Ceramic Mountains

[Victor Lark]

68 Fall, 511; seven bells

Thk, thk, thk, thnk, sshk... thk, thk, thk...

The dawn’s sun was a pale blue glow on the murky black sky, hidden from the world by a thick blanket of clouds. Having won their battle against the moon, the dark wool veil fought on to cast the city in dreary darkness. The autumn air was swollen with the cold stench of rain that had yet to fall, and yet rebellious yellow flames still danced hot and bright on long poles between every block. Because of them, even the most oblivious of nighttime wanderers was allowed his eyes.

A keener pair might notice the blur of a shadow just above a line of roofs. It might have been a racing specter or a low-flying bird, except that the distinct rhythm of mortal human footsteps, running swiftly and yet without urgency, followed it like a shadow:

Thk, thk, thk...

The shape and its pursuant noise passed lanes and alleys as the city offered them, a flash of a whisper of a moment that passed before it came. It did not seem like it would ever stop, could not be told whether it even had a beginning.

And then, impossibly, it ceased like held breath; the shade became a solid man, who wiped his brow and rolled up his sleeves and leaned on his knees. Sweat like ice clung to the thin linen on his heaving shoulders and his mouth’s panting doused the black air with dissolving warmth. The glint of eyes beneath a curtain of moist black hair searched a circle around him, then he stepped on...

Bd dn dn dn dn dn. Thk, pk, pk.

…and stopped for good. With a sigh, Victor collapsed at the valley between two sharp-sloped roofs. There he slumped backwards, cradling his head in an upstretched arm, and stared idly at the starless sky.

[Palla]

The sound of the roof tiles shifting under the weight of a two-legged caught Palla’s attention. Rising up on two hind legs, she turned her attention from the apple before her, instead focusing on the origin of the footsteps. Her ears craned backwards, forwards, side to side, searching for a clue as to where this creature was, and what it was doing on the rooftops at this time of night. She paused only long enough to take a chunk of the apple’s skin between her little teeth and detach it. She chewed it and swallowed before looking around again. And then, there… A dark headed man dropped between two roofs. Having met another two-legged in this strange city days before, Palla was feeling braver than she ever had before. She continued to munch on the tart treat, peeling the skin and meat of the apple away with her little teeth. The fruit settled in her stomach, and she was full before she had even made it completely to the core. With two massively furry paws, she gripped the left-overs in her claws and made her way across the roof. Peering down, and settling on all-fours, she observed the two-legged man below her current elevation. And then, she batted the apple across the tiles and sent it tumbling down where it connected with a thud on the man’s head. Palla twittered and whistled excitedly, peering down at him. The sound was akin to a giggle, directed at her own mischievous doing.

[Victor Lark]

He should have been getting home. He told himself that he had only taken to the roofs to find a place to sleep, whether it was the gambling house he had only just left, the Inn that he had not visited in weeks, or the rightful bedroom with the waiting embrace of a sleeping friend. But it had been hours; he could not find any of them. Frustration in the foiled journey had made him restless, and the subsequent exertion had left him tired. Perhaps this was as good a place as any, to sleep. There was no color above him, nothing to distract his eye or even tell him that his eyes were open.

But then there was a peculiar nose, and Victor discovered that he had indeed been dozing: he opened his eyes in just enough time to watch an apple core descend on him, hit him square in the forehead, and force his eyes closed again in a startled wince.

Grumbling, the human sat up and pressed his palm against his brow to ease the small ache that had emerged there. He reached back to grab the offending item, then chucked it begrudgingly at his unknown assailant, the vague outline of a small creature and all its ticks and twitterings. What remained of her snack arced through the air, over her head, and escaped into a dirty alley on the other side. Though he was weary and irritated, Victor could not take offense at the antics of and animal. He waved a sleepy arm at it and called, “Shoo! Get out of here!”

Then he collapsed onto his back again, laid his hands over his stomach, and closed his eyes.

[Palla]

Palla craned her head after ducking to avoid the apple core as the strange man below sent it sailing back overhead. She peered down at the man, now more curious that ever. Carefully, she made her way down to the vicinity below. Keeping her distance from the two-legged being sprawled out before her, she twittered and chirped at him, rising up onto her two hind legs. She had no intention of nagging him for food; she simply wanted to talk to him. The two-legged peoples made her feel uneasy, but she was never going to get past the unsettling sensation if she didn’t at least try. It was her newfound goal, and she would succeed… As long as none found it totally necessary to skin her and eat her flesh. She shuddered at the idea. Inching closer, she whistled at him, dark rusty eyes scanning his face for a sort of expression that would betray his emotions. She fell back to four legs, and laid down in front of his feet, curling her tail around her body to sit comfortably and watch him. Eventually, she would show him her little secret. But that took trust, and so far, she didn’t exactly know what to make of this dark-headed two-legged. Had she been in her other skin, her nose would have been wrinkled delicately, pursing ridges between her eyebrows. Palla was inspecting him, sniffing out any sort of danger. Again, she crawled a little closer before settling back down almost a foot from him.

[Victor Lark]

That noise again. Victor pretended not to hear it, holding his eyes closed even as curiosity and annoyance pulled away the blanket of fatigue. His expression was not weighted with any single emotion, but rather a comfortable mask of nothingness. The thing neared, and even the eyes that flashed open were not marred with hatred or anger, but remained as murky and indifferent as the sky above. A deep exhale sank in his chest, and he sat up again.

There it was, sitting at his feet, a little ball of fur and eyes, red or maybe brown in the low light. He did not know what it was, so he took it for a rodent. It was looking at him. He could not even begin to guess why. Tired, he mirrored the thing, stared blankly at its eyes for a few moments. There was nothing there to read or infer, at least not that he could recognize without a face around it. Shrugging inwardly when it did not instantly depart, he reached forward and grabbed it by the scruff of the neck. He held it away from him so that it could not lift its little claws and feet against his face, turning and inspecting it for nearly a second.

If it did not retaliate in that second, he would bring it towards him without hesitation. He would fall backward yet again, tuck it under his head, and wriggle onto his side to make better use of his new pillow.

[Palla]

Being gripped by a clump of fur on the back of her neck caused her to growl a little warning through her deceivingly sharp omnivorous teeth. Her thick tail dangled down uselessly from her hindquarters, and she swung her bottom feet like a little monkey. Playfully, she growled again as the two-legged man placed her beneath his head. Irritated now, she wobbled and wiggled halfway out from under his head. With a massive paw, she batted at his mass of hair, popping him on the crown of his head. Again she whistled at him, urging him to sit back up and talk to her. It was then that it occurred to her: She couldn’t get out from under him, and he had attempted to use her as an inanimate object for resting his head upon. She cocked her little head to the side before considering the joke she would play on him next. Giggling inwardly at the look and reaction she was sure to invoke from him, she burst into a strange globe of light, and took the form of her second skin. Beneath the dark-headed man now was the bare bottom of a young, red-headed woman. Palla propped her head up on her elbows and looked back at him, knowing for certain he hadn’t missed the spectacle. A shy smile crossed her face as a rosy hue crept into her cheeks.

[Victor Lark]

Victor knew what that light meant, even though he could barely glimpse it from behind tired eyelids. He was squirming to his elbows by the time the darkness had settled again, his chin a few dangerous inches above her unabashed rear end. His narrow eyes narrowed still as they tripped an appraising line to her face, which looked back at him with a newly human countenance: a demure flush atop a faltering smirk. She seemed at be at least pretending a sense of modesty despite the nature of her race, but as the human beside pulled himself up by the side of his mouth, he thought he noticed something else.

She was proud of herself, he thought. Her shoulders hung as if to shrug; her curled lips pointed at her body; her eyebrows lurked expectantly beneath a mane of coarse red. She seemed thrilled to see an ounce of curiosity or incredulity, if not simply to startle him. Victor new what she was and was hardly impressed, but he would not let her see that. He chose curiosity, letting his eyes wander her as he sat up, leaned to one side and reclined against the steep rooftop beside them. With a wide smile, he canted groggily to one side to get a better look at her face, chuckling as he barely saved himself from falling against her.

“Look at you. Aren’t you a pretty thing?” He crooned, his brow open and pitying. He reached towards her, leaning so that he could pull her wild hair from in front of her half-hidden eyes. “Do you have a name?”

[Palla]

Palla cleared her throat and squinted her eyes together, creasing her delicate brow as the man reached out to brush the tresses from her freckled face. A set of rusty brown eyes gazed back up at him. He was gentle, seemingly, and curious, maybe. Had he expected the transformation? He seemed like an interesting creature, what with his strange charcoal grey eyes and matchingly dark hair. She leaned to sit up and face him, situated with her legs crossed, and her arms straight through the elbow to rest down between her legs. The prop of her arms set her chest to be hidden, though slightly inconspicuously perked. Running her tongue along the insides of her little teeth, she contemplated his actions. What was he doing on this roof? ”I-I’m called Palla.” She replied in almost a whisper. For what reason she was whispering, she didn’t know. It seemed the only thing that could hear them there and then was the air itself, and who was it going to tell? Nervously, she dropped her gaze from his, allowing the hair to fall back in her face.

[Victor Lark]

His brow lowered barely, so that his smile became less pitying and more friendly. “Victor,” he answered, sitting up as he held out his hand to her. “Lark.”

Instead of lying back again—it seemed he would not be sleeping soon—he turned to her, folding his legs and gripping the ground beneath them, mimicking her. Their knees touched. As soon as he had dropped it, Victor’s hand rose out of his lap, dared to knuckle aside her hair again. Breathing a laugh, he dipped his face to catch her eyes. He peered closely at those eyes, which no doubt returned the inquisitive look he offered, and after a long moment, his nose was somehow inches closer. He reeled back, as if embarrassed, but there was no color on his cheeks or reticence on his eyes, only the same mask of cautious amity.

He had seen as much as he should have expected, and that was nothing at all. But other things than eyes could be honest; he glanced at her body again. She was slim and strange and attractive for it, but she seemed thin, even weak.

He had not whispered yet and he did not lower his voice now. Still, his words were soft and airy, as if he were speaking to a child rather than the full-grown woman before him. He let the grin trickle back as he regarded her face again, and his curled hand fell to the crook of her neck before he withdrew it. “Is this where you live?” His hand escaped to the confines of his lap and he looked to the side, slumping. “I’ve intruded on your home.”

[Palla]

Victor Lark. She tossed the name around in her head and chewed on the syllables, as she often did when meeting new people. As he sat near her, he brushed against her, only barely. The light touch made her skin tingle, though she shrunk away a little. She still was not entirely keen on allowing herself to be touched by strangers, especially when it came to two-leggeds. She made no move to block him, however. Alert and curious, she watched him. When at last he spoke, she replied to him, ”I make no place my own. I was only snacking.” She pointed up to where she had tossed her apple from. ”Up there.” She had thrown an apple at him, hadn’t she? The core wasn’t a heavy chunk of the fleshy fruit, but she supposed that from what she had learned about the two-leggeds, it was probably a rude gesture. Considering this, she added, ”I didn’t mean anything by it, by the way. The apple. I just, uhm…” The peachy flush spread beneath the spattering of her freckles as she cast her gaze downwards, realizing how silly she was about to sound. ”I just did it for attention.” She hadn’t actually intended to hit him with it, just to nab his attention. Palla shifted uncomfortably as she cleared her throat, an awkward smile curving the corners of her mouth.