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Post by demikara on Sept 15, 2018 14:31:34 GMT -6
Molly decided very firmly not to think on what Bill had jsut said. Yep. Not her concern at all in anyway. "I've not tasted a human so I can't say." She said simply and then considered the others need for food. "There is no meat here, but I can use some underworks to get some from a store. Do you eat meat cooked or raw?" This was going to be fun. Molly really didn't want to think on it if the other preferred raw, but it was possible, and she would respect that.
She just didn't want to think on it at all. She preferred what meat she ate well cooked. She wasn't a big meat eater in general, but when she had it, well cooked was the way to go, despite what that stupid second set of instincts wanted. They could suck it. She was sticking to a light meat diet and the work could suck it if it wanted anything else.
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Post by littlekreen on Sept 15, 2018 15:01:43 GMT -6
Bill shook his head, "Cooked. I'm not eating meat from some foreign place raw. I'll get gutworms or something. Raw fish is disgusting."
"You've never had your own?" Flynn asked with a risen brow, "you seem old enough that some must have passed. What do you do with your family dead? If you leave them idle too long they'll turn to voidbrood."
A short came out as Flynn's chuff, "a stronghold tried to bury at water once until voidbrood all woke up and started tearing through water level flooring. It took a whole kelp cycle for the Far and Deep to destroy them all. They said they were thankful no fools survived. Heh!"
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Post by demikara on Sept 15, 2018 15:56:04 GMT -6
"They've all passed." Molly admitted. "My mate and my parents. I've no young." And doubted it would happen given her preference for her own gender. "My parents were cremated. Set to burn." She explained. "Some prefer burying, in a wood box deep underground." Molly shrugged. "I'll be back shortly." Breaking every set of special rule that Molly had slapped on her, she stepped forward and disappeared from room entirely. She returned about five minutes later with a rotisserie chicken some plates and some utensils, stepping out of thin air a few feet in front of Bill. "They had some cooked chicken. I hope you like it." Hopefully it suited the other well.
She placed it, the plates and the utensils on her desk and dug out some napkins as well. "You little ones should be here soon." And then they could go safely to the reserve while Molly worked out the other's home world. That was going to be tricky and she'd definitely need to check her grimoire.
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Post by littlekreen on Sept 15, 2018 16:34:03 GMT -6
Flynn nodded balancing better in her haunches, "My brood mother passed to grandfather teeth years ago. I spend too much time in our dreaming plane to age. But yes, thank you for the giving of food."
Flynn waited patiently while the odd one shifted out of the world then picked up the utensils, "Clutch mother yellow made me omnifecund so I have many children not my own kind. Probably why she wishes to take these half human whelps. Or the wolf kind that protects didi while i am gone. The egg host wants what it wants! I outlived my mate didi and raised her when she reincarnated. Not male this time either. I may risk a shaper again so we can raise our own new blood this life too. It's my turn to be pregnant. Hah!"
Bill used his middle fingers to grasp one another though Flynn's intent was to use her index.
"Past death until the maw of grandfather teeth," she repeated the vows.
With only a little awkwardnesss she tasted the chicken with a grin, "tastes good! Texture like clutch mother yellow but with less,ah, sour bitch?"
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Post by demikara on Sept 15, 2018 17:00:15 GMT -6
Molly followed very little of that. Her mom was dead, it seemed. But this one didn't age because of... Molly chalked it up to magic. "It's called chicken. Rotisserie chicken actually. There's usually some in every grocery store, so I figured it'd be fast to grab for you." She shrugged, and paused, then looked up the hall some. A very displeased officer was coming down the hall bearing two animal carriers. "I think your children may have arrived?" They didn't usually get animal carriers back here. They must belong to the zoo or animal control. Either way, they certainly weren't MCU's.
Still she smiled and intercepted the officer. A quick conversation had him handing the carriers over to her and Molly took them back to her desk. "So, awkward question. If I open the carriers, will they attack or bite?" Molly sincerely hoped the answer was no. "And I apologize for the undignified way they were transported. Mundanes are...unusual. That was the best way to put it as far as Molly was concerned.
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Post by littlekreen on Sept 15, 2018 17:42:25 GMT -6
Bill looked up chewing to clasp his hands and pump them upward with Flynn's expression of agreement. Flynn was inspecting the white bone curious at it as her own kind were black. She wondered what they were made of though these ones seemed lighter like hers than what the heavy humans seemed to use. She'd not seen a chicken before but recognized the wing muscles but as a whole seemed as mutant as the wolves she'd seen in town with collars on. The other was mostly just making a softer version of the angry noise though there were telltale drops of blood on the carrier.
Outside in the carriers angry pitched squall periodically rammed holes in the side of the carrier. Black nubbins at the end of their tiny fingers sustained a amount of force from the tiny arms of a foot-high fluffball. The inside showing fluffballs looked far more hospitable than the peeved noises coming from within. Lime green and intensely fluffy occupying the entire interior with long strands. Periodically a mismatched set of rose pink eyes peered out the front of the cage the fluff parting with a warning of sharp black teeth. It was actually somewhat difficult to see the shape of the whelp given the stiffness of the long lime strands. If one had a particularly keen vision the dark flesh within was something plucked out of time then perturbed. Both hidden bodies with the shape of a deinonychus but webbed limbs with a larger brain pan. The eyes were comically large for the head they belonged to though one eye was a slit-eye the other a round iris occupying the whole of the eye.
When Molly picked them up the angry waggling ceased entirely replaced with a furious sniffing. Both immediately began peeping insistently.
Flynn nodded while looking into the carriers, "Hello little males! Clutch mother has food!"
She added to Molly, "It is safe, they're good whelps! You're female so they're docile it is the way of our males. They try to escape males that handle them. Though it smells like one got too close."
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Post by demikara on Sept 15, 2018 17:50:45 GMT -6
"Oh good. Good to be female, I suppose." The woman opened both of the carriers, though she was careful about it. Brilliant. Lime green feathered fluffy dinosaur babies. And the mundanes had mistaken these for exotic animals how, exactly? She glanced around and bared an order to the officers around them. "No men within a fifteen foot radius! We have a gender specific aggressive reaction." Several officers jumped back and one of the female officers moved to intercept anyone who tried to get too close.
Molly gave a small smile to the mother. "Sorry. I do have to see to the safety of my officers too." Though it looked like someone would need bandages. So long as it didn't get infected, the fae really did not care. Still, with the mother and children here, it meant they could go to the reserve shortly. Good. Molly didn't want to think of how bad it would be otherwise. As it was, she grabbed an energy bar from her desk and began nibbling it. She'd need the calories shortly. Magic was exhausting work.
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Post by littlekreen on Sept 15, 2018 18:23:24 GMT -6
As the door of one opened the other shot over to the second carrier. The dinosaur whelp barely over half a foot tall shot over to his brothers carrier as fumbled clatters poked at the door. He backed off as Molly's hands approached though now freed of the confined space the stiff lime bristles spread out quite a bit. A small bush worth of evenly distributed fluff easily obscured its shape but the eyes dilated as he peeped insistently to be reunited with his brother. A small bump actually indicated the tail of the small creature which whirled around that bright pink eyes could make sure the threats were somewhere else. The head pivoted to and fro, unable to move their eyeballs, and satisfied the hairs whirled in a spin as the speedy babies reunited as two lime clouds race around the carrier door and smoosh together. The two coiled springs then take off for the edge of the desk clacking nails all the way clearing the distance from desk to Flynn's current eating surface without difficulty.
Flynn stops eating to hold the back of the chicken as there's a wet smack of headfirst impacts into her food, "Someone has to protect the males! Their claws are not sharp enough yet to slice but they are strong enough to puncture. I can't use Bill's throat to call to the children to keep them placid. The husk's flaps are difficult to cast with too."
The two whelps made odd rumbling chews as they tried to growl at the same time as eating her chicken.
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Post by demikara on Sept 15, 2018 18:31:56 GMT -6
Molly shrugged. "They've been warned. They'll stay back, or end up in remedial training with me, which is a fate none of them want." And one she thought hilarious to dump on idiots too. The Sergeant watched the two fluff balls and smiled. "Finish up the chicken and I'll take the three of you to the reserve, assuming you can carry your children?" She didn't really follow much of what the other said, but hey, so far there was no violence other than what was usually expected with toddlers or puppies. That was more than good enough for her, and she'd count it as a win.
It was still better than Dawson and Brandon as kids when there would be an officer involved in separating the two. Molly smiled and twisted her wrist in a circle. A book appeared, floating in the air in front of her and chained to her wrist. Anyone seeing it wouldn't even see words. Molly began to flip through it muttering to herself. "Reptilian...largely water based planet. Uses the phrase underworks to refer to magic. Grandfather teeth is death?" That last one she wasn't certain of. Still, what she had would be enough to limit down her searching. It would still take her a bit, but they were definitely leaving from the reserve, so she had time.
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Post by littlekreen on Sept 15, 2018 19:35:20 GMT -6
Flynn had fairly good hearing she corrected with a point upward, "Places like the dreaming plane are planets with skies and a sun. We have water under ceiling without horizon."
After digging through fluff to scritch on the noisier whelp he quieted and she added, "The whelps give the warning after the ambush. Ha! They'll be fine whelps are clingers as long as they are with a clutch or brood mother. The little fleshchisels already mouthed their side of the chicken."
She taps the table in a square grid of points, "The supports, Towers of Gan by tradition, and boundary wall is immutable. We've tried to go through the walls by force. There are rumors my clutch mother Yellow protects a door now that she is reborn but nobody can get in that enclave to see. We don't know how deep the water goes but studious twitch are curious enough to research. The kelp are attached to something we know there must be a floor but twitch grow lungsick on their diving boulders well before the bottom."
The whelps spin to stare at their mother tapping the table freeing a view of skeletonized chicken ahead of them. They listened intently as Flynn partly explained to educate them. Their little minds steel traps of mimics at this age. Bones left behind, spat out into the interior. Lime hair at their fronts covered in chickeny gore but neither old enough to care. Flynn just looked at them and scoffed once only one eye rolling upward. The black mark on her arm started to throb and expand as Bills final hour came ever closer.
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Post by demikara on Sept 16, 2018 6:44:18 GMT -6
Molly nodded, accepting the correction and put away her book, both book and chain disappearing. It wasn't something that was allowed to leave her sight when open. It was usually kept at her mentor's but she could summon it to herself, though it did automatically chain to her, just in case. The protections on the book were numerous and Molly was very careful of it and its contents. It was important and could go to no one's hands. "Right. Let's get you three to the reserve before Bill passes. You said it was soon." And they had the whelps here, and everyone was fed. "So this is complicated."
She had never walked with more than one person before. "You may get a bit dizzy. If you can carry one whelp and I can carry the other, we should be fine, but I'm going to need you to hold my hand the entire time. It's important you don't let go." Letting go would be Bad. Molly wasn't certain one hundred percent what would happen, but she had heard horror stories. "I firmly suggest closing your eyes and asking your whelps to keep their eyes closed also. You can trust me on getting you there. It's about...two minutes to the reserve from here, for me." For everyone else it was several hours. Molly tugged on her ponytail and considered what else. "It'll be a short walk, and we'll be in a clearing when we arrive." She knew the reserve well enough to know of a good spot, or what should be a good spot.
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Post by littlekreen on Sept 16, 2018 12:21:47 GMT -6
Flynn stood up to which the whelps started mincing their feet staring expectantly. One nudged on the back with Bill's withered hands the fluff leaped face-first at her side landing with a whump. A death-grip somewhere under the fuzzy lime barnacle gave a firm grip as the whelp started a rough chirruping. His brother paced expectantly on the edge of the table until bill spun him about toward Molly and nudged him forward. The pink mismatched eyeballs picked a flat space on her torso and with two taps of his small feet launched at Molly's midsection. Each pressed their heads into whatever surface they'd landed on and faced upward rotating in place if necessary in an instinctive need to stay above water.
Bill's voice chuckled raspily, "Hrh hrh hrh, They're harder to dislodge than you think. I've never had someone else move the reacher before. We're easy to drag into the dreaming so careful of your strength."
Flynn took Molly's forearm the weight of a reacher's touch feather-light even when dragging them across the planes. She'd spent so long in their dreaming place it had become part of her as with any reacher that survived their first year. Bill's eyes closed as the throbbing black crawled up the other arm.
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Post by demikara on Sept 16, 2018 17:38:44 GMT -6
Molly placed an uncertain hand over the fluffball on her chest and nodded, then took a step forward. The world faded from around them, became hazy and almost transparent. She took another step and the world disappeared entirely. Now they were where Molly traveled from. She knew her destination so continued walking with sure steps through the nightmareish world she was in. Here, her glamour was gone entirely, but her form was distorted, lengthened, sharpened into a terrible rictus, though she knew she had seen much worse. In comparison to her mentor's brother, she seemed small and harmless. She resolutely did not look at either of the whelps or her guest as she walked forward.
In this realm, your truest self was there and visible. Not your species or gender, but the core of your being, you good deeds and bad alike writ on your very being and obvious to all who saw them. There was no hiding in this world, not shying away from the hard truths of who you were. Gender, race, even species. Those were all constructs. Here your passions defined you, whether it was a passionate love, or a resounding hate. In this not world of blues and blacks, the people moving were obvious harsh splashes of color. But Molly ignored them, ignored the imprints of powerful souls she could see around them.
Dreaming place. That was one way to put it. It was more like a realm of nightmares. She knew, intimately, the status of her soul, and if she ever wanted to see the status of another's soul, well. She need only bring them here, or view them through this place. Rare was the person she couldn't see the truth of through the lens of this realm. But she knew the sensations, the sight were too much for most. Most only stumbled along in darkness, viewing the world as it flared out around them as stepping stones for each place. A bit of asphalt, some concrete, the desert, and then the mountains. At one point even, they stood on a lake for the length of a single step. Still, Molly was careful, made certain that her passengers remained with her.
And then they were out of it, standing in a clearing high up in the mountains, a camp site without tents to be found. She smiled and looked around. "We're here." She announced. "You can open your eyes now." And she hadn't lost a passenger. Good, she had been nervous. She hadn't taken three passengers before. The woman found herself absolutely ravenous though, and she poked around the camp site a moment, before she twitched her fingers and a small cooler began visible. She slipped the top off and grinned. "Hey! Nice, I left myself poptarts."
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Post by littlekreen on Sept 16, 2018 21:44:33 GMT -6
Flynn did as she was told tightly shutting her eyes clutching Molly's arm to move forward on Bob's withered legs. The reachers knew better than to disobey one more familiar than a place than themselves. There were horrors lurking in their dreaming and Flynn had no illusions there were others here too. Cross one's path unprepared and the lightest sentence was death. Though she heard less of the shambling offensive ticking over twisted skies and hills that come with Children of Teeth. Heavy they strode across her place in the dreaming a thunder of warning across the dreamscape if one was lucky. Their oppression of natural design to that of this other's left a far more lucid place to Flynn's own reckoning. Though both were a laughable comparison to reality that did not suffer lies gladly.
The scraping that came behind Flynn was something she'd heard before and with each of the husk's steps a chain clinked. A long red brass chain stretching deep away into the mists of this place to parts unknown. Its other end a spear through Flynn's withered bag of flesh growing bloated and pale the eyes ragged holes as runes writ in blue sylvan fluid squirm free from within the husk's dark. As one tattered relic flagged it held against this world but both only barely now a fleshy threadbare sail flapping itself under a harsh gale. Leaking from growing splits in Flynn's husk was an odor of ozone, parchment, and blood.
The whelp on Molly's chest unseen but felt was divided in personage and thought as he felt this place. A clawed hand on one side grabbing firmly the tinkling musicbox melody rising from inside his chest with the gentle scrape of a wrought iron frame. The far side a smooth hind end of a human baby. A life too young for its soul to be anything but its construct. Even then its secrets still laid bare.
As they re-entered reality Flynn collapsed to the ground this place in the dreaming badly taxing her husk. The black mark now more clearly a dark writ to a broken man's oncoming end their mother's suffering worrying her children greatly. Flynn groaned with Bill's voice making a scraping bass unintelligible nonsense highlighted by a faint fluted speech. The whelp Flynn was holding, Thebus, hopped down looking on worriedly. His brother, Quinn, squirming free from Molly as she moved her hand to twitch her fingers. Quinn made a fluted bark at his brother as one ran for the other then both for the safety of a tree hollow. A shifting of natures spalling magical residue at the border of light and dark. In the place where they were born light had not been and light was danger. Quinn took his brother to the safety of the dark. Though one lime fluff could be seen a far deeper dark now obscured their shapes though Quinn had changed. In the dark unusually deft human baby clung to his brother in his lap of obsidian black skin set against those bright mismatched eyes.
Flynn was too busy to hear Molly as she released herself from the failing husk with a bit of the sylvan tongue, ((Another's path I walked. Safety within lost souls. That path is over. I call to path to now be my own.))
Bill's movements slackened with legs bending as if the bones had gone. Though the noise was still there of ribs snapping though the husk collapsing insisted it had them still. Splits started to leak blue blood at first as the form engorged painfully. Black feathers jutted free as the leaking of blue and red from the splits in the flesh slowed. Flynn pulling herself out of the husk blood magic willing herself reconstructed back into reality.
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Post by demikara on Sept 18, 2018 17:34:10 GMT -6
Molly opened her poptart packet and nibbled the first one, keeping half an eye on the kids. Huh. And now they looked human. That was neat. She nibbled the poptart a bit more, waiting to her new friend slash assignment to finish. That just looked entirely too painful. Good to know the feathers would never go away though. Molly thought she rather preferred the lime green ones on the babies, but maybe that was just to make them look poisonous or something.
Brightly colored animals were supposed to look poisonous right? It was a possibility.
Finishing off one poptart, she started on the next, still rather hungry and summoned her book to her, flipping through it as she gave the other time to recover. She didn't bat an eye at the appearance. Frankly, the other looked different, yeah, but Molly had seen much, much weirder. It came with the training that she never discussed with the people at work. All they knew was she could do some space time but was good at wardbreaking. They didn't need to know why or how, or any details, and it's not like she could give those details anyway. Even if it weren't forbidden, which it was, she couldn't speak of her training or her skills.
The kids had been cute in the traveling plane. It was nice to see such sweet souls every now and again. Too many she had seen were hideous and ugly and frightening. Molly never told anyone what their souls looked like, but she knew. She knew things about Rahal, about Catherine, about all of them, things that were imprinted on their souls themselves. She saw how Brandon's soul was becoming even more twisted, and kept silent on it, not having any proof other than what she saw in that other plane.
There was no hiding your sins from her, not when she was there. There was a reason she could see wards so intricately and well, and it wasn't just a comprehensive education across each language of magic. Not that she would ever admit that. Some things were meant to be a secret, and her abilities, her full abilities were them. It was best they thing her a fae, or a long lived human and there to be nothing truly strange about her other than her magic.
Her upcoming fae guardians were going to be in for a treat if they thought Molly would listen to them if their souls were too dark.
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