Something Old, Something New

Skye Collins · 05-30-2011, 10:29 AM

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here you go! ^^ remember too that you can have threads with other people simultaneously as well, as long as it takes place on another day! <3 wc: 316

Where was the ivory-laden woman but in the garden, tending to her plants? A day or so before, she had left the pups with Bangle to go out to Halifax and perhaps find some new information on new plants as well as gather some - and she had. On her way to the area, she had found a plethora of plants that she hadn't noticed before in Ethereal Eclipse; taking a sample of a leaf from each one, she had traveled to the library and found a book on plants - Plants of Nova Scotia.

Many of the pages were worn and faded, and she couldn't identify many of the plants that she had taken samples of; she did, however, find that a few of the plants were useful to her - one of the leaves she had taken were from a plant called Bayberry, which were used to make candles - they also warded off insects, perfect for the incoming summer, where there would be a multitude of the pests. She had also identified one of the plants as Opium Poppy; too much could cause damage, but if one used it sparingly, it could be used as a painkiller or a sedative. Glad to find plants that were of more use than just consumption or dyes, she had stuffed the leaves in her pocket and on the way back through Ethereal Eclipse, she had taken two of both plants and had planted them in the garden.

She had also taken the book of plants, and was currently sitting at the edge of the garden, sketching the plants in her garden in pages of the journal Bangle had given her so long ago, and was writing their names above the sketches as well as short descriptions. It would be an inventory of sorts - keeping track of which plants were in the garden and how many of each they had.

Giron Felorn · 05-30-2011, 10:16 PM

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Note taken! wc:252

Having rested and no longer weary, Giron had finally decided to explore again and learn his surroundings. As always, his nose lead the way. He had become entranced by the trail he was following, mixed with many fragrances that he recognized along with others he'd never smelled before. Most of the smells he at least recognized as flowers, though there was an earthier smell too, somewhat familiar to him as a dog, but whom it belonged to he could not quite place.

Giron walked into the garden, startled by the wide range of colors and aromas as his eyes and nose scanned the area. At last, they laid to rest on the cream-colored figure sitting at the edge of the field. It took Giron a moment to recognize her as the one who had greeted him at the border. Giron hesitated in making contact. She seemed quite relax, and he was uneasy about disrupting her. A second thought hit him, and he realized standing there without making a sound would make him seem like a creepy follower. The third thought quickly followed, and reminded Giron that he had been sniffing the same flower for the past two minutes.

"Hello madam, nice to see you again. Really nice garden, isn't it? The beautiful forget-me-nots, the bright pink lambkills, and the . . . oh dear. chzt!" With a quick, practiced movement he ran his handkerchief over his nose and back in his trench coat. "Sorry about about," Giron continued without pausing, "What brings you here today?"

Skye Collins · 05-30-2011, 10:43 PM

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wc; 338

The leader sat, sketching the latest flower of her collection, when something shifted in the air; a new scent arrived, and the sound of gingerly crunching leaves accompanied it. Lifting her eyes from her work, she spotted the newest member of the pack; Giron Felorn, the scent hound with the peculiar hat that had arrived at the borders not too long ago. He seemed like quite the amiable fellow, and had spent the past few days resting; understandable, considering the state he had arrived in. Currently, the man was sniffing one of her flowers; she thought it may have belonged to one of the decorative types of plants. She was about to say so when he spoke.

"Nice to see you, too, Giron," she said to the male. He then commented on her garden - she smiled a bit; she had spent hours upon hours in this garden, and she always loved when someone complimented her hard work. "Thank you; I worked hard on this garden ever since the pack was first made. The first garden was blown away by a hurricane, however, and I had to rebuild it. I think it's doing nice - bless you!" she exclaimed, surprised when the other emitted a sneeze.

The sudden switch of subject brought Skye back to her senses. "I just finished up planting some more plants in the garden - bayberries and opium poppies, to be exact," the woman said, closing both her books and looking at the garden with love. She had been devastated when the hurricane had ripped her old garden to shreds, replacing it with debris of stone and moldy wood. She had cleared it out and decided to wait for spring to plant her garden again; once she did, however, it flourished once more beneath her gaze. She knew that she paid more attention to it than most anyone in the pack, but she didn't mind; this way, she could always keep track of it, and use it for trade and other uses of the green-leaved sprouts.

Giron Felorn · 05-31-2011, 09:31 PM

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wc: 609. Rambled on a bit

"Opium poppies? Mind if I smell them for a bit?" Asked Giron, his eyes beginning to tear up, and not just because of his allergies. He took one look at Skye to see if she would protest, and when she did not he took a deep breath from the flower. The light scent registered in his brain and strengthened the weak memory, every detail jumping back as vivid as the day it happened. "I don't have much to offer you, but if you won't mind, I can tell you a tale of one of my travels dealing with poppies." Giron contemplated and waited for a response, thinking of how best to say the story. At last he decided, sat down, crossed his legs, shifted his fedora to make sure it would fall, took one more deep breath and began.
"Back with my old pack, in distant lands, I used to have a partner. Little Cairn Terrier, little bugger would never hurt a fly. So we'd been on the trail for a very elusive killer, one of the worst we'd had in quite a while. He pounced on some of our more elder dogs, disappeared right after. Never found anything in the crime scenes, though we searched over and over. Finally we thought we hit our big break: Poor little bloke attacked a Rottweiler, well past his prime but managed to put up a fight that would have shamed our own officers. No clue how he had avoided leaving a scent before, but whatever he did before, he didn't this time. A search party was formed, my buddy running in front of me to check for danger. I was some paces behind, tracking the scent. The rest of the hunting party was well behind us, ready to rush towards us in case we found the criminal. In du- Ah. .. ah . . .ah. . . . " Giron froze with his nose up in the air, his mouth open. "Sorry, about th-chzt!!" With the same practiced movement as before, GIron wiped his nose, this time also straightening his hat.

"Where was I? Oh right, in due time we can to a field of poppies, vast and wide. My nose went numb, I knew I'd lost the trail then. My stubbornness to quit though, that made me keep going. Must have gone in a full circle before I'd remembered about my partner. I lost my voice that day, yelling and howling in every direction, looking for him. It wasn't until nearly sun down when I gave up. Every twenty minutes or so I had to leave the field, the air's thick perfume making me full of weariness. I feared if I fell asleep there I'd never wake up. It must take a dog made out of tin to walk through that field and not sleep!" Giron recomposed himself, straightening his trench coat.

"I'm afraid the fate I feared is the fate he met. On my way back, I tripped over him actually. I laughed at the irony of it. Or at least I remember laughing. Might have been sobbing, actually. In any case, I dragged his body to one end of the field and went back to my office. A few dogs retrieved his body the next day. Thats when things started heading downhill, as people mistook my detachment for apathy. They thought I'd forgotten about Toto just like that. Forget about Toto? I could never. Of course, the people who thought that never once asked me why I kept a poppy flower in my office." Giron leaned back on the floor and watched the sky, calmed by the aroma of the flowers and his pensive mood.

Skye Collins · 06-05-2011, 06:36 PM

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Big Grin wc: 327

Skye's ears perked a bit at the mention of a story; she dipped them back again, a bit embarrassed to have such a childish instinct take over. The truth was, however, that Skye wasn't that old, and the prospect of a tale to be told excited her more than it would excite someone with more experience in life or less interest in stories. She listened intently, however, as the man relayed his own story of the poppy flowers to Skye.

The matter-of-fact way that Giron told his story was strange to Skye, but she nonetheless felt for the basset hound. She had never lost a friend in such a manner, nor did she wish to - she did remember, however, reading about the sleeping powers of the opium poppy plant in her book about the various flowers and plants and herbs around Nova Scotia.

She did recall, however, the murderer Argul, and how he had ravaged the area of Cercatori d'Arte before Shawchert chased him off. It had been horrible to watch pups dying and not knowing who was it that had done and were doing such things, nor why. When they did catch him, it was a relief - but Giron hadn't caught the killer; the killer had caught his friend.

"I'm sorry to hear that - it sounds horrible," she said quietly. She could imagine that the grief he had felt was magnified by the fact that people had forgotten about his friend - with Orin, it had been similar; people accused Shawchert of not caring, and although they never accused the same of Skye, they hadn't paid much mind to her either. Recalling the disasters that had lead to Shawchert leaving and her becoming the sole leader of Cercatori d'Arte, she spoke to the dog. "My friend, Orin, was chased out a similar way; a mysterious killer murdered her pup, and chased her out. We didn't find out who it was until nearly a month later," she said mournfully.

Giron Felorn · 06-13-2011, 08:03 PM

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A paltry wc of 150

Giron paid close attention as Skye talked, eager to learn the details of this new place. He was feeling quite relaxed and wanted to ask her for more details, but was afraid his old detective habits might kick back in and turn a friendly discussion into an interrogation. His curiosity would not let him leave, yet his politeness would not let him question her. In the end, he decided giving her enough room to answer what she wished.

"That is terrible! Did you manage to punish the culprit? Surely there is more of a story to that." Giron asked, though he quickly added, "It seems like it is getting quite late, I won't keep you if you have anywhere else to go."

Having said what he wanted, Giron at up and straightened his trench coat some more, then laid back down, his eyes once more on Skye, eager to listen.

Skye Collins · 06-19-2011, 01:52 PM

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sorry for the delay! D: and for the semi-large post.. wc: 576

The female thought back to the encounter with Niro, Orin's brother. She had first thought that he had been Orin herself, due to the similarities in scent; she realized how much she missed Orin and hoped that she would come back when her heart fell and found that it was simply Niro, the blue-mohawked man who kept the beautiful golden birds. Shawchert had told her about him, and how they had almost fought when they first encountered, and again when Niro found out that Orin was having Shawchert's pups.

She hadn't underestimated Niro's obvious dislike of Shawchert, and she could feel that he was angry towards him; first for taking Orin's innocence away from her, then for not protecting her and her pups while the murderer ravaged her house, stole her pup's life and chased her, and finally for instead of searching for her himself, running away off to who knows where. Skye herself tried not to feel any bitterness towards the leader; she knew how he was unhappy at the time and she was seeing him less and less. She didn't blame him, nor did she judge him - it wasn't her place to do so. Shawchert, despite his faults, was her friend nonetheless, and she wouldn't betray him by spreading hurtful words. She wished that he had told her before leaving, but what was done was done, and couldn't be taken back now.

Her mind drifted to when Niro found the house, and his pained look; a rush of anger had surged through her then, towards Argul. The ungrateful bastard.. he had come to Cercatori d'Arte looking for a home, looking for someone to take care of him - he had been quite the ragged fellow. And he repaid them by saying that he loved the woman whose pup he murdered. The only solace that Skye got from the incident was that Argul was finally dead.

"We did get him," she said cautiously. "Shawchert, our... former... leader, managed to attack him and chase him out of Cercatori d'Arte forever. Later, a member of Phoenix Valley, a pack not so far from here, found him and killed him."

She recalled, too, the anger that Niro had when he found that Shawchert only chased out the man, not killed him. Her mind went back to the pack meeting they had before the incident; Mars, who was now happily living in Dahlia de Mai with Krystalle and Iliya, had voiced his loud opinions against Shawchert. With a short spark of anger, she remembered how she had reminded him that it was not his place to say such things - and how he had so callously ignored her, as did everyone else. Everyone but Slade, a modest but loyal coyote that she was glad to have in the pack.

Members had stopped coming for a while, and people had left, scared of the lack of security in Cercatori d'Arte. Looking at her plants, she remembered the change that she had put them through; and it had worked, so far. Giron was here, and he hadn't been before; she gave him a small smile. The pack was recovering from the incident, but the scars of it still remained. Orin was still gone.

The female smiled at Giron again, clearing her head - she didn't want to dampen the afternoon. "Recently," she said, changing the subject, "We've been acquiring some livestock, including goats and horses. Did you have any animals where you're from?"

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