just done so." A demure but still playful wink, and Brightling bobbed her head once, gesturing to a place beside her on the branch and waited patiently, rolling the chestnuts back and forth under her talon and watching Teak with mild interest.
If nothing else, this meeting would be fascinating.
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Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 10:44 pm
Teak squinted at Brightling out of the corner of her eye and grunted in acknowledgement of her greeting. She took precious time preening her ruffled feathers back into place before shuffling over to the spot on Brightling's branch that she understood to be her own.
She didn't enjoy looking foolish, and she didn't enjoy being proven wrong, even privately. The fact that the bard she's assumed to be a fool both defied her expectations and had been able to effortlessly read her mood not only further agrivated the surly crafter but, in a way, intrigued her.
Few things about Brightling conformed to Teak's perception of a typical bard. True, she was, well... bright... and Teak didn't exactly appreciate her habit of drawing a simple statement out into a meandering string of images. But the bard's mannerisms and surroundings weren't as silly or extravagant as she'd expected them to be. For one thing, the tree they were sitting in hadn't been painted orange or adorned from tip to base with ribbon or foil. It seemed like an ordinary tree. And while Brightling's gestures were a bit exaggerated, they weren't obnoxious. She wasn't completely nutty.
Scratching uncomfortably at the bark beneath her with her talons and staring sheepishly into the distance, she mumbled her first words of the evening: "Well, I'm here. What will you have me do?"
The night had barely begun, and Teak had already decided it would be a bad one.
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Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:09 pm
Ignorant of Teak's irritation and disdain or just choosing to ignore it, Brightling smiled warmly at the other Sentinel when she came down to her. Giving a short but elegant bow (she suspected that Teak would have disapproved of her typical flourishing mannerisms), she rolled the chestnuts under her feet again and watched Teak quietly until she spoke.
When she did, the quiet in Brightling seemed to withdraw, and an aura of good-natured comfort seemed to exude from her, enveloping her in a general happiness that was extremely typical of the Bard. She suspected that Teak's interest and outgoing mannerisms had been a fluke of the insane circumstances of their meeting, and while it disappointed her a bit, it could have been worse. After all, Teak was still there, and actually asking about the task.
Reading the crowd was one thing she was exceptionally good at, and she recognized that if she didn't get to work immediately, she'd lose her audience. And then where would she be? Flicking her tail once in dismissal of her own thoughts, she lifted her foot and inspected the chestnut that rested on the tree. Turning it over once with her talons, she picked it up in her beak before dropping it and catching it with her Will. Offering it to Teak, she spoke quietly.
"I thought perhaps we'd work first with just getting the feel of tossing and catching," she suggested. "Chestnuts are some of the easiest things to juggle. I thought you'd like them best." She shrugged and, with a practiced nudge of her will, flicked the chestnut up a few inches, catching it when it came back down. "It's just a little bit of a push. Nothing drastic, and certainly don't try to throw it. After a moment, you'll understand what I mean, I think..."
She was a self-taught juggler; experimenting had gotten her to where she was, and she had never tried explaining it before. She hoped she was headed in the right direction. The last thing she needed was for Teak to think she was trying to pull a fast one on her.
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Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 2:57 pm
Teak looked doubtfully from the chestnut to Brightling's cheery face. At any other time she would have mocked the bard's uncalled-for gaiety. However, Brightling was, in this setting, her teacher. She had a purpose for the moment. If only for that evening, she would hold Teak's respect.
Without taking her eyes from the bard's face, Teak lowered herself to take the hovering chestnut in her beak. Glancing once again from the nut to Brightling, she transferred it to her talons and then to the branch between her feet.
She didn't look from the nut again. If she looked up, she might find Brightling staring at her. Teak wasn't one to try something new, and certainly not while someone else was watching her and waiting for her to falter. Instead, she focused on lifting the chestnut from the branch, first to the top of her feet, then to the middle of her belly, and finally to eye level. The nut wobbled and bobbed in the air as she squinted in earnest concentration.
The nut will remain in the air. It will not fall, bounce, and plummet toward the ground. It will remain under my control. It is still part of a tree, just like a branch or a twig. It's just another tool.
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Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 7:21 pm
Ah, working with a crafter was nice. It was much simpler than she thought it probably would have been had she been working with, say, a scout. Indeed, she realized in hindsight that someone with the dexterity required to weave baskets couldn't have that much of a problem with little things like lifting chestnuts. But since creators didn't often throw their tools, that's where her reall eforts would need to be concentrated. Thinking, she let her beak go where it wished.
"Mmhmm, good," she said, still watching Teak studiously. For a moment, she blinked, completely at a loss of where to go next. Something about the other Sentinel suggested that Teak was less-than pleased, even if she was curious and trying the task anyways. For a moment, Brightling realized how silly it was to have tried this without a platform. Perhaps it would be easiest to invite Teak in. There was room, but the slightly cramped space would make juggling difficult. Perhaps...there was a way to do this that combined not having two Sentinels (she suddenly realized how strange in stature Teak was for a deep woods female: she was quite large and rather...masculine...) in the space with having a floor to catch the chestnuts.
For the would undoubtedly be dropped.
She'd keep thinking. "Good," she repeated, devoting a little more attention. All the thought had happened in about the space of time a wingbeat took, but it still took her away from the task at hand. "Now, what I want you to do is try to do that just a bit faster. Don't try to flick anything yet, just see if you can lift it from, say, your chest to your beak a bit more quickly."
She preened her breast feathers for a moment.
"Once you have the tossing motion and then the toss down, the rest becomes easier. It's not so hard as it sometimes looks, though it does take work."
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Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 8:49 pm
Without looking at, or in fact acknowledging the bard in any way, Teak stretched to snatch the chestnut in her beak. Once again placing it between her feet, she shot a frustrated glance at Brightling and before turning back to the nut.
Teak centered her thoughts on an image of the little brown nut propelling itself above her head and following a narrow, graceful arch over her head before making a controlled descent back to her feet.
She stared at the chestnut.
It didn't move.
She glared at the chestnut.
It didn't move.
She squinted her eyes and hissed at the chestnut.
It shot up like a bullet and, after striking her between the eyes, fell, bounced once, on the branch, and fell to the ground below, thudding softly as it met the bed of litter below.
Teak, for the second time in the evening, almost toppled to the ground. After a bit of frantic grabbing, she regained her balance and focused on acting as if her head wasn't throbbing and her vision wasn't blurry.
If she ignored the mistake, it would go away.
After a moment of silence, she turned to Brightling. Staring at her ear tufts (which she then realized were unadorned and quite lovely and dark) to avoid eye contact, she mumbled something apparently aimed at the bard, but which was spoken to quickly and softly to be intelligible by anyone, including Teak if she'd listened to herself.
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Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 8:59 pm
Brightling, who had been expecting many things, hadn't even contemplated what happened next as an alternative to any of her inner scenarios. Indeed, the physical comedy of the situation struck her as something a troop of less-serious bards would have done, not something that ever happened in real life. Biting back laughter that never had a chance to leave her ever-conscientious throat, the bard watched the chestnut only briefly before looking at Teak. There was a slight look to her eyes that concerned 1. Brightling. She moved close to Teak and quickly preened her eartufts, the first comforting gesture that came to mind.
“Oh dear, I think that might be considered trying too hard, are you all right?” she said/asked, staying close to the other Sentinel and looking hard at her, obviously concerned. It would be horrible if she had just managed to wholly concuss her first student. In fact, it would transcend the boundaries of embarrassment and move into the territory of shame.
She hoped Teak would be okay, indeed, she found herself idly praying to Noctus that her companion wouldn’t suddenly fall from the branch and kill herself. Nervously, she flapped around to Teak’s other side. “Here, come in and just sit for a moment,” she began, starting to gently herd Teak toward the entrance to her tree.
“If you need, I can get you some water, or something?”
The chestnut lay, forgotten.
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 4:45 pm
Teak's head hurt. She was certain that the throbbing spot between her eyes would be the only thing she'd be able to think of for the rest of her life.
That was, until she felt a tugging at her ear tufts.
Physical contact wasn't something the crafter was familiar with. She lived alone, limiting most of her contact with others to business transactions. No one got that close. It made her nervous. She particularly didn't like the thought of another female preening her. That kind of contact from a bard was unimaginable. Brightling's simple gesture seemed terribly imposing.
This was possibly the worst night of her life.
The next thing she knew, she was being pushed toward Brightling's home. When the bard asked if she would like some water, Teak was infuriated.
"DO YOU THINK THAT WILL MAKE IT BETTER?" She turned to face Brightling and shouted, "You don't even know what you're doing, do you!?"
She regretted the outburst before she'd finished the sentence. She'd assumed the bard had simply been mocking her clumsiness. The concerned look on Brightling's face told her otherwise. Confused and ashamed, she turned away to once more look down at her feet. Saying nothing else for the moment, she was grateful for the pain in her head to give her something else to think about..
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Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 5:30 pm
Surprised, Brightling promptly jumped back, lost her footing, and fell clean off the branch. Hooting loudly in consternation at herself (as well as indignant and slightly sheepish surprise) she snapped her wings open and flapped back to the branch, where Teak was sitll staring at her feet. Thoughtfully, she paused, then flared her wings, shook herself out, and lightly swooped into her tree. Humming in a low, concerned manner, she covered her abashed embarrassment by digging out her little package of tinctures. Never one for making trips when she felt poorly, Brightling planned ahead.
Thinking quickly, she extracted a small wooden capsule and wriggled the roughly-woven cloth stopper out of it. Taking the cloth in her beak, she sidled out onto the branch toward Teak. Taking the cloth from her beak with her Will, she offered it gingerly to Teak.
"Peppermint oil," she said calmly. "Apothecaries and medics say to rub it on your temples, it makes headaches go away. If it's a bruise pain only, I think I might have something for that, too. I stockpile," she added, sheepish.
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