Post by Athena Fire-in-Snow on Jan 21, 2009 22:59:47 GMT -8
White-Raven sneezed. Thus far she had tried planting foxglove, red carnations, clover, cowslip, lilacs, pansies, and now primroses. All of the plants were spirit awakened, and flowering despite the chill winter soil. The air around her Umbral den was thickly scented with their combined scents, but so far they had attracted not one single verifiable fae. Each of these plants was reputed to attract faeries...though at this point, she thought, with the combination of them all it would probably take one with a bad cold just to penetrate the wall of smell! She had to find a better way to arrange them...
White-Raven shifted back to homid, but it started again. Itch, itch, twitch...just at the edge of her senses. It was driving her crazy! Her wings itched! Only in Homid, though... She twisted her head around, trying in vain to see her back...stupid human form, no flexibility at all... The worst part was, it wasn’t even like scratching helped. It was less physical, more...inside her head. Like her own imagination getting the better of her. When she concentrated on it, it went away. But the minute she got distracted, back it crept.
She knew it had to be all in her head. There was nothing there but a tattoo. But some part of her was convinced that her wings were all tangled up in her shirt and cloak, and itch itch twitch cramp it went inside her mind when she wasn’t paying attention. Growling between her teeth, she shucked the cloak and stripped off her shirt.
Ah. Much better. Well, not entirely true. Now she was COLD! But somehow the itch itch feeling died down. This was not going to work for going to class, though! White-Raven pictured herself walking into Gabriel’s class naked and nearly choked with laughter. Well, it might be good for a joke! Bear-form, maybe? She snorted. No better, and scarily more likely!
Thankfully, Sangmu and Blue kept tabs on her about that. Every day before class, in her head – “Look in the mirror, Kayli. What form are you in, Kayli? Do you really think the students are going to respond well to an Ursine classmate?” By now she almost certainly would have forgotten and shown up in her true form, if not for their diligence. She was bad enough about it before, forgetting which skin she was wearing, but now with the itch twitch cramps going on, she’d found herself slipping into a furry form without thinking about it...and forgetting to go back.
But now... White-Raven looked down at her shirt and cloak, and a stupid, bizarre, brilliant idea danced across her mind. Maybe she could make imaginary slits for the imaginary wings to stick through! She spread out her shirt, slipped a thin panel of wood inside, and then stretched the cloak overtop it. Closing her eyes, she pictured a knife in her hands. Lovingly she imagined it in detail...the soft swirling grain of the oak hilt against her palm, the shining single-edged blade etched with a gentle wave for beauty and grace, a simple pommel-stone of smooth malachite, rich green swirls echoing the grain of the oak and the wave pattern along the blade. She felt it with a craft-master’s heart – how the blade would have felt, looked, smelled beneath her hammer as it was forged; each and every stroke of the knife as the oak branch was shaped under her hand into a perfect grip; the sound of the stone as it was painstakingly polished with wet sand.
At last, when she could feel the blade as if it were a real thing in her mind, in her hand, she reached out with her knife, eyes still shut, and used it to cut perfect, precise slices in her cloak, down through the layers to the shirt beneath it, stopping at the wood plank.
She took a deep breath and, without opening her eyes, put her shirt and cloak back on. She waited. It seemed, maybe, better? Hard to tell now, she was thinking about it too much.
White-Raven went back to rearranging the plants. Maybe if she grouped them together in lanes, like paths? Then she could see if the fae came down one path in preference to others, and the scents might not mix so violently...
It was an hour later before she realized that her wings weren’t itching anymore.
White-Raven shifted back to homid, but it started again. Itch, itch, twitch...just at the edge of her senses. It was driving her crazy! Her wings itched! Only in Homid, though... She twisted her head around, trying in vain to see her back...stupid human form, no flexibility at all... The worst part was, it wasn’t even like scratching helped. It was less physical, more...inside her head. Like her own imagination getting the better of her. When she concentrated on it, it went away. But the minute she got distracted, back it crept.
She knew it had to be all in her head. There was nothing there but a tattoo. But some part of her was convinced that her wings were all tangled up in her shirt and cloak, and itch itch twitch cramp it went inside her mind when she wasn’t paying attention. Growling between her teeth, she shucked the cloak and stripped off her shirt.
Ah. Much better. Well, not entirely true. Now she was COLD! But somehow the itch itch feeling died down. This was not going to work for going to class, though! White-Raven pictured herself walking into Gabriel’s class naked and nearly choked with laughter. Well, it might be good for a joke! Bear-form, maybe? She snorted. No better, and scarily more likely!
Thankfully, Sangmu and Blue kept tabs on her about that. Every day before class, in her head – “Look in the mirror, Kayli. What form are you in, Kayli? Do you really think the students are going to respond well to an Ursine classmate?” By now she almost certainly would have forgotten and shown up in her true form, if not for their diligence. She was bad enough about it before, forgetting which skin she was wearing, but now with the itch twitch cramps going on, she’d found herself slipping into a furry form without thinking about it...and forgetting to go back.
But now... White-Raven looked down at her shirt and cloak, and a stupid, bizarre, brilliant idea danced across her mind. Maybe she could make imaginary slits for the imaginary wings to stick through! She spread out her shirt, slipped a thin panel of wood inside, and then stretched the cloak overtop it. Closing her eyes, she pictured a knife in her hands. Lovingly she imagined it in detail...the soft swirling grain of the oak hilt against her palm, the shining single-edged blade etched with a gentle wave for beauty and grace, a simple pommel-stone of smooth malachite, rich green swirls echoing the grain of the oak and the wave pattern along the blade. She felt it with a craft-master’s heart – how the blade would have felt, looked, smelled beneath her hammer as it was forged; each and every stroke of the knife as the oak branch was shaped under her hand into a perfect grip; the sound of the stone as it was painstakingly polished with wet sand.
At last, when she could feel the blade as if it were a real thing in her mind, in her hand, she reached out with her knife, eyes still shut, and used it to cut perfect, precise slices in her cloak, down through the layers to the shirt beneath it, stopping at the wood plank.
She took a deep breath and, without opening her eyes, put her shirt and cloak back on. She waited. It seemed, maybe, better? Hard to tell now, she was thinking about it too much.
White-Raven went back to rearranging the plants. Maybe if she grouped them together in lanes, like paths? Then she could see if the fae came down one path in preference to others, and the scents might not mix so violently...
It was an hour later before she realized that her wings weren’t itching anymore.
Go White-Raven!