TEST DRIVE MEME

[fairyfoes]

TEST DRIVE MEME

Considering apping to EACHDRAIDH? Why not give the setting a test run here! OPTIONAL SCENARIOS 01. ARRIVING IN THE DRABWURLD. The Seelie and Unseelie courts welcome you with mirthful revelry and hearty food. After you have been briefed on your purpose here, you will find an endless feast and a night filled with entertainment to placate your concerns. Mingle with new arrivals, sneak down the castle halls and make sure your eyes are always on your glass; fairies and imps have no bias when it comes to tricks! 02. THE STATION. Looking for a little slice of home? The Station gives you all that and more. Take advantage of the wifi, have a cup of fairy-brewed coffee (the one they didn't spit in) or sit back and relax on the patio. You can even move your things into one of the available rooms! 03. WILDCARD. Your own scenario! Explore the Drabwurld or simply take advantage of your Locket!

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Janine Farehouse | Dinoverse

[pterosaur]

[As a girl possessing a Quetzalcoatlus, Janine is a curious creature, stork and bat and giraffe all at once, covered in shaggy almost-fur. Her shoulder is around six feet up - generally, if she's in a room, the room seems smaller.

She has found the feast and is eating. Dramatically, of course, her body does not allow otherwise. Meats and the odd bit of fruit get delicately picked up in the tip of her beak, which is then tossed back so that the food goes down her long throat. You weren't after that roast pig, were you?


Alternately, she's lying on her stomach somewhere out of the way, head up, watching the goings on with large, wary red eyes.]

[infant]

[ Peter is beside himself with new friends, but it's the oddities that draw his attention regardless of any danger posed. Those in the Seelie castle are honourable, as he understands it, and once he espies a huge bird-lizard thing eating alone it's all he can do not to fly straight over. So he does, perching on the edge of a nearby table at a crouch, peering up unabashed, a boy dressed in leaves swatting away the shimmering, live light-baubles that clamour for his attention. ]

Hello, there. Have you got enough to eat? [ A genuine question, thinking such a fearsome beast ought to be fed properly. Tinkling sounds in his ear and he snorts. ] The fairies say they are worried you will snap them up.

[pterosaur]

[Janine keeps one eye on him as he lands, but doesn't say anything until he does. This body isn't made for speaking in English. It croaks and caws softly. Still, her old human voice is projected mind-to-mind. She's no older than fourteen.]

:I'll eat bugs, but those glow too much for me.: [Probably she shouldn't joke about that. Janine gestures with her head and neck in something vaguely like a shrug. :Besides. I won't eat anything that talks or feels strong emotion.:

[infant]

[ Startled by the voice in his head, a grin slices into place. Peter continues to talk normally, enjoying the way he understands her though the creature's mouth doesn't really form words and thinking himself awfully clever for it. ]

I'll tell them later. Fairies are bothersome things and they might crawl all over you if they start being unafraid of you while you're eating. They would steal your meal.

[ His head cocks, bird-like. ]

I'm Peter. Who and what are you? You look magnificent.

[pterosaur]

[Janine eyes them, blinking with her milky horizontal eyelids.]

:They should be careful anyway. Accidents happen.:

[She punctuates that by snapping her beak closed. It doesn't make for that loud of a sound by itself, but she projects a very reptilian snap! as she does this.]

:Janine. Flattery, huh? I'm a Quetzalcoatlus. Last and most perfect of the pterosaurs.:

[infant]

[ His back straightens when she snaps, a hand going to the hilt of his dagger. Peter loves danger almost as much as he enjoys making new friends, and he's pleased she's turning out to be fun in both respects. ]

My Wendy is sometimes called Wendybird by my Lost Boys, but she has neither the mighty wings or beautiful feathers. She flies quite badly. [ Sorry, Wendy, it's true. ] Are you a bird? Is that what a Quet— a pterosaur is?

[pterosaur]

[Janine would really quite rather not fight - she's big, but her skin isn't any thicker than the webbing between a human's thumb and forefinger. Still, her beak is worth respecting.]

:Flying takes a lot of learning. Maybe she hasn't done it for long enough.:

[Reaching back to the table, Janine takes an apple and crushes it before swallowing, keeping an eye on Peter all the while. Juice shows at the corners of her beak.]

:Not really. We're kind of the older cousins of birds. Bigger, not so feathery. How about you?:

[infant]

She's had such a lot of practice, though.

[ Peter can't be bothered teaching her time and again. He shrugs, stabbing an apple with his dagger and slicing it up, popping bits into his mouth to talk as he chews. ]

I lived with an old stork called Soloman in Kensington Gardens, the birds were my friends before I flew away. Soloman said I am a Betwixt-and-Between, neither bird nor boy but both. I am myself, first and foremost; Peter Pan of Neverland.

[pterosaur]

:An interesting name to take.:

[She's seen the Disney movie, but decides not to bring it up. Even if he's taken his name from that, Janine would rather not too many people wonder why she's so familiar with the modern (1999-era) human world.]

:If you're at all bird, why do you look so human? That is a flat face I see, and skin without scales or feathers, and a stub of a neck:

[infant]

I can speak with birds and I don't wish to live in the world of men, I think that is the reason. If it is not, I don't care to bother thinking about it at length. I am a boy and I wish forever to be so, no matter what, even if I am not a normal boy. I am wonderful when set amongst the normal kind, none compare.

[ Peter rubs his neck. Is it a stub? By comparison, certainly. ]

Are you here to go to war too, Janine?

[pterosaur]

[She considers, and neck-shrugs again. Janine too has pretty much rejected the human world. It's never had any use for her.]

:No one here has my allegiance. I don't care for fighting when I don't have to.: [Getting thirsty, but there's not really anything here she could easily drink from. Janine steps back from the table and starts walking, quiet for something her size. He can come with, or not.]

:If they wish me to map, or scout, or find lost people, or hell, decorate, that's a different story. This place is too fancy.:

[infant]

[ Peter soars along at her side, swooping overhead at times as he plays tag with some persistent fairies. ]

That doesn't sound any fun. If we fly together, I'll make a game of it for us. Whoever kills the most, wins.

[pterosaur]

[Long ago, Janine's father died overseas. War may have been involved. Her voice is dry.]

:Count me out. Games like those are tedious. Flying should never be tied to numbers.:

[lightcatcher]

[It's out of the way, and outside, and there is someone else sitting not too far away, exactly because of that, and is trying to figure out his device. The instructions that he got weren't too helpful, and so it is more trial and error.

Which he would normally be good with, but it is completely unlike anything that he has done before, so he has no real inroad. And being really bad at something and just not getting a shoe in on how it works is not a thing that he is used to, at least not in areas that he would be invested in. Which makes the already frustrating matter all the more frustrating.

Not that it means that he'll give up. He will figure this out. ...which means that he'll easily sit there one, two, three, five, twelve hours with his mind fully on the tablet, unless he is addressed by someone else.]

[pterosaur]

[Normally Janine would ignore him. A loner herself, she's disinclined to interrupt someone who's broadcasting I'm-busy-leave-me-alone signals like that. But this guy? He was here when she came through looking for food, and when she left, and some hours later when she was starting to feel hungry again, and he's still here and intent as she leaves her second meal.

Clearly he's not dead. Janine watches, considering. If Loki were here he might have snatched at that tempting loose hair, or dropped or flung a scrap of food at him, or just snapped in his face to see if he jumped. Janine is a more cautious and considerate soul, though she does imagine doing each of these things. And then wonders if he'd notice if she painted designs around him. And on his back. And if she put things in his lap.

...for all her cynicism, she's still very young. Quietly Janine pads closer. Her 'essence', the part that was her before she became a great flying lizard, is not entirely confined to this body but rather reaches out and around it. She has a form of empathy that she does not quite know how to master, and so something of that frustrated fascination blurs and becomes hers, itching at her so that she whips her beak down and scrapes herself with it to no avail.

Just leaving is not an option now. She circles him, watching out of her left eye. Then begins the work of making a paint out of flowers, shells, fruit and so on, ground with a primitive mortar and pestle made from rocks she's found, and forming a brush large enough for her from long grass stems.]

[lightcatcher]

[Focused he might be, but his guard down he has not, and when the paints draw closer, he looks up sharply, the device switching to his left hand as he frees the right for his sword, no clear intention displayed but wary, not displaying an intent to draw the blade but ready to do so.

Something drawing in on him, and in this place where judging and interpreting events is harder due to how new many things still are, he simply is more careful, even if he can feel no threat in the approaching ...person?

Seeing Janine gives him pause. Yavanna were you high.]

[pterosaur]

She'd made a great quantity of a nice strong purple-red and started by painting a circle around him set well back at around the same distance she'd kept when she'd walked around him. Then, another circle a little farther in, and the space between had been decorated with meaningless lines and shapes. Sometimes Janine held her brush in her beak, sometimes in her large, rough wing-hands.

After that had come lines and shapes and instead of circles great triangles and rectangles, sharp-edged jagged things as the whim and the itch took her, drawing closer and closer. It's monochrome art, rough and primitive against the flagstones, but not without appeal. She left herself paths towards the center to walk on, clear places like the spokes of a wheel.

Honestly she's surprised when, pushing a line towards him at the tip of her beak, he finally notices. For a moment she freezes, head down, and just blinks her milky horizontal eyelids. Then she draws her great head up and throws the brush out to the side with a flick. Her 'voice' is young - she's barely a teenager - and entirely too casual for someone who's been caught scrawling giant designs around someone.]

:Hi.:

[lightcatcher]

[More startling than her appearance is the casual way in which she invades his head, and it prolongs the pause that her looks and actions already gave him, though it doesn't last much longer. His hand drops on his sword, not yet drawing it but poised to do so.]

What is the meaning of this?

[His eyes don't go to the patterns as he speaks, resting instead on her.]

[pterosaur]

[...this was probably a mistake, she realizes, but it's not in Janine's nature to dissemble and apologize easily. She doesn't quite toss her head - that would be a dramatic gesture indeed - but she does set it, bracing against the ground, all the better to strike with her beak and then take to the air if it comes to that.]

:Didn't you notice how lifeless this place is? The decorations're as generic as it gets. It needs commentary. Lucky everyone, I'm good for that.:

[...she was a graffiti artist when human.]

[lightcatcher]

[Yeah, that position definitely doesn't put him at ease and he stands, his hand clearly on his sword still though not drawing it yet, more a statement that he could fight, announcement of capability, than open aggression. So far.

He still follows her words though.]

Why then did you decide to start with this encircling me?

[pterosaur]

:Because you were there and didn't even blink when I was walking around. Because I could.:

[Adults, in Janine's experience, do not understand this concept.]

[lightcatcher]

[He dislikes the voice in his head, the invasion of his mind that it represents. If it can get there, what else might this being be able to do?]

You claim that you had no purpose past that. [Also he perfected the ability to shut everything out exactly when there were a lot of kids around. So her reply fits well enough into the pattern for him to not follow up with the details. But she's registered as a child right now, which... does not relax him, this being is still potentially dangerous, but shifts things lightly.]

[pterosaur]

[He might be surprised. ...so might she, Janine hasn't advanced beyond transmitting maps and diagrams yet.]

:Pretty much. And, I'm bored.: [Still braced for takeoff, Janine makes a small, rippling gesture with her head and powerful neck that somewhat recalls a shrug.] :Novelty always wears off.:

[lightcatcher]

Set yourself to a task, then. Keeping your hands busy, or laying your head down in different places, helps with boredom.

[He feels no patience with such complaints.]

[pterosaur]

[Janine can't roll her eyes. They don't move that much in her head. She inscribes a small circle in the air using the tip of her beak.]

:That's what this is. Was, I guess. A project to tide me over 'till morning. I don't have little hands like yours, it's big things or nothing.: