[SRP] Claws and Voices (Ailbhe + Perdita)

[elfstar89]

Solo RP between my Soqs Ailbhe and Perdita de Helcegaear. Please do not post. Ailbhe posts in Dodger Blue, Perdita posts in Cadet Blue.

It was a quiet evening in the cave, and moonless outside. Ailbhe shivered under her dark purple cloak, wishing that Karloff hadn't gone off hunting on a night like this. Sure, he could take care of herself, and so could she, but that didn't make her like it. On nights like this, Ailbhe just wanted to snuggle in close to her lifemate in their cozy little den, with her tail curled around Karloff.

Somewhere in the distance, if she listened hard with her feline ears, she could hear the orchestra of subtle sounds that swept over the land at night, trying to be only selectively audible, if at all. Owls, crickets, bats, the occasional wolf howl, followed closely by a few other canine voices raised in song. The normal range of sounds, but still not what Ailbhe wanted to focus on as she tried to fall asleep tonight.

Karloff should be back within a few days, as usual. His hunting trips were never very long, although this time, their adopted son Lucian had gone with. Ailbhe had chosen to stick around, mind the cave, continue making it into a true home for their little family. Next time, she promised herself, she'd go with her boys, unless she had some pressing reason not to. Like very young kittens. Ahhh, kittens. Well, OK, foals, but foals with feline features and belongings, as they would be descended from the Cheshire Cat clans. It wasn't that Ailbhe and Karloff didn't love Lucian. It was just that they'd been talking off and on about kittens for a while before Karloff had brought home Lucian as a basket, and she definitely wanted to have kittens of her own, to raise and to love, to play with Lucian, to hunt with Karloff. An extended family, as seemed to be a permanent fixture of her existence. Sure, it was said that cats were solitary creatures, but some felines lived together, like lions, and the Clans.

Ailbhe smiled at the happier thoughts, and nestled among the bracken she'd brought in as bedding, and in her cloak, finally starting to feel sleepy.



Golden eyes blinked against black sclera in confusion, and tears momentarily formed on her lashes, like delicate diamond dust. How had she gotten here? Where even was here? Had she fallen asleep again?

She inhaled the air around her with a feline muzzle. Cool, sweet nocturnal air. No blood. Wait...no...no recent blood. Something had bled near here on at least one occasion. But that could easily be some other creature. There were more things than her out there. Plus, if the snowy Catwalker had been involved, there would be fresh blood staining her coat. It happened often enough when she woke up in confused states like this that she had learned to accept it. She didn't like it, though. Why wouldn't this stop?

But the blood in this area...it smelled good. That fact vaguely sounded both completely wrong and completely right in her head, and the conflicting wrongness and rightness seemed tangled together in one horrifying morass in her mind. A problem for another time. Preferably one in which she could think straight.

Preferably a time when she was far away from Mommy, and couldn't smell blood. Mommy and her two brothers had often smelled of blood, just as she herself did. Her brothers had left the nest a long time ago, but Mommy was still there, like an ominous shadow across the face of the moon.

The Catwalker bared its fangs gleefully, before awkwardly pulling them back. Tonight might be a very good night indeed.  

[elfstar89]

Ailbhe's head shot up warily, looking around cautiously.
Something was off in the sounds of the night. She twitched her pale feline ears,
trying to catch what specifically was off. It didn't sound like anything that lived around here, and while that wasn't necessarily cause for alarm, it wasn't necessarily innocent, either. Whatever it was, it was muffled, and wasn't moving much. Yet.

But maybe it was friendly? Or just simply lost?

"Halloo?" she called out cautiously, getting to her feet. Ailbhe stretched out her tail and legs as she continued twitching her ears. If it was something dangerous,
like the Skinwalkers Karloff feared so much, for good reason, it was better to be ready to run at the slightest provocation.

The sweet and friendly voice of the pale and strange Soquili mare in the cave mouth tugged at Perdita's drifting consciousness. An innocent, and yet, someone who, on some level, resembled her. Pale coat striped the color of water, fangs extending beyond a delicate muzzle, feline tail and ears twitching.

Did she wake up lost and alone, too? Did she wake up with blood on her coat, too?

The Catwalker bunched herself up, launching herself up into a nearby tree she scrambled up with moon-pale claws digging into arboreal flesh.

A response clawed its way out of her throat, and Perdita felt herself slip away into the oblivion that took her and left blood in its wake.

"Is someone there? I need help!"  

[elfstar89]

Ailbhe relaxed slightly. Anyone who needed help was a lot less likely to be dangerous. Plus, the voice sounded childlike, innocent, and genuinely worried. She stepped beyond the confines of the cave, peering upward into the branches of the nearby trees, trying to spot the source of the voice.

"Are you lost? Do you need help getting down? How can I help?" she asked curiously.

Finally her sapphire eyes caught on a snowy shape in the trees. A cat, big enough to be a mountain lion, with great saber-toothed fangs dripping past a delicate chin. Around its neck was a black scarf, glittering with golden stars, and fringed with...bells? Coins? Ailbhe wasn't sure. But whoever this was, it looked sort of innocent enough, after all, Karloff had fangs that big, too. And in the faint starlight, she thought she caught the glitter of tears drying on its pale cheeks.

Ailbhe smiled trustingly and encouragingly. "How can I help you?"

In retrospect, had Ailbhe known much of anything about Cheshire Cats, she would have realized that just because a childlike and innocent voice told you something, didn't make it true.

The Catwalker watched as the cat-Soq naively traipsed closer. Inside, it laughed gleefully. Too sweet by far, as alert as it had been a moment ago.

"I'm lost, I don't know where I am, and can't find my way home!"

It paused, focusing golden eyes against pitch-black scleras.

"But I can get home if we play a game. Can we play a game, pretty lady? I do so want to go home, pretty lady~!"

The game had begun.  

[elfstar89]

"A game?" It sounded bizarre as she asked. What kind of home could be found through a game? This sounded...wrong. What little she knew of Cheshires and Skinwalkers tickled at her mind.

Both were prone to madness.

Ailbhe stepped back, suddenly wary. "A game? Are you sure that's part of your way home? That seems a little...a little odd." She hazarded a nervous, haphazard smile. The smile didn't reach her pretty blue eyes. "I--I'm sure if you come down from that tree, we can discuss things better, and I can get a sense of where you need to go to get home."

The cat-Soq looked like it wanted to run. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fuuunnn~!

The Catwalker leapt effortlessly to the branches of a closer tree, smilingly as sweetly as a newborn kitten.

"Didn't you want to help me, pretty lady? I can only get home if we play this game! Shall we play it?"

The Catwalker leapt to a third tree, just in front of the cat-Soq. "Do you wanna hear the rules, pretty lady? They're simple, easiest game, I promise!"

The stars glittered faintly on the features of the boreal-looking Catwalker.

"You have to not get eaten by me!"  

[elfstar89]

Ailbhe's heart froze with fear. Her legs made a decision, seconded by her hooves, ears and tail, to not stay here.

Whirling around, Ailbhe bolted into the darkness under the trees, brown hooves pounding across the root-covered ground. Her short golden mane and deep purple cloak streamed out behind her.

The cat had been a Catwalker. Of that, there was now little doubt in Ailbhe's mind. Probably a thoroughly crazy one.

The branches of saplings and bushes whipped at her as she ran, drawing blood when she scraped past bramble and thorn. Behind her echoed the laugh of a very, very mad Catwalker.

The Catwalker began to leap toward the cat-Soq as the mare turned and ran for it. Fortunately for the cat-Soq, it had a good turn of speed on it.

Which would only make the game more fun.

Adjusting the trajectory of the pounce as best it could in midair, the Catwalker landed in the lower branches of a nearby oak, and sprang for the next tree. It giggled in ecstasy.

"Hey, hey! Pretty lady! Do you bleed? Do you bleed prettily, pretty lady?" it asked of the fleeing shape ahead, easily keeping pace in the branches above.  

[elfstar89]

The childlike voice and playful questions made it worse. Ailbhe flattened her ears to her spine, trying to tune out the madness as she fled the Catwalker.

And still, she could feel its presence and hear its movements in the branches almost directly above her. There was nothing stopping it from leaping on her insufficiently protected back. Ailbhe felt tears bud and bloom in her eyes, whipped away with the speed of her passage.

It was playing with her! Like a predator with its prey! Only this predator might have zero interest in eating her afterward. That just made it worse. Ailbhe could understand if the Catwalker wanted to eat her. This one just wanted to watch her suffer and die. Just like the one that had destroyed Karloff's family.

Karloff...Lucian...would they be OK? Would the Catwalker find its way back to the cave?

It thought it could hear a soft sob released by the escaping cat-Soq. And yet it kept running gamely. The Catwalker grinned happily.

Best. Game. Ever.

And even if the cat-Soq ran out of steam or got itself killed in the escape, it would still have been the best chase the Catwalker had had possibly ever. It would be a shame when it was all over. Assuming the Catwalker would even remember this at all.

Which was a big "If".

Giggles and claws digging into tree bark sped into the night after their sobbing prey.  

[elfstar89]

A dull throb set into her legs as Ailbhe continued to race through the underbrush. She couldn't run forever. At some point, she needed to lose her pursuer. Ailbhe started to focus on her surroundings, looking around desperately for someplace to hide.

Her sapphire eyes widened in horror as they darted back and forth. Nowhere to hide. Worse, nothing looked familiar. None of the trees, rocks, bushes, nothing.

Where had she run to? How long could she keep running? Would the Catwalker get--

Ailbhe felt her hooves hit nothing, and continued to hit nothing. Looking down, a more immediate terror gripped her. She was falling. No way to back up or turn onto a trail down the cliff.

Just a terrible descent.

And an unforgiving ground.

And no wings from her father's blood to save her.

The Catwalker, unfortunately, was not tiring. This was far too fun to stop. But the initial burst of speed was gone. It still giggled, although it concentrated more on the pursuit of the cat-Soq.

Ahead was a thinning of the branches. The Catwalker squinted, then growled in irritation, slowing even further. A clearing of some kind. No, worse. A crevasse.

Slowing to a halt just at the cliff's edge, irritation and glee both faded. It was clear that the cat-Soq had no idea what it was running toward. The hunt was over, for now.

Perdita blinked her golden eyes, confusion setting in.

Where was she? In a tree by a cliff, yes, fine, good. But not someplace she recognized. Perdita whimpered fearfully and inhaled. No blood nearby. Well, nothing closer than the cliff base. Maybe something else had gone hunting nearby?

She sniffed again. It wasn't the smell of a gory massacre. That fact alone meant something. But there were other things in the air, too. Dawn was coming. Perdita felt like she had been up all night, though she couldn't remember it. Maybe she could find a place to get some real sleep. The kind of sleep that didn't mean waking up with blood on her paws yet again.  

[elfstar89]

Ailbhe blinked her eyes open to the bright light of midmorning several hours later. She tried taking a deep breath.

Everything screamed in pain, and she nearly followed suit. Tearfully, Ailbhe swallowed the sharp cry. Even if the Catwalker hadn't killed her yet, it might still be close by.

Which meant that she absolutely couldn't stay here, either, no matter how much it hurt.

Lifting her head, Ailbhe tried to find the source of her pain. One of her legs looked bent out of shape and was in excruciating pain. The others hurt, too, but didn't look bent even remotely so badly. Probably one broken leg, the others bruised or fractured, probably same for her ribs.

She stumbled to her feet, favoring the broken leg as best she could. Looking around, one of Ailbhe's other worst fears from right before the plunge over the cliff came back with a vengeance. Everything looked unfamiliar. Ailbhe was not only injured, but lost and alone, possibly miles from home, chased here by a crazy Catwalker. Sniffling as softly as she could, Ailbhe started looking for an exit, with only the most basic of plans running through her pain-addled mind. Get help, from a unicorn or something else with healing powers. Find out where she was. Get home, ideally before Karloff and Lucian came home and freaked out. After all, given one night's run, she couldn't possibly be that far from home.

Right?

Unfortunately for Ailbhe, the road home would be a lot longer than she had ever anticipated.