[ORP] The Hole

[Scaramouche Fandango]

Simple Gifts had been entrusted with a job she did not want. She hated being on zucchini duty. Every year it was the same thing- her dad grew too many. He had seventy-three children, and none of them wanted it. His friends did not want it. His grandchildren did not want it. He wasn't cruel enough to offer it to any of the does he'd courted, so now she was stuck with it, trying to find somebody who wanted the zucchini.

As she approached the gathering, she sighed, wondering if anybody would be alienated by her offer. One zucchini was a present, but this many? This many was a curse. However, this gathering seemed to be centered around a massive hole in the ground, and that was absolutely the answer to her problems. Without further thought, she approached the edge of the hole and pushed the zucchini in. It was better this way, even if it was wasting food. Guilty, but defiant, she looked around. "Trust me, none of y'all wanted that. It wasn't even good zucchini. It was mealy and bland, even blander than zucchini normally is. Dad couldn't even get the pig to eat it. He couldn't even get his furbody to eat it, and that thing eats everything. It's not that I'm wasting food, it's more like I'm putting it out of its misery." Her eyes darted around the circle, hoping to find somebody who knew what zucchini was like.

A thudding noise from the pit caught her attention. Had- oh, oh no, there was a kin in the pit. Had she just hit him with a load of unwanted vegetables?

Her wolves sat behind her, quietly not judging. They didn't like zucchini either. Painted Dog, the first spectral to follow her, stared across at a spectral wolf that stood behind a kimeti buck. The ghostly beast was almost washed out by the buck's halo of light. Dog wuffled at it quietly, then approached, tail held evenly behind. He hadn't been told to heel, after all, and he was a curious beast. If this one wasn't up for a greeting, perhaps the one that had just arrived with an acha would be.

I'm assuming Bite's spectral wolf is here bc he's in the image; lemme know if it isn't!

[phoe]

Beetleshell had danced backwards as the zikwa just fell in, the wasp behind her taking to the air to avoid being stepped on. For a moment she stood at the edge of the hole, looking down into it (no chance of seeing the zikwa, she gathered, this wasn't an ordinary hole).

It was only because she turned her head that she avoided getting knocked in the head by the -- not-hoof, and then glanced from it to Until Next Time. She was learning far more than she'd intended.

"It appears so," she said, turning it over with her hoof to examine its make. "Which makes me wonder what the zikwa will come out as."

[rexcorvus]

He was falling, and it was very unpleasant.

Sleepy Time really, really would have preferred to not be falling, if he had any choice in the matter. If he had had a say (or just a small bit of sense to avoid the sticks on the ground) he would have preferred simply turning around and going back home where it was nice and safe and warm and where there were most definitely no suspicious looking holes.

As it was, he was no longer in the hole, not exactly, but he was still falling.

He was, in fact, falling upwards.

It took him a second to realize this fact, and then, when he did, there was another second or two of simply staring as he tried to work everything out. The cold bit into his fur, and he was grateful (for once) that he had chosen to leave all of his beloved familiars behind on this little jaunt.

Then he opened his mouth and began to scream.

Loudly.

[Dizzy_Kat]

His eyes lit up with satisfaction when the zikwa went over the edge... and disappeared. It was a shame he wouldn't see the aftermath of the kin's descent. Or would he? Bite hadn't seen what the does had tossed into the hole... but the object that came out was very obviously not one of the swamp. Bite circled the edge of the hole, coming closer to the two and their prize. Like the cup he had claimed not long ago, he looked upon the bright red object with desire. Was the hole a portal? Like the doors that lead to other worlds? Why then had it appeared here?

He looked up at Until Next Time as she spoke. He didn't know the word, he hadn't taken as much notice of his appearance beyond the unique utility of having hands. But at her words he remembered the feeling of his feet flexing and the soft raps of... whatever he wore on them, against wood. They had been nothing like the item before them though. Before he could reply to her though, another doe approached and surprised a dry huff that was almost a laugh from him.

Ghost was a frequent companion of Bite, possibly his favorite though it was hard to say. She was quiet and by her very nature never got in his way. She had been watching the milling boars intently until Dog whuffed at her. Her ears perked and her tail gave a soft wag. She wasn't about to go bounding playfully, but if they weren't a threat, curiosity was more than welcome.

She is!

[rexcorvus]

It was by accident that she arrived and by choice that she stayed, mostly out of a morbid desire to see what was causing all of the noise. It was this, more than the ominous hole in the ground, that bothered Smoke and Mud; the chatter and the raised voices had distracted her from what had almost been the successful hunt of a rabbit on the edge of the clearing. A burst of sound and the heavy thump of hoofbeats had startled the creature away into the darkness of the forest before she could catch it.

Now she was both hungry and bitter, slinking around the group of assorted kin with a mutinous look on her face, hair dragging through the grass and collecting various bits of leaves. Twig was on top of her head, the little mouse hunkered down between her ears, and Twig Carrier was trotting along beside her, snuffling into the ground for food (or perhaps bugs, which were the same thing, really).

She said nothing, and instead glowered.

[Beejoux]

Something did indeed come back out of the hole, just barely missing the doe that had kicked the rock in, and Whispers of Death gasped softly.

Or perhaps the gasp was for the zikwa that had stumbled forward upon his arrival and...fallen in. "Oh my." That was deeply unfortunate. Well, maybe. Her head tilted as she considered for a moment, them she remembered the red thing that'd sailed out of the hole and her attention shifted easily back to it and the other doe.

By now there were more does and a buck that had joined them, and Whispers passed a considering look over all of them, mismatched eyes lingering on Bite for a second or two longer than the rest, before she was stepping towards the red thing.

Omen squawked indignantly, fluttering down from her horn to hop over the ground, pecking at the heel of the shoe curiously. "A not-hoof?" She asked of the gathered few, voice rich with curiosity. She had yet to traverse the forest or it's strange trees.

Behind her, from the hole, screaming bubbles up. Her ears turned back to listen. "He hasn't landed yet," she observed airily. It was very bizarre.

[Scaramouche Fandango]

"Don't worry! It's just zucchini!" she hollered at the screaming Zikwa. "It's kind of awful, but it can't hurt you!"

She knew that wasn't why he was screaming, but a little joke can go a long way towards cheering somebody up, and as the Zikwa was being tossed into the air by... some kind of invisible geyser and/or hole magic, a little humor might help ground him. Get it, ground him? She nodded sagely at the words of the pretty doe with the crow- he hadn't, in fact, landed. "Do you think he will land? If he's only going up, we might have to help him by lassoing him with a vine or something. I'm... not great at lassoing, but surely somebody here is, right?"

Dog sat politely after greeting the other spectral wolf, and watched her kin. He seemed deeply interested in something, as kin so often did. Dog was a simple creature. He hunted. He floated. He was transparent. He didn't much understand the motivation of Kimeti or the others; he liked it when his hunted with him and the rest of the pack. He would observe what this Kimeti did, and what the wolf did as well. Then he would rejoin the pack. Or- no, then he'd go say hi to that other wolf. There were a lot of spectral wolves here, huh. He whined and gestured with his nose at the one who had come with the acha. Did the wolf he'd just greeted perhaps want to go meet that one with him?

[Baneful]

The hole smelled like birthday cake. Which was interesting as there weren't birthday cakes in the swamp.

[Baneful]

The ground came up at Sleepy Time very, very fast, and when he hit it, it should have been the end for him.

But instead, he bounced, as if he was made of rubber, feeling no pain, but bouncing up into the starry night sky as fast as he was falling.

He hurtled out of the hole on the swamp side again at a safer and less lethal speed, but still enough to hit the ground and get a little scuffed up. On this side, it did hurt a little.

At some point between flying up into the sky and flying out of the hole, he'd obtained a pair of floaties around each of his four legs.

[LOLLI qAq]

Things happened in quick succession for Totem.

She smelled ... she smelled ... something real good.
And then a kin came out of the hole and landed with a solid thump, but no one screamed like he'd come out wrong or anything.

She listened for Good Dog to be sure she wasn't going to be stopped, and then jumped neatly into the hole.
As she jumped the little acha gleefully shouted.

"ADVENTURE!"

Her spectral wolf took one step in her direction as she leapt, sniffed at the edge, and then wandered his way over to the other two wolves and their kin. Tail a-wagging.

[Dizzy_Kat]

"Something from the other realms." Bite finally spoke in response to Whisper's question. He watched the crow peck at the shoe until the sound of screaming reached a crescendo from the hole. He looked back in time to see the zikwa launched high into the air, and he smiled at the thick thud of the kin's body as it struck the earth.

Ghost glanced at her kin and finding little of interest in what he was doing, turned her attention fully towards the other two wolves. As Good Dog bounded up to them her ears flicked and she lifted her tail higher still, wary but interested.

[phoe]

The zikwa hit the ground hard enough to leave an impression in the grass roughly the size and shape of his own body. Beetleshell winced at the thudding impact, and then made her way to peer quizzically down at Sleepy Time. She didn't look concerned, though there was a measure of it in her voice. Mainly she just looked curious. She lightly tapped one of the floaties with a hoof. "Are you okay?"

Then, with a shriek that she thought approximated joy, the little acha vaulted into the hole and was gone.

Beetleshell winced.

There was no way to know whether or not you'd even come back out, let alone come back out the same way, but she had to admit it did pique her interest. She glanced back down to the zikwa after an uncomfortably long second spent staring at the hole.

[AMItotic]

"Oh goodness, they could come back as anything, couldn't they?" said Until in curious agreement, nodding towards the fallen Zikwa. Another kin went barreling down into the hole, and Until Next Time leaned in for a tentative sniff, still not entirely sure what all the fuss was about.

"You know, a hoof for when your feet don't have hooves," Until said to Whispers, with a friendly nod. "It happens sometimes, you stumble over the wrong log and end up with soft feet for a day and a night, and it makes rocks and mud both super unpleasant. So you make a fake hoof, and that protects your feet." Not every kin understood the changable nature of the swamp--her son had never seen much of it, certainly, which made her tales all the wilder for it--but Until knew it to be true, knew she couldn't be the only one.

And then the Zikwa came barreling up and out of the hole, just like the not-hoof before it--looking unchanged physically, though perhaps worse for wear. To no one in particular (but vaguely in Bite of Passage's direction, since he'd spoken of other worlds) she asked, "Do you think this has to do with the obelisks?"

[Beejoux]

Whisper's head tilted at the explination and aimen continued pecking at the heel of the not-hoof. She's heard stories of other places that were strange and fanciful, but she hadn't known what to think of them, of there was truth to the tales or if the kin who shared such strange experiences were, well, unwell (says the doe that speaks to the dead...). But here were two more kin telling her of other realms and other things beyond the swamp.

Perhaps there was truth to it.

"Interesting," she answered rather simply, lips tugged to one side and gaze distant as of she were lost in thought.

It last until the zikwa that had fallen in came falling right back out, followed by a rather loud this. The bright doe that had initially kicked the road into the hole was seeing to him, so Whispers stayed where she was at.

Behind her, a cry of joy sounded, and that sounds slowly faded as another kin leaped blindly in. Whispers blinked, glancing back. "It seems quite ill advised, does it not?"

[Dizzy_Kat]

Until's explanation... was a lot. There were entirely too many words for how little she actually said. The obelisks... they lead to other places but all very much here in their own reality. He suspected it wasn't obelisk but something... Other. He reached out a hoof and gently rolled the not-hoof over in the grass. His jaw clenched on a flash of anger that he didn't have hands to pick it up with. He planted his hoof forcefully back into the ground beneath him, glaring at the object he couldn't hold. "No." was his only reply to Until.

When Whispers spoke he lifted his gaze to her. "You could find out?" A hint of his previous smile returning to his tense face. It was a challenge. It was a threat. Or was it an invitation?