Log Date: 9/12/96 Log Cast: Thicket, Pacer/Evergreen Log Intro: [See pacer-vision-3.log, from which this log is immediately continued.] ---------- ** Back to stay, ** Pacer murmurs, a mere sendwhisper of joy and promise. He lifts his head once more to beam, smile taking over his face and outshining the few pleased tears in his now-grey eyes, down at you. ** You must eat. ** Thicket, shaken, stunned, mumbles blankly, "Eat...?" A nod. The smile corners slightly, becoming a grin, eyes dancing -- greyly. ** Quail, ** he offers, disentangling an arm with increasing, yet not much, grace from behind you, pulling you toward him with the other in a gentle cradling embrace. He points toward the bird lain on the waterbank. ** My hunt. ** Thicket breathes, "But... you... with me... how hunt?" She offers no resistance, as she is tugged; indeed, there hardly seems to be any strength in her legs, and she clings with both hands to your arm. Her gaze flicks to the quail, and registers it briefly, but most of her attention still seems captivated by the warm muscled flesh under her palms. The grin falters, and smooths into the face of thought. Pacer looks skyward for a moment, registering tree limbs, leaves fluttering in the breeze, the sound of the waterfall...all the same, and all different, from what he knows, from what is True to his mind. He tries to recall a hunt -- a hunt of quail, and one comes (shaded with dismay, an echo within claiming it was unreal) -- a memory, bringing yet another offering to the cub-bearing mate at the falls. These falls. (Mine! *I* hunted...) Ah! Just recently, in the woods not far from here. ** I was away, ** he manages at last, with a shrug, helpless to explain more than that. Pacer frowns, fleetingly, inwardly. His head is so strange. Everything has changed, for all that it's the same. More thought on that... in time. ** Will you eat? ** Several times, Thicket blinks at the stranger who has transformed, at least in sending, to her lifemate... then glances down at her belly, as if having forgotten anything as prosaic as hunger. "Food... will eat..." ** ** The bright smile of pleasure, of triumph in providing for his mate -- his Thicket, his _Vess_! -- returns, and it is with those smiling eyes he looks back down at you. ** I'll clean it... ** Gently, and so warily in this strange, short-limbed bulk-muscled form, he lets you down to the earth, that he may rise and, with a stretch -- silver braid sliding lithe over silvery glistening downed skin -- pad over to the quail. A knife, he needs, to clean it, and at the thought his hand drops to the sling-sheath at his belt. He pulls the knife from that place and turns it over, looking at it as one would an ancient artifact, and kneels once more to tend to the bird. Uncognizant that she remains unclad, still damp from her interrupted sojourn into the pool, Thicket sits, childlike, mute. Her gaze follows the stranger -- not stranger! -- her mate's movements, never leaving him. Pacerlike movements, awkward in this stauncher, silvered, wolfish form. Slowly, as he relearns the right motions for defeathering, gutting, and carving fowl, Pacer's movement and that of the body come to a meeting point, dancing on the edge of fusion, on the edge of grace. Yet awkward, but smoothly so now, he lifts the carcass stripped of feather, down, and innards. (Heartmeat for mate! ...my mate...) He grins, ear to ear, with a thought, and slips the heart and liver into the collapsing chest of the bird before bringing it, raw and cool from the water he's washed it in, to the elf sitting a few steps away. He looks down at you, gentle-eyed, for a moment, then crouches to hold the meat out to you. "Hunt for my mate," he intones, still experimenting with the new, strange pleasantness that comes from his throat now. Thicket lifts her hands to the offered kill, nodding slowly, dazedly; how long has it been since she accepted a hunt's prize, thus? No, don't think about that -- no need to, now? Yes? Blinking tearily, she lifts warm blooded flesh to her teeth, gnaws, her own motions jerking. Thicket's gaze stayed fixed on your face, though, in continued amazement. He watches, eyes full of pride and pleasedness, dreamingly engrossed in the autumn-spring-soil gaze meeting his own. Softly, testing the voice he's been given, he tells you, "So good to be here. Feel like...I've missed you, but never missed you at all." His gaze flickers, to the ground between his feet, then up to your eyes again. Thicket eats, in graceless, feral peckings at the meat -- as though, perhaps, she is a she-wolf gone without food for so long that to actually have it before her causes the height of confusion. She pauses then to swallow, to send unsurely, ** Here, always... felt... ** He thinks on that, eyes distancing a bit with the effort (echoes angry, like shaking a cage, and tiring again in a fade...). "Like I was with you," he murmurs, with a nod. Focusing on you, all seriousness for a moment, he breathes, "Was I...?" Thicket swallows again, food momentarily forgotten. Her eyes turn liquid, grieved; her mouth opens as though she might speak, but she sends instead: ** Here... gone... both... ** Attention leaving the smooth tones of his new form's voice, Pacer, too, slips into sending. ** Yes...no legs to run, no throat to howl...just _me_, the dream-part. ** A lightweight feeling in his sending, as of timelessness of self, the Now free of the form that grounds it in the passing of time. She swallows hard. And nods, still holding half-eaten quail flesh, bones from which the marrow has yet to be sucked. Pacer nods too, summoning a smile to try to relax you. ** Eat, ** he coaxes, adding, ** my Thicket. ** Another blink. She coughs out, huskily, "Not used.... not used to fresh kills, long time..." She begins to gnaw again, with that same taut reservation. ** Not used to fresh...! ** His eyes widen in concern and amazement. Thicket, soft-footed sure-handed keen-nosed and clear-eyed huntress, elusive and invisible in the wood, going without fresh meat? ** What _have_ you eaten...? ** As she sparingly nibbles, it can be seen again how gauntly thin she's grown, with barely any flesh to her frame; ribs and hipbones make sharp angles along the planes of her body. Her right arm seems particularly slender, and ever so subtly she favors the left, though both of them seem to work well enough. To your question, she pauses again, once more startled at the simple reality of actually having this conversation, and at last she sends gruffly, ** Foraged. Roots. Shrooms... ** That makes her sound almost like the mate you recollect, though there yet lingers in her contact that dazedness. A smile, though, at the gruff, cool send, lights Pacer's...well, the male elf's face. ** I'll hunt for you. ** He reaches out with gentle fingers to touch your face, then pulls them back to let you finish the meal. ** You've not eaten enough. ** "Hunt for..." She pauses yet again, and begins to tremble anew, liquidness building in her eyes. Pacer nods, once, firmly. ** We'll hunt together, ** he murmurs, ** when you're stronger... ** Hope glittering (stormcloud grey) in his eyes, and certainty in his sure, joyed smile. He won you once and he will again. ** Tell me how things are now...? ** He reaches out a hand, and for the first time, makes an effort to scent this place, to search out the differences he hadn't tried yet to place. Thicket begins to weep in earnest, scatteredly replying, ** I... arm healed... trying to learn hunt, forgot... str-strangers gone... I... ** In a rush, his arms are there around you, quail-bones forgotten in his need to comfort you, to hold you. ** Arm healed...? You were hurt...! ** A flare of protectiveness, of sadness, and he squeezes your shoulders, holding you to him, lifting a hand to touch away a few tears. A sending leaks out of her, a memory... Tall Ones. A particular Tall One... battle. A massive stone axe, colliding with the bone of her shoulder... And with that, she winces, sobbing noiselessly. His arms tighten, his tear-wet hand slipping through your hair to your thin shoulders. Though his sending is soft, calming, wordless, his eyes harden (silver ice) and lift to the shimmering watery cascade of the falls, unseeing. Two counts, now, against those...them. The Tall Ones. Twice they've hurt his mate... He bows his head, nestling his warm breath into your hair, coaxing for an image of this particular Tall One. The response brings you mostly sensation more than anything else, dimmed down from sharper memory with the passage of time. She can recall the sheer _size_ of the human hunter, over twice her height, more than that of her bulk... a pang of fury, too, as he strikes down her wolf-friend.... Fury reflected in the tremble that shakes your mate's new body and his mind, as well, eyes wincing shut. ** I'm here, ** he manages, gentled more by secondhand agony than by intent, doubled by his clasp around you, arms warm and desperate. Thicket dazedly adds, ** Arm dead after... long time.. ** But it's more image than word, memory of a span of seasons where she couldn't make the limb move, couldn't do more than scrabble for roots to eat, couldn't fix a broken weapon, couldn't mend leathers with an awkward single hand. ** You'll learn to hunt again. ** Unsent, but so near to words that the thoughts fade through: Just as I learn again...to walk, to run, to hunt and howl... ** Together. ** A tight squeeze, a fierce smile, and gentle touch, a brush of your mind: ** Vess. ** Thicket meets your gaze, her own anxious, frightened -- filled with bone-deep fear, in fact. ** Aron, ** she answers, but her sending, too, is filled with that gut-wrenching near-terror. It goes against the Way, doesn't this? Elves that die _stay_ gone... but, in desperation, she grabs at you, at least mentally. Against the Way or not, to hear your sending clear in her mind again is something she's craved with far more longing than for any meat, and she weeps, hysterically. Pacer sighs, breath warm into your hair, presence powerful even in the strange, small, broad body he wears now. His love for his mate, his fury for her hurt, his non-understanding confusion at the tight crampedness of his own head -- but most of all, his joy at reunion with lifebreath and mate alike -- reach forth in more or less than sending, in wordless emotion he must, after so much time glimpsed through your eyes, share with you. He must share _something_. Undone, Thicket flings her arms around your neck, sending the remnants of her meal tumbling to the earth. Shaking violently, skittishly, in unfamiliar arms, she presses her face to the broad chest there, and her own heaves in great broken sobs. He has no more words, no way to explain, nothing to say -- he bows his head and curls one powerful arm about you, trying to express the safe place he wishes to be for you, the other hand stroking your hair, helplessly. ** Don't let me go-please don't let me go-no more aloneness-fear-head spinning, alone so long ** Pacer closes his eyes, shutting himself in, squeezing you fiercely. ** I won't ever let you go...won't ever leave... ** Somehow, being alone in his head is too hard, like not being alone at all, and he opens his eyes a bit tearfully, blinking. Again, he scents the air for strange-things, trying to place the not-right and the changes, right or wrong. As Thicket clings ferociously to you, continuing to sob, you can take in the details of the waterfall; surely this is the same place? You remember the cascade of water down the hill, making a pool, it bubbling off to a fledgling river... but the place is still subtly _changed_, as is Thicket herself. Trees seem of different heights; the shape of the pool isn't quite right. But how much of it is due to the place's true difference, and how much to the haze in your memory that doesn't quite yet go way? That's hard, too, the looking, the attentiveness...why does everything have to be so _full,_ so dual? Most of all his head. Maybe because he was only the dream-part for so long, Pacer reasons; the other parts must be in the way. He looks inward a bit, accepting...come to me, be of me, my memory and... (Fighting, teeth bared, clawing at selfness, at one-outside-of-oneness...can't attack, can't fight back, will get sucked in. The echo withdraws, hiding, fading...) Too much at once. Too many memories. ** We'll start again, ** he thinks aloud, making up the idea on the spot. But what about this body? He trembles a bit as he holds you, worrifully. Such a torrent of tears! They must have been pent up within her for... too much time, for her to have unleashed such a flood onto you, now; only gradually does she begin to settle, though her frantic grip -- both physical and mental -- does not release you. The body you've got does seem to disturb her; this you can glean in flashes from her mind. Your scent sets off stranger-hide-warnings, even as your mind coaxes her to you. Only the familiarity of the latter finally lets her curl as tightly as she can against you, as though she were trying to meld with your being. He holds you there, listening to the sobbing and the cascade of the falls, the saline weeping wetting his chest, matting tiny fine hairs to his skin in an alien fashion, and as he holds you, Pacer remembers. His mate had a den here, and must still...so little has truly changed, for all that everything looks different. Surely she yet dens there...keen eyes squint through the leaves, piercing. There, if his memory serves, her den, and once, his too. ** , ** he offers, as he curls his other arm round your back, the first slipping down about your knees. Unsteady as he rises, he gains balance quickly -- strangely, center lower and sturdier in this broad form than in his own, that he recalls -- and carries you, wordless, home. [End log.]