This Totoma's natural coat could have helped them become a great hunter - if the sand bar had afforded as much shadow and tree as the inner Swamp. Still, the tribe needed meat to make its meals with. So, instead of trying to blend in with her surroundings, she took a different tack: waiting. She could stay still for hours. Had such a lot of patience. Could wait like anything. And, eventually, when a mongoose, or a foxbun, or what have you, finally let down its guard and brushed past the long-immobile bulk - bam!
Her method of operation wasn't quite evident to her kith and kin, however, in its early stages.
"What are you doing?" some would say (startling away her targeted prey), "are you waiting?"
"What are you waiting for?"
"Still in wait?"
"You're still waiting?"
"Where's the waiter?"
"Waiter!"
It stuck, even as her methods started producing delicious results, and it wasn't long before cries of, "Where's that dang Waiter?!" started resounding through the Sand Bar.
He had always been a quiet child, somewhat intense, who stuck close to his pearl-dealing mother and peered seriously at the pearls she cracked out of the oysters and mussels she retrieved (although he did not care for the swimming parts). As a lamb and foal, he nosed the biggest and best of the pearls apart, then, when he had grown too big for such delicate manouevers, directed Conch's well-trained claws to pick the pearls about. The biggest and the best, "- and the rest, Mother," he huffed sometimes, "you might as well cast before swine." (Whatever that meant.) His intensity had grown to match his frame.
"He's quality control for my wares, I suppose," his mother would chuckle (a little nervously), "he's very good at that, Quality Control."
Though most Totoma throng to fight during tribe clashes on the battlefield, she is one of those who come round after for the wounded, with water in a turtleshell, or what have you of the sort. She has slaked the thirst of many an injured, or dying, Totoma this way - but don’t underestimate her martial capabilities just because of her chosen role: if it’s blood you thirst for, she’s more than equipped to slake that with her punishing hooves as well.
Last edited by Jun on Sun Aug 09, 2020 6:11 pm, edited 1 time in total. word count: 84
The runt of the litter, his sister bullied him mercilessly from the moment they were born. One day, when they were but foals, she thoroughly battered him in a fit of rage when he got underfoot, stomping him quite, quite flat. The shatter shards around him shattered further into tiny little bits, and it was no longer orange markings that bled through the cracks in his skin. Oops.
Indeed, he was very broken. They did not think that he would live to see adulthood. And yet, somehow, flesh healed, bones knitted, and he survived, a testament to the rubber-like constitution of children. His early near-death experience taught him to keep out of the way, strike fast, and run faster, making an excellent soldier of the buck he became.
They called him Once Broken, not as a slight, but a badge of honour, that he was once broken, yet here he be.
[align=center]You hold two lives, and then another
you'll only find if you should stray:
one life gifted from your mother,
one life from your sum of days;
if these lives should lose their lustre,
the last comes when you walk away.[/align]
Last edited by Jun on Mon Jan 31, 2022 11:37 am, edited 1 time in total. word count: 55
