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Sep. 2nd, 2009 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pyraxis"Don't be impatient with me!" she snapped.
"Don't yell at me!" he hollered back.
Daria stood at the top of the cliff, breathing hard, seething with frustration. When she tried to think about knots, her mind went empty. The rope still trailed off her climbing harness and back over the edge, a heavy reminder that if it were suddenly pulled, she would go tumbling down and smash her body open like an overripe fruit on the rocks below.
Curse her stupidity.
She couldn't think of the right words to explain this predicament, and even if she could, she couldn't shout them all the way down to Jarid* below.
Silence from the bottom of the cliff. He probably thought there was nothing more to say to her until she got done with her snit.
The rigging loops which had held her rope on the way up still hung below the lip of the cliff, out of her reach. They hadn't counted on this when they planned the climb. She was supposed to just reach over and grab them, unhook herself and climb down without a rope along the other, far easier route behind her. But it wasn't so easy as it had looked from the ground. The top part was almost sheer, without a decent hold until as far down as she was tall. And she couldn't just grab the rigging loops - they dangled an arm's length out of her safe reach.
"Is there anything to tie off of?" Jarid yelled.
She looked around a little desperately. "There's a rock, 'bout as far around as two men." She set her teeth - that was a conservative estimate - but surely she could rig it somehow.
She thought of telling him, again, that she should leave the rigging loops and just climb down without rope. But it had taken him and Ean a long time to weave even a foot of rigging. She couldn't begrudge them that because of her own cowardice. She smiled ruefully. Ean wouldn't listen if she did.
Jarid had circled around to the 'easy' side of the rock. "I'm coming up!" he called.
Her stomach went sour. Expert as he was with knots from his time hauling gear in the mines, Jarid didn't actually have much climbing experience. Safer for her to start down without a rope than for him to scramble up as far as he'd need to be to throw her more rigging, surely. Better she should fall than let him take her risks for her -
But he was already climbing.
She paced the top of the rock as the sun blazed down on her bare shoulders. Her mouth was already dry, and she'd brought up no water. Tempting as hell to get down on hands and knees and cup her hands in the pool of brackish rainwater that had collected in a hollow in the rock. But the sun was already going to make her sick enough by the time she was back on the ground. Curse this body and its pale, easily burned skin. For that matter, curse the fact that if she went toren and just flew down, it would be left stranded up here instead of shifting with her.
Where was Jarid? She couldn't lean far enough over the edge to see him.
She held herself back from calling out. Too late to order him to stop. Better not to interrupt him with her fear.
Too late to ask him to bring water.
There. His tousled head appeared over a crest of rock. Two thirds of the way up, there was a flat area broad enough to shelter a tree. He hauled himself over the lip and waved to her.
The last bit was the hard part. Crouched at the edge, she couldn't see a single good hold, just a wide, v-shaped crack between two rounded boulders.
"Wait there," she called.
"Why?" Jarid sounded resentful.
Because you're not as strong as you think you are. She pressed her hand against her forehead, trying to force the blur in her head to resolve into a correctly knotted rig that would loop around the big boulder and let her both lower herself safely down, and retrieve the rope afterwards.
"I need to think," she finally said.
Jarid sat sullenly down in the shade of the tree, no doubt with the knots already worked out in his own head, but knowing he couldn't explain them from where he was.
There! Pacing back around the puddle of rainwater, she spotted two bolts anchored side by side near one of the other edges. There must be a second climbing route, and - she did a quick mental estimate - if she anchored herself there, it would be safe to lower down over the other side and rescue the rigging loops.
As safe as her knots could be without Jarid watching over her shoulder to make sure they were twined right.
Then started the long process of unhooking herself and hauling up the entire rope until it lay in a loopy mass at her feet. She could remember only two knots, the twin-moons and the stopper knot. Twice she had to undo them all and start again. It hadn't been quite so clear to her growing up, when she rarely talked, just watched people make things from the fringes of a group and then went off to figure it out her own way afterward. But now that she had to live among people again, it was becoming clear that she was just stupid. Her mind couldn't keep up with people's instructions. It would be a significant disadvantage back home, running Teiranen, that she would have to become very good at hiding and minimizing. She hoped that the other toren would appreciate a strong, silent, earnest type.
"I'm going for the rigging loops!" she called, in case Jarid were still listening. Finally, her hands dusted with a fresh coat of chalk, lowered herself over the side on her own rig. The rope stretched and bounced and pulled taut.
Elation surged in her as she fumbled to get them unhooked. "Got them!"
She scrambled back onto the top of the cliff.
"I can come down now," she called to Jarid.
Silence.
Realization penetrated. She was blocking him out. He wanted to join her up here. And now that she'd found the second set of bolts, he could. She probed her reddening shoulders. Yes, worth it.
"Throw me your belay device," she said. "I think I can belay you up."
And so she lowered the rope down through the wide V for the last part of Jarid's climb. A few minutes later they stood together at the summit, the sun and the wind in their faces, and laughed at their stupidity in not bringing up any water.
* Feris and Kenyn, the griff boys from Teiranen, are now Jarid and Ean respectively.
"Don't yell at me!" he hollered back.
Daria stood at the top of the cliff, breathing hard, seething with frustration. When she tried to think about knots, her mind went empty. The rope still trailed off her climbing harness and back over the edge, a heavy reminder that if it were suddenly pulled, she would go tumbling down and smash her body open like an overripe fruit on the rocks below.
Curse her stupidity.
She couldn't think of the right words to explain this predicament, and even if she could, she couldn't shout them all the way down to Jarid* below.
Silence from the bottom of the cliff. He probably thought there was nothing more to say to her until she got done with her snit.
The rigging loops which had held her rope on the way up still hung below the lip of the cliff, out of her reach. They hadn't counted on this when they planned the climb. She was supposed to just reach over and grab them, unhook herself and climb down without a rope along the other, far easier route behind her. But it wasn't so easy as it had looked from the ground. The top part was almost sheer, without a decent hold until as far down as she was tall. And she couldn't just grab the rigging loops - they dangled an arm's length out of her safe reach.
"Is there anything to tie off of?" Jarid yelled.
She looked around a little desperately. "There's a rock, 'bout as far around as two men." She set her teeth - that was a conservative estimate - but surely she could rig it somehow.
She thought of telling him, again, that she should leave the rigging loops and just climb down without rope. But it had taken him and Ean a long time to weave even a foot of rigging. She couldn't begrudge them that because of her own cowardice. She smiled ruefully. Ean wouldn't listen if she did.
Jarid had circled around to the 'easy' side of the rock. "I'm coming up!" he called.
Her stomach went sour. Expert as he was with knots from his time hauling gear in the mines, Jarid didn't actually have much climbing experience. Safer for her to start down without a rope than for him to scramble up as far as he'd need to be to throw her more rigging, surely. Better she should fall than let him take her risks for her -
But he was already climbing.
She paced the top of the rock as the sun blazed down on her bare shoulders. Her mouth was already dry, and she'd brought up no water. Tempting as hell to get down on hands and knees and cup her hands in the pool of brackish rainwater that had collected in a hollow in the rock. But the sun was already going to make her sick enough by the time she was back on the ground. Curse this body and its pale, easily burned skin. For that matter, curse the fact that if she went toren and just flew down, it would be left stranded up here instead of shifting with her.
Where was Jarid? She couldn't lean far enough over the edge to see him.
She held herself back from calling out. Too late to order him to stop. Better not to interrupt him with her fear.
Too late to ask him to bring water.
There. His tousled head appeared over a crest of rock. Two thirds of the way up, there was a flat area broad enough to shelter a tree. He hauled himself over the lip and waved to her.
The last bit was the hard part. Crouched at the edge, she couldn't see a single good hold, just a wide, v-shaped crack between two rounded boulders.
"Wait there," she called.
"Why?" Jarid sounded resentful.
Because you're not as strong as you think you are. She pressed her hand against her forehead, trying to force the blur in her head to resolve into a correctly knotted rig that would loop around the big boulder and let her both lower herself safely down, and retrieve the rope afterwards.
"I need to think," she finally said.
Jarid sat sullenly down in the shade of the tree, no doubt with the knots already worked out in his own head, but knowing he couldn't explain them from where he was.
There! Pacing back around the puddle of rainwater, she spotted two bolts anchored side by side near one of the other edges. There must be a second climbing route, and - she did a quick mental estimate - if she anchored herself there, it would be safe to lower down over the other side and rescue the rigging loops.
As safe as her knots could be without Jarid watching over her shoulder to make sure they were twined right.
Then started the long process of unhooking herself and hauling up the entire rope until it lay in a loopy mass at her feet. She could remember only two knots, the twin-moons and the stopper knot. Twice she had to undo them all and start again. It hadn't been quite so clear to her growing up, when she rarely talked, just watched people make things from the fringes of a group and then went off to figure it out her own way afterward. But now that she had to live among people again, it was becoming clear that she was just stupid. Her mind couldn't keep up with people's instructions. It would be a significant disadvantage back home, running Teiranen, that she would have to become very good at hiding and minimizing. She hoped that the other toren would appreciate a strong, silent, earnest type.
"I'm going for the rigging loops!" she called, in case Jarid were still listening. Finally, her hands dusted with a fresh coat of chalk, lowered herself over the side on her own rig. The rope stretched and bounced and pulled taut.
Elation surged in her as she fumbled to get them unhooked. "Got them!"
She scrambled back onto the top of the cliff.
"I can come down now," she called to Jarid.
Silence.
Realization penetrated. She was blocking him out. He wanted to join her up here. And now that she'd found the second set of bolts, he could. She probed her reddening shoulders. Yes, worth it.
"Throw me your belay device," she said. "I think I can belay you up."
And so she lowered the rope down through the wide V for the last part of Jarid's climb. A few minutes later they stood together at the summit, the sun and the wind in their faces, and laughed at their stupidity in not bringing up any water.
* Feris and Kenyn, the griff boys from Teiranen, are now Jarid and Ean respectively.
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 07:30 pm (UTC)I've never been that good at climbing anything because I'm not that strong, so the most I've done is really dumbass times with my friends trying to drag me up to the top of playground equipment. I think 47 mentioned that my new goal in life is to get her to climb a tree. And she's all thinking it's a good thing because she doesn't want to be so supercontrolled, but I'm thinking mostly that's a good side-effect, but the real point is to get me into a tree. I've always wanted to climb a tree, especially because my friend Eric is one of those people who you'll be walking around with him and suddenly he'll be halfway up a tree and looking all confused like he doesn't understand why everybody else isn't in the tree with him. It just sucks because all the trees nearby are pine trees so I haven't found a good one yet. Even though it's really creepy to not be a robot if I'm fronting, I'm trying to think of the good side, which is maybe I can try a bunch of stuff I'd never be able to do on my own.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 01:12 am (UTC)If you get 47 to climb a tree, I'll... I'll think of something good. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-09-05 03:22 am (UTC)@Pyraxis: That's so awesome that you can climb trees! I'm all jealous now. I'm gonna do it as soon as I can find a good tree. :D
This is kinda random, but can I ask something to you guys or to
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Date: 2009-09-05 05:42 am (UTC)I'll tell him you asked, but I can't promise you'll end up with a cogent explanation. XS
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Date: 2009-09-13 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 11:36 pm (UTC)Celesty and I are always getting interrupted by other people when we're at work. The solution has been to keep a stack of notecards and stickies on my desk, and whenever someone wants to say something or post something, scribble it down, and do all the actual posting when we get home at night. Otherwise we'd get hopelessly distracted from work.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 05:51 pm (UTC)And
Cause it sucks to have people be scared of you when you haven't done anything wrong. I can tell you right away that his parents were scared of him too - I mean, what do you do with a kid that young who has that much magic? - and that's part of why they treated him so bad. So he runs away from people who are scared of him, the same way he runs from people he thinks might hurt him.
That is to say, maybe he's a freaky kid, but he's only a little boy for heaven's sake, he never hurts people on purpose and - well, except when I give him permission. But I would never tell him it was okay to hurt you. I don't know if we could pull it off, but maybe if we worked together, we could get him to come back.
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Date: 2009-09-11 08:49 pm (UTC)I really don't think he's a freaky kid or anything. I've seen weirder. Heck, look at me. :P
I was kind of wondering about that, though. I mean, you said he was 4 years old, right? But I don't think I even heard him talk. Can he talk? I don't see why he shouldn't grow up like anybody else. And who's Wolf?
Is Sha old enough to understand it when you talk to him? If he is, can you tell him that Jim's a dumbass who's scared of everything, even cats, and that it's just kinda normal for me to be that way? I'm worried that maybe I'm not the best person for him to be around, if he needs to be around people who don't get scared of stupid shit. :( But I'd totally like to help if you think I can.
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Date: 2009-09-11 10:50 pm (UTC)He understands a lot more words than he can speak. He's kinda - delayed? But he's really smart and awesome with puzzles and stuff. He's just not as good at talking English as most four-year-olds. He does speak another language more fluently. I've never been able to figure out if it's kid-babble or the spoken language of Ua. Like, dni-gen-dni, vazi-kan-dni. "Dni" is kind of like "okay", "yes", or the Japanese "hai". He thinks in pictures, so I talk to him by telepathy mostly.
But he still thinks like a kid. I could say "Jim still likes you" and he might believe me. He knows "hot" as in "Don't touch the fire, it's hot!" so if one of us told him your arm was hot, he'd leave it alone. He knows "scary" so I could say "Jim scary" and to him that would mean "Jim was scared" (not "Jim's a scary guy"). He'd probably say "Why?" and then I could mime how getting your arm scratched would be bad. Then he'd be all shy until he figured out what was and wasn't allowed around you.
Would it be ok if he touched your other hand?
And Wolf, Wolf is one of
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Date: 2009-09-12 01:30 am (UTC)If he thinks in pictures, I wonder if he'd like it if I drew stuff for him? Today is crappy MS Paint day, after all. :P
And yeah, it's fine if people touch my other hand. It's just, like... It's not even that I'm scared of getting scratched, it's that... I'm just weird about my right arm. I don't really want to go into the details of why.
I wonder if anybody else here is good with kids? I don't think we've got any kids here. ...Dang, I just realized I'm the youngest person here. I wonder if the lizardman's any good with kids? He's gotta be, he was with 47 when she was younger. I haven't seen him around much today so I dunno if I can ask him now.
Sh-San: The lizardman will have more intelligent things to say once 47 is allowed to drink coffee again. :)
Jim: ...Okay. Probably so will I. :P
@ Pyraxis: It's cool to actually know who your boyfriend is. XD I was kinda wondering how the hell dating works with multiples. It's like, if 47 ever gets a boyfriend, that totally doesn't mean they're my boyfriend too! At least I hope not. It seems like it could get very confusing.
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Date: 2009-09-12 01:50 am (UTC)I was curious if anyone else was good with kids as well. I could see him getting along with Sh-san. They're both pretty quirky and playful. I'm always finding seeds and pebbles and stuff in my shoes, in my pockets, anyplace he thinks he can slip them and surprise me.
Here's hoping 47 gets better soon, if only for the sake of the coffee. :D
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Date: 2009-09-12 02:06 am (UTC)Not sure how good I am with little kids. There were a few kids I got along with really well when I was younger, mostly because I'd sit there and be sort of calm and bewildered while they'd attempt to use me as a climbing wall. I'd probably be better at figuring out things to do with a wolfcub, but then again I don't mind getting chewed on.
I am counting down the hours until I can feel better and drink coffee again. I am way too much of an addict.
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Date: 2009-09-12 05:01 am (UTC)http://jimnightmare.livejournal.com/10153.html?thread=90537#t90537
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Date: 2009-09-14 05:52 pm (UTC)He loves them because once, a few years ago, Jack went to a conference in Hawaii and they got to swim with tropical fish. Sha was still in kifu then, but I guess he somehow saw it.
And hey, that's a good idea. I wonder if they would want any real fish....
no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 01:58 am (UTC)He likes to learn lots of things. He likes mimicking things he sees, so when he gets on a forum, sometimes he'll start typing any word he sees and it'll come out something like "(0 unread), jogr Your Account Supplement Facts (10 ml) Nikon weFitmorethanyourFeet". And he's always asking me what words mean. He likes to draw and paint too. Maybe I can get him to paint a picture for you.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 07:36 pm (UTC)Hahaha, I can identify with this a whole lot. I didn't actually manage to learn how to tie my shoes the "right" way until I was nearly 20. People kept trying to teach me as a kid, I couldn't understand them, they'd get frustrated and give up. Eventually I sat down and figured out my own method of doing it, which I still use.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 01:16 am (UTC)What I shoulda done is rappelled. Turns out Jarid/Shashigai knew that all along. But he couldn't tell me.
hiya dar
Date: 2009-09-14 07:08 am (UTC)make fi
seti sora shashiwords dar music
dni
hiya
shashi
Re: hiya dar
Date: 2009-09-14 05:49 pm (UTC)Seti sora, huh?
Re: hiya dar
Date: 2009-09-14 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-14 07:02 am (UTC)hiya
shashi dress socks
hiya
thank you domo merci gracias, danke
shashi
no subject
Date: 2009-09-14 05:54 pm (UTC)You're welcome. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-14 05:56 pm (UTC)Ya I know. I'm just playing.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-21 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-21 11:30 pm (UTC)*a blue leaf with brilliant yellow veins sprouts out of the ground at your feet*
no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 02:09 am (UTC)*smile*