Hi Ho Silver

[wildmage_daine]

What makes it all the worse is that Daine was minding her own business.

She knows something odd is afoot; Biffy and Lyall have brought it up over the table, and she's been noticing some of the more shy immortals during her rounds -- the sort she wouldn't normally expect to spot. There was an undine in one of the ponds in the woods, and something she doesn't know the name for in one of the park's older oaks. But they hadn't tried to do her any harm (despite some of the stories she's heard), and she'd been leaving them well enough alone.

She's out for a nice evening flight -- minding her own business -- and alights on a branch to straighten out a few feathers. A faint gleam of off-color magic in her mind is the only warning she gets before a small form lands on her back. Daine lets out a startled croak as she feels a pair of spindly little legs wrapping around her, and tiny hands gripping the base of her feathers. Her wings open, at first to try and regain her balance and unseat her passenger... but when that doesn't work, they catch her as she drops off the branch.

There's something else, too: a pressure against her mind that reminds her of the will she can exert against the People, when it's needful. It might be enough to subdue a normal crow, but Daine's not a normal crow by a long shot, and she isn't subdued. She takes off for the farmhouse, cawing furiously, as the creature on her back tugs at her feathers and screeches words she can't understand.

It isn't until she makes it to the property that it occurs to her that she shouldn't let whatever this is into the house. Kitten, she suspects, could give it a run for its money, but she doesn't want to put the rats at risk -- or Robin, for that matter. Still cursing the creature out in a crow's expansive vocabulary, Daine lands on the lawn in a ruffled heap. Almost immediately, she switches to owl shape, her caws transforming into a screech as she twists around, trying to get at the thing with her beak or her talons as it crawls around her body, trying just as hard to avoid her.

Comments

[consummate_beta]

He hears the cawing first, like a warning or an argument, whilst making himself tea in the kitchen, not like an ordinary crow. It's that thought that spurs Lyall to the open window to see what's going on. Daine, his other senses inform him. He can't tell if she's in trouble or angry, can't see anything behind her that her crow shape might be fleeing, but she divebombs onto the lawn, and shifts, twisting and screeching.

Robin begins to cry, as well, and that's just about it. Lyall storms out onto the lawn, suppressing the urge to growl at the invader, instead grabbing a broom to keep whatever it is that she's fighting at arm's length. "Can you shift back to human?" he hisses at Daine, trying to get a good look.

[wildmage_daine]

The last thing Daine wants is to shift back into her human shape with this thing still clinging to her. But Lyall's question does give her an idea.

She grows into wolf shape, but lets her arms shift back to human. It's her hands that she really needs, and as the creature tries to crawl up to her shoulders, she reaches around, seizes it around the middle, and pulls it off of herself -- losing a few tufts of fur in the process. Snarling, she hurls the little creature away. Then she leaps back, all wolf and bristling with indignation.

Now, they can both get a better look at the thing. It's small and roughly human in shape, though its eyes and ears are too big, and its spindly fingers too long, and its teeth too sharp. Daine's extra grateful she didn't shift back completely if it would've meant that was crawling all over her.

[consummate_beta]

Now that's a version of the change that Lyall hasn't seen in all his many long years of being a werewolf -- completely transformed except from shoulder to fingertip. Even his own practice at a more delicate transformation has never ended up with that, and it has a disconcerting effect, as though someone in a full suit had both sleeves ripped away.

But it does the trick, and the thing comes dashing in Lyall's direction. "Don't you dare," he says, brandishing the broom. "We haven't done a thing to you, but we aren't helpless, and a lot bigger than you are, too."

It's almost like some sort of pixie, from the old stories. They've been hearing strange reports, lately, but he hasn't seen anything like this. But Lyall's not so thoroughly modernized that he's forgotten those legends. Are they supposed to have been leaving out milk or something?

This doesn't look like the sort of being that'd be pacified by a bowl of warm milk.

[wildmage_daine]

Now that it's standing on its own, Daine gets the sense that it's finally realized its bitten off more than it can chew. It glances between her and Lyall, and if it had hackles, Daine thinks they'd be raised.

Robin lets out a squall of general objection from inside, and the creature turns its gaze towards the house, eyes alight with interest. Growling, Daine leaps to plant herself alongside Lyall, between the creature and the farmhouse. You didn't get me, and you won't get him, she tells it, though she isn't certain if it will be able to understand mind-speech. Go back wherever you came from and quit being a nuisance!

That earns her a nasty look and a screech, so perhaps it can understand her.

[consummate_beta]

The little creature turns toward the house, and Lyall has to repress the change physically at the very idea that it might go after Robin. It's a near thing, held off by Daine's leap forward, and he's a little ruffled by that momentary lack of control, more instinctive even than fighting alongside his Alpha usually.

If he's to defend his pack, he needs to have his wits about him. Going wolf-mad over one little threat is not his modus operandi.

As it is, he strikes out at the thing to get it away; for a moment he can feel the connect of wood on flesh and pauses, but as he swings the broom handle, it's clambering up along it, disproportionate teeth bared.

aaaaa sorry I wrote this tag in my head and not on the post gOSH

[wildmage_daine]

Daine doesn't think; as soon as the little beast starts climbing Lyall's only weapon (of a kind), she leaps forward and grabs the creature in her jaws. She shakes it three times, sharply, then tosses it aside.

And it isn't until it lands on the lawn and lies motionless that it occurs to her that maybe that wasn't the smartest way to react. She puts her ears back, both with lingering suspicion and a touch of guilt, and glances up at Lyall uncertainly.

Re: aaaaa sorry I wrote this tag in my head and not on the post gOSH

[consummate_beta]

Lyall jumps a bit at her sudden leap, but having a wolf so close is more natural, if anything, than a sharp-toothed pixie, and the moment is over before he can stop it or even truly reckon what's happening.

He stills, taking it all in, and takes a few steps closer. The creature is very dead.

What Daine's done has protected them both, and he can't blame her, but it's also possibly terrible. "Let's go inside," he says, with enough firm Beta authority in his tone to imply he's not taking questions, but gives her a bit of a soft look in response to Daine's guilty expression. They can talk outcomes once she's fully human.

[wildmage_daine]

Mithros, she's killed it. It's not the first immortal she's slain, but this feels different. Because it wasn't a proper battle, because it was so much smaller than her, because it might not have been needful. It leaves her feeling guilty and foolish, and it's with her head down and her tail tucked that she makes her way back into the farmhouse.

She lingers long enough to check on Robin, who hiccups dubiously when her furry face first comes into view. But he's seen her in shapes plenty of times already, and he grabs a double fistful of her fur and lets out a happier squawk when she darts her tongue out to lick his chin. He's all right.

Her paws click against the hardwood as she climbs upstairs, and a few minutes later, she pads back down in her bare feet. "I'm sorry," she says as soon as she sees Lyall. "I wasn't--it was stupid."

[consummate_beta]

Robin cheers up a bit when he sees Daine but his chin starts to wobble when Lyall comes over, and Lyall scoops him up just as that first intake of breath preceding an all right, you're back, but where WERE you wail goes.

"Paaa", he whines, and Lyall lets his heart break a little bit, patting his back and murmuring "it's all right, you're just fine," even as Robin settles quite quickly. It reminds him of how Prudence used to -- or will, memory is so odd -- call Conall Paw Paw, and that comes with a whole host of feelings, loneliness and being slightly under-qualified for everything right now. Biffy is usually "pa" to Lyall's "da", but Robin hasn't really settled on one or the other. It's a recent thing, that he's started identifying them, and it feels like an incredible new responsibility, even as it hasn't changed anything.

His chest aches over the way Daine had slunk in here, guilty and punishing herself, too. She's not a werewolf, truly, doesn't live under those hierarchies, and he doesn't feel quite like it would be useful to handle this like he would in London. Over this year, they've become family, pack, but despite or because of that, it's difficult to look at her now in terms of how he'd react to a packmember back home. Not that he knows, entirely, what he would do there, even.

He's still clutching Robin, who has comforted himself, and is wriggling: he sets him down as Daine comes back in.

"I didn't bring you in here to lecture you, Daine," he says gently, and puts his hands on her shoulders with a gentle squeeze. "You were protecting me. Protecting Robin, our pack. Perhaps it wasn't thought through, but loyalty isn't a thing I feel inclined to fault you for, and berating yourself won't make anything better."

He puts an arm around her shoulders and turns to look with her toward the window. "It's just a question of what to do, now. Have you encountered anything like that before?"

[wildmage_daine]

The look she gives him suggests that someone ought to berate her, and if he's not going to do it then she will, even if it's not aloud. But she's relieved that he's not angry with her, and she leans into him sheepishly as he points them towards the window.

"Not really," she says. "It put me in mind of an undine, a little, except they like water. And they're shy." Her brow furrows in confusion. "Back home, it was mostly the bigger immortals that troubled folk, if they troubled folk at all. The littler ones just tried to stay hid."

So, why hadn't this one?

Robin crawls over to sit by her feet, his little hand braced against her shin, and she musters up a smile and twiddles her fingers at him. Remembering the way the creature had responded to his cries, she feels the guilt over what she'd done lessen a little.

[consummate_beta]

He knows she's berating herself; it's not going to teach her anything better for him to do it. Instead Lyall hums thoughtfully. "It reminded me a bit of -- fairy stories, back home. Pixies and such that people used to keep out milk and bread for. They weren't real, though."

He makes a face. "There've been some odd occurrences in the city, of late. I wonder if something's angered some sort of -- well, immortals. Only I don't know why you should have agitated it. If anything I'd think they'd take to you, with your sort of magic."

Which makes him wonder if it's not specific at all: if they're just on the prowl, and that's a more upsetting thought. "I don't like not knowing something, but this isn't my area of expertise, warding off things like that." He will have to see about any Darrow books that might tell of such creatures. "We'll have to be vigilant in case it has friends who return for it."

[wildmage_daine]

Daine hums in sudden understanding. "We had stories like that, too, about what the immortals were like. Except they'd been shut away so long, no one really remembered. The details would get changed or mixed up." Especially in places like Snowsdale, far from any universities where actual written accounts might be preserved.

"It just landed on me out of nowhere," she says, frowning pensively. She doesn't much like the thought of it being city-wide; that just means more folk being ambushed, and more immortals dying because they chose their victim poorly. "I don't know if it even knew I was a mage. It might've just thought I was any other bird." That might be just as well; if it had known what it was tangling with, it might have brought more of its friends along for the initial pouncing.

Presuming it has friends. "D'you think we should... move it?" she asks, nodding out the window towards the body. They can't just leave it in the yard, and she doesn't want to attract more of them to the farmhouse.