Solo Seeing with New Eyes

[Khida]

Summer 45, 513 AV
late morning

Ants as farmers. Aphids as cattle.

Khida mused over these ideas as she drifted through the sky, idly surveying her surroundings. The day was warm and damp in that particular manner which foreboded rain to come -- but for the moment, it was also bright and welcoming in the falcon's eyes, the grass brushed by a gentle breeze, only a few pale clouds decorating the heavens. Small clusters of zibri dotted the grasses beneath her, as if they were clouds of the earth. Here and there, she caught sight of one or another Drykas, human and horse watching over the herds.

It is a different thing from eat plants, eat meat, the circle we think about.

Khida had never given the ways of the world close attention, in that respect; her paradigm had always been simple. Straightforward. Some things she ate, when she could. Some would eat her, if they could. People -- Humans and Eypharians and all the rest -- well, they did whatever they wanted. The rest... the rest existed, they lived by their natures, and whatever those natures were didn't really make a difference to her.

But now the Kelvic wondered... were the ants and aphids exceptions... or had she really overlooked that much of the world she moved through? This world -- this wilderness -- that he said the goddess Caiyha had made?

She and the hunter had fed well that morning, and the city of tents seemed to be remaining stationary today. It was a day which did not place demands on her, and she was free to occupy herself however she pleased. Today, Khida thought, she would see what she could find that was not predator and not prey, that was outside the 'circle' he had so briefly alluded to.

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Khida]

She flew for chimes, the grasses rolling on beneath her. Nothing strange revealed itself to Khida's eyes along the way -- a herd of the horned not-deer, a trio of glassbeaks bickering over something she didn't bother to investigate, a great deal of grass. But then, if she could distinguish such things from the air, wouldn't she have seen them before? It had taken landing, and the knowledge of that man, that Jaron, for her to see the ants and aphids...

The falcon's gaze settled on a low ridge covered by a shorter type of grass than she saw in most of the Sea, stiff and clumped together with patches of bare earth between. And rocks; lots of rocks. Gray rocks and brown rocks and rocks of a wan, tawny shade. Perhaps that was why the tall grasses didn't grow here -- they didn't do well around so much stone. It seemed as good a place to investigate as any other, and unusual for the Sea; maybe it also had unusual creatures.

Khida swooped down to land on a projecting stone, to the accompaniment of strident barks and what seemed a thousand brown, furry bodies diving into nearby burrows. The large digging rodents were familiar to her; she'd tried hunting them before, and sometimes even succeeded. The Kelvic ignored their agitation, instead shifting to human and sitting on the ridge, her elbows on her knees and her chin on crossed hands.

And there she waited.

Syna traveled her slow arc across the sky, breeze ruffling through the grasses and through Khida's hair. It was cool on her skin, a pleasant counterpoint to the growing summer warmth. The grasses seemed to shimmer as they bowed in turn, revealing occasional glimpses of summer flowers. Eventually, the burrowing rodents decided the falcon had gone away, and the human probably wasn't a danger; they left her a wide berth, but resumed their own business, flashes of quick or erratic motion at the edges of her vision.

And something else, small and brown and fluffy, too round to be one of the rodents. It peeked from a burrow, then hopped tentatively out on its long, skinny legs. Bird legs; bird beak; barred in brown and white the way she had only ever seen birds to be. It had an owl's round face, an owl's large and vivid yellow eyes.

But an owl living in the earth? Living... with?... rodents? Even if those rodents were larger than it...

How very strange.

animalsPrairie dogs and burrowing owl.

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Khida]

The little owl blinked its large eyes at her in an assessing way, then walked out into the rock-strewn grass -- walked. It had wings, she could see them; but still it chose to remain aground. It took up station in the grasses and just looked about, head swiveling sharply once every few ticks.

Her curiosity piqued, Khida rolled over to her hands and feet and clambered along the stony rise to investigate the owl's burrow. She clung close to the rocks, her belly brushing across them, trying not to startle the rodents into another alarmed scatter.

The burrow... well, it was a hole which sloped down into the earth, surrounded by a slight mound of packed soil. It looked to take a turn a short ways within; there was nothing she could see but a fading into darkness. Did it nest down there, in the black underground? Did the rodents dig the tunnel for it? Khida leaned closer, trying to peer further within. She couldn't imagine the owl digging such a thing itself...

Khida could imagine the owl chirping and hissing, however, as it was now doing that very thing. She tipped her head to regard the little bird, with its wings fanned low and wide, its feathers fluffed to make it look big and fearsome. It was still a little owl. But she could respect its claim and concern. The Kelvic woman retreated the way she had come, slowly crawling backwards over the rocks, keeping the owl in her sight. With no view of her next step, she slipped several times, pebbles shifting beneath her weight; the worst, though, came when the rodents launched into their yapping again, the unexpected sound causing her to start. That slip drove grit into palm and knee, scrapes which would definitely sting for a while.

Eventually, the little owl settled down, and later still, it decided she had finally gotten far enough away. It scuttled hastily to its burrow and disappeared within; and though Khida watched for several chimes as she dislodged the grit from her skin, it showed no sign of emerging again. Neither did the rodents; they seemed to have decided her human skin was a hazard as well.

Clearly, she had nothing more to see here.

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Khida]

Khida walked over the rocky mound, progress made much easier now that she was watching where she traveled. Also, the mound was riddled with burrows. Once, she almost put her foot into three holes with the very same step. Did the rodents have nothing better to do than dig?

Maybe they ate dirt. That wasn't any stranger than rodents living with owls.

An insistent, trilling chiir interrupted Khida's wandering thoughts. It was a demanding sound, not a song but voiced by a songbird. Normally, she would have ignored it -- songbirds were for eating, and at that only when the Kelvic wore falcon shape -- but... her curiosity was running high, anyway. Khida paused, turning towards the source of the sound. It stopped, but now that she was paying heed, she also heard other birds calling, the little chirps which kept a group in contact.

Slowly, trying to place her feet with care and make little noise, she approached the little birds. The demanding trill came again, and she paused, studying the ground. A flicker of motion -- small, brown. Bird-shaped. More motion, a small flock of them, all scavenging among the rocks for... whatever little brown birds ate. Whenever one turned her way, Khida glimpsed a striking black and yellow pattern on their faces.

Except for one. The noisy demanding fledgling. It was just brown, what must have been the drabbest brown she'd ever seen on a bird. And it was distinctly bigger than the rest of the flock. But it chrred insistently, fluttered its wings, gaped its mouth, and one of the stripe-faced birds hustled over and fed it.

It didn't seem like the same kind of bird as its... parent?... at all.

animalsHorned lark flock and brown-headed cowbird fledgling.

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Khida]

Coming to a decision without quite verbalizing the thought, Khida bolted forward into the midst of the flock. The stripe-faced songbirds all chattered alarm and took to the air, scattering in every direction. The brown chick flapped its wings once, then scuttled towards a clump of short grass. There, it went utterly still, hoping immobility would secure its safety.

It didn't. Khida plucked the baby bird from the tuft it hid behind, cupping her hands around its body and holding it up to examine more closely. Its heart beat furiously beneath that plain brown plumage, dark eyes staring wide at her. It had no yellow anywhere. No white on its belly. No real pattern at all -- just that streaky brown. It couldn't be the same kind as the rest.

But the stripe-faced birds answered to and fed its hunger all the same.

Khida let the little bird go; it stood where she placed it like a statue, rigid and unmoving. It would run away when it felt safe, she thought, and the flock would come back and feed it after she left. So the Kelvic did just that. Deciding her feet were tired of rocks and short, bristly grass, she shifted and took to the sky. The falcon's silhouette in the air really spooked the little birds, but their renewed disarray held no interest for her.

She was too busy reflecting.

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Khida]

Ants that farmed. Owls which seemed to co-exist with rodents. Songbirds who raised another breed's chicks. Orphaned chicks? She could only guess. A season ago, Khida would have claimed such relationships were the province of people, humans or otherwise, because people... well, they just did things like that. It was part of being people. Look at the hunter, and all his stray foundlings.

But apparently, the world did not fit into that easy division. The stark simplicity of prey, predator, and indifferent other did not truly apply. Or at least, not universally... and she had, deep within, presumed that it basically did.

I have been... narrow, Khida mused in rare introspection -- mused to herself, to the grasslands, to the unseen goddess who governed these wilds. Narrow of mind. It was a humbling realization, a jarring one; doubly so in that humility was not something which struck her often.

The falcon looked out over the plains which were home in a visceral, essential fashion, in a way that made the word seem either small and confining or grandly expansive. These not-prey relationships... they hinted that there were whole facets of life in the Sea that she didn't know about.

What else lay out there that Khida had never thought to look for?

I need... All of this. I need to know it. Not a plea, but an intention: she would learn. All the things the falcon once flew over and dismissed as irrelevant -- they were part of her home. His home. They could never be irrelevant, and she would no longer ignore them.

She would know the Sea. However long it took to learn.

Common | Pavi | someone else

[Timshel]

[Double post. My bad.]

[Timshel]

Grades, Lores & Awards

Khida

Experience

• Acrobatics +1
• Stealth +1
• Investigation +2
• Running +1

Lore

• Synergy in the Sea of Grass
• Brown-headed cowbird: Drab, loud and adopted.
• Burrowing owl: Lives among the prairie dogs.
• Horned lark: a ground feeding songbird
• Horned lark: Seemingly willing foster parents
• Investigation: The value of details
• Prairie dog: gregarious burrowers
  

Penalties

Injuries
Khida has a scraped left-hand and right-knee. Grasping with the hand, running on the knee, and flexing both appendages will be annoying for a week or so. Slight scabbing/scarring for a few weeks.

Notes

Well written. There's a ton of character development here in just six posts, and "Ants as farmers. Aphids as cattle," has a nice little musical mantra to it. Good job.

Stealth doesn't perfectly fit here, but sneaking up to (wild) birds is hard, so there ya go. Any concerns, or anything I missed. Feel free to PM.