05-22-2017, 11:13 PM
It took Jade an embarrassingly long moment to understand just what she was looking at.
Her tower, once so isolated and forlorn in the midst of a sheet of barren ice, looked like an ivory needle with tangles of orange thread churning around it. Even through the mountainous morass of rocky outcroppings and steam the occasional gleam of a snowflake would peak through, twinkling gently over the veins of boiling lava spooling out on her doorstep. The forest of emerald-colored trees that surrounded her home, too— still prettily speckled with their red blossoms that glimmered like Christmas ornaments over the snow— hung on the periphery and shifted beneath waves of gossamer heat.
There were also dwarves everywhere, loads of them. What she had thought to be just seven was... well, a lot more than seven. There was a dwarf in full mail with battle gear strapped to her belt, scowling over the whole procession; two dwarrow miners with shiny brass helmets and laden down with loads of stone, jostling one another around, carrying pickaxes and streaked from head to toe with soot; one dwarf wearing entirely too many shiny, jingling trinkets to be chipping away at the stone like that; another dwarf dressed in warm furs and reading from a creased parchment letter, spectacles perched upon his round little nose; even more dwarves stomping their shovels into the frozen ground and grunting irritably when it refused to give. Dwarves, dwarves, dwarves.
A jarring chrn-nng! rung through the air, startling Jade so much that she would have tripped and fallen over if it weren’t for the warm, steady arm that shot from out of nowhere and caught her just in the nick of time.
Blinking slow, Jade looked down into the face of her savior, eyes widening when she actually recognized who it was— Kenan Badgerburrow! He was still wearing that funny bronze armor of his that fit him like an iron band strapped around a whiskey barrel, looking up at her with a crease denting his sweaty brow. A beard the very color of driven sheets of copper concealed most of his frown from view, dirt and bits of chipped stone caught in the unbraided whiskers. And, lord, he stunk too, like sulfur and rotten eggs left to warm in the sun. Gross!
“You’d best watch your step, lass,” he chided her, being very nice in helping her to regain her footing.
Jade thanked him with a nod, though it was more a slight tip of the head. She was too busy staring around at the chaos that had gripped her snowy lawn, mining tools scattered everywhere and dwarves scraping at frozen earth and bizarre streaks of burnt ground without so much as a by-your-leave.
The Witch of Space looked at him with pursed lips, eyes roving around the excavation site. What the hell is going on? she wanted to ask. Instead, all that came out was an unmistakably eloquent, “Um?”
Before he could come up with a no doubt blustery reply to that, the other Badgerburrow brother, young Treacy, hurried over. With his raggedy hat clutched in one hand and a rusted shovel in the other, fuzzy scrap of a beard streaked through with grime, he looked almost as if he had just emerged from battle. Still, even in his rugged state he was able to muster a grin for Jade, teeth flashing about as bright as the snow spread around them.
“Halloo, kind witch!” Treacy greeted her, face flushed red from the exertion of whatever he’d been doing. “It is good to see you again, ‘specially since you’ll now be able to share in the spoils! What d’you think of our operation here?”
“….your operation?” Jade repeated, baffled. She glanced around at the rugged ground, some of it lined with gigantic coal-like lumps of dusky rock, speckles of what seemed like dark glass glinting up at her.
Being confused was beginning to lose its previous luster.
Thankfully, Treacy seemed more than willing to enlighten her. Grinning, he whacked his hat against his legs to get the dust off from it before replacing it upon his head with a flourish. “Our operation, yes. Y’see, we had proposed to come back to make sure you were alright, seeing that you were in such a remote area. But you weren’t here, and all these fiery rivers were spread around and… and would you look at these stones they leave behind!”
He stooped over, snatched up a black stone, and summarily held it up for her inspection. A blinding grin lightened his cheeks. “A real beauty, isn’t it?”
“Wow, it sure is!” Jade murmured, correcting her glasses and leaning in to get a better look. The stone gripped in the dwarf’s grubby fingers was blacker than jet, speckled almost like a bird egg with small grey spots, delicate edges similar to a very poorly shaped knife blade pressing lightly against Treacy’s hand.
At a subtle gesture from the bright-eyed dwarf that seemed to say ‘go on, take it’, Jade carefully grasped the shiny piece of rock between the tips of her fingers, turning it this way and that with a cursory eye. It felt warm against the pads of her fingers and nestled easily inside her palm, sparks of heat tingling against her skin and glimmers of orange flame seeming to shift in kaleidoscopic patterns from some indeterminate source within.
When Jade finally looked up, Kenan was staring suspiciously at something behind her. For an irrational, affronted second Jade worried that his glare might be directed at either Bec or Rebecca, but when she turned she discovered that it was just Brennon standing there. The shackles were (thankfully) still on his wrists, but he had a cheeky bluster in his gaze and his bristly chin was tilted up in challenge.
Jade sighed. Honestly. Dwarves.
Following his brother’s gaze, Treacy’s eyebrows lifted towards his hairline as he looked between Jade and her companions. He didn’t comment on the shackled dwarf for the moment, however, instead focusing on Rebecca and giving his most jovial grin to the little girl. She had tucked herself away behind Jade’s skirt and was peering up at what must have been perfect strangers to her, only a few strands of her wispy, dark hair sticking out against the winterscape. “Well, isn’t this a surprise! I didn’t know you had any siblings, Miss Jade, least of all a sister.”
“That’s because she’s not,” corrected Jade, but smiled fondly all the same. “Treacy, Kenan, meet Rebecca! I’m looking after her for a very good friend.”
“Is that so?” Treacy’s face brightened and, without much further ado, he crouched down so that he was at the Little Sister’s eye level. “Hello there, little Rebecca! Would you like to see something absolutely, wonderfully, faultlessly amazing?”
One yellowish eye shifted with great reluctance into view, but twinkled with interest. “Is it shiny? Did the pretty angels leave it?”
“Uhm…” Treacy looked to Jade, who shrugged a bit helplessly. “…Sure? Yes, the angels did leave it! Plopped right out from their togas while they were strumming their golden harps in the sky, you know, and stuck deep into the snow. Come and see!”
This verification that the mysterious “angels” had somehow left something behind seemed to mollify Rebecca, and so she was then easily coaxed out from behind Jade and hoisted up onto the trusted dwarf’s shoulders. She and Treacy promptly traipsed off across the excavation site, Bec tailing behind, the squirrely dwarf pointing out odd objects to the Little Sister and laughing good-naturedly at her puzzling responses, whatever they were.
Kenan shuffled his boots, the fur cuffs on his legs and arms bristling with chilled white. He nodded to himself, pleased that the child had been shuffled off so other, less lighthearted matters could be discussed.
“So,” he said, turning to face Brennon with his arms crossed over his chest. “That nasty killing business finally caught up with you, has it, uncle?”
Her tower, once so isolated and forlorn in the midst of a sheet of barren ice, looked like an ivory needle with tangles of orange thread churning around it. Even through the mountainous morass of rocky outcroppings and steam the occasional gleam of a snowflake would peak through, twinkling gently over the veins of boiling lava spooling out on her doorstep. The forest of emerald-colored trees that surrounded her home, too— still prettily speckled with their red blossoms that glimmered like Christmas ornaments over the snow— hung on the periphery and shifted beneath waves of gossamer heat.
There were also dwarves everywhere, loads of them. What she had thought to be just seven was... well, a lot more than seven. There was a dwarf in full mail with battle gear strapped to her belt, scowling over the whole procession; two dwarrow miners with shiny brass helmets and laden down with loads of stone, jostling one another around, carrying pickaxes and streaked from head to toe with soot; one dwarf wearing entirely too many shiny, jingling trinkets to be chipping away at the stone like that; another dwarf dressed in warm furs and reading from a creased parchment letter, spectacles perched upon his round little nose; even more dwarves stomping their shovels into the frozen ground and grunting irritably when it refused to give. Dwarves, dwarves, dwarves.
A jarring chrn-nng! rung through the air, startling Jade so much that she would have tripped and fallen over if it weren’t for the warm, steady arm that shot from out of nowhere and caught her just in the nick of time.
Blinking slow, Jade looked down into the face of her savior, eyes widening when she actually recognized who it was— Kenan Badgerburrow! He was still wearing that funny bronze armor of his that fit him like an iron band strapped around a whiskey barrel, looking up at her with a crease denting his sweaty brow. A beard the very color of driven sheets of copper concealed most of his frown from view, dirt and bits of chipped stone caught in the unbraided whiskers. And, lord, he stunk too, like sulfur and rotten eggs left to warm in the sun. Gross!
“You’d best watch your step, lass,” he chided her, being very nice in helping her to regain her footing.
Jade thanked him with a nod, though it was more a slight tip of the head. She was too busy staring around at the chaos that had gripped her snowy lawn, mining tools scattered everywhere and dwarves scraping at frozen earth and bizarre streaks of burnt ground without so much as a by-your-leave.
The Witch of Space looked at him with pursed lips, eyes roving around the excavation site. What the hell is going on? she wanted to ask. Instead, all that came out was an unmistakably eloquent, “Um?”
Before he could come up with a no doubt blustery reply to that, the other Badgerburrow brother, young Treacy, hurried over. With his raggedy hat clutched in one hand and a rusted shovel in the other, fuzzy scrap of a beard streaked through with grime, he looked almost as if he had just emerged from battle. Still, even in his rugged state he was able to muster a grin for Jade, teeth flashing about as bright as the snow spread around them.
“Halloo, kind witch!” Treacy greeted her, face flushed red from the exertion of whatever he’d been doing. “It is good to see you again, ‘specially since you’ll now be able to share in the spoils! What d’you think of our operation here?”
“….your operation?” Jade repeated, baffled. She glanced around at the rugged ground, some of it lined with gigantic coal-like lumps of dusky rock, speckles of what seemed like dark glass glinting up at her.
Being confused was beginning to lose its previous luster.
Thankfully, Treacy seemed more than willing to enlighten her. Grinning, he whacked his hat against his legs to get the dust off from it before replacing it upon his head with a flourish. “Our operation, yes. Y’see, we had proposed to come back to make sure you were alright, seeing that you were in such a remote area. But you weren’t here, and all these fiery rivers were spread around and… and would you look at these stones they leave behind!”
He stooped over, snatched up a black stone, and summarily held it up for her inspection. A blinding grin lightened his cheeks. “A real beauty, isn’t it?”
“Wow, it sure is!” Jade murmured, correcting her glasses and leaning in to get a better look. The stone gripped in the dwarf’s grubby fingers was blacker than jet, speckled almost like a bird egg with small grey spots, delicate edges similar to a very poorly shaped knife blade pressing lightly against Treacy’s hand.
At a subtle gesture from the bright-eyed dwarf that seemed to say ‘go on, take it’, Jade carefully grasped the shiny piece of rock between the tips of her fingers, turning it this way and that with a cursory eye. It felt warm against the pads of her fingers and nestled easily inside her palm, sparks of heat tingling against her skin and glimmers of orange flame seeming to shift in kaleidoscopic patterns from some indeterminate source within.
When Jade finally looked up, Kenan was staring suspiciously at something behind her. For an irrational, affronted second Jade worried that his glare might be directed at either Bec or Rebecca, but when she turned she discovered that it was just Brennon standing there. The shackles were (thankfully) still on his wrists, but he had a cheeky bluster in his gaze and his bristly chin was tilted up in challenge.
Jade sighed. Honestly. Dwarves.
Following his brother’s gaze, Treacy’s eyebrows lifted towards his hairline as he looked between Jade and her companions. He didn’t comment on the shackled dwarf for the moment, however, instead focusing on Rebecca and giving his most jovial grin to the little girl. She had tucked herself away behind Jade’s skirt and was peering up at what must have been perfect strangers to her, only a few strands of her wispy, dark hair sticking out against the winterscape. “Well, isn’t this a surprise! I didn’t know you had any siblings, Miss Jade, least of all a sister.”
“That’s because she’s not,” corrected Jade, but smiled fondly all the same. “Treacy, Kenan, meet Rebecca! I’m looking after her for a very good friend.”
“Is that so?” Treacy’s face brightened and, without much further ado, he crouched down so that he was at the Little Sister’s eye level. “Hello there, little Rebecca! Would you like to see something absolutely, wonderfully, faultlessly amazing?”
One yellowish eye shifted with great reluctance into view, but twinkled with interest. “Is it shiny? Did the pretty angels leave it?”
“Uhm…” Treacy looked to Jade, who shrugged a bit helplessly. “…Sure? Yes, the angels did leave it! Plopped right out from their togas while they were strumming their golden harps in the sky, you know, and stuck deep into the snow. Come and see!”
This verification that the mysterious “angels” had somehow left something behind seemed to mollify Rebecca, and so she was then easily coaxed out from behind Jade and hoisted up onto the trusted dwarf’s shoulders. She and Treacy promptly traipsed off across the excavation site, Bec tailing behind, the squirrely dwarf pointing out odd objects to the Little Sister and laughing good-naturedly at her puzzling responses, whatever they were.
Kenan shuffled his boots, the fur cuffs on his legs and arms bristling with chilled white. He nodded to himself, pleased that the child had been shuffled off so other, less lighthearted matters could be discussed.
“So,” he said, turning to face Brennon with his arms crossed over his chest. “That nasty killing business finally caught up with you, has it, uncle?”
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Gamzee Makara Wrote:S’aight. After all, dogs have a tendency to motherfuckin’ bite.