A flight long in the running...

[homeless_pard]

Who: Khem and a new world!
When: Start of canon smash here!
What: Terrified kitty arrives in the vague area of St. Louis.

Tired. She was so bone weary that had someone told her that she'd die but it would be in a bed, she might honestly accept that trade at this point. The pads of her feet were leaving red marks along the rough stone she scrambled and clawed haphazardly upward, ever upward, ever away, through so many terrains they all blurred together in a haze of color and snatched hunts.

She should have lost him. Should have, and there had been times over the past turns where she had almost believed him gone. Finally shaken from her trail and naught more than a shadow left in her mind to spur her onward. Any hunter would eventually give up on game when coursing it had run to long...

...surely?

Ah, but she'd little experience with hunters, those near the abbey were more farmers with the occasional lord's man, and even had they needed care it was likelier that they would seek tending from their own ladies. AN isolated abbey was not easy to seek out when ill.

Still, it had seemed logical that he'd stop. At the Wastes perhaps.

At the Falls.

At the turn of blasted scree to strange, new lands past where tales she knew ended...

...and yet here she was, his shadow practically nipping at her heels. She was flagging and he hadn't stopped. This hunt was soon to end, as any chased thing knew in time, escape simply wasn't going to happen. Mayhap it would kinder, cleaner, to miss a jump. To tumble and not reach for ledges as she went down.

Kinder...but she shrank from it none the less. A little further...

...a little further...

...until there was naught left but sheer walls and a deep, dark crack between. A cave, not a passage. No exit. A tomb for one hard worn girl who had thought, foolishly, that finding fur had granted her freedom. And so it was to end.

If he hounded her even here, his bootsteps harsh on the stones behind her, then she was determined he would know who he was to slay. Not some cat that had teased him, not some furred prize, but as a woman. If he was to slay her, let him slay a woman and be haunted by her face. An unkindness perhaps, but she was far past ability to feel for him.

To wonder if she could explain, or beg her safety somehow.

No, let him have a flickering pang of conscience as he did his fell deeds. And so as the mouth of the cave darkened she set her back to the stone, fingers rather than claws lifted to shade her face, skin covered in long, dark hair and gooseflesh that gave some semblance of proper depth to her too-thin frame.

Let him slay a woman.

And yet, as she watched the dull, metallic sheen of a dart gun rising, it wasn't pain she felt burn through her chest but warmth where her single item, the amber stone on a string about her neck graced to her by Gunnora, flickered like sunlight and the wall at her back faded to naught so that she was falling...

...falling...

...falling...

...there was a brief scream, she couldn't help it, as her shoulders struck beaten grass and tree roots, shock making the sound choke off as abruptly as it had started. A heartbeat, two, as she stared up at tangled tree limbs and dappled light she shouldn't be seeing then she was sitting up with a gasp, trying to espy the Hunter.

And he was not there. Somehow, somehow...he was not there, and she sat in a wood far younger than the one before the stones she'd climbed, hands and feet still bleeding harshly from the abuse she'd pounded into them over the many moons of travel. She was alone and she was...naked. The stone upon her breast cooling from it's earlier warmth. She'd give thanks somehow, later. For now she shivered back into fur in a blur of mist and achingly, carefully, hauled herself up into a tree to try to determine where she might be.

A how would take much longer no doubt, but...

...rest seemed a blessing, and she was still so very, very tired.

With luck there would be no fresh, strange beasts to contest her claiming the crook of a tree, there to watch, or likelier pass into blessed unconsciousness.

Comments

[jasonpschuyler]

He blinked. "Fair enough. I have no idea what chook and loper are. But deer isn't that usual unless you're out catching it yourself." He smiled wolfishly. "But yeah, paprikash is like a red pepper sauce? But not super spicy."

[homeless_pard]

"Hmmm, chook is...yard hens and cocks? Lay eggs?" she mused, not really knowing how else to describe the feathery hellions. "Lopers are grass runners, fast, larger hind legs than front, burrow..."

[jasonpschuyler]

He laughed out loud. "Ok, yeah. Chickens. I mean, hens and cocks, too, I guess. Most people just say chicken when talking about food. And we usually say rooster instead of cock because...slang again."

His smile widened. "And rabbits. You can find those in fancy restaurants, but they're easy enough to catch when you're hunting alone."

"People here mostly eat chicken, beef, pork, or seafood if they're eating meat. It's cheaper and more common than wild game."

[homeless_pard]

She blinked, a bit floored by the idea that cows were more common than rabbits..."lands keep cattle over hutches?!" That was...idiotic really.

Truly.

Such a strange world. "Chooks and lopers are common in my homelands, kept easily, alongside goats."

[jasonpschuyler]

"I don't think it was always like that. Our country has a lot of space for cattle, so yeah, beef is pretty big here. Goats not so much as a long time ago, or in some of the poorer countries around the world."

He shrugged. "You read about what people used to eat, you realize we're pretty spoiled now. Anything you want, any time of year. If it's not in season here, we trade with a region where it is in season. Any fruit, any vegetable, whenever you want."

[homeless_pard]

"...that seems rather wasteful," she admitted softly, blinking. "Is there a law against keeping smaller things?" Mayhap if she ended up isolated with her own small cottage she could keep what she was used to?

Add in the fact that lopers and chooks tended to be a singular investment and trade that renewed themselves easily, well...it just made sense to her yes. No, Jason probably wasn't going to manage to totally sway her to a sybaritic lifestyle.

[jasonpschuyler]

He made a face. "Not in the city, I don't think. But if you move into the suburbs or more rural areas it shouldn't be a problem. You'd just need the land."

He paused for a moment, a slight smile on his lips. "Aren't you worried about eating them on the full moon, though?"

[homeless_pard]

"...ah," so what she knew could not be had near here. That was something to think on wasn't it?

"And why, lord, would that be an issue? If I were not capable of self control I'd not have made it far..."

[jasonpschuyler]

He could sense her disappointment. "Not saying you couldn't get a place, but...I mean, you look at what we drove past. Building and concrete. Not really conducive to farm animals."

He paused, remembering the clear-eyed leopard craving words into the dirt. "You...you don't black out or anything when you shift, do you? You stay the same in your head?"

[homeless_pard]

"It wouldst be strange to depend on others in even so simple a thing as ingredients constantly," she admitted. Very strange.

Ah. "There is instinct, that I may move body proper as I do on two legs, but I am myself regardless?"

[jasonpschuyler]

"You get used to it. The way our society works, it's more difficult not to."

He frowned slightly, considering that. "No urges when you're shifted?"

[homeless_pard]

"A sad thing to grow used to mayhap," she admitted quietly. It was going to be a life long battle that one, yes! Fear!

Urges? She blinked, "naught I did not have as a woman watching her life become a cage." All urges seemed normal in that light?

[jasonpschuyler]

"Not too sad, I hope?" He meant that: he didn't want to see her sad at being stuck here. Or at all.

He looked at the ceiling, trying to find the right words. "I mean...what do I mean...you don't feel any overpowering urge to feed? Or hunt? When you shift, I mean."

[homeless_pard]

"I am alive, lord, aught else I will ponder in time," she admitted simply. Emotion wise anyway!

And it seemed his own claimed shifts (that she'd yet to witness honestly) were...harsher things with such questions asked. "To hunt and eat, yes, to supply a four footed form, but not to such degree I cannot reason." Again, she'd be dead otherwise...but probably better fed.

[jasonpschuyler]

He nodded, letting that sink in. That had to be nice, holding on to all of you during a shift. But again, he couldn't imagine being able to successfully Run and Hunt with the Pack if his thoughts remained entirely human. At least it had been years since his black-out shifts.

He blinked, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I got caught up again. Let's get you some food before the restaurant closes shop. You're probably hungry and I'm just sitting here and talking."

[homeless_pard]

Ah, but long runs oft gave a mind too long for poisonous thoughts. Might it have been relieving to lose such for a time? Who was to judge?

"I am patient, lord," she noted, not unkindly. Patient and as much a beggar as anything given she had naught to trade and the High Lord's guesting rights did not account truly for one not fed on blood it seemed.

[jasonpschuyler]

He shook his head, concentrating for a few minutes on his computer. "Ok, I ordered a bunch of different things. It'll be delivered in about 20 minutes."

He closed the laptop and crawled gracefully off the opposite side of the bed. "I've got a change of sheets in my closet. I'll make up the bed for you. There's shirts and some sleep pants in the drawers that you can wear until we find something you like. Oh, and I'll get fresh towels for the bathroom. You can use anything in there."

Eventually they'd eat their meal and he'd have to leave, but of course he couldn't leave until he'd made the room suitable for a guest...he could probably stretch that out, right?

[homeless_pard]

She blinked, "if you but show me where such are I will do such!" He was already giving her the chamber itself, it was too much that he might do such menial things on her behalf! Naturally she was working to edge off the bed, ignoring the slipping shirt edge in favor of not losing the trews as she scrambled to aid him!

"Like as not there are far more important things you are taking time from!"

[jasonpschuyler]

Trust me, I don't have anything important to do tonight."

He turned with the fresh sheets just in time to see the neck of her shirt gape open slightly, pale skin gently curving from her collarbone...he blinked, darting his eyes away quickly.

"No, I've got it. You sit: you're hurt." He let smiling eyes meet hers. "Seriously, I've got it."

[homeless_pard]

She blinked, "if you are in training lord..." then obviously there were things he should be doing yes! And she had to get off the bed anyway if he intended to change the sheets so it only made sense to aid in such...

...yes. She was bad at resting.

[jasonpschuyler]

"I can meet with Jean Claude before he retires for the day if he calls for me, but he probably won't I don't have any meetings every day, anyway." He sighed. "Fine, but as soon as we're done you sit. You'll never let yourself heal if you keep trying to run around and be busy."

It was a light-hearted chiding, and as they stripped the bed he fought very hard to keep from the quick glances in her direction, or the direction of that too loose neckline...

[homeless_pard]

"...ah?" Was that normal? That degree of...unoccupied? Huh. "As you wish lord," she sighed at his admonishing, ducking her head slightly. "I will sit after the sheets are settled. If you have a comb?" She could get her hair handled and braided at least?

[jasonpschuyler]

His life had a good deal of leisure time built into it...

He began tucking the fitted sheet around his side of the mattress. "I promise I'm not trying to be an ass, Khemrys. Just want you to have a chance to heal."

He offered up a smile, tossing her the corner the flat sheet to stretch over the mattress.

"I have a comb you can use. Will...will your hands be ok?" He'd be willing to help, but there was definitely a line in touching a woman's hair that he felt would be even bigger to cross with Khemrys.

[homeless_pard]

She was going to lose her mind for boredom honestly...

She tucked and pulled on her end of things carefully, managing to get crisp corners without tweaking her fingers overly much! "I'd not think to ever call you such lord Jason," she admitted. "It is not a failing nor misbehavior to be of very different different worlds I think." How could it be?

Ah. Hmmm. "I...do not know," she admitted quietly. "But would like to learn such? Though mayhap I should wash first."

[jasonpschuyler]

He looked up at that, unable to help the little smile when she actually used his name. "Well get to know me better and you'll get there," he chuckled. "I can definitely be an ass. I'm just not trying to be one now."

He looked from his corner to hers and just shook his head. Then he crossed the room, gesturing to the bathroom. "Bathroom's over here. You can have a hot bath if you want one and I can go wait upstairs for our food. If you want. We can even redo the bandages after we eat."