[PRP] All's Well that Ends Well [ Beauty Past Compare x Shroud ]

[Maxx]

[imgright]https://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/imag ... uncert.png[/imgright]Beauty Past Compare spent a little while blinking rapidly after having been eaten and spat out by the all-encompassing light, but she could recognise from the feel of mud beneath her hooves that she was back in the Swamp. She could also tell from the chill and wet flakes that it was snowing, and she was deeply displeased that the cold had somehow followed them back unseasonably - she was very much keen to leave all of that nonsense behind. There was some hubbub - the crowd had returned alongside? - as she squinted one final time, and stepped away from the stray bones and obelisk to see the loose gathering of kin, confusedly meandering about, and away.

"Ugh," she said, but lightly and curtly, before she sighted Shroud who was bumbling about sightless, as usual. Well, that was unfair. He was just there, as any other kin was, just functionally blind.

Then she sighed, softly and beleagueredly, as Pookie rose in her mind, and smiled in the same way. How indelicate a reminder. Begrudgingly, she...hoped, perhaps, that if Pookie wasn't straight-up a manifestation of her psyche, that the awful, ugly, adorable, lovable creature was fine, wherever it was. If it lived in her head, then it certainly would be. She couldn't erase it if she tried.

With meaningful steps, she strode over to Shroud, and nudged him, perhaps just a little savagely, in the shoulder.

"We're back," she informed, "despite the weather."

[Jun]

[imgleft]http://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/image ... uncert.png[/imgleft]


Contrary to popular belief, Shroud had known before she'd told him. Before his hoof had touched the soil, he had known. It was in the very air - he could taste it, the thick cling of water; he could feel it on his skin. He could hear it in the chorus of crickets. But, yes, he could also feel the snow.

So that was an odd one.

"Thank you," he said, "why is it snowing?"

[Maxx]

It took a brief while of filtering for both Shroud and the Motherfather's sake before Beauty managed out, mildly personably, "I don't know - I suppose it has something to do with these obelisks and what have you; the desert one was far less troublesome."

She allowed herself to sniff in some disdain briefly.

[Jun]

"You must be right," he said, turning his head this way and that into the cold flakes in wonder, and a touch of worry, "I do hope this freakish phenomenon doesn't kill anything. Or anyone. Or destroy the delicate balance of the Swamp's ecosystem."

He took a moment to let the worry overtake the wonder, and then placidity overtake them both.

"But I'm sure the Motherfather will provide."

[Maxx]

"Well, we are to part ways," she sighed, for even though he was a very nice boy with a very kind personality, she didn't want someone to mistake them for more than acquaintances again, "remember you're part of the delicate balance of the Swamp's ecosystem, so watch yourself in the ice and snow and don't break any bones.

"Good-bye."

Beauty pronouced it delicately, before starting to take her leave, then stopping and turning back as visions of Pookie danced in her head. Acquaintances seemed rather mean for having lived through eagles and bears and sharded turtles, all the while smacking each other. It didn't sit quite right with her to think that way, and perhaps she shouldn't have. She wasn't sure.

"Shroud," her tone had an edge of hysteria, "am I a bad kin?"

[Jun]

"Are you a bad kin?" Shroud's jaw hung open after he repeated her words, looking, and having sounded, like the very embodiment of bafflement.

He shook it off before she could mistake the pause for anything but more bafflement, and said, "Beauty, not only are you a good kin, you're one of the best kin I've ever met! Why would you ever think such a thing about yourself?!

"You helped me look for a turtle when you just wanted to fight them - you pulled ten million shards out of a turtle just because I didn't want to hurt it. Why, just two seconds ago, you told me to remember I'm part of the delicate balance of the Swamp's ecosystem - that might be the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me!"

[Maxx]

If Beauty didn't know that Shroud was too stupid to lie, she would have suspected him of it as he gaped ever so sweetly. She smiled a little wryly and awkwardly, because old Beauty would have puffed up and asked for more, more! Instead, she said:

"That's sad, Shroud."

[Jun]

"If it weren't for you, I'd be dead several times over, I'm sure," he continued, impassioned, and also ignoring her words:

"You stuck with this blind Zikwa in the ice and snow when you didn't have to at all - you could have just left me to fall off a cliff, or get eaten by a bear. Instead, you came running to save me from a bear! Only the best of Kin would do that, Beauty. I owe my life to how good a kin you are.

"You're a great kin, Beauty Past Compare, and I'm so grateful and honoured to be your friend. We're friends for life."

He smiled at her in a way that made it very obvious he had no earthly idea how he was twisting the knife.

[Maxx]

She smiled harder in a tense, uncomfortable way, but she was grateful. The new Beauty picked out a modicum of sense from it, which is to say - she kept him from dying because it was really untenable to let a functionally blind kin expire from an avoidable death, and the guilt would have been so vast that it would outweigh her self-absorbed discomfort.

Still, she supposed that this would be sufficient - as a kin, as her legacy. It felt nice that there was a nugget of truth in that.

"Thank you, Shroud," she said with the same tight smile, but playfully bumped his shoulder, "yes...we are...friends. Now don't break anything! I would so hate to say 'I told you so.'"

[Jun]

"I'll do my best," he nodded, "keep yourself well, too! We'll meet again, I'm sure of it."

And then he proceeded to make sure of it by telling her, "If you go to the Zikwa caves and ask for my father, Buried Alive, he'll tell you where you can find me. Just about everyone in the caves knows my father.

"Or if you don't want to ask for my father, you can ask for the Zikwa who lives with his Kimeti mom who doesn't move. That usually works too, just that I might not be in."

He thoughtfully paused.

"Ask for my father," he concluded.

"See you again, my friend, and thank you for everything. Maybe I'll come look for you myself! It'd be quite another adventure, hahaha!

"Hahaha!" he laughed.

[Maxx]

Zikwa had such morbid names. In the light of this new tidbit of information, alongside Shroud's own name, Beauty figured that she was very unlikely to stop by the deathy caves. She however, did chuckle along with his bright laugh, graciously and sociably.

"No bumping into bears," she chided in a friendly manner, and managed to dispose of some of the tension from her shoulders, "we will meet again, Shroud.

"Good-bye."

This one was a little more pleasant than the former, and quite friendly all things considered.

[Jun]

"Goodbye, goodbye!" he called, until he could no longer feel the vibrations of her departing hoofsteps through the ground. This must have been very irritating for everyone else.

*******

It took another few hours - hours largely filled with attempts of varying success trying to find all the wonderful Kin who had helped him in order to thank them; he'd ended up having to recite a list of shout-outs for those he hadn't been able to locate, but needs must and it was better than nothing, even if perhaps he hadn't been able to locate them because they were no longer there. It took another few hours before Shroud was finally on his way, but on his way he was.

It would be a long way. He was going home to the Zikwa caves. He could have gone in by Ghost Thistle's Mound, but once you really got into the caves, it was such a maze, you could hardly call it a shortcut. If the expedition had remained in the mountains, perhaps it would have been a slightly shorter way - but much tougher going, he'd reckon. Long way as it may be, trekking back from the middle of the Swamp, it was still a pleasant one, filled with the Swamp's sweet bounty, and much more temperate.

Well.

Maybe not right now. It was still really cold.

Still, he mused, as he paused, beckoned by the smell of sweet berries, for a quick lunch before moving on, a pleasant one.

He was going home to his darling Maggot, and his dear mother, whom Maggot had been taking care of, all this time. He hoped it hadn't been too hard. His mother could be quite the handful, the one day of the month she came alive. And it had been just about a month or so since they'd left for the mountains. It was amazing timing, really, that their entire adventure had managed to miss his one day a month.

In that moment, Shroud experienced an emotion that felt very much like hubris.

"Oh, f-"

Was all he managed to say as his limb froze mid-step, before his jaw also locked up, and the entirety of him tipped over into the muck.

Shroud did not fear death, but he did fear this. Or more than fear, he dreaded it: this day a month that made a prison of his body. He could hear the chorus of crickets; the chirp of frogs, the slosh of the marsh, the call of a bittern farther in the brush, again and again and again.

The passing swish of a pluming tail, the fumbling thud of a hard carapace, the six-legged stride of some confident beetle; he could feel the wet press of the marsh into his skin, into every seizing muscle of this body he could not move.

From a distance, he might have been mistaken for a large, felled branch.

His mother was like this, every day of the month save one. She never spoke – except she could move, but so barely, so lifeless, only enough to take the barest bite from time to time, that she might as well have never moved at all. He could not move at all, when he was like this. His flesh locked up in a way hers didn't seem to. He thought perhaps it was because his was only one day a month, and so it had to cram all of that rigidity into one day all at once. And he was the lucky one, he knew – he knew, because, just to think it: every day save one of every month, unmoving, unliving, while all around, you heard, and felt, and saw…

Shroud did not fear death, and, if he had to spend as much of his life as unliving as his mother, he might have welcomed it.

But, for him, it was only once a month. And how he lived besides.

How he had lived.

This, too, would pass.

He listened to the call of the bittern, and dreamed of flying.

*******

It was many days yet before he stepped through the mouth of the cave he shared with his mother, but he did. He was sprightly, hale and whole. The mud of the marsh had been long washed off in some handy stream – though he might not have looked quite so different for it.

"Hello, Mother," he called, cheerfully, trotting over to nuzzle against her wan, unmoving warmth, "I'm back. I'll tell you all about it later."

She was on the other side of the cave from when he'd left. Her once a month, it seemed, had too come and passed.

"Hello, Maggot," he hummed fondly, as his chittering cave worm skittered against his legs, "how's my girl? Thanks for taking care of mother, you're a peach."

It was good to have gone, and it was good to be back.

He pressed his nose into the plates of her face, but Maggot clicked her mandibles, and skittered towards the mouth of the cave.

"What is it, Maggot?" he asked, following, "has Condolences fallen down the sinkhole again?"

But he did not get so far as the sinkhole before he was stopped, near the mouth, by the fumbling thud of a hard carapace into his shins. It took him a moment, then a moment more, before he had felt enough to understand: the gentle curve of a beak, the unmarred bump-bump of a hard-shelled back.

"Why, it's you!" he cried, full of pleasure, "you were there all along. Did you follow me all this way?"

Maggot chittered, and clicked her mandibles, tapping her little legs over the newcomer.

"Come on in," he smiled, content, "you found me, after all."



END