Ari ♫ ♪ ♬ (gracenotes) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-01-21 19:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !log, arielle chiaro, nathaniel porter |
Who: Ari & Nate
What: Chocobo walkies
Where: Outside the city gates
When: This afternoon!
Rating: PG-ish?
Status: Complete!
Ari maybe had a point, Nate thought, as the bottoms of his trousers slowly began to wick up water from the snow they were trudging through. They weren’t likely to find many bugs out at this time of year. He’d done his usual cold-weather trick of just wearing all his clothes at once, and it wasn’t really cutting it, out in the woods north of the city. He was pretty sure there was snow actually between his two layers of trousers, and it was pretty hard to lower his arms against his sides while wearing quite this number of shirts. They’d been walking for a while, more quietly than he would have expected from a bard. He wanted to ask if she really did have a summons, as she’d been hinting, but at the same time he didn’t want her to say no, so he’d held back. But eventually, in a fair-size clearing where the snow was completely free of footprints, he turned to her and said, “We’re far enough out now, right? For you to - I mean, you’re going to show me?” “The amp?” Ari said. Her eyes betrayed her merriment even as she spoke. “To test for… range?” She grinned at him over her thick, woolen scarf. She was a bit better equipped than he for this outing, she had to admit; her tall boots kept her feet dry (if not entirely warm) and her gloves and cloak were lined with rabbit fur. “I can, if you like,” she said agreeably. “Though we can, perhaps, dispense with that task, at least for the moment. There’s another that takes precedence.” She couldn’t deny she was very curious. He’d taken care not to ask any intrusive questions on their way out, and as far as she was concerned, if he had no intention of pushing, she would play stupid for the rest of the afternoon. Nate resisted the urge to pull a face at the bard. He didn’t know her well enough for that - if she ever stopped hinting in circles long enough to admit that they had summons in common, though, maybe he’d get to know her. “You know what I mean,” he said plaintively. He didn’t have a problem with saying it out loud, he just… had a problem with saying it out loud when other people could possibly hear it. Nate still wasn’t quite sure he believed it himself. Insanity seemed a much simpler explanation than that a mystical legendary summons had bound itself to him. Kaw! Mystical! The voice fell into clucking, cawing laughter. Shut up, featherbrain, Nate thought back at it as loudly as he could. It didn’t seem to help. Ari’s too-innocent smile didn’t falter. “Ah, but I think you will be the one to show me something,” she said. A pause before she added, “It is not a… formula to follow, nor a spell to incant; you should not actually need to do much of anything, except potentially keep your balance.” Though who knew how a giant chocobo would come? Certainly not surging out of a fiery ring in the ground… “If you have the stone,” she said, “all you really need to do is tell it to come. It will do the rest.” And quite gladly, she had to assume -- just how long had this creature been cooped up? Nate frowned. “It’s that easy?” he asked, fingers dipping into the leather pouch containing his summoning stone. He twirled it in his palm, and the gold flecks glinted in the sun. He held it up, and pulled in a breath to say the words, and then stopped. “Why would I need to keep my balance?” he said suspiciously. Stupid hume, let me out! Twitterbard doesn’t know what she’s talking about! Somehow, Nate was pretty sure he trusted Ari over Birdbrain on this one. “Only one way to find out,” she said, and made a motion with her hands as if to say, well, go on. They’d been remarkably lucky with monsters so far, steering clear of anything roaming the plain, but that could change at any moment; while Nate puzzled over his stone, Ari listened and watched for the approach of anything -- or anyone -- unwelcome. Nate was pretty sure she hadn’t actually answered his question. He really should be expecting that by now, though, so he went back to staring into his stone. “All right then,” he said, drawing in a breath. “Chocobo, get out here!” It wasn’t quite a shout, but it was definitely louder than just talking. For several long moments, nothing happened. “Did it work?” he asked, staring around in case the bird had appeared behind him. There was some kind of speck, way up in the sky. Nate squinted. “No way…” he said, backing up as the speck got larger, and larger, and - FLOMP! The bird hit the ground hard enough for it to shake beneath their feet. Nate wobbled, but managed to stay upright, staring in disbelief at the half-buried decidedly grumpy-looking bird. “You look… ridiculous,” he said eventually. “What?” What had just happened? Ari had to smother her laugh with one gloved hand. Dramatic entrance designed to strike fear into the hearts of one’s enemies this was decidedly not. As the bird (huge, as advertised) shook itself off with a highly annoyed squawk, the rumbling voice at the back of her mind say, Oh, him. That time I summoned you in a river, you weren’t much better, Ari pointed out (the answer was an irritated rumble). “You may want to tell it not to try hurting me,” Ari pointed out, just in case, as baleful bird eyes focused on her. Not that, she imagined, it would be out long enough to manage it, but… just in case. Nate eyed the bird. It did look excessively grumpy. And he remembered from their fight that it could be mean. “Don’t even think about it, bird brain,” he cautioned. The bird turned its baleful eyes on him instead, then warked dismissively and dedicated itself to ridding its feathers of every last bit of snow instead. Just like a cat, Nate thought. Not that the bird would appreciate the comparison… It lumbered upright and stomped around in a circle, testing out its feet. Nate took care to stay between it and Ari, just in case, but it didn’t seem too interested in her now he’d warned her off. A moment later it stopped, and tilted its massive head to one side. “Wark?” it asked curiously, then all of a sudden it disintegrated in a rain of golden light. “...was that meant to happen?” Nate asked. Pathetic, said Ifrit. “Yes,” said Ari, though she was mostly talking to Nate. “His time will be a bit limited at first. The more often he gets let out to play, the longer he’ll stay.” She had to wonder what something like a giant chocobo could even do (aside from perhaps falling upon its enemies like some fluffy anvil). “You’ll have to try again sometime to see just what he’s capable of. Or you can ask, though who knows if he’ll feel like answering?” It would certainly be an interesting thing to see someday, she had to admit -- a giant chocobo fighting at Nate’s behest. She had to assume it wouldn’t always look ridiculous. “There,” she said, “now tell me you don’t feel better.” “I - do,” Nate said slowly. He wasn’t sure why, but the sense of pressure he’d been feeling inside his head seemed to have fallen away. He hadn’t even realised the background headache until suddenly it was gone. See, birdbrain, he thought at his unwanted passenger, you don’t need to be a pain in my side constantly! Nothing. Not even a single, cackling wark. “Birdbrain?” Nate said out loud. Still nothing. “I can’t hear him. He isn’t talking. Did I do it wrong? Is he gone?” Nate asked, worried. Ari laughed. “Don’t miss him too badly,” she said. “You only get a day -- give or take -- of peace and quiet. This time tomorrow, he’ll probably be telling you to eat bugs again.” The spans of quiet were, in her mind, precious opportunities to not have her intelligence (and courage, and life choices) questioned. She had to assume anyone would welcome the reprieve. “And now that you’re no longer distracted,” she said, “how about we work on this amplifier?” “Sure,” Nate said, still a little dazed from the complete silence inside his head. “We can do that.” Now that he knew silence was possible, Nate was beginning to think there were a whole lot more things he could do. But first, time to prove to himself that a few months of hermiting weren’t enough to make him completely forget how to be a machinist. |