I wanna be the very best like no one ever was... Who: O & Mickey What: The oddest start to a friendship ever. When: November 11, late Where: The Cemetery; TBD Rating: High - probably some language Status: Complete
To catch them is my real task, to train them is my cause
The days had grown colder. Leaves danced and twirled across the streets, grasping gently at the tails of coats and the laces of sneakers. She had never seen that many variations of colors that weren’t etched into the pages of long forgotten tomes from the glass of her cell. White Coat Two had left small books when she behaved. O coveted those as one might a mountain of treasure and the days they were plucked from her bleeding fingers for disobedience were the days she questioned that insatiable thirst for survival. Something had nagged at her to keep on, to keep going. She had come from a world that she coudn’t remember and didn’t understand, yet she knew she had some place in the rankings here.
Summerview had been a blessing. Those that she had met so far had not been kind, but then again neither had she. Perhaps they, too, had been through much. Had they been captives? The gargoyle had spoken of humans harming his family, the woman from the flower shop had not mentioned a past connection to humanity. Then again she had no way to determine who was what, what species felt like or smelled like, nothing to differentiate any bipedal humanoid creatures like herself from regular humans other than the fact that actual humans weren’t welcomed there.
A deep exhale.
O lifted her eyes to the sky. The barrier sat there snug, the only obstacle that separated them from the expanse of cold, concrete buildings across the bridge. She could recall that city - the humans entitled it as Atlantic City. That name meant nothing to her in the same ways a lot of modern things meant nothing to her.
The night was even more frigid. Obsidian feathers shivered from the chill. O had been cold for most of her life, thrust into the darkness and then suddenly the lights. Even now, a freed creature, she slept on the floor of her loft on hay rather than in the bed that Jayati had helped her get. The bed was too soft, the hay was new, it gave some relief but allowed her body to find familiarity in the hardness of the wooden slats of the floor.
A push from the branch and O was in the air. She’d been perched, cautious, on duty protecting the island with the select few with the same shift. Easily she soared like a shadow across the expanse of that dark starry graveyard above. Silently those keen eyes searched the ground for no other reason than just to find something to look at —
— in the cemetery, just past the gate she noticed a tiny figure following a shadow, probably its shadow. Canting her head, O observed, circling overhead like a vulture waiting for prey. Her wings flapped. Not far from where the person was moving sat a couple of other humanoid creatures for which she lacked the proper term: their flesh was hanging from their bones in decayed ropes, in some areas on their legs the skin and sinew had detereorated to reveal the ivory bone. Whatever they were, they did not smell good. This did not seem like an ideal situation and it seemed that whoever the approaching human thing was, well....
Twisting in the air O dove and without a moment to spare she scooped the youth up - her strong arms curled beneath his own with his frame pinned tightly against hers. She landed for a second to gather purchase from the ground hard enough to leave impressions from the toes of her boots, before vaulting into the air. She carried the human into the air and away from whatever those things had been curious if she should have even bothered with the event in the first place. But her duty was to protect the citizens of Summerview and so she would.