Ororo and Clarice | Yorkland, Day 1
Nov. 27th, 2018 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainClarice drops in on Ororo to complain about the latest iteration of morons to bother her at home because they can't tell the difference between a teleporter and a unicorn.
For all that they were located in the middle of the populous Kingdom of Yorkland, the woods ironically dubbed the "Central Park" were heavy, deep, and often quite dangerous. Ancient trees, hundreds and even thousands of years old, rose high into the air, their massive boles tangling with lower vegetation to form a virtually impassable labyrinth of foliage. Spreading branches bursting with broad leaves kept all but the faintest of light from reaching the forest floor. Though plants of all sizes and descriptions could be found there, animals were much rarer--they could more often be heard somewhere in the distance, or fleetingly caught out of the corner of one'e eye, but actual encounters were rare. The few paths through Central Park had an ominous reputation for shifting and changing at random, seemingly of their own volition.
Central Park was generally avoided by both travelers and hunters for all these reasons; it was widely considered a place of ill-fortune, best left alone. Even so, the occasional unwelcome visitor did still occasionally risk the dangers of the seemingly haunted woods.
"Gath dammit!" Clarice swore, blinking into the Druid's grove at the appointed time in a column of snaking pink energy. "Gath dammit all to the deepest, foulest, most noisome thrice-cursed shit-hole in the Abyss!"
"Hello to you too," Ororo replied, calmly, as she emerged from between some trees, carrying a basket of fruits. Unlike in the rest of the town, it was wonderfully warm in the grove, allowing her to wear a light dress that seemed to be made of several veils that moved on her, as if blown by improbable winds. Her long white hair was pulled back from her face by a head band fashioned out of antelope horns, and she looked at her friend with sympathy. "What have they done now?"
"They shot me!" the lavender-skinned girl exclaimed, outrage obvious in her luminous green eyes. She held up the side of her shirt, revealing the long, ragged cut in the fabric. "They actually Gath-damned shot me! What am I supposed to do with this? It's not like I can just walk into town and get a new shirt, can I? Ugh."
"I can get you a new shirt," Ororo pointed out simply. She tilted her head, looking at the shirt. "Or maybe I can do something for this one. Come inside," she added, nodding for Clarice to follow her inside a cabin the local vegetation seemed to have adopted. Various plants had climbed all over the outter walls, and roof, disguising it from most people, at first glance.
Inside was a warm, simple home, but one with holes instead of windows and doors. Nature was always welcome in and out of it, and it only got cold here if Ororo decided that it should. Ororo set down the basket of fruits on the sturdy wooden table in the middle of the room, then turned back around to Clarice, gesturing for her to come over.
"Sorry," Clarice said as she followed the white-haired druid into her comfortable home. "You know I don't want to ruin this visit with complaining. But," she fingered the rip in her shirt again, deliberately avoiding the thought of how close the bolt from that crossbow had come to doing significantly worse. "Ugh! I mean, I've gotten used to the nets and the snares and the pit traps. That's almost become like a sort of game." Even if it was an incredibly annoying one, most days. "But they've never shot at me before."
How they expected to collect their wish--which she could not have granted in any case--with her pinned to and bleeding out all over the trunk of an oak tree was anybody's guess. But the type who fell for that "wish-granting faerie" tripe didn't tend to be the brightest to begin with.
"Did you get a good look at them, before you came here?" Ororo asked, stepping into Clarice's space and gently taking the fabric into her hand. Her eyes went shock white as she murmured a few words under her breath, swiping her palm over the hole. She smiled at her friend, and let go of her shirt. "There, good as new."
"Of course," Clarice huffed. "And right before I dropped them all into the middle of the East River--I wasn't going to let them keep crashing around through the forest shooting at things. Idiots." She and Ororo both had very particular feelings about the forest, and the animals and spirits that dwelt there; interlopers, especially violent ones, were most definitely not welcome.
As Ororo finished her Mending spell, Clarice ran he fingers over the admittedly-modest fabric of her blouse, and grinned. "Thanks, I owe you one. Why didn't I get any fancy magic powers to go along with the teleporting? It'd be nice to be able to do something other than just ... blink around, you know?"
"Blinking around's an amazing gift, and you know it," Ororo replied with a small, warm smile. "And if you want those oafs punished further, you'll only need to point me to them." She turned around to go grab a bottle from a shelf. "This calls for day drinking, don't you think?"
"If anything ever did," she agreed gratefully at the appearance of the bottle. "And whether they need to be punished again will depend on whether or not they show their faces in the forest again. I'm willing to give them a fair warning, but I'm not about to be dodging crossbow bolts for the rest of my life. Especially not for something as stupid as a wish I absolutely have no power to grant. How in the Hells do these stupid rumors even get started?"
"I don't know, but this is a new level of problematic," Ororo replied, bringing two clay cups to the table, so they could sit and drink. "Berry wine," she said before pulling the cork off the bottle. "Why would they think shooting you is a smart move?" she went on, pouring them both a drink.
Clarice shrugged, scooping up her cup and raising it to her mouth, letting the wine spill down her throat ... and feeling some of the tension ease away as the alcohol warmed her stomach. "You might as well ask me why a dwarf loves gold, or why elves can't explain anything without talking down to you. It's just their nature, isn't it? Stupid people aren't capable of coming up with a smart plan, by definition. So what they imagine is smart must, in fact, seem stupid to normal folks like you and me."
Ororo set her glass down after taking a sip. "But then, who's to say we're not the stupid ones?"
"Everybody's stupid, compared to somebody," Clarice asserted, waving her cup in a wide circle for emphasis. "I mean, there's always somebody out there who knows more, or has profounder insight into the multiverse, or whatever. But you and I are definitely titans of intellect compared to most everyone else who comes into these woods. Granted, that doesn't set the bar that high, but still."
Well, that was a question on the potential absurdity of the world lost on Clarice, but Ororo did not mind over much. After what her green-skinned friend had just gone through, Ororo could hardly expect her to wax philosophy with her. "I will take what I can get," Ororo confirmed with a half-smile. But there was one word Clarice had used that Ororo had never heard before, so she echoed, "The multiverse?"
Spreading her arms as if to encompass something phenomenally large, Clarice replied, "You know, the multiverse. The eladrin who pass through the forest now and then talk about it, sometimes. Apparently, it's an infinite number of parallel worlds and pocket dimensions, where pretty much everything that could possibly happen has happened, somewhere and somewhen. They travel through it regularly, I guess, on there way from here to there. Sounds like anybody with the right kind of know-how can go world-shopping, if they have a lot of free time and a high tolerance for life-threatening adventure."
"That sounds very unsteady," Ororo replied with a small frown, trying to take in the concept of the multiverse. That sounded far larger than Clarice's arm could hint at. Everything that could possibly happen. It sounded mindblowing, and Ororo lost herself in contemplation for a few long seconds.
Huffing a laugh that blew errant strands of magenta from her luminous green eyes, Clarice helped herself to another drink. "You know how much eladrin love a tall tale, Ororo--they can be worse than pixies, when they get on a roll. They were probably just trying to overawe me." Of course, the Feywild elf-kin were also known to speak the deeper truths of the mysteries of reality on occasion ... but Clarice hadn't met one yet that seemed serious enough for that. It had all probably just been some elaborate faerie game.
Clarice's laugh snapped Ororo out of it, and she focused on her friend again, giving her a small smile. "It's been so long since I talked to one of them. Perhaps it is time I meet one again."
"I'll bring one by, the next time I find them passing through," the lavender-skinned girl promised. "They don't tend to linger long, but they love new things. Just ..." Her expression scrunched into something dubious. "Remember not to take them too seriously. Eladrin are everything that is 'too much' about both elves and fey. It's not that they don't mean well, most of the time, but ..." She shrugged, helplessly.
"Also, they 'port around almost as much as I do."
"You're talking as if I had never talked to one," Ororo remarked, mostly amused that Clarice thought that she needed to be warned about them.
"The fact that you want to makes me think it's been long enough you need to be reminded," she pointed out, grinning. "I mean, I love the gravity and the dignity--the whole Earth Mother aura you've got working here in your grove. But I haven't met an elf yet that didn't want to puncture other people's gravitas just for the sake of it. Especially the ones from the Feywild."
"People's gravitas should definitely be punctured every once in a while," Ororo chided her with an amused smile. "Even mine. Especially mine. No one wants to take themselves seriously all the time."
Clarice grunted, but good-humoredly. "Ain't that the truth? The only way to survive in this crazy world we were born into is by laughing at it, and ourselves, as often as we can. The alternative is just too damned depressing."
"Laughter, and good berry wine," Ororo confirmed, with a small raise of her glass, before she took another sip.
For all that they were located in the middle of the populous Kingdom of Yorkland, the woods ironically dubbed the "Central Park" were heavy, deep, and often quite dangerous. Ancient trees, hundreds and even thousands of years old, rose high into the air, their massive boles tangling with lower vegetation to form a virtually impassable labyrinth of foliage. Spreading branches bursting with broad leaves kept all but the faintest of light from reaching the forest floor. Though plants of all sizes and descriptions could be found there, animals were much rarer--they could more often be heard somewhere in the distance, or fleetingly caught out of the corner of one'e eye, but actual encounters were rare. The few paths through Central Park had an ominous reputation for shifting and changing at random, seemingly of their own volition.
Central Park was generally avoided by both travelers and hunters for all these reasons; it was widely considered a place of ill-fortune, best left alone. Even so, the occasional unwelcome visitor did still occasionally risk the dangers of the seemingly haunted woods.
"Gath dammit!" Clarice swore, blinking into the Druid's grove at the appointed time in a column of snaking pink energy. "Gath dammit all to the deepest, foulest, most noisome thrice-cursed shit-hole in the Abyss!"
"Hello to you too," Ororo replied, calmly, as she emerged from between some trees, carrying a basket of fruits. Unlike in the rest of the town, it was wonderfully warm in the grove, allowing her to wear a light dress that seemed to be made of several veils that moved on her, as if blown by improbable winds. Her long white hair was pulled back from her face by a head band fashioned out of antelope horns, and she looked at her friend with sympathy. "What have they done now?"
"They shot me!" the lavender-skinned girl exclaimed, outrage obvious in her luminous green eyes. She held up the side of her shirt, revealing the long, ragged cut in the fabric. "They actually Gath-damned shot me! What am I supposed to do with this? It's not like I can just walk into town and get a new shirt, can I? Ugh."
"I can get you a new shirt," Ororo pointed out simply. She tilted her head, looking at the shirt. "Or maybe I can do something for this one. Come inside," she added, nodding for Clarice to follow her inside a cabin the local vegetation seemed to have adopted. Various plants had climbed all over the outter walls, and roof, disguising it from most people, at first glance.
Inside was a warm, simple home, but one with holes instead of windows and doors. Nature was always welcome in and out of it, and it only got cold here if Ororo decided that it should. Ororo set down the basket of fruits on the sturdy wooden table in the middle of the room, then turned back around to Clarice, gesturing for her to come over.
"Sorry," Clarice said as she followed the white-haired druid into her comfortable home. "You know I don't want to ruin this visit with complaining. But," she fingered the rip in her shirt again, deliberately avoiding the thought of how close the bolt from that crossbow had come to doing significantly worse. "Ugh! I mean, I've gotten used to the nets and the snares and the pit traps. That's almost become like a sort of game." Even if it was an incredibly annoying one, most days. "But they've never shot at me before."
How they expected to collect their wish--which she could not have granted in any case--with her pinned to and bleeding out all over the trunk of an oak tree was anybody's guess. But the type who fell for that "wish-granting faerie" tripe didn't tend to be the brightest to begin with.
"Did you get a good look at them, before you came here?" Ororo asked, stepping into Clarice's space and gently taking the fabric into her hand. Her eyes went shock white as she murmured a few words under her breath, swiping her palm over the hole. She smiled at her friend, and let go of her shirt. "There, good as new."
"Of course," Clarice huffed. "And right before I dropped them all into the middle of the East River--I wasn't going to let them keep crashing around through the forest shooting at things. Idiots." She and Ororo both had very particular feelings about the forest, and the animals and spirits that dwelt there; interlopers, especially violent ones, were most definitely not welcome.
As Ororo finished her Mending spell, Clarice ran he fingers over the admittedly-modest fabric of her blouse, and grinned. "Thanks, I owe you one. Why didn't I get any fancy magic powers to go along with the teleporting? It'd be nice to be able to do something other than just ... blink around, you know?"
"Blinking around's an amazing gift, and you know it," Ororo replied with a small, warm smile. "And if you want those oafs punished further, you'll only need to point me to them." She turned around to go grab a bottle from a shelf. "This calls for day drinking, don't you think?"
"If anything ever did," she agreed gratefully at the appearance of the bottle. "And whether they need to be punished again will depend on whether or not they show their faces in the forest again. I'm willing to give them a fair warning, but I'm not about to be dodging crossbow bolts for the rest of my life. Especially not for something as stupid as a wish I absolutely have no power to grant. How in the Hells do these stupid rumors even get started?"
"I don't know, but this is a new level of problematic," Ororo replied, bringing two clay cups to the table, so they could sit and drink. "Berry wine," she said before pulling the cork off the bottle. "Why would they think shooting you is a smart move?" she went on, pouring them both a drink.
Clarice shrugged, scooping up her cup and raising it to her mouth, letting the wine spill down her throat ... and feeling some of the tension ease away as the alcohol warmed her stomach. "You might as well ask me why a dwarf loves gold, or why elves can't explain anything without talking down to you. It's just their nature, isn't it? Stupid people aren't capable of coming up with a smart plan, by definition. So what they imagine is smart must, in fact, seem stupid to normal folks like you and me."
Ororo set her glass down after taking a sip. "But then, who's to say we're not the stupid ones?"
"Everybody's stupid, compared to somebody," Clarice asserted, waving her cup in a wide circle for emphasis. "I mean, there's always somebody out there who knows more, or has profounder insight into the multiverse, or whatever. But you and I are definitely titans of intellect compared to most everyone else who comes into these woods. Granted, that doesn't set the bar that high, but still."
Well, that was a question on the potential absurdity of the world lost on Clarice, but Ororo did not mind over much. After what her green-skinned friend had just gone through, Ororo could hardly expect her to wax philosophy with her. "I will take what I can get," Ororo confirmed with a half-smile. But there was one word Clarice had used that Ororo had never heard before, so she echoed, "The multiverse?"
Spreading her arms as if to encompass something phenomenally large, Clarice replied, "You know, the multiverse. The eladrin who pass through the forest now and then talk about it, sometimes. Apparently, it's an infinite number of parallel worlds and pocket dimensions, where pretty much everything that could possibly happen has happened, somewhere and somewhen. They travel through it regularly, I guess, on there way from here to there. Sounds like anybody with the right kind of know-how can go world-shopping, if they have a lot of free time and a high tolerance for life-threatening adventure."
"That sounds very unsteady," Ororo replied with a small frown, trying to take in the concept of the multiverse. That sounded far larger than Clarice's arm could hint at. Everything that could possibly happen. It sounded mindblowing, and Ororo lost herself in contemplation for a few long seconds.
Huffing a laugh that blew errant strands of magenta from her luminous green eyes, Clarice helped herself to another drink. "You know how much eladrin love a tall tale, Ororo--they can be worse than pixies, when they get on a roll. They were probably just trying to overawe me." Of course, the Feywild elf-kin were also known to speak the deeper truths of the mysteries of reality on occasion ... but Clarice hadn't met one yet that seemed serious enough for that. It had all probably just been some elaborate faerie game.
Clarice's laugh snapped Ororo out of it, and she focused on her friend again, giving her a small smile. "It's been so long since I talked to one of them. Perhaps it is time I meet one again."
"I'll bring one by, the next time I find them passing through," the lavender-skinned girl promised. "They don't tend to linger long, but they love new things. Just ..." Her expression scrunched into something dubious. "Remember not to take them too seriously. Eladrin are everything that is 'too much' about both elves and fey. It's not that they don't mean well, most of the time, but ..." She shrugged, helplessly.
"Also, they 'port around almost as much as I do."
"You're talking as if I had never talked to one," Ororo remarked, mostly amused that Clarice thought that she needed to be warned about them.
"The fact that you want to makes me think it's been long enough you need to be reminded," she pointed out, grinning. "I mean, I love the gravity and the dignity--the whole Earth Mother aura you've got working here in your grove. But I haven't met an elf yet that didn't want to puncture other people's gravitas just for the sake of it. Especially the ones from the Feywild."
"People's gravitas should definitely be punctured every once in a while," Ororo chided her with an amused smile. "Even mine. Especially mine. No one wants to take themselves seriously all the time."
Clarice grunted, but good-humoredly. "Ain't that the truth? The only way to survive in this crazy world we were born into is by laughing at it, and ourselves, as often as we can. The alternative is just too damned depressing."
"Laughter, and good berry wine," Ororo confirmed, with a small raise of her glass, before she took another sip.
