usir | on the outside [open]

Entry tags:

on the outside [open]

Character(s): Billie + whoever else is lurking around the wilderness.
Status: Open
Location(s): Marshlands near City of the Free Peoples
Date(s) Early March
About: With tensions and fighting within the city on the rise, Billie's opted to keep Mr. Werewolf fed through somewhat more wild means.
Warnings: She's hunting, so animal death and potentially more violence.

With winter on the run and the snow and ice ebbing away, the marsh isn't necessarily the safest place to pick off rabbits and the like, but the point is that the animals know that, too. There's less foot traffic outside of the road that edges around the swampy parts out here, meaning creatures popping up to pick at what greenery has begun to show through are far more common.

It also makes it a good place to hunt through less conventional means. Why waste arrows when you can literally turn into a giant rat? Or in this case, a cross between a human and a rat. She's shed her coat and boots to go skulking through the marshland in her black-furred shiftling form. At a distance, it's easy to assume she's one of the beastfolk. Though, at a closer range, the much more wild traits of a wererat are obvious to someone who knows what they're looking at. She isn't a wererat in actuality but for lack of a better word...

All that aside, for whatever reason you're out here on your own, your trek is about to be interrupted by a hare bolting out of the rushes and across your path. This is followed immediately by the shiftling leaping after and landing directly on it with a sick, soft crack of bones underclaw.

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It's probably answer enough that the rat settles back on her haunches and makes a reedy kehehehe noise — very much a laugh of some sort, just not particularly human — at Shura yelling at her lion. It isn't all that off from how it went down back in Didymos, too, if only lacking in birds fighting over that very same hare there.

Shishi is just having the time of his life and going to town on his dinner, making a terrible mess of hair and blood and everything else that's included with a fresh dead bunny dinner. Shura is clearly Not Impressed with this whole thing, especially not with a damn rat that thinks this whole thing is funny. Shura turns her wrath to Billie, now much more certain of the identity of the wererat, jabbing her finger in Billie's direction.

"Laugh it up, Fuzzbrain! Ugh, seriously! I brought him out here to make him hunt, no so someone else could feed him." There you go, Billie, you've gone and ruined all of Shura's plans for the day by feeding her lion.

Billie gives a huff and shrugs like it isn't her problem. For real, it really isn't! But she isn't going to get anywhere in this form, even if it does free her from the general obligation of actually having to hold a conversation. Dropping the form is as easy as breathing for her, so she does.

Not that shapeshifting is particularly pretty. Shura will just have to live with witnessing a rat monster twist back into a human form, which leaves the Billie she actually knows sitting on the ground in place of the wererat.

"Yeah? Well, lead with that next time, maybe I would have kept it."

It might not be pretty, but it's at least shiftling changing and not werewolf changing, so it could be a lot worse. Shura isn't that well-versed in shiftling culture, so she's not entirely sure whether or not she should look away while she shifts, but at least she knows better than to stare. And at least Billie has clothes on when she returns to her human form, hooray.

"Next time I'll let him wrestle you for it." They can do that an call it training. Yeah. That works.

Ultimately, Billie wouldn't care if she stared or turned away. That she's wise enough to keep tight-fitting clothes to survive low-impact shifting like this makes it more or less a moot point to worry about, although one would never know with each and every other shiftling. As it stands, the worst thing about this situation is being covered in mud. Not really her preferred way of appearing in public (even if it's only a public of two).

"You really that willing to put your soul on the line like that?" Billie answers that with continued amusement. "Because I'm not afraid of any lion, especially not that one."

And Deirdre makes another racket, more scolding, to which Billie rolls her eyes and cranes her head up to look at the tern.

"You already ate! Don't even think about swooping in."

"Considering that he might double in size again, he might be tougher the next time you run into him." Really, though, since Shura had put enough together to assume that it was his revival that seemed to have cause the change, she hoped he would stay the same. He was problem enough as it was with his current body, no need to add on to that.

Ultimately, Shish was a lover, not a fighter, which would explain the way he growls when he hears the bird hollering. If there's a chance that damn bird might try to snatch his food, he'll tighten his jaws around the carcass, slinking behind Shura, who he assumes will be a great shield. Shura clicks her tongue, looking between the lion and the tern.

"I outta make you give that up. Jeez, don't put me in the middle of this."

"So that's all true? The getting bigger thing?" Billie can't help but ask as she finally gets to her feet. Strange had mentioned something similar and she had just laughed about it then. "That batty wizard said his hare could do the same thing."

“No, it’s not the same as his.” The batty wizard could really only be one guy. “Shishi just started growing for a week or so after we came back and stayed that size. Strange’s rabbit went berserk and doubled in size until he could get her calmed down before changing back to normal.”

Bell’s sudden brutality wasn’t something Shura was about to forget. She glances down at the lion, happy with his face covered in blood and bunny gore. Seeing it on a carnivore was less disturbing than on what was supposed to be a quiet little animal. “He said before that she came back with a mark on her body. That might have been the hint that something changed.”

"A mark?" Billie purses her lips, thinking that bit of information over. She isn't aware of any mark showing up on Deirdre, though she still tosses a look back up to the bird sulking in the tree. "Well? What about you?"

After which she waits, head tilting slightly as if listening to something, only there isn't anything to listen to beyond Shishi noisily tearing the hare apart. Still, after that bit of silence, she nods a bit and looks back Shura's way. It is tempting to keep on keeping this to herself but if the other woman's in a sharing mood about all this weird anima shit, well...

"Not sure about any marks but Deirdre changed after that whole getting thrown into a pit mess," she offers her own creepy animas update to the pile. "She's smarter. Smart enough to converse with, anyway, though just to me."

That sounds incredibly insane when said out loud but here we go.

That does sound incredibly insane! But so does being resurrected for no particular reason other than humoring some sorcerer or other magically-fueled being, so Shura has to roll with things until Billie proves herself to be just as batty as Strange.

"Converse with you?" Shura frowns, raising a hand to her hip as she glances between the tern and Billie. "Y'mean, like right then you were talking to her?"

Telepathy? Well, no more odd than doubling in size or gaining a berserker rage. Shura's standards of normal weren't really high to begin with, but they just keep getting lower and lower.

"Yeah, right then," Billie confirms with a nod, "Asking if she had any marks. She said no."

An admission followed by a confirmation from Deirdre, where the tern chirps and bobs from left to right where she's perched. Like Billie said, smarter. Maybe too smart, in her own opinion, but there isn't much she can do about it now.

"So what the hell triggers it? Danger? Because I sure didn't eat dirt back there."

"You didn't?" Well, there goes Shura's main theory that they somehow just got messed up after being revived. She purses her lips, trying her hardest to think of what could be the trigger.

"Danger might be the trigger, but if it's that, then why didn't it effect him until afterward? Why would different things happen to that rabbit and Shishi? I don't get it."

They were magical chunks of soul or something. They shouldn't be changing all willy-nilly, and it's really just annoying.

"Could be there's no pattern at all," Billie says after a moment of thought. It isn't one she likes in the least, though. Random shit happening at random isn't comforting. So with that in mind, she rolls her eyes and turns to start walking off elsewhere, but she will wave for Shura to tag along.

Here's hoping Shishi has enough wits to take his lunch with him when they go.

"Someone else who washed up from the pit with me had the same thing happen. Why it's different for you and Strange, I don't know. Did the same thing happen to you both or was it different?"

She follows, though Shishi will stay behind for a bit to finish off his snack.

"No, it was the same thing at the same time," Shura says with a frown. She really doesn't like the idea that it might be something random. She didn't know much about keeping an animas, but the idea that they could change unpredictably was a dangerous thing. Shishi's change in size was an inconvenience, Billie's bird's telepathy could be a blessing, however annoying it might be at times, but Bell's rage was a danger.

"Whatever magic created them might not be stable. Danger or stress might be a trigger, whatever magical currents are in the environment could influence how they change. I haven't seen any flaws in whatever was used to bring us back, so it'd be odd that there'd be such a big flaw in it."

"Unless it was on purpose," Billie adds her own two cents to that after a second or two of considering it. It wouldn't be a flaw if whoever did this wanted the animas to change. "Maybe it's all an adaptation, changing to try and avoid whatever happened."

Of course, she doesn't like that reasoning all that much, either.

"There has got to be somewhere to read up on these stupid things..." After which she immediately has to pause and look back behind them towards where they left Deirdre and Shishi, clearly scowling. "Shut up, I'll call you what I want!"

She's still getting used to this...

All that aside, she's leading Shura back to where she set up camp, more or less, though it's essentially just a spot of dry land that she's left her stuff along with everything else she's hunted up; fish, rabbits, the like.

There was probably someone they could talk to about how their animas worked and have do all the research for them. Maybe giving the batty wizard a Job would be a good thing. But Shura doesn't really want to suggest that right now. Instead, she's going to snicker at Billie yelling at Deidre.

"Ah~, maybe I should be glad Shishi just got bigger." Seriously, she doesn't want to know what he'd be trying to tell her if he was given unlimited access to her thoughts.

Shura doesn't know what to expect when Billie leads her off, but she's only mildly surprised to see Billie's goods. This was... impressive. A lot more work than Shura would have cared to put in.

"Not bad~ I'm guessin' you aren't just hoarding all of this for yourself." She could be, Shura wouldn't judge.

"What, you saying you wouldn't prefer the in-depth thoughts on whatever he's stuffing down his gullet every time he gets into something?"

Because Billie is pretty sure that would be the sum of Shishi's telepathy, judging how the lion is always eating something whenever she sees him. It's not like Deirdre is much better, it's just that plus a lot more scolding and nasty opinions. Anyway, she'd rather hang onto the topic shift to the collection of wildlife at the camp than dwell on animas thoughts for too long.

"And no. It's just cheaper and less annoying than shopping at the market."

By now, the mud on her has dried, faster than it has any right to. The whole inner furnace ala dragon scale helps but that's a trick that doesn't need to come up, so she just moves on to brushing her legs off and retrieving her boots.

"And I figure a wolf doesn't really care where the food comes from."

"I'm sure his thoughts on how much nicer it'd be if I scratched his back a little longer would be absolutely riveting." If there was even the smallest chance that it would get him to stop hogging the bed, Shura might consider it a good thing. But no, telepathy wouldn't be enough to convince the asshole to sleep on only half of the bed.

"Prolly not. I hope not. He doesn't have much of a choice, even if he does care. Didn't strike me as much of a priss, but who knows." It was hard to have an opinion of a man she had only briefly seen before. The wolf didn't seem to mind the grub they rustled up for him, if nothing else.

And wasn't that a neat trick, drying mud like that. It probably isn't important, right??

Yep, just a neat trick. No unexplainable dragon powers here.

"Guess we'll find out if he changes back just to complain about the cuisine," Billie says as she pulls her boots back on and then turns to grab her red coat. That's going back on, too, after another bout of brushing off dry mud. "You want to help me haul this back? I figure you can either bag up the rabbits or get the fish. Doesn't matter which to me."

"Do I wanna help?" That's a dumb question, of course Shura doesn't want to help. She's too lazy to want to be useful or helpful. But since Billie's right about it being easier to hunt food down for Lykos rather than spending gold that she didn't have much of in the market, and Shura isn't that much of an ass. So fine, she'll move towards the fish. Fish might stink, but after combing the shores in Didymos and enjoying the odor of completely rotten fish for so long, it's only a mild bother.

"Jeez, you really have been working hard. You got a place you're keepin' it?'

"Not really," Billie admits with a shrug as she turns her attention to bagging up what's rest and slinging that over one shoulder. "But I can clean and dry whatever he doesn't eat tonight. Since he's healthier now, that ought to be fine as long as we soak it before giving it to him."

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on the outside [open]

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this log went up before lykos changed back so ~pretend he's still a woof~

captain bow wow

mr. 8/10

the newest romantic poet on idan's art scene

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