| Logs |
2002 January 30
| Idlewild |
| Realms |
Retired
| Reality Fault |
General Info
 |
| Realms: Idlewild Logs |
Aiden's Introduction
The air smells good in this rainbow silk
tent, and the moss underfoot is as soft as the colorful pillows strewn
everywhere. A slight mossy tinge to the pleasant air is the smell of the
color green. The round tent is about 30 feet in diameter, and the tent
flap is down but not tied shut; it flutters in a mild breeze from outside,
flashing bits of green through the changing gap. Small animal and bird
sounds come faintly through the walls.
Aiden is a slender male in his early twenties. He has shoulder-length dark blonde hair and green eyes. He is wearing hiking pants made of nylon that can be
zipped off above the knee to become shorts. He has a pair of hiking boots
on and a UNBC baseball cap on his head. He has a grey long-sleeved shirt
on, with a green, short-sleeved "Parks Canada" T-shirt, complete with the
simplified yellow beaver enclosed in a downward triangle that makes up the
Parks. He's wearing a backpack and his three-in-one jacket is currently
strapped to the backpack. He's carrying a walking stick in one
hand.
Aiden gasps and drops his walking stick, looking around as though he's trying to figure out why he isn't in the water and where that thing that he was struggling against is. "Rainbow tent?" he says uselessly. "No.. I should be in a canoe.. or just recently out of one and in the water. Damn.. Not even a drop of water. I hope I didn't die."
Quiet, unworried small animal calls outside are his only answer. The tent flap flutters.
Aiden adjusts his hat and picks up his walking stick. "Suppose I may as well try to figure out where I am." He pokes his head out of the flap of the tent.
Nothing bites off that head-- not immediately, anyway. No large animals are in sight. No creatures at all, in fact, despite the soft calls. To the left, a splash of color and fragrance on the breeze suggests a meadow of flowers, and a distant waterfall can be heard. To the right and directly ahead, a low shimmer might be water-- small pools. Trees border the meadow in all directions.
Aiden steps fully out of the tent to survey the area. "No fire, brimstone, screams of tortured souls or red skinned men with horns and bad suits. That's a good sign." He sets his backpack down and digs through it a little, pulling out a canteen and a package of little capsules. He sets off towards the the pools. "Water first, then I'll worry."
A sharp mineral smell comes from the hot
pools here. There are several, sloping down a slight incline so that water
flows in a small channel from the highest to the next highest. The highest
also seems to be the hottest. All are big enough for four or five average
humans.
Aiden looks at the pools.. then at the empty canteen in his hand. "..not particularly fond of mineral water, even if they do swear that it's good for you. And I suspect that these purifications tabs aren't going to do anything for this. Damn." He shifts the backpack on his back and looks around, trying to pinpoint that waterfall.
Beyond the hot pools, the trees curve in and there appears to be a clearing, past a large pile of wood at its mouth. The contents of the clearing are not visible from here. The waterfall noise is coming from the direction Aiden saw the spread of flowers, requiring some backtracking.
Aiden turns around and starts back in the direction he came from, towards the flowers and the sound of the waterfall. "Just great, Aiden. You want to be a warden, but you're in an area you're not familiar with for five minutes and you're already lost."
A profusion of wildflowers, most shaped like tiny orchids,
carpets this meadow about knee-deep. When disturbed, they give off a very
pleasant but hardly overpowering odor... it hints at several things-- baking cake, your favorite fruit, the way the hair of that teenage crush
smelled when you walked by-- but settles on nothing, remaining just out of
grasp. It would be pleasant to idle here awhile, or even lie down and let
the tiny, perfect blossoms surround your body.
Aiden makes his way to the flowery meadow without trouble, and the waterfall noise is definitely stronger here. The source must be further, in the same direction... though it smells awfully good here.
Aiden stops, looking at one of the flowers near him oddly. He kneels over it and takes a sniff and looks utterly baffled. He stands up whistling. "Well. We're narrowing this down.. Not Hell.. and definitely not Yoho National Park. Yoho doesn't have flowers that smell like that girl that sat three rows in front of me in Fisheries Management two semesters ago."
Aiden sits down next to the "Jessica Flowers" and slips his backpack off. "Maybe a little rest wouldn't be so bad. It's not like I've got anything urgent.."
Aiden rolls his shoulders back, then looks off in the direction of the waterfall noise. "I shouldn't be so thirsty. I'm sure I swallowed two gallons of water in the lake. But, I really should get going." He stands up and slings his backpack back on, picks up the canteen and purifications tabs and heads off towards the waterfall.
The waterfall is not far or
hard to reach, once Aiden gets moving again...
The air here is clear, unscented by flowers. It smells a bit
damp and faintly mossy, though there is no moss in sight. The banks of the
waterfall's 40-foot-wide pool are rock and lichen and mud, and the
waterfall itself cascades down a huge, black-veined granite outcropping
that must go at least 60 feet up. The falls have no visible source but the
top of that immense boulder. Trees shoulder in closely around the rocky
pool.
Aiden gets to the waterfall and kneels down, leaning out over the fall pool to fill the canteen up. He drops one of the tabs into the canteen, then caps it and shakes it up a bit before setting it down next to him. He sits while he waits for the tab to work, looking out at the forests around and listening..
With no warning whatsoever, something cold and wet pokes through Aiden's loose shoulder-length hair and lands smack on the nape of his neck.
Aiden stiffens and fights against nature's Fight or Flight reflex. Scream like a girl or smack at it.. scream like a girl or smack at it.. He chooses to leap to his feet and try to dislodge the thing on his neck by attempting to brush it off his neck, preferably to the ground and not down his shirt.
Aiden's spin-and-brush takes him in a few tight circles, ending up facing the pool again. The cold, wet thing is gone; vanished as soon as he stood up, in fact.
Aiden looks around where his feet are.. then the area around him.. He also checks his neck again. It may be gone but I can still feel it smacking into me.
Something pokes Aiden in the butt. A small sound as of claws on rock comes from behind him.
Aiden whirls around, barely choking down a small squeal when something else touches him.
A large golden-bronze mottled dog is gazing up at him, orange eyes bright, mouth partly open. Aiden is pretty sure it's laughing at him.
The dog has distinctly orange eyes, stands about three feet at the shoulder, and looks no worse fed than a normal pet; his leanness is clearly a species trait, not starvation. His fine, long head looks around at the world, his tail is untucked, and his eyes are burning bright. He wears a dark, braided leather thong around his neck, pulled through a small, pierced amethyst point.
Aiden gasps and sits - or rather, falls - down. "Oh my god.. Get a hold of yourself Aiden. It's a dog not the thing from the black lagoon." It may as well have been "Hi there, buddy!" He holds out a hand to it. "You scared me."
The dog grins, gives Aiden's hand a desultory sniff while maintaining eye contact, then has its paws on his shoulders and swipes his face with its tongue. It's a tall dog.
Aiden blinks and gives the dog a pat on the neck. "I sure hope that wasn't a grin. Dogs don't grin, you know."
The dog tilts its head to one side, still only a few inches away from Aiden's face, and very slowly shuts one eye, then opens it again.
Aiden leans over to grab his canteen and takes a quick drink from it. "And they don't wink, either."
The orange-eyed, laughing, winking dog suddenly drops its paws back off Aiden's shoulders and makes a grab for his canteen-- with its teeth. Aiden's reflexes save the canteen, but the dog wins its next sally for his staff, and dances out of reach with it, wagging its tail madly.
Aiden slings the canteen over his backpack and crouches down with his arms wide.. waiting.. He suddenly makes a dash for the dog..
The dog evades Aiden with insulting ease, and dances swiftly into the woods... where it pauses again to face him with his staff in its mouth, wink, and then turn to trot off in a straight line, not too fast to follow at a jog.
Aiden laughs, "You want me to follow you, do you?" He jogs along behind the dog..
The dog makes a muffled "Rrf!" noise right after Aiden asks that. It could be coincidence.
Aiden picks up his pace a little, to see if he can flank the dog..
It leads Aiden merrily through the trees, increasing its speed easily to stay the same distance ahead of him, until they come out of the trees into a clearing... where nine plain tall standing stones are arranged in a circle about twenty feet wide. Another bipedal figure is leaning against one.
Aiden's canine playmate bounds over to drop the staff at the other figure's feet, and dances back to encourage Aiden to hurry it up.
Aiden skids to a halt. "What?" He looks at the dog, back at the stones and then at the person standing there. He takes a few cautious steps forward, then, encouraged by the dog, walks towards the person standing there. He keeps his arms at his sides, carefully neutral.
He sees a dainty but not tiny lady, about 5'5", with clean pale skin and a shock of short silvery hair that could almost be rabbit-fur. Slightly elongated, sharply pointed ears do not quite hide in her two-inch pouf of soft hair. She has big, luminous silver-grey eyes that barely possess any color at all, but seem almost like moonstone in their pale gathering of the light. She is dressed almost head to toe in layers of thin, fine leather with ragged edges, mostly white and grey with a blue and lavender mottling like barbaric tie-dye, or camoflouge for a snowy, lumpy field at twilight. The overall effect is something between haute couture and an ambitious Renaissance Fair outfit by a well-meaning, treehugging fantasy reader. She wears a dark, braided leather thong around her neck, pulled through a small, pierced amethyst point.
The lady sighs audibly, and bends to pick up the staff. She moves as fluidly as water flowing downstream. "I'm sorry... is this yours?"
Aiden nods and smiles a little shyly. "Yes.. Your dog.. I think he wanted to play.. "
Her voice is high but not annoyingly so, and very pure. "Soleil, apologize to the young man." The dog responds by walking over to Aiden and flopping down in front of him to loll about on its back, belly in the air. It looks sort of contrite. Maybe.
Aiden leans down and rubs the dog on the stomach. "That's quite alright, Ma'am. He wasn't hurting anything."
Soleil wriggles with doggish joy.
Aiden laughs!
The slender woman walks closer and offers Aiden his (only slightly slimy) staff back. "You're kind. Still, I'd feel better if... would you like to join me for lunch? I was going to eat anyway, it's that time for me."
She adds, "You can call me Lua." She smiles.
Aiden smiles again and takes the staff back. "I'm Aiden.. Thanks. Lunch would be nice.."
Lua looks pleased. "Come this way, then. We might even feed Soleil." She winks, and moves off.
Aiden follows the woman and her dog.
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