Scrub-a-dub Who: Bramble and Jacta When: Anesus 3, 2:30 PM Where: Second Floor Hall
Jacta was feeling invigorated. She was also exhausted, but she had gotten so much work done in the few hours between eating breakfast and afternoon that she felt that she could be proud of herself. The hall was sparkling, the stairs were... passable (mud was hard to come by in the late of winter when everything was still frozen, but somehow people managed it!) and she was currently working her way down the bedroom hall, a great big bucket of sloppy, soapy water to one side, rags in hand. Her hair was tied back, her sleeves pushed up, and she knew she probably looked just like the little toiler that she'd been called the other day... but she didn't care. Surely others would appreciate all of the effort that she put into her lot of chores, right?
The human was using the cleaning as a partial excuse to watch the comings and goings of people in the day. It was a good opportunity to get to talk to others, and even to snag them to lend a hand, if they weren't needed elsewhere. She had her eye out for just such leisurely individuals right this moment.
Bramble, in her own unfortunate stalking of an even more unfortunate mouse she'd seen slip out of someone's room, appeared to be exactly that kind of leisurely being. Her tail weaved behind her as she stalked forward, bringing her out of the side-hall she'd been in onto the freshly-done floor of the larger hall. Faintly bewildered at having suddenly damp paws, Bramble tried to concentrate on the mouse as it hugged the wall and shot into yet another side-hall. Temporarily lost in the chase, Bramble gave chase, zooming around the corner.
What Bramble expected to find was an empty hall, but for herself and the mouse. Why, exactly, she'd held this belief was hard to tell, but she'd felt this way nonetheless.
Finding herself confronted with the second human of the day, Bramble scampered backward, slid, and fell with a final thump into an awkward sitting position. Ears falling flat against her head, Bramble gulped and hunched her shoulders. Oh no. Not another one!
The sudden noise of claws scrabbling on wet stone was the last thing that Jacta had expected. She had seen Lykos in their normal, hair, bipedal form and even in their four-footed ones, but it just wasn't sinking in that they could all be the same person. Tabrika, for example, being the shy, somewhat edgy girl versus a sleek and dark-furred monster... it wasn't clicking.
So when Bramble went a-sprawl for a moment, backing away like mad, Jacta simply stared at her for a moment. 'Big wolf' or 'big cat' or something in between was the first thought in her mind, but the fact that Bramble wasn't attacking, nor was she even getting very close, allowed the human to banish the thought before she went fully on defense. As it was, she'd dropped her rag to ready her hands in case she needed to cast a spell. (What on Trivald she could cast without having an immediate source to draw from was always going to be the question... but that didn't stop her from thinking 'protective spell' over any other defense!)
When she realized that the two of them had come to a stand-off, and it had clicked that this was a sentient... well, 'nonhuman' was true, but not particularly flattering, Jacta relaxed a touch. "These floors are slippery when wet. Are you alright?" And there the white-furred creature was going to get fur all over the stones, wasn't she? Jacta supposed that perhaps not everybody liked things as clean and tidy as maybe she had been wont to believe.
Bramble looked up, met Jacta's gaze for a brief moment, then shrunk down to the floor. She gave an exaggerated nod of the head, hoping she could get away with just that and not having to do any more. It didn't occur to the Lykos that she could have tracked anything, including her fur, over the wet floor, since mopping wasn't a pass-time she'd indulged in before.
This human, however, had been much more on the defense than the human from earlier this morning. Oh dear. There must be at least two types of humans, then - those who would attack a Lykos with their strange powers, or those who would let a Lykos sniff them and stay still and non-threatening.
Bramble glanced up again, and whined. Was she in trouble? This would be awkward, not having a true pack yet, and having to deal with already being wrong, let alone with creatures who could use such things as disastrously harmful magic on her. By the Ancestors, Bramble didn't feel like joining them yet!
It wasn't just that Marcus was a push-over... really, Bramble's sad-face could tug on the heart-strings of even a practical soul like Jacta. The girl's face fell, and suddenly she felt the urge to apologize. But what for?
In any case, she raised an arm and gestured for the unknown Lykos to come closer. "Are you hurt? I didn't mean anything by what I said, you know. I'm not going to bite your head off or anything! Why don't you come over here? I don't think we've met yet."
Bramble slunk over, uncertain. Maybe she wasn't in trouble? That would be good! She liked things better when they were happy and working, which might be a bit of a challenge around the Compound (at least for Bramble). She glanced up at Jacta again, whined, and began a slow waving of her tail, still held close to the ground.
The hope, however, for friendly people was consistently winning against fright Bramble suffered every time she scented someone who wasn't Lykos - and sometimes, even if they were. It was dawning on her, however, that if she were to properly communicate with any human, she was going to be forced to take on a human form. Marcus had been able to understand some of her intents while she was a quadruped, but there was only so much to communicate to those who weren't her own species.
But... she really, really didn't want to be forced into wearing clothing, and it was cold enough still that such would be a near certainty! Bramble's ears flicked back and forth, an externalization of her internal quandary.
Bramble's uncertainty seemed to affect Jacta, as well. For all that the Lykos had come a little closer, she still didn't exactly look like she wanted to be here. "What's up?" Jacta asked, feeling more than a little odd for holding a one-sided conversation. "You look like you want to be somewhere else."
Girding herself, Bramble shifted into her fully human form. Crouched still on the ground, eyes taking in a full view of Jacta's feet, the Lykos got herself ready to speak. "Oh, no, I'm sorry," she said, the small hairs of her arm slowly raising into gooseflesh. "I was just chasing a mouse and I was surprised and I'm still not used to being here and you're human and while that's not exactly bad it's just..." Bramble looked up from her crouched position. "Overwhelming?"
The process of a Lykos changing was something that Jacta was not going to get used to. The single Light-walker within her caravan was good at casting illusions, but those came on and off in a kind of snap, at least in the way that she cast them. Bramble simply seemed to... change. And suddenly there was a naked young woman sitting in the middle of the floor, a few feet away.
Had Jacta been less practical, or perhaps more privileged, she very likely would have raised a stink about this sort of social faux pas. As it was, she blinked a few times, a little overwhelmed herself. She couldn't quite put together that Bramble had to change in order to speak, and was in fact going out of her way and her comfort zone sheerly in order to communicate with the darker woman.
Aware that her mouth was open and that she was staring, Jacta finally asked, "overwhelming, well." Averting her gaze and picking up her wash cloth, wringing it out over the bucket, she thought on what to say next. "You must be cold like that. Do you want a blanket or something?" Nevermind that naked was naked... Jacta was trying very hard not to point out the obvious. Surely Bramble would notice that she wasn't decent, sitting in the hall like this! (And, as funny a thought as it was, Jacta hid a chuckle: at least she wouldn't be smudging her rump on a dirty floor!)
Bramble, however, had seen Jacta avert her gaze, and decided she was now officially not going to offend anyone by standing. "No thank you," she said in reply, "Unless I need to stay like this, I can endure a little chilling." She offered a small smile, self-conscious to be speaking forwardly with another female rather than about her current state of undress.
That Jacta had seemingly become preoccupied with the rag in her hand jarred the Lyko's curiosity. "What exactly were you doing?" She rubbed her arms, currently oblivious to the social niceties she wasn't following. Bramble was a more extreme case than most, wearing the bear minimal as was required. Most the individuals she'd run into here wore far too much, confining themselves in layers that would have left her clawing at her psedu-skins! Surely she wouldn't be required to wear that much - Oh. "I'm sorry! You're human, I just -- I'm sorry, should I be wearing something? By the Ancestors, I didn't realize - I mean, didn't remember, and I - I -" Bramble looked around, then ducked into the alcove of an open door. Thankfully the resident didn't appear to be home. Looking around the corner, Bramble cast her eyes at Jacta's midsection. "Forgive me!"
The fact that Bramble realized that she might be offending Jacta at all was one of those social niceties that the human could appreciate, at the very least. She grinned at the face that was ducking out of the hallway, half sympathetic, half bamboozled. "Well, we're both girls, but I'll bet you'd give any Vrykola that walked down the hall a heart-attack... I guess it's probably best that we're on the second floor, for that." She hung the washcloth over the rim of her bucket, shoving a stray lock of black hair back under her scarf. "You really don't wear clothes? Even when it's this chilly out? I thought Lykos liked to walk around on two feet." It wasn't as if she hadn't seen several fur-toting humans kicking around the compound since she'd gotten here.
Or maybe they felt like they were being made to walk around like that because they had to? "You don't have to stay like that, if you'd rather do that thing." That changing thing. Jacta didn't know what to call it. "I'm Jacta, by the way, I'm a first-year."
Bramble continued to peek around her current little haven in the world. Past the initial shock of cool, she'd gotten used to the feel of stone against the furless front of this body, which was good, considering how flat she was pressed against the wall. She gave a nervous half-chuff, a sound that didn't come out from the human mouth like it did in her other forms. "I don't think I want blood-eaters to be feeling anything about me." She pushed back some of the stray hair which was falling in front of her eyes, then licked her lips. Jacta wasn't too frightening right now. But didn't the females use the magic in the human race? How unnatural, all those stories about women leading men. Then again, those might just be stories.
"We do, around here," she said, pointing back behind the wall to her own midsection. Realizing that wasn't going to make sense, she switched tactics, and briefly gestured toward Jacta's waist. "I just don't like to," she said, finishing in a soft voice. "I like feeling four feet on the ground." Granted, a good deal of the time she also had to be on two, taking care of intricate tasks and rituals that simply couldn't be performed on four, but her preference was hers nonetheless.
Confused at what "that thing" was, Bramble stumbled past it when she realized the human had introduced herself. Jacta? A new name. She liked the Ja, and said it out loud once or twice to affirm the sound did feel like she thought it would. "Bramble. I'm Bramble, and I'm first. I mean, a first year, too, like you said." Nervousness tended to increase Bramble's ability to ramble. "Jacta. What were you doing, Jacta, before I chased a mouse up to you? Why was the floor wet here?"
Jacta couldn't help but grin at Bramble's practice soundings of her name. That was... cute. The girl seemed incredibly modest (and yet ridiculously brash, though the human had to keep in her mind that it was a Lykos thing, not a personality thing) and maybe a little simple, almost as if she were acting as someone younger than her eighteen years. Human women usually had control as they were growing up, following social niceties by taking leadership (or at least confidence) under wing. Bramble acted so shy and awkward. It pricked at something already inserted into the back of the humans mind in her earlier conversation with Tabrika... something about males being in charge, and fights being used to settle arguments. Nothing that actively gripped her mind, but enough to get the back of her mind chewing.
She answered Bramble's question, happy for a diversion when she couldn't immediately put a finger to her worries. "I was cleaning the floor... people had tracked a lot of crap in when they moved in the other night, and it's one of the chores, here. You keep things clean and you won't have to worry about looking dirty, or getting sick." She rolled her shoulder in a half-shrug. "I was raised with the thought that what's outside should stay outside, and what's inside should be kept neat and tidy. I think it's a pretty good philosophy."
Bramble eyed Jacta in unabashed curiosity. Certainly, separating the insides and outsides of things was important, but denying the presence of Earth indoors? Certainly, rock was from Earth, but it was still almost obsessively dismissive. Did it really prevent illness? That's not what Bramble thought, though she knew that dirt in wounds were bad, and dirt was kept away from sick individuals unless the Spirits called for some. Was this need for separation a strictly human thing?
"Less dust is good, as it means less sneezing," Bramble said, her slow agreeance. "And I guess it is nice not to be walking in filth." Maybe it was a necessity in keeping stone floors. Yes! That must be it! "And I guess that's a good philosophy," she said, trying out the new word - what did it mean? "Especially since you're human, right?"
She looked like she was braced for being either told she'd done well, or berated for being wrong. More toward the well - Bramble had the nerve to look somewhat pleased at her logic.
The slow reasoning was enough to cause a smile to spread across Jacta's face, and by the time that Bramble was done, the human had broken into a chuckle of amusement. "Yeah, that's about right. And I'm a human, too. I'm sure it's not too hard to figure that one out." She began to wring her cloth out and get back to work, wetting a new patch of stone before scrubbing it down. "So... what chores... did you pick?" she asked, putting her weight into her scrubbings to get the most effect out of them.
Bramble looked nervous, at the mention of chores. "Chores? The things that were being talked about during that meeting of many people in the big room?" She was supposed to choose them? Wait - she remembered something like that. Only, what was there to do? Bramble hadn't seen the list up in the main hall, and swallowed. Was she doing yet another thing wrong, even if by accident? "I... didn't?"
Jacta stared at her, a little surprised. "You know, like... gathering firewood, tending the orchard... uh... exercising the horses, stuff like that?" How had the Lykos not managed to sign up for any chores and nobody noticed? "You'd better find Tayne and let him know that you missed out, or somebody's going to find out and make you do something really nasty." Jacta didn't think that they had to clean out the toilets latrine style, but then again, she wasn't sure!
Bramble immediately looked panicked. "Oh no! I need to find Tayne?" Tayne? That sounded familiar, but from where? She couldn't remember at the moment, and she was shaking with nervous energy. "Where is this Tayne? Who is this Tayne? I think I remember Tayne. I don't want to do anything nasty." She paused.
"What do you mean by nasty?" Maybe it wouldn't be too bad!
The intensity of Bramble's reaction was enough to take Jacta aback, though she simply paused in her scrubbing to regard the Lykos to make sure that she didn't hurt herself. "Take it easy, I'm sure it can't be too bad... if you don't mind scrubbing out toilets." She thought about that, then amended, "like latrines, if you know what those for."
She went back to scrubbing, steadfast in that chore, at least. "As for Tayne? I dunno. He was that short git who was talking to us all yesterday in the hall. The one with the brown hair? Kind of bad speaker?" She didn't sound like she had a lot of respect for him; Jacta wasn't outright disdainful of the last year human, but she didn't have to like him!