There's a story in my veins, with scars on every page

[notathreat]

WHO: Ellie & OPEN
WHAT: Rifting in less-than-gracefully, a rogue explosion or two, & initial trouble accomplished
WHEN: Arrival and during the first week after.
WHERE: The Hinterlands, The Gallows
NOTES: So much swearing holy shit.

[Arrival.]

The worst part about lucid dreaming is when shit gets a little too real. Especially when it's not the usual kind of horrible. So when Ellie goes from another nightmare about things hunting her in an endless horrible sewer to being sucked into the water, hurtling down through the rain-soaked Seattle depths, she tries to tell herself that she can breathe underwater. She opens her mouth and tries, and the foul water fills her throat-

And she launches out, along with a gush of Seattle sewer water, hits a hillside and goes tumbling.

... and it's steep enough that she keeps going.

Ellie coughs, chokes, tries to scream, and unleashes a garbled stream of hacking, choking profanity.

Maybe you're the unlucky person on the trail she happens to literally bowl into (and possibly take out).

Or maybe you're the one who finds her screaming back into the face of a despair demon, soaked in foul-smelling sewer water, having just hurled a piece of rock shaped suspiciously like a revolver into its face.

She absolutely just called the demon a motherfucker.



[Gallows; Quarantine Times]

A bath, a few square meals and a bit of explanation later, Ellie seems far less... feral. She's dressed in local clothing, a tunic, pants and boots, and has stopped acting like a cat, roaming the stairways in the towers and popping up unexpectedly in places people didn't see her enter.

She shows up near the top of one of the towers, tucked into a window, looking down at the courtyard below.

"... so I heard there were actual griffons roosting up here. Is it true?"


[ooc; HMU if you want a custom starter!]

Comments

[sparklequeen]

"They rideview up there. Like you were a bird or something." Glimmer is also restraining the urge to pet--mostly because she doesn't want to cause any trouble more than from any fear of losing fingers, though. She takes a step closer to peer at one of the nests.

"They're so expressive."

[notathreat]

"Y'know birds are the last living relatives of dinosaurs?" Ellie murmurs, soft and excited as they get closer. While most of the griffons ignore them, one or two break from the nesting areas to approach, bright-eyed and feathers ruffling, possibly even hoping for treats.

Ellie feels a pang of regret that she didn't think to swipe anything for them, and reaches out to lay a hand on Glimmer's arm, letting the griffons come to them instead. She doesn't want to crowd them or anything, and her heart's beating hard.

If something does go terribly wrong, she knows that Glimmer won't hesitate to get them out.

"Looking at these guys I'd believe it." Her voice goes soft and incredibly sweet.

"Hey, buddy. You sure are pretty."

[sparklequeen]

Glimmer really doesn't want to ruin Ellie's moment, but she has to ask, quietly:

"What are dinosaurs?" One of those things from Earth, she guesses? They never got around to talking about it, she's pretty sure. She goes still as Ellie holds her back, though a hand does stretch out--fingers curled in--so that one of those fierce beaks can nudge against it in curiosity.

"Aren't you gorgeous?" She murmurs along with Ellie. Then, slowly, she runs a hand through the feathers on one of those massive heads. Giggles. She glances sidelong at Ellie, as if to say 'look! look, I'm petting one!' and then turns her attention back to the griffon.

"Oh, you are beautiful."

[notathreat]

"Like dragons but without the wings or the fire-breath," Ellie explains with a grin. "They're all extinct but we've found bones and st-"

She's cut off by one of the griffons nosing into her shoulder, going for her pocket, dipping the tip of her beak in and poking around. Thankfully it's empty, nothing to find in there, though the griffon seems disgusted by the lack of anything on offer, and headbutts Ellie's side to demand grooming instead.

"Oh, right. Rude to talk about those when you're here," she mutters to the griffon, but can't contain the joy in her voice.

The way she smiles at Glimmer comes close only to the smile she got when they were looking at the projection of the planetarium. This is absolutely wonderful.

[sparklequeen]

Glimmer laughs, her musical giggle sounding loud in the enclosed attic space. She continues the gentle stroking of her own curious griffon, ruffling her fingers through the feathers of the fearsome eagle's head and smiling all along. The expression on Ellie's face, though, is what catches her eye for the briefest of moments. Seeing her friend smile like that, full of wonder and joy--there's nothing else like it in the world.

"...Okay coming up here was a good idea," she admits softly. "You have good ideas. Sometimes."

[notathreat]

Glimmer's laugh is contagious, and Ellie finds herself snickering too, rubbing and affectionately grooming the sleek feathers with her fingers.

She sneaks a look over at Glimmer, catching the teasing, and her expression softens, involuntary and sudden.

"Sometimes," she snorts. "I have great ideas."