predator [secret]

[Jackal]

x x

Kyoku de Ajia

Jackal knew these forests better than most. In fact, she'd be willing to bet that she was among the people alive who knew them best. She'd spent years here, hunting as a dragon, and even as a young girl. She knew most every tree, knew nearly all of the animals that dwelled here. Not personally, of course. She knew them as footholds and prey, respectively. Any who held some naive view of the forest were idiots. It was eat or be eaten, and Jackal was not one to let herself get eaten.

She liked it here, because she didn't have to wear her cloak. It was hung safely up in a tree, not far away from where she was. She herself was standing in a field, enjoying a moment of peace.

I might not have many moments like this, soon, she thought. Maybe it would be for the best.

[Nadia al Khalifa]

Moments of tranquility were far and few between. Poor Jackal was enjoying her own when, not far from her, a young girl with nary an article of clothing on. Her left eye was covered by a crystal rose seemingly grafted to her skin, and her hair was quite long and grey. Almost long enough to act as some sort of clever censorship, if there were not the real world. As such the girl, aged only a few years into womanhood by appearance, strolled along as if nothing were wrong.

Why?

Well to her nothing was wrong. Clothing was a pointless concept, covering up areas of the body arbitrarily picked as unfit for public. The mammary glands were for children to feed, and the other area brought those children into the world. It all seemed silly to get bashful and shy over such things. Clothing made no sense, and she was nothing if not practical about her decisions.

She strolled through that grove and right past Jackal. Her one golden eye glanced at the woman, but didn't pay her any heed. People were people, and she was exploring things she had not seen before. Parts of the world she wanted to go to. Ignore the pain in her barefeet, the bloody tracks she left as the soles of her feet were punctured by branches and pebbles.

[Jackal]

x x

Kyoku de Ajia

Jackal was enjoying her nice, quiet evening when a girl walked past her.

A girl who wasn't wearing any clothes.

Okay, hang on.

She stared at the girl and blinked, wondering what the hell was going on. Her first thought was that she might've been the victim of some bandits or ... worse, but she didn't looked like she'd been attacked by anyone, just that she'd walked her feet bloody. For a long time, Jackal didn't know what to do, until she finally figured she at least had to see if the girl was all right. Of course Jackal was barely wearing anything herself, but Jackal was also covered in scales and claws. She walked up to the girl and tapped her on the shoulder, carefully making sure she didn't cut her up any more.

"Hey. Are you all right? What's your name?" Jackal asked, wondering what to say. What did you say to someone who walked around without any clothing on?

[Nadia al Khalifa]

One foot in front of the other, her body taking over naturally in keeping balance as she did this. One foot up, the other one on the ground, then that foot lifted and swung forth to join the other. She didn't even need to think about it. It just happened. She wanted to move forward, willed her legs to, and so she moved. That in itself was such an interesting thing; half her voyage from the Minish Forest had been watching her feet, the other half watching the world around her. She had a gift for watching many things.

Then there was a prick in her shoulder. She stopped, turned and looked to her side where the clawed hand had tapped her. What was that supposed to do? Was this an attack? There was pain, so perhaps the woman she had passed was attacking her.

Questions. Was she all right? Satisfactory and acceptable, not particularly good. "I am all right," she stated flatly, with almost no inflection. She was still learning inflection. The next question, however, caught her. No answer came. Name. What was a name? She knew of names, but she had never had a name. What was her name? "I . . . do not know."

[Jackal]

x x

Kyoku de Ajia

This was extremely unusual and Jackal had absolutely no idea what to do about it. She was not in any way equipped to handle this sort of thing, and the girl was not helping. She felt like she couldn't just do nothing, though. She felt like there was an unwritten law that people like this became the responsibility of the first poor sucker to ever see them.

"Are you ... sure?" Jackal asked, her voice losing its usual velvety smoothness in place of a sort of confused mewling. It was a very lucky thing that no one was nearby who understood what "cute" meant, or they probably would've been sworn to secrecy and threatened with brutal castration. "You don't seem ... well ... don't your feet hurt? And, not that I'm one to talk, but usually people don't stroll through the forest with nothing on."

[Nadia al Khalifa]

There was something in her voice. It changed so suddenly, the inflections changing all together. Are you . . . sure. What was that? Hesitation? Uncertainty again. That was something she was familiar with. She had experienced it before. But the voice was not like the other woman's. "Yes." It was a straightforward answer to the question. She was certain she was all right, her feet were moving, and she could see everything. There was nothing wrong.

"Are you . . . sure?" she repeated, testing her own voice. The mewling was impossible for her to do, her own vocal chords not even fully adjusted to speaking considering she was only a few days with a body. "Are you sure." She tested the words further, looking down as if trying to see her own lips. She was still not accustomed to not seeing everything, to not being able to see exactly what she wanted to.

There was another question. Her golden eye turned back up to the scaly woman. "Perhaps," she responded, turning that eye once more down to her feet. She was bleeding, and bleeding was generally accepted as bad. The rest of Jackal's words were lost as she lifted her leg up and, showing remarkable balance for one just thrown into a new body, studied the bottom of her foot, the lacerations and cuts from all the rocks. Red blood tripped off the end of her foot and onto the grass below. Curious.

[Jackal]

x x

Kyoku de Ajia

Okay, so this girl was weird as hell.

Not just the run-of-the-mill weird, either, but more the "Oh god you're going to hurt yourself" kind. The girl responded simply, then started talking to herself by repeating what Jackal had said. At first Jackal was a little annoyed, but then she started to realize that the girl was basically experimenting. She recognized it vaguely, from somewhere ... then she remembered the first time she'd turned into a dragon (by accident). It had been very interesting adjusting to a new body, and by "interesting" she meant a personal and never-ending hell, particularly since back then she'd just transform whenever her thoughts drifted, and those transformations were extremely painful.

"What are you?" Jackal asked, walking closer to the girl and studying her. She looked like a person, but then, so did a lot of Minish. Or maybe she was something else entirely. "Were you always like this? Have you been hurt, or ... has something happened to your mind? To you?" The girl seemed to answer all of her questions, so she tried to toss as many out as she could think.

[Nadia al Khalifa]

The woman got closer. She was studying her. In return that golden eye studied the woman, examining her scales and her scars. It was quite clear the woman was a minish, but not your typical minish. Scaly. Most minish took after mammals. Fur, tails and ears. This one was different. And she had so many questions. There were so many answers to be had, that golden eye considered all of the questions. The crystal rose stared back up at the woman as the questions rolled around in her head.

"I was a Gossip Stone. Now I'm human," she said frankly, answering the first question. The rest were tangled up, more uncertainty. She found the questions, sorted them out, and answered in order. "No. My feet are bleeding. No. No." Four questions, four answers answered with startling efficiency and abruptness. Not being much of a conversationalist, she did not have much else to say. Those were the answers to the questions as best as she could answer them.

Truth be told she wasn't sure what had happened to her, so she couldn't answer.

What was happening to her body? Sudden shaking, the flesh raising in bumps. Goosebumps, a body's reaction to several things. Hair raising on end. Fear? No. Anxiety? No. It must be the cold. Which would explain the shaking. She was shivering. What should she do about that? This was what cold was, then. She decided to hold onto that knowledge. Cold didn't feel nice, though all of this thought was hidden behind the impassive mask that was her face.

[Jackal]

x x

Kyoku de Ajia

Jackal let out a sigh of exasperation and slapped herself in the forehead as the girl answered all of her questions as literally as possible. Her ears flattened against the back of her skull, and unaware to her, a slow trilling noise was occurring in the back of her throat, as a spare set of vocal chords vibrated with her irritation. When she realized it was happening, she stopped it abruptly and snarled. When she realized that had happened, she just generally felt terrible. She hated when that happened. She also hated that unless she devoted half of her mind to it she couldn't really stop it.

Woah woah woah hang on what.

"You were a Gossip Stone? Don't answer that," Jackal said, her voice clipped with more than a little bit of irritation. The timbre of her voice had shifted slightly, away from the mewling curiosity of earlier and towards a more lizard-like, raspy hiss.

She rubbed her forehead. She didn't know if the girl was telling the truth, or if she had been hurt in her mind, but either way she was a danger to herself. And Jackal supposed she was the only one who was going to do anything about it. She watched as the girl started shivering. Jackal herself wasn't that cold, which had always surprised her but was definitely welcome.

"Okay. I'm getting you some clothes. Stay here." Jackal turned around and hastily darted up the trees, moving shamelessly on all fours. She moved as fast as she could, grabbed her cloak from its hiding spot, then returned to the girl and dropped down in front of her. She took the old, ragged cloak and pulled it around the girl's shoulders. She tried to remember how she'd been, the first time she'd been a dragon. She'd been a bloody idiot. She applied this experience as best she could.

"Clothes will keep you from getting cold. If you get too cold, you'll get sick, and that sickness can eventually kill you. All those bad things you're feeling are your body telling you to stop whatever is causing them. We need to bind up your feet, too. Don't take the cloak off. Don't try to eat it. Don't make any sudden movements if I'm touching you because these claws really hurt. Are you sure you don't have a name?"

Jackal would never admit it, but in a different life--one where any offspring she might produce wouldn't be misshapen, deformed things doomed to die--she probably would've made a pretty decent mom.

[Nadia al Khalifa]

Why ask a question but demand it not answered? That seemed a bit useless. But in considering the tone used it was the woman speaking with doubt. She was incredulous at the thought. That was the tone, that was why she didn't want to have that question answered. Despite the direct order, the answer found its way to the tip of her tongue and wanted to be freed, as all answers do. But she had been told not to, and so she swallowed the answer and turned her attention instead to the sound coming from the back of the woman's throat.

Then the woman was off. Where was she going? Clothes, she said. That didn't seem necessary. When Jackal returned she would find the girl stroking her own throat, trying to mimic the noises she'd heard from the minish. The trill was quickly found to be quite impossible. Her anatomy resembled humans, not minish, so there was likely something missing. The snarl was a bit easier, though it left a pain in her throat that she decided was bad, so she didn't pursue that noise anymore.

Then there was a stream of information. Don't eat it? The woman was stating the obvious. Useless waste of words and time. Such things were known by all things. Most animals didn't even try eating clothing. The information drifted by, unwanted, until another question assaulted her. This one was seeking an answer. "Yes, I'm sure," she stated in response as the woman went about tending to her body. Gold eye followed the woman's motions, analyzing each one.

[Jackal]

x x

Kyoku de Ajia

Jackal was either going to strangle her or kill herself.

Okay, maybe neither of those things, but they were both equally tempting. She supposed she might have felt a little guilt about strangling a complete stranger who seemed to have absolutely no idea about how to navigate through the world. That, and her life was all right. She had her peaceful, happy moments, when they weren't being interrupted by ex-rocks.

She'd met an ex-rock, though. That was something.

"You won't be able to make most of the noises I do. Most things can't. My throat is strange," Jackal said factually, trying to treat the girl as she spoke. Hopefully that would help her understand things a little better. Unfortunately, they all but needed to go towards a town to get her safe, and Jackal didn't have her cloak, now. That was not going to end well. She looked at the girl in exasperation when she maintained that she had no name, and blurted,

"Well we're going to call you Secret, for now, since you seem to be chock full of them. Ugh, dammit, now my cloak's going to look worse than it does already," Jackal muttered, before she bent down and tore a couple strips off of the cloak with her claws. "Okay, now sit down. Like this," Jackal said, before she squatted down on the ground and crossed her legs. "Now put your feet in my lap. I'm going to bind up your feet so they won't bleed any more, or get infected. If that happens you could wind up getting very sick, then dying. As it happens a lot of things can make you get sick and die, but we'll start with the basics," Jackal said dryly. This was going to be a long day.

[Nadia al Khalifa]

Secret. That was going to be her name? It would suffice, for now. Stones didn't normally have names, and being only days from being a stone she hadn't adopted one for herself. Secret would do. It was a name, after all, and names were merely labels, something to be called by to make it easier. They weren't entirely pointless, but there was no need to go fussing over them either. Secret would suffice as it was easy to say and remember. Efficient, even. Though she couldn't see how it fit herself. She was a stone. Stones carried all the secrets of the world without knowing it.

So Secret sat down as directed and put her feet in the lady's lap. Strips of cloth wrapped around her feet? It would stop the bleeding and function as a makeshift bandage. Secret knew this was necessary. As the lady spoke and worked Secret glanced around the glade they were in, that golden eye scanning everything around them suddenly, then she looked down at where Jackal was treating her feet. "That herb over there will help reduce the likelihood of infection when rubbed against the wound. It tends to attract some bugs, however, which you will want to get rid of. This would require you to boil it before application."

Her eye then shifted to a different section of the glade. She pointed over to another plant. "That one would work after infection has set in. Boiled into a tea will help break an infection-induced fever as well as swelling in the throat and lymph nodes. Side effects include drowsiness, nausea and sometimes vomiting, though the vomiting will actually help reduce infection in this case."

[Jackal]

x x

Kyoku de Ajia

Jackal was glad that the girl--Secret, she supposed--didn't make binding the bandages difficult, since she was having a hard enough time of it as it was. She could do so expertly, of course--you didn't survive in the wild without learning how to bind a wound--but her claws didn't make it easy when you were dealing with really fleshy stuff. She picked out the stones and weeds as best she could, slivered away dead or suspicious-looking skin with her claws, then bound her feet efficiently. She was somewhat surprised when the girl started lifting off a description of the various flora about them, but didn't look up.

"All that is really great, but as of right now I don't exactly have a lot of water. Or anything to boil it in. We're going to get you to town, and then I can properly fix you up, get you some clothes, and make sure you don't get robbed or the Goddesses know what else. All right, that should do it. Up," Jackal said, getting to her feet and grimacing. She did not look forward to the prospect of marching into a town with barely a scrap of clothing on. "Okay, take careful steps. Tell me how much your feet hurt. If it's too bad, I can turn into a big bloody dragon and carry you around on my back."

[Nadia al Khalifa]

Secret did exactly as directed, standing to her feet abruptly. The bandages felt constricting, like they were trying to pull her feet upward in a weird way and were failing miserably at it. She looked down at the ground and studied the work. There really wasn't much she could compare it to. One did not see nor treat many wounds when one was a rock for most of their life. Rocks didn't even bleed, so it didn't come up often.

Her eye turned back to the woman at the prospect of turning into a big dragon. She knew that the minish could change form, but dragons in her knowledge were few and far between and that would be a new sight for her. However it was not practical. A dragon would draw attention which would ultimately lead to a crowd which would get in the way, preventing them from going about whatever business the woman had in town. So Secret took a step with her freshly bandaged foot.

And then another.

And then another.

There was no pain. Well there was. She could feel the presence of it, as if it should be hurting, but it didn't register right with a mind that had existed far longer as a rock without nerve-endings than as a human with a central nervous system. So she stepped forward and began walking perfectly in the direction of the town. "What do you wish to procure in town?" she asked, taking care in getting her inflection right. That was a question, so one placed the emphasis on the last word, toward the middle.

Perhaps with time, practice and much observation she could understand conversation.

[Jackal]

x x

Kyoku de Ajia

Jackal watched the way the girl walked. She didn't limp, but then, she didn't seem to quite understand the way pain worked, which was ridiculous. When Jackal had been poking around in her cut feet she hadn't so much as twitched. That was a bad sign. It was also a sign of a few poisons that Jackal knew, but none of them left you coherent enough to start recommending treatments for infection. When she spoke, it sounded hilariously like a young child trying to mimic their parents, if of course that young child was as emotionless as a rock. Which, if the girl could be believed, she was.

I refuse to believe that I have had a conversation with a rock. I am not crazy.

Jackal followed along next to her, studying the girl now that she seemed like she wasn't about to hurt herself. It was extremely bizarre to see someone else wearing her cloak, but she didn't exactly have much of a choice. However ... the girl was wearing something, though it was a very strange something. That flower-thing in her eye ... was that in place of an eye? Or just a decorative eyepatch?

"Do you know what that thing on your eye is? The flower-looking thing," Jackal asked, pointing at it with a talon.

[Nadia al Khalifa]

There was pain in her feet. She could register it down there, but the pain did not matter to her. She just ignored it. It was useless. Pain was a method your body used to tell you something was wrong. She knew that her feet were cut and bleeding, so she did not need the pain to tell her exactly that. Yes, she knew it was not a normal, but then she had been turned into a human from a gossip stone. She was not exactly normal, period.

There was another question. Her eye? Her hand reached up and touched the crystal rose over her eye. What was wrong with it. "I don't know," she said in response. It was the truth: it was there when she became human and she hadn't given it second thought. Perhaps it was linked to her transformation. It would require further investigation. And then, suddenly, there was a large red dragon in front of them. Except it was not in the forest, but rather the forest was in it. The trees were piercing through it, or rather existing inside of it.

Just an illusion. Curious.

[Jackal]

x x

Kyoku de Ajia

Well, at least I have a built-in natural censor, Jackal thought wryly, looking down at her chest briefly. She had a light, soft layer of fur there, as well as a series of scales around her naval. If young girls around the world thought they had been self-conscious about their bodies, Jackal wanted to slap them in the face. With the claws. She was used to it now, of course, she just usually tried to wear her cloak whenever she was going to be around other people. It was going to be interesting to get into town.

She was beginning to suspect that the girl would answer any questions verbatim. When Secret touched the strange flower, a huge dragon appeared, which would've alarmed Jackal more if it wasn't clearly sticking into some trees. It had to be some sort of illusion, which was not altogether out of the question; Jackal, after all, could make herself invisible if need be.

"Well, that could be handy. As a matter of fact ... if you can control that, could you illusion me up some clothes? It'll help with the staring and the jeering and the torches and pitchforks," Jackal said wryly, though she supposed that Secret probably wouldn't appreciate sarcasm.

[Nadia al Khalifa]

Secret looked up at the dragon then at the trees. While she had been considered Jackal's dragon form--as the other woman had mentioned being able to turn into one--Secret didn't possess a very broad imagination. This dragon was exactly what one would expect when they thought dragon: large, scaly, red, winged, et cetera. With a blink of her eye and a thought the dragon was gone and Secret realized she had other abilities. Curious. She would have to experiment with them.

"Perhaps that is a remnant of whatever turned me into a human," she reasoned out loud, then turned to look at Jackal. She had made a request, accompanied by yet another new tone. This one was strange. Ironic? Sarcasm. Not having been able to read sarcasm before, Secret had never experienced it, but reasoning suggested that was what Jackal was using in this case. Sarcasm, the use of irony to mock or convey contempt. Was the woman mocking Secret? No, there was no obvious mockery there. She was mocking the reaction of people to her appearance.

With a blink of her eye, Secret cast another illusion. This one wrapped itself around Jackal and portrayed her as she would appear without the fur, scales or claws. She looked human--too human, as Secret, still not understanding clothing, cast the illusion au naturel. That being done, not realizing her folly, Secret turned and began to march toward the village once more. The makeshift bandages were already starting to soak through due to her own reckless steps keeping the wounds from recovering, leaving crimson tips on the grass as she walked ignorantly along.

[Jackal]

x x

Kyoku de Ajia

Jackal stared at the girl, wondering what the hell she could do to slow her down. It was obvious she was hurting her own feet with the way she was walking, but there was only so much Jackal could do. How did you handle someone who clearly either felt no pain, or just plain didn't care about it? When she spoke, Jackal couldn't help but grin and think, Yes, perhaps it is.

However, at Jackal's request, instead of gaining pretend clothes, she suddenly looked like a regular person. She stared down at herself in shock for a long moment, her brain slowing down. Then she shook her head and snapped out of it. Jackal was no stranger to illusion magic. All she had to do was scrape her fingers together to hear the click of her claws. They were still there, just hidden behind an illusion.

"That wasn't what I meant. While I'm sure a great many people would love to see a bare woman walk into town, typically the reactions aren't much better. Could you please undo the ... regular-person thing and just give me a pretend cloak? Like the one I gave you? That'll have to do for now," Jackal muttered, tracing a hand along her arm. She could feel her scales, but saw the skin. It was strange.

She tried not to think too much about it. Thinking about that sort of thing did no one any good.

[Nadia al Khalifa]

Secret did not see the problem yet, but she undid the illusion just like Jackal had asked. This was all rather pointless. Secret didn't even see the reasoning for going into town, but Jackal seemed to be concerned for her feet. Infection didn't seem a pressing issue, and eventually her feet would heal up and the scar tissues would make them more tolerable to walking. It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing in the end, but it was efficient for her case.

Still, she undid the illusion as Jackal asked and responded to the question. "Yes, I can," she said in response, then did exactly that, creating an illusion over Jackal's body just like the cloak. Because of her inhuman efficiency with mental processes, she was even able to make it respond to natural stimuli like the breeze. Once that was done, she started onward once more.

"Are there any more delays? At the current rate we'll arrive in town with only twenty eight minutes of daylight and few shops are opened there without daylight to operate in," she stated flatly, not out of irritation.