multiversallogs | All mimsy were the borogroves...

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All mimsy were the borogroves...

Who: Mermaid, Manticore, and YOU!
What: lazing by the gross tar, or roaming the city
Where: Brock Marsh where the gross tar forks, and wherever is convenient to you!
When: Throughout last week
Notes: polyvore set with multiple costume changes!
Warnings: Lovely tooth filled friend.

Shrieky was going to take Manticore back to his own world eventually. He'd been around the temples, and he'd asked people for advice, but in the aftermath of the invasion there was enough displacement of their own people for anyone to be too interested in wanting to help a stray manticore. Additionally, it had not evaded Shrieky's notice that when he tried to explain that Manticore had been as hurt and troubled as the rest of them when the sky opened up, certain people looked at his companion as if he too was part of the problem.

He knows it isn't ideal, and he knows that the Manticore will need to go home eventually, but in some not insignificant way, Shrieky is pleased. It's not that he wants the manticore to be trapped in Baedal forever (although it would be nice if the manticore could willingly choose to stay in Baedal forever), but... over the chaos of the last month, Shrieky's circle of friends has been bisected. The squat which had been crammed with it's illegal inhabitants before, now feels comparatively empty. The survivors come and go at odd times, and some have drifted away already, moving closer to their families, or to the outskirts of the city. Shrieky could sense the day coming when they would all be dispersed, and he'd be left alone again.

But as long as Manticore was there, that day was yet to come! The creature had a way of making the entire house feel full with his tolling voice, and he and Shrieky had scarcely been apart since the world was sewn shut. They ate together, played games together, slept in a large lion-y pile together, and roamed the city together. As long as Shrieky could keep his focus on Manticore, and not on his host of lost and dead friends, all would be well!

On this particular day, Shrieky and Manticore have been out for hours. They've had a little hunt through the goods of the Bazaar, they've visited Queequegs where Shrieky had enjoyed a cup of coffee and manticore had enjoyed a bowl of milk, and now they're flopped out on a small patch of grass beside the Gross Tar.

There are two takeaway trays on the grass beside them, one filled with cooked meat, and the other with raw. Both have been picked at, but neither Shrieky nor Manticore are eating now. Instead, Shrieky is sprawled out comfortably, flat on his back, and Manticore is laying on his side, perpendicular to the mermaid. His body is stretched comfortably across Shrieky's stomach, and Shrieky has one hand buried in the Manticore's fur, stroking him lazily.

They are both purring.

[ooc: Multiples welcome and encouraged! If you'd like to thread but don't have a reason for your character to be around Brock Marsh/The Gross Tar, just tag in with another location, and I'll find a reason for them to be there <3]

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She smiles back, further reassured by his ease around the manticore, "I am, still a little shaky after everything that happened, but I'm glad it's calmed down. You look like you've been doing well." Which is apparently Steph code for you made friends with a monster???

It's a slight effort for her to come within striking range of the manticore - not that she thinks it would, if it's so calm around Shrieky - but it's... well it's a manticore and she's only human, both in abilities and fears. But she manages it, coming close and standing near Shrieky's feet, so she doesn't have to twist to look at her.

"I did, but I had some friends with me, and we scared off the men," It's a huge simplification of the fight that went down, but Steph does it for Shrieky's sake, he doesn't need to know the specifics.

Megan squeals and does another mid-air flip, this one propelling her another couple of feet in the air. She likes these shoes, okay, she's not going to let them get clawed up or gnawed on by a giant... whatever that is. Lion thingy. With a people face. Okay.

"Yeah, sure! Hang on." Megan has to dig in her shirt somewhere to find the pack of gum... look she doesn't carry a purse and half the time her "pants" are actually just a pair of leggings, she hasn't got pockets most of the time. You have to get creative under such circumstances. She pulls out one individually wrapped stick and aims it at Shrieky's general torso-area before dropping it. "Catch." Hopefully it will not be intercepted by a manticore! Gum isn't good for them. Probably, anyway, with those teeth.

"Oh, so like, it came in the monster rain or whatever? But it's not like... eating anyone."

Damn thing. Hawa gamely ignores the pleased sounds the manticore is making. And that expectant tinge to the expression earns Shrieky an exasperated look at first, a if you're looking at me like that, I'm never going to sit down stubbornness. Eventually, he seems to silently concede and flops ungracefully into a sitting position, coat pooling around him, a leg shifting up so he can rest his elbow on his knee.

"I can't say I'm interested in many things they have around here," Hawa grumps. Not even bars appealed to him that much-- Someone sorely needed to teach him to relax a little or find a hobby or something. One of the few things he'd actually call leisurely was when he ran into the mermaid here, or else was teaching Patrick some more about magic-- and even then it was still teaching. Mostly. "What do you do, mermaid?"

Edited (sob I should not forget words) 2012-03-30 11:45 (UTC)

"Maybe that's just because you haven't tried any of them?" Shrieky suggests, because it's not evaded his notice that Hawa is kind of an antisocial sulk. "I do a lot of things! Sometimes I go to listen at Karaoke nights, or sometimes I go to the Bazaar and look for people selling kinds of food that I've never tried before, and I have a job, and my employer sometimes teaches me how to play board games, and I paddle in the Gross Tar, and I try to make friends on the CiD, and I go look in the windows of the Vivarium, and I just do whatever else I feel like."

Shrieky has an entire lifetime of making his own fun in a pretty enclosed space under his belt. Being unleashed into a place like Baedal has opened up such a vast quantity of opportunities to him, that he more or less never runs out of ways to entertain himself.

"I'd like to go to Joyland as well, eventually, but it's always been closed when I've tried to visit it."

The question makes Shrieky forget all about the meat, and he drops it back down quickly, his undivided attention suddenly focused on Sebastian, "No. I mean, no, it isn't rude, and I don't speak it. Teach me the words you know?" He shifts forward unconsciously, intent and fascinated by the prospect of learning about other Merfolk. He hadn't even really been conscious of them having a language of their own, although it made sense, now that he thought about it.

Manticore flicks his forked tongue out again, ghosting it across the back of Sebastian's hand experimentally. Apparently content with the scent, it lets out a string of deep, melodic sounds, clearly addressed to Sebastian.

"Maybe," Hawa grudgingly admits. It's true. He's an antisocial sulk on the best of days; that he's actually talking to others is rather commendable! (So he thinks.) He frowns, folding his hands together, leaning his chin on the backs of his knuckles.

Really, he has to be knuckled and needled into doing things, stubborn thing that he is. He's kind of determinedly focused on getting out of Baedal, so much so he doesn't try to have fun.

"Go to whatland?" is what he asks.

Shrieky flails his hands a little wildly, in an attempt to catch the falling gum. Instead what happens is that it lands on his chest with a little 'pap' sound. Manticore gives a little sound of sorrow at the loss of Megan's shoe, and rolls over, it's big, furry body swallowing up the gum.

Shrieky searches through it's fur for a few minutes before giving up. He'll get it later, when Manticore rolls in a different direction.

"That's right. I know most of the monsters were bad, but he was just lost and far away from home, like the rest of us."

The manticore is more afraid of Steph than Steph is of him... or maybe he isn't. He rolls off Shrieky and pads towards her, face graced with his ever-present grin, lined with equally ever present sharp teeth.

"Things have been mixed with me, some good and others bad." Shrieky offers, straightening himself up somewhat now that the weight of the manticore has been lifted from him, "As in all places, time proceeds and things get better."

Shrieky tilts his head a little at the mention of scaring the men off, "Did they turn out not to be dangerous then?"

"Joyland. It's a place on the edge of Brock Marsh with huge towers and metal trails swirling through it!" Mermaid's never seen a fairground before, but he is entranced by the sight of one. "I am not entirely certain of it's function, but with it being called something like Joyland, it must be a worthy thing to find out!"

Shrieky is still grinning just thinking about it, and he bites his lip a little thoughtfully, "Perhaps you and I could go together? And you could experience the pursuit of leisure?"

Megan giggles when the manticore rolls over on the gum and it gets lost somewhere in its ridiculous fur. At least it's not chewed, they won't have to be putting any peanut butter on Manticore's beautiful flowing mane.

"Oh. Well that's cool then." She makes a gesture like a fistbump to the manticore, but she isn't going to actually fistbump anything because it has like gigantic paws and will probably cut her hand off or something.

"So it's a he? Can he talk? He's got like... a people face." Which is a bit freaky, honestly.

There's a brief moment where her gaze leaves the manticore in order to look for the quickest possible escape, but she forces herself to stay still as it approaches. Shrieky would tell her if it was inclined towards eating people, right?

"I'm sorry about the bad things," said genuinely, but she's glad at laest some things have been going alright for him, "It's good that you can stay positive." It's a quality Steph can appreciate.

A shrug, "We were more dangerous." She probably shouldn't be able to say that so casually, but the past few weeks were long and it's worn her down a little.

Edited 2012-03-31 09:33 (UTC)

"Oh, you lovely thing," he says addressing Manticore before pulling his attention back to Shrieky. "It's meant to be spoken underwater and I think you need to have a gills or throat that's different mine, but here goes."

There's a series of short, barked, gulping sounds that he makes and identifies as 'hello', 'don't eat me/I come in peace', 'trade', 'unsafe/flee'.

"I'm not even sure if that's their normal language or just something wizards were taught so we could communicate in something that wasn't English."

The mention of metal makes Hawa purse his lips in uncertainty--but the invitation has him outright staring, his eyebrows raised. You're inviting him to a theme park, mermaid, and he thinks that he's perfectly capable of experiencing the pursuit of leisure on his own, damn it.

But he doesn't have any reason to say 'no'. So Hawa shrugs his shoulders after a long minute of silent thought. "All right, Mermaid. I guess it ain't like I'm particularly busy with anything."

The manticore answers her question about whether or not he can talk, with a string of happy little manticore sounds, which Shrieky echoes a moment later, with little faux-manticore mermaid sounds. This done, he glances up at Megan, and adds "I think if he was a lady, he wouldn't have such a flowing mane, would you?"

Manticore makes a sound which might be agreement, or might just be an exercise in making sounds, and Shrieky pushes his face against his friend's big silky head, "And manticores are supposed to have people faces. He doesn't speak common though, no."

Shrieky glances up at Megan again from his position entangled in the depths of a Manticore, "How've you been, Dragonfly? Have you been all right since things calmed down again?"

Xas is walking alongside the river - not in it, anymore, although he clambered out of the water recently enough that his pants are still wet and clinging to his legs beneath his knees. That's as deep as he got before something large and dark beneath the surface made him reevaluate his plans to swim. Spending so long with his feet on the ground is starting to make him grouchy, but it's not worth being eaten.

The same thought makes him stop a good distance away from the creature and its... companion, Xas decides after a moment of peering. Not prey. That's good.

He doesn't move for a minute, maybe two, while his new skittishness tries to win out over his old nosiness. It's futile: his curiosity has made him ignore his better judgment in the face of much more serious consequences than biting and much less interesting rewards than perhaps getting to pet something he'd consider a mythological creature. Still, Xas only moves close enough to be merely polite, so he doesn't have to shout. "Does it bite?" he asks, smiling and wary. In the space of a pause, he recognizes the companion's face and unruly hair from - somewhere. The network. Xas doesn't have a name to match it to, but he adds, "Oh, hello."

Shrieky feels a little thrill of happiness at seeing someone so obviously impressed by Manticore. He folds his arms across his stomach, grinning widely, "Isn't he wonderful? I wish he could stay."

If a manticore could preen, then that was exactly what Manticore was doing. Content with the flattery he's been paid, he lies down in front of Sebastian. Permission to stroke without getting bitten has been granted.

Shrieky follows along with the noises, taking a little longer to figure out how to make the gulp intonations than he would most noises. Once they've gone through Sebastian's roster, he puts his fingers to his lips thoughtfully.

"You're a wizard then? Have you known a lot of Mermaids?" He paused for a beat, then added, "Do you often need to tell them not to eat you?"

"It's all right. We all had bad things, didn't we?" Manticore circles around Steph inquisitively as Shrieky speaks, then without any real warning, there comes a sound like the roaring of high winds, jagged, and unpleasant to the ear.

Whatever Shrieky was planning on saying is lost in his bafflement. He's never heard the manticore make that sound before, and it's a touch worrying. It doesn't even occur to him that this might be the noise of a manticore growling at Steph...

Well, that was a lot easier than expected! Shrieky looks thrilled with Hawa's agreement, because let's be honest here, there's no way Hawa would actually go pursuing leisure on his own. The mermaid sits up, prompting a sound of objection from the manticore behind him.

"Excellent! Should we go right now? I mean, I don't know when it's open, so we might just get there and find that we can't go in anyway..."

"He does sometimes." Shrieky replies, automatically, "But not any people, that I know of." Manticore bites other things. Like food, and shoes, and sometimes the edges of Shrieky's clothes. Craning his head so that he gets a good look at the newcomer, Shrieky shoots him a little grin.

"Hello." It takes him a moment to put two and two together and remember that he's seen Xas before, then he frowns, trying to place him more precisely, "Aren't you in my Cohort?"

The question hangs between them for a moment, before Shrieky remembers, and immediately frowns. "You were writing words in your introduction."

Words which Shrieky could not read!

"The school I went to had a colony of merpeople, Scottish merrows, in the lake. While I didn't know them well at all, I had a friend who spent a some time down there and passed the information along to me." During the war, they entered into careful negotiations with the merpeople to see if they could find and use an underwater entrance into Hogwarts.

If there is permission to stroke, then Sebastian will indulge. Traditionally, manticores are signs of war to come, but that doesn't bother him in the slightest.

Shrieky nods, his brows drawn in slightly. He's not... entirely certain how he feels about the idea of merpeople living in a lake in close proximity to humans. He has a lot of opinions about enclosed bodies of water, as it happens, "How did the the merrows come to be there? Were they happy living in the lake?"

Manticore emits a low, vibrating purr which can be felt right up the length of the arm being given over to stroking him. If he's an omen, then in this moment, he is at least a very contented omen.

"As far as I know, they've always been there and we did our best not to bother each other. I think if they'd been unhappy, they would've moved to another lake, but I suppose it was a good place for them - deep, dark, quiet, no one fishing or getting in their way." The merpeople in the lake stayed away from most wizarding conflicts, but the Order managed to sway a few selkies to their side.

"Words is generous," Xas says, taken aback. He does remember that. It was one of several incredibly bewildering encounters during his first few days - but not one he would have thought would make anyone unhappy enough to remember it later.

He moves closer anyway, drawn by the manticore. Xas isn't people, exactly, but hopefully the no-biting rule still applies.

"I was playing with the CiD," he adds, contrite. "Pressing buttons. They weren't real words." It was the beginning of the alphabet, actually, and the fact that this fellow didn't recognize that makes Xas pause. But he doesn't ask, just raises his eyebrows and offers, "So you didn't miss anything important."

"I'm still sorry you--" She cuts off as soon as the manticore makes that sound, her whole body going unnaturally still aside from her widening eyes. She'd been turning slightly as it had circled, so now she's twisted a little, the manticore visible from the corner of her eye.

"Mermaid?" Her voice is just above a whisper, and she's already trying to work out what to do if the manticore attacks. She can probably jump out of the way before it leaps, but she's hoping Shrieky can stop that from happening somehow.

Heyyy, he might. One day. Maybe? Probably not. But Shrieky doesn't need to know that. He tilts his head slightly to the side. "Right now?" See, he hasn't even had time to get used to the idea of going to 'Joyland'.

But he can't make up an excuse now... "You're pretty intent on that place, aren't you, Mermaid?" It was kind of funny, in a way. "What about your friend there? I expect he's coming along?" He nods to indicate the manticore.

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All mimsy were the borogroves...

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