[Edge of the World] Midnight Serenity (Taln)

[Risa Moontide]

Risa smiled at the nestling as he reached for the fish. She kept it within reach of his small beak, so didn't want to tease him or just give it to him. As Reech snatched up the fish Risa released the fish with practiced hand, fingers wary of the sharp beak from years of feeding birds this way. Risa's face cracked into a small grin as he happily snacked on the fish.

Risa just noticed she kept thinking the bird as small. Reech was nearly the size of Fala, just his proportions were cute and made him appear small. As he sat in Taln's hands Risa felt his soft pre-flight feathers gently, running her hand down the side of the eyas. His colors were so much brighter than Fala's dark and white, his feathers thinner for flight rather than Fala's waterproof ones. Risa loved the eagles up here, loved all the differences. She marveled at the little bird.

The man's feelings for the bird were touching. The way his hands instinctively caught the little bird, the way he cradled Reech against him. Reech also echoed the deep emotions of his owner, cradling himself against the tall man's warm chest. They were clearly connected, and it was now clear who Reech meant when he was speaking of his mother. An absentminded finger rose up to Fala, rubbing his cheek as he shrilled a short happy note and met her embrace.

Taln's change in position was comfortable. His story was just as touching as his actions. This man was more sensitive than he acted, the little things hinted at who he really was. After he finished speaking, Risa sat down next to him, hands on her knees as she glanced over at him and then up at the sky. "That sounds wonderful. You were meant for each other." Her words were warm, but were also strong with conviction.

"What do you see when you glance up at the starry night?" The question felt odd even as it left her lips, strangely sage-like. Risa wanted to know what he saw, what he experienced. This man was so much like her but so different. Fala hopped down her arm, and as he did so Risa stretched her arm further, providing a pathway for the bird. Fala finally settled on Risa's lap, snuggling himself into the sea of cloth draped from her skirt over her. Still with her eyes locked to the starry night, Risa murmured, "What makes you give it more than a passing glance, unlike so many others?"

[Taln]

The man busied his hands with Reech, feeling very self conscious under Risa's intent scrutiny of him. He wondered why in Wind Reach would such a free spirited, happy, -friendly- person ever visit here--on purpose even! The copper haired dek couldn't fathom why anyone not Inarta came to Wind Reach of their own free will. He knew he was trapped here with his bad sight and no depth perception. He'd spent fifteen years memorizing Wind Reach because he'd never survive if he left. Then again, Taln wasn't sure he'd survive much longer living here. He mentally shrugged and obediently responded to the Svefra's comment, and hoped that she understood his strange mix of Nari and common. His knowledge of common was far too poor to speak that alone. "I like to think so." Taln answered quietly, holding Reech near him and grooming out the loose baby feathers like a true 'mother.' "You and Fala have been together for a while now. I've never seen a sea bird up close before. His feathers are so...different. They're really smooth, and a different bone type than Reech's." Slowly he lowered his enormous six foot frame to the grass, gently enough to leave Reech's position undisturbed. He looked up at the sky and exhaled, almost relaxed. What Inarta dek could truly relax in the presence of foreigner or an Avora? Without any forethought, Taln answered her question instantly, fully trained to follow orders. "I see everything I could ever want. Limitless freedom just there for the taking and too far away to ever grasp. Imagine being a bird that could touch that sky! To live and -be- a part of that limitless potential. To never be earthbound." In the dim night sky, he glanced over at Fala and admired the beautiful bird's trust of Risa. His vivid emerald gaze locked onto the sky again. "I suppose because I am forever earthbound. Forever to serve and stare at the ground while so many other Inarta get to ride that sky on their cherished Wind Eagles. It's something I will never be allowed to achieve in this life." The man's pitch changed to one of envy and deep longing for the dream that nearly every Inarta alive wanted so badly. A dream that could never be fulfilled by a dek.

[Risa Moontide]

The man's words were curious. First, his meaning wasn't completely clear when he switched to a mix of Nari and Common. Risa regretted never learning any Nari yet for the millionth time. Their tongue, the tweeting and chirping language, was actually very soothing and pretty, made for great songs and stories though she wished she understood the words behind both. Risa's own whistling paled in comparison to their tonal coos and whistling.

The words and expression Taln used told more of the story. He sounded... tired, or broken. Forever earthbound... Risa understood his words. Being earthbound would be a tragedy for her, never to return to the freedom of the sea. Earthbound, to her, meant living a life no better than the one she had left, living without purpose or without the true freedom needed to plot your own course in life. The world had trapped this tortured soul, it seemed. Maybe not these stone walls within Wind Reach itself, but other walls, ones that could not be felt nor hiked away from.

"Why don't you try?" Risa did her best not to seem commanding, this man was already perturbed by her words, seeming pent up and a little on edge. Risa kept her tone bright, a smile on her face. "There's no reason to settle for what you have. Look at Reech there." The eyas looked so comfortable, he knew nothing would harm him when he was safe in his 'mother's' hands. "You could be as free as he is, leave your cares and troubles. Allow yourself to. I know you could do it." she glanced over at his face, probing his dark eyes.

Risa sat back again, relaxing further. The web of stars above her were beautiful, each link in the sky so bright in the clear night. "I see choices. That's what freedom really is, isn't it? A choice. The sky is a link of hundreds of choices, each one affecting the other. A pattern." Risa knew she was marveling, staring at the dark sky. Her mind made patterns with the stars, traced around the old constellations and branching out. Like leaves of a tree, though each green spot of color was instead a light, shining down on the two from the perch of the Gods themselves.

Risa was lost now, staring up into the night. No longer was she sitting at the Edge with a stranger, she was no more. Nothing was left of her but the stars, nothing remained in her head but each twinkle and every gleam. The colors of the nebulae were glorious splashes of paint in the dark landscape of the night sky, the stars weaved into the colors with more patterns like a glorious tapestry above.

Fala whistled loudly, snapping Risa out of her distracted stupor. She blinked a few times, spots of light filling her normal vision, before she glanced back over at Taln. Her cheeks reddened a bit, she hated losing track of herself around other people.

[Taln]

"REe!" large glottal stop,"Ch!" Taln automatically corrected her on the pronunciation of the name. His finely tuned hearing gave him an ability to distinguish the finer nuances of a language if he heard enough of it. The large man listened intently as Risa spoke, quickly memorizing the tone and fricatives of her speech. The dek listened to people far more often than he spoke, but something slowly began to emerge. An innate facility with language was something he'd never fully recognized in himself. Anyone else would call it an eidetic memory, but he only knew that if he heard something once, he remembered it perfectly. The more the Svefra spoke, the more Taln could understand her. He quietly mumbled one of her words, trying to perfect the sound of it. "Leeeef. Leeeevf. Leeeeave." The long vowels were easy, but the V fricative was harder to reproduce. In their short conversation, he'd rapidly learned more common, but with an unintentional Svefra accent. When Taln answered, it was in an accented Common identical to Risa's. "Choice is a freedom not allowed to a dek. It's a luxury for others to enjoy. What was that word you used? Pattern?" Taln mimicked her Svefra tones exactly as he spoke, not even realizing how swiftly he'd just learned more common, and a brand new accent in under a bell! The latent talent was never given the chance to come out until he got to hear someone foreign speaking with their own flavor. Something stirred within his mind, a new way of thinking that he didn't fully realize. A glimmer sparked of in an inkling of thought when he'd asked her to repeat the unknown word. And it sparked into a whole new idea. "You speak your language to me?" Taln looked frustrated and urgent, on the verge of an idea. His green eyes were vivid with color and his Common got amazingly better, the more he listened to Risa. "No, not speak--teach. Teach your language to me and I'll teach you mine? You want to speak Nari?" Reech had settled comfortably on the man's stomach, a fluffy bundle of sleeping feathers. When Fala spoke up, the young falcon chirped sleepily in answer.

[Risa Moontide]

"Ree-ech?" Risa tried her best, but her own tongue seemed to flow words together with the slightest Svefra mixed of Fravala that was common of her pod. The stop just didn't fit her mouth the way it did Taln's.

Risa peered at the man as he played with her words, rolling them off his tongue. Her eyes were warm, welcoming. Her expression changed to a more clearer surprised one when Taln began speaking in common, her own accent echoed back from his words. It was remarkable! When he asked his question, Risa was getting more excited, wanting to piece together this puzzle that was forming before her. "I'd love to learn some Nari! I'll gladly help you with common, though your common is pretty good."

"Pattern..." Risa reached over to a grass-less patch nearby. Her finger drew squares in the sand, dotting every other one like a small checkerboard. Glancing up at Taln her fingers touched the dotted squares, skipping over the plain ones in order. "Pattern. It's common for... For..." Risa couldn't think of how to explain the word in more than the pictogram, and her eyes looked more concerned as she peered into Taln's, searching them again for understanding.

Risa sat more forward, draping Fala in more fabric as he gave a quick tweet in annoyance, fluffing back his wings to free himself from the web of cloth Risa had accidentally surrounded him in. Risa quickly scooped Fala up and brought him to her face, gently setting her nose against his beak and more gently whispering, "Oh, I'm sorry, my love." Fala nuzzled his beak against her and she lowered him, looking brightly back at Taln.

[Taln]

"You got the last half right. In the first part, you count a heartbeat and then put your tongue to the roof of your mouth." He nodded and encouraged her to try again, smiling at her results. "The more you speak, the more I learn." Taln watched her motions, scowling (squinting) intently. When Risa's bird chirped, he chuckled at the indignant tone and answered in the swift, birdlike Nari. "Aw she ruffled your feathers didn't she? Oh the the indignity!" The dek hadn't laughed and enjoyed himself this much in a long long time. The large man moved onto his side, placing Reech over near Fala, so he could socialize better. "Reech, don't be so shy and such a momma's boy! Go chat with Fala. It's Ok little one, I'm not going anywhere." He turned his attention back to Risa, soaking in the way she spoke and how she moved her hands. With swift hands he arranged some stones strangely and it looked like nothing more than gibberish. south.jpg (1.46 KiB) Viewed 637 times Something seemed to click at the back of his mind, and excitement and understanding lit up his tone. "When I'm in the warrens and it's too dark to see, I feel for the marks on the walls that I've made with my talon sword. This means 'South' so that's what I put in the tunnels that lead south of the entrance. That's a pattern, yes?" Taln gave Risa a genuine smile that brightened his eyes, at the pleasure in learning and sharing. No one bothered to share knowledge with him often, and he was as starved for learning as he was for food.

[Risa Moontide]

Risa tried again, pushing her tongue against her mouth as directed. The sound came out distorted, but Risa seemed to hit the stop what sounded like the right way. "Ree'tcch." Stopping the word with her tongue made Risa want to buzz her lips into raspberries or something, but the concept was pretty simple.

She played with the word a few more times. "Reee't'ch... Ree'e cha. Ree'ch!" Risa was proud of herself. The sound was a lot more like Taln's, at least recognizably so. She beamed over at him, the feeling of learning coming with its own feeling of elation. "How did that sound?"

When Taln moved Reech nearby Risa grinned and did the same, motioning her hands for Fala to depart. He did so with a grumbled coo, his words speaking subtly of wanting to be nested in cloth than on cold stone. Still, Fala's webbed feet awkwardly scooting off Risa to a short fall towards eh ground, catching himself with a flap of his wings. With piqued interest Fala turned his bright orange beak towards Reech, tilting his head as he examined the eyas again. Risa simply admired Reech's feather pattern again as Fala moved.

The pattern of stone Taln had made was curious. Was it like Nari writing? Almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind she shook it free, she had seen Nari writing before and this wasn't it. Risa tried to think about how to explain the concept, before finally reaching into her bag and pulling out a long strip of cloth. The cloth was red and had a repeating design in the fabric, almost a striped pattern like a tiger though more wavy like the sea, with a diamond shape in the middle every few stripes.

"This is a pattern." Her hand moved over the stripes and paused at each diamond shape, before continuing quicker down the stripes again. "The meaning... isn't as direct as the stones you placed. Most patterns have no meaning at all." She hoped she was coming through clear and rethought his words again and again in her head to try and see if any misunderstanding may have come up or could be avoided.

But a puzzled look took her face then, asking a quick question. "What are the warrens?" Somehow she had never managed to hear the term in a context she was able to understand it in. Might as well ask.

[Taln]

Taln watched Risa's efforts at reproducing the sound and the chime she got it right, the little falcon answered avidly before the man could make a peep. The fledgling's chest fluffed out with pride, knowing she was saying his name. Reech's sharp yellow eyes turned to her and he answered Risa as if praising her. "Reech! Reeeech!!" His vivid green eyes watched as she took out a crimson cloth with striping and diamond shapes on it. He nodded, finally understanding what she'd meant by pattern. "That's pattern." the Dek enunciated carefully in Nari. She'd been nice enough to teach him pattern in common, so he felt obligated to return the favor in Nari. "The warrens?" Taln blinked, a little confused that someone didn't automatically know what the warrens were. The nice woman was teaching him, so it was only fair that he teach her what little he knew. Although his Common was improving, the man's explanation was still pieced together with Nari. "They're underground tunnels that connect all the rooms together. In winter it saves our lives because we stay totally underground after the first snow till the Valintar declares open doors by about mid spring. The main warrens are worn smooth from so much traffic over the years, but there are still older, unexplored tunnels that people get lost and occasionally die in. From the lowest Dek to the mightiest Wind Eagle, we all hunker down when winter comes." His gaze had traveled to Fala as he spoke, staring at the peculiar webbed feet and the eye catching head feather. It was a handsome little bird.

[Risa Moontide]

Little Reech's answer was so adorable Risa wanted to scoop him off the ground and just hug his soft feathers to her. Fala flapped his feathers up for a moment, making a spectacle in front of the eyas. 'Showing off, was more like it!' Risa grumbled to herself and held another piece of fish between the two birds, letting her arm block Fala from snatching it from her open palm so Reech could grab it.

"Petitelarian?" Risa's attempt at copying Taln's phrase was far worse than his own. Risa's whistles carried far too much musical touch than verbal, random sounds which were less Nari and more just sounds than she wanted. She just was having a hard time getting this language. Risa tried whistling again, but lost any semblance of a Nari word. Ugh, this language was so frustrating!

"Oh, the tunnels all around are called the Warrens? That explains it. I was thinking the Warrens were some place I hadn't been to..." She gave Taln a sheepish shrug. "There's was other question I'd like to ask you, one word I'm curious of the meaning." Risa tried another word she'd heard often, one of the few she'd tried to practice before this fair night. "Foreenurr! Does it mean Hello or something, I hear it all the time." She glanced over at Taln again with a curious glance.

But a much more dangerous sound filled the air all of a sudden than the words of a naive girl. The sound was low and gritty, but Risa heard the noise translated into clear words she had heard many times before: "Food!" The voice was husky and sounded wet. But all Taln would have heard was "Hoo!"

[Taln]

Taln almost laughed out loud at Reech's antics as he preened and showed off for Risa. Half a chime later, he watched Fala making similar motions and he smiled. How could anyone resist? He put out a large hand to gently stroke Fala's chest feathers. There was nothing wrong with a fine looking bird knowing he's good looking! The young falcon hopped up and snatched the food rapidly from Risa's hand. The Dek and the young bird had that in common--there was no such thing as turning down food. "It's a little shorter in this form; not quite so drawn out. The first half is actually petit." He demonstrated carefully. Taln chuckled at her question, charmed by the innocence of it. Briefly, his smile lit up his eyes, taking away the tension. "Uuh..it means outsider, foreigner. Good accent though--" the sentence broke off abruptly as the man heard a hunting owl. Before he could move to grab the fledgling, Reech made it to Taln in three fast hops. He completely buried his terrified little self into Taln's long hair, instinctively scared of the predator. Although both Fala and Reech were at the larger end of an owl's preferred pray, it was no deterrent. The fledgeling was a still a couple inches shy of being big enough to fight off other birds. It made the man realize that his feathered companion was growing rapidly and would soon become hostile and aggressive toward any other bird. And leave him to find a mate...