[PRP] A Truth Universally Acknowledged [ Handsome x Shame ]

[Maxx]

[imgleft]https://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/imag ... uncert.png[/imgleft]Spring had come and Handsome had enjoyed much of its arrival, frolicking in fresh grass and blossoms as soon as she saw them. After a while of grass burn and pollen, however, Handsome found herself mildly bored of the cheery landscape. She was, after all, a contrary and curious free spirit, and she sought a different view.

It had taken some wandering and insistent journeying towards the shaded parts of the Swamp, pushing against one's natural inclination to sunshine deeper into darkness wrapped by dense foliage. She did, indeed, find interesting things there. There was a tremendous slug for one, and she was sure it was bigger than the other giant slugs she usually saw. She saw more corpses than usual, some of them stuck in the marsh, bones awkwardly emergent like a signal. This too, was interesting.

The morbidities were plentiful enough to worry her at times, but she felt like she hadn't yet seen anything so interesting that it fulfilled her curiosity to the utmost, to drive her back out into the boring sunlight.

She was getting thirsty, and she had been mindful of the rather dank-looking bodies of water on the way. This lake was a little different - half of it was covered in some algae and the lot, but the gaps nearer to the edges seemed clean enough. Handsome tentatively sniffed it.

Seemed fine.

Handsome cautiously licked it, and continued to lap.

[Jun]

[imgright]https://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/imag ... uncert.png[/imgright]Someone was at her lake.

She shrunk back, sank her head into the mire, lost beneath the weeds; she would not see them.

But someone began to lap, at the waters, and the ripple that tap-tapped at her flesh was too much to bear. It tapped and tapped, like the little blows of hooves that would not cease.

She moved.

She crawled, a tangle of weeds, a monstrous sprawl of weed and scum, spilling onto the bank, oozing out of the lake.

Where were they? The person who tormented her so.

[Maxx]

When the laboured rustling started to happen, Handsome's tongue stopped still in the water, and felt her limbs stiffen. It sounded much larger than she would have expected, larger still than a caiman.

Then her eyes raised and witnessed the pile of foliage and grime shift with dramatic distance, and her tongue returned and she backed away in self-preservation.

A weedy pond-scum creature emerged with slow deliberation. So the clear water, free of algae, was only to lure naive critters such as herself into the lake monster's maw.

She couldn't bring herself to flee. Perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was curiosity. Instead she helplessly picked up a hearty branch, watching it advance. She wanted to see its face.

[Jun]

At first she saw no one, past the tangle of weeds. She dragged all four hooves out of the lake onto the muddy bank, meandering forward, in search.

Then as drips of weed slithered off into the mud in her wake, the movement caught her eye:

A kin, the same mossy green as the thick lake, algae dapples across her hide. No wonder she had been so hard to see.

She had come to her lake, hidden, and now she would beat her with a stick.

At first she shied back, the anticipation of the blow shivering across her back - then she lunged forward, hissing, because -

- how dare she?

To hide herself so, and come to hunt her. In her lake!

[Maxx]

Handsome was very surprised by the whole circumstance. First, the creature had slowly shed muck in its wake, revealing a kin-shaped body, that became ever more apparent when she could see an eye, that it had a kin-shaped head, which looked quite normal, spare all the grime that still remained.

She had loosened her grip on the branch before the - doe? - recoiled, then clamped down as she attacked, holding the branch fast in order to defend herself.

It was strange that she was so feral given that most of them were dumped in the Swamp to find their own survival anyway, but this area was much wilder than the rest. Despite the ebb and flow of fear in her chest, her curiosity endured evermore.

So what she chose to ask was: "Do you speak?"

She gasped through her teeth.

[Jun]

And now she wanted her to speak.

She growled.

[Maxx]

When she growled, she could see her a little better.

"You're quite pretty," she exclaimed with some surprise, muffled through the branch, "though I can't tell if that's hair or seaweed."

Though of course if she did not speak, she might not understand her perving appreciation.

[Jun]

Pretty. That was what they'd said at first, and then when they had tamed her, and grown tired, she was hideous, a monster, for shouting at, and beating, and casting out under the waters.

They had held her there, but she had risen. Was it not good enough that she had crept back into the waters on her own?

And now this doe would seek to tame her so, and hunt her down?

The nerve!

She snarled, and this time, she leapt.

[Maxx]

Handsome was knocked over, and looking up at her lovely aggressor she was confusedly taken with her intensity. Hope that didn't awaken anything. She thought she should honour that intensity in return - or at least, get to a point where she could determine if she could speak, or if it was going to be snarls and gasps the whole way through. She could mind more.

With all the strength she could muster, she tried to shoulder upwards to roll over the doe instead. As far as she could tell, she had uniquely-shaped eyes.

[Jun]

The uniquely-shaped eyes glittered and narrowed in turn as she tried to bite her throat out.

[Maxx]

"Are you very unwelcome to visitors or...or do you eat other kin," she managed out as she struggled, her neat hair getting quite wild as they tusselled.

She was half-hoping to find interesting kin in these deep, dark marshes, but she hadn't banked on being murdered by a territorial one. At least she was pretty.

[Jun]

"You dare," she dragged the words, like rotten vines, so long unused, out from the dregs of her memory, from the time before, "insinuate that this is my fault?"

[Maxx]

She spoke! Slowly and somewhat terrifyingly! She would be excited had her adrenaline not been so highly engaged that her body could not possibly be reacting any more aggressively. She used that to strengthen the tension of her limbs in holding her bitey mouth away.

"No," she breathed, "after all, it was I who came to your lake, so that fault would be mine.

"I would not mind atoning for it. unless it involves my being eaten, which would be considerably more objectionable, sorry."

[Jun]

This confused her, because the doe said it was her own fault, which was a first.

She gave a last half-hearted snap, shook her head, and, failing to dislodge any thoughts but only weeds, sprang off to circle the strange doe, growling once more.

[Maxx]

So it seemed she was not a cannibal, which was good - that was much less negotiable than any other alternatives. It was easier to appreciate her at a slight distance, without teeth in her face.

Handsome should really have turned tail and left, but she was drawn to the wild doe. So instead, she said, "I'm sorry for imposing on your lake.

I've been journeying for a while now, and it seemed clean enough to drink from.

I would have asked if I had realised it was occupied."

Manners, manners.