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12/23/05 - With Christmas break here, I might actually have time to work on Kiq's page... might. I'm redoing the main picture at the moment in addition to making some new adoptables. But it will be a while before either of those are up.
Sample adoptable:
God, If I could sprout wings and fly, he thought. I would be gone from this place, my great wings bearing me up and out, long feathers hissing in the wind. The world would unfurl below me like a bright picture on a scroll of paper and there would be nothing holding me to the ground. The watercourses and hills passing under me effortless and simple. And me just rising and rising till I was but a dark speck on the clear sky. Gone on elsewhere.
- from Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.
Plains at sunset. The long golden grass rustles in the last warm breeze before twilight. The setting sun paints the sky with pinks and yellows and purples. A shape parts the stalks of knee-high grass, heading in the same direction as the playful wind. The young lupe acts as if the frail draft itself is pushing him along, gamboling and prancing. His reddish brown coat is rough and matted, as is his cream underbelly. A thoughtful smile graces his muzzle as he stretches his wings so the soft feathers catch the warm waft of air. He seems a playful spirit, oblivious to the world.
You call out a greeting.
Hello there!
The lupe stops and smiles, his pale blue eyes searching for the source of the voice. He seems unable to locate you, though you are standing clearly visible over the grass. You wave.Ah, the lupe says, and heads toward you. Forgive me... I don't have the best of eyesight.
You blink. Are you... blind? you ask.The lupe reaches you. He is, in actaulity, fairly small. Not exactly," he replies, "I can see light, and shapes... mostly everything is dark and blurry
Oh, you say. You are about to ask another question, but the lupe speaks instead.You're going to ask how I became blind. Or if I was born like this." He smiles. "I've gotten that question many times in my travels. Well. I can tell you, but it's rather a long story.
Alright, you accept.
Chapter One - Green Isle
I wasn't always like this. Blind, I mean. I'd like to call the times when I could see the good old days, but I don't really think it applies, the lupe says. Growing up I was completely normal - well, almost. I admit I was a little diminutive, but otherwise I was healthy. Wingless as well. These are a story in themselves, he chuckles, flapping his wings lightly. My childhood was spent on a remote island off the northern coast. We called it Green Isle...
A blue lupess lay, sweaty and tired but content, in a tiny copse of evergreens isolated on the sandy beach of Green Isle. The isle was so named for the dense wood that covered it entirely, except for the bare stretch of sand on the eastern shore. The conifers remained a deep, rich blue-green all year round, which made the island, when viewed from the mainland, seem like a green thumb sticking out of the sea.An auburn colored lupe stood over the lupess, nosing the small ball of fur curled near her belly. "A bit small, isn't he?" he commented, with a hint of dissapointment in his voice. "And the only one, too. I was hoping for a big litter." The lupess licked her pup protectively. "Oh, stop griping," she replied. You know he's the only one born this spring. It was a hard winter, what did you expect? None of the other lupesses bore this year, see, you're the father of the only pup this spring. You can brag about that to you friends, Boq.
I don't need to brag," huffed the father, puffing out his chest fur. Changing the subject, he asked, "What shall we name him, eh? 'Tiny One?'" The mother swished her tail in his face, annoyed. "No no, I think I'll call him Kiqtaaku. 'Good Deed.'" "Of course," said Boq absently, and trotted off over the beach towards the forest.The newborn yawned, blind for the moment, too young to open his eyes yet. Stretching, he revealed a cream-colored underbelly, contrasting with the auburn coat he had inherited from his father. The baby whined hungrily and suckled as dusk fell over the island.
-------Several years later, the pup, not just a child but far from adolescence, romped around the meeting clearing in the center of the island. Other pups played around the bare circle of grass while their parents watched them lazily. It was the peak of summer and pleasantly warm. Kiqtaaku was the smallest lupe there, smaller even than pups a year younger than him. Still, he gamboled with just as much vigor as the rest of them. He was currently deeply involved in a game of tag, and he was it. Chasing his friend, a husky pup with a blackish pelt, he weaved in and out of the trees at the edge of the clearing and the grown lupes alike. Agile because of his size, he gained on his friend. Hoping to lose him, the black lupe made a sharp turn as the two pups neared the meeting fire in the middle of the clearing.
Kiqtaaku turned himself to follow him, but continuted to skid towards the fire. He tumbled into the edge of the burning mass of wood and tinder, unable to stop. He yelped in pain as the cinders burnt through his fur. Scrambling out, he panicked, parts of his coat smoldering, until his father seized him and rolled him in the dirt, extinguishing any threat of fire. Kiqtaaku lay panting, his eyes stinging from the smoke and the pain. Boq roughly heaved him up by the scruff of his neck and shook him.What did I tell you about playing near the fire? Will you never learn?" He dropped Kiqtaaku unceremoniously on the ground. "You," he barked at the black lupe, "take him to the stream to cool these burns," and shoved his son to his feet again, pushing him on his way. In an undertone, soft but not soft enough to be inaudible, he said, "Just my luck my son is the smallest and the dullest pup of the lot.Kiqtaaku walked glumly behind his friend, wincing with each step as the skin stretched over a burn on his flank. The black lupe looked thoughtful. "You know, I think your father hates you," he informed Kiqtaaku. His friend looked unpleasantly surprised. "Do you really think...?" "Yes," the black lupe answered. "I heard my mother saying that Boq is... what was the word? 'Dissapointed.' Said you were too small to ever live up to him." Kiqtaaku's face fell as he limped to the stream. "I am not that small," he protested weakly.
His friend rolled in the mud by the streambank. "You're lucky, you know. You probably could have died." Kiqtaaku glanced at him and shuddered. "Yeah," continued the black lupe. "Didn't you know that fire eats you? Eats you alive." Kiqtaaku shook his head, looking scared. "It's a monster. If you get too close for too long, it will eat you all up and spit out the ashes, the bad stuff that it can't use. And... once you've touched it, it's inside you, and it'll keep eating away at you until there's nothing left but the bad stuff.Kiqtaaku, now looking quite disturbed, scratched agitatedly at a burn, licked it, and winced at the sting. He whined involuntarily and continued to scratch at the burns until they opened and bled. "Get it out of me!" he shouted, over and over. Alarmed, the black lupe toppled him into the shallow stream. He thrashed a bit, then calmed himself. Standing up in the gurgling flow, he glanced at his friend ashamedly, and fled into the forest away from the meeting circle. The black lupe shrugged and returned to the rest of the pack.
-------Kiqtaaku ran, sobbing, not knowing where he was going. He eventually came to where anyone will end up if they run in one direction on an island - the shore. The northern shore was unlike the eastern. It was all cliffs and rocks that jutted out from the woods into the sea. Dusk was falling, the sun slowly sinking into the mainland in the west, spreading bands of warm color across the sky. But in the east a storm was building. The heat and humidity had foreshadowed it. It was a sea-storm, come from across the unknown wastes of ocean. Kiqtaaku curled into a natural cave in the cliffs and watched the storm roll in.
Mixed thoughts echoed in the young pup's mind. He was right... father hates me. I'm too small. I'm worthless, and wicked. I'm bad. The fire will make me bad. He shivered, partly from the thought of the fire as a beast inside him, destroying the good, and partly from the chill that the pounding rain brought. They don't want me. He doesn't want me. None of them do. I should... leave. But there was nowhere to go to, save for the mainland. He looked west over the strait between the isle and the continent, but the setting sun, not yet obscured by the clouds, cast a orangey-red glow over the land. It looked as if the mainland was all one burning mass. The stormclouds high up echoed the red sheen. He looked away. They're trying to drive me away, aren't they? he asked himself. Yes, they are. They don't need me. Well, I don't need them. I could show them. He glowered, angry, unaware of the hate catching fire inside of him. And outside the cave, the storm came into its full fury.Chapter Two - Fire and Fright
My mother always said I was never the same after that day, said Kiqtaaku, with a sad look in his eyes. I was sullen and ill-tempered. I wanted to be independent, but I only isolated myself from everyone else. I became an outcast...
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art by swan
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art by others
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Swan luffs adopties! *rabid*
RULES!!!
Now let me be clear. I would like it very much if I didn't even have to post the adoptable rules, but some people can't be trusted to follow them, so here. You MAY NOT:
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