ON THE HUNT FOR MOTES!
Kin Name: Dominant
Preference List: One, Two, Eight, Nine, Three, Ten, Twenty, Seventeen, Fourteen, Four, Twenty-One
RP:



Wherever Boar went, he was in the company of his scavengers, trailing along with his movements in a hungry pack. There was something about him that drew them to him, and the musk wolf added the very essence of Sinweed scent to their progression, intoxicating and strong. The light had gone out in the world and he was not concerned. As long as there was life, he would be hungry, and as long as he was hungry he would exist, little else mattered to him but his companion. They'd found themselves almost led here by their noses, by the feeling that there was something afoot. Boar did not care to help others, but he cared to gorge himself on new and interesting tastes.

The tongue lolled from the teeth on his belly as he looked upon the flitting, swirling motes and immediately he knew that he needed to taste them. There was something fractured and strange about the things, not alive like the slowly meandering nudibranches but instead moving with a direction of their own, fast then slow and then drawn to unusual things.

A small mote flitted past him and he snapped out with his huge golden fangs like a viper about to strike, swallowing it down with a gulp. It tasted strange and abhorrent, something about the energies offensive to his sensibilities.

He tossed his head and from his horns, large clods of rock and earth dislodged. He turned to look over his golden plates and found them composed of burnished obsidian instead, jutting from the earth that had become his very body. He was a creature of dark, fertile soil and mud, jutting with stone and minerals, not alive but infinitely hungry and infinitely giving. He would consume the dead, regurgitate the living, on and on in an endless cycle and this was infinitely fitting.

His eyes gleamed like eager red starlight as he turned his attention to another mote. The first had tasted strange, but the second might be a new delight for his palette. It went down easy, but as it did it drove back the earth and the stone, eroding him down to a small thing, small enough to step between the petals of grass. All he saw at this new perspective was more to eat, proportionally more to devour. A locust in a swarm, a plague of frogs, a blight of hungry tiny things, things that would eat and eat until all of the world realised it was bare and they had not understood the danger. He would suffocate the world like algae by inches, devouring the remainder of this darkened world.

He was supposed to be retrieving these motes, he knew, but he did not truly ally himself with anyone. They could retrieve them later if they passed through him intact. Earth and life, cycles of repetition.

It did not matter that he thought he was small as the large mote drifted past him, he knew he could eat it anyway, there wasn't anything he couldn't eat once. So he seized it in his teeth and swallowed it like the others, the light flashing through the fur at his throat as he did so. This one was delicious, good, satisfying.

It swept away the impurities of the other effects and left him pleased and entertained.

But never satisfied. Never, ever satisfied.

ON THE HUNT FOR MOTES!
Kin Name: Small Game
Preference List: Just glow, please!
RP: (please ignore the second set of rolls, I accidentally edited a post instead of copying the code from it!)

9: Your kin imagines they are completely covered in motes!
7: Your kin imagines they are a different species of kin!
910: You capture an exceptionally large mote with no consequences.

Small Game was nothing if not excited about the ability to hunt down something new. To be a part of something as big as helping return the sun to the sky above them-- that was a tale of epic propotions which would be told for generation, and he had a chance to be part of it.

The motes were something strange and glowed with a light that bobbed irregularly, but never went dark, not quite like the fireflies that helped light the late summer swamp. As he followed one that seemed to be making a path he'd be able to connect with, however, the strangest thing happened-- dozens, no... more than dozens of the tiny things began to swarm, hitting his skin and making his fur stand on end. He could taste the light they were putting off as more and more piled onto him-- completely engulfing his body from his tail to the tip of his muzzle, glowing like the sun through his closed eyelids as the light began to speak and shudder. After the sensation dissipated, he found himself with one more mote for the lanterns, and two more tries to get some more before he would be cut off.

The second time he encountered one, he snapped at it quickly, but found himself stumbling and unable to turn. He crashed against a tree, but instead of the bark digging into the fur on his scalp, he stopped short, completely no worse for the wear. The tree was definitely still quite firm, but he couldn't feel anything but pressure against his skull... but the mote was getting away, leaving him to try to turn to meet it, and finding his neck and back not quite so willing to turn as he was used to. He was trapped by something on his own pelt-- binding his skull, his neck, and his back and limiting his movements. As he craned to try to see, he realized what it was-- a set of protective plating like his second mother's, like Fish's own. He startled again as he caught another scrap of glow, and continued his gallop in another direction-- his sudden change was not as important as the return of the sun, and if anything, this new, sturdier body should only help.

After some time, following mote after mote that floated just too high to reach, or meandered across a dangerous gap that he felt unable to jump, his neck had returned to normal, and examination proved that the plates he had imagined having were no longer there. He wouldn't let himself be distracted, not when he only had one more try for a mote... and when that mote directly ahead of him looked so close to the ground! He trotted towards it, trying to keep as fast a pace as he could manage without risking tripping in the dark, and watched as the mote seemed to grow, and grow, and grow, until it was so big that he wouldn't possibly be able to fit it in his mouth. It floated low and sluggishly, almost as if the effort of being so big was too much for it... but when he tried to set his teeth against the glowing side of the thing, his teeth seemed to find purchase on something... something allowing him to grab it and carry it along back with him.

With the size of this last magnificent capture, he'd be able to impress both of his mothers, and perhaps even encourage other family members of his to join in on this marvelous game!

ON THE HUNT FOR MOTES!
Kin Name: Oath
Preference List: Just glow, please!
RP:

4: Your kin imagines they are a tree and cannot move!
7: Your kin imagines they are a different species of kin!
7: Your kin imagines they are a different species of kin!

The darkness was all-consuming. For days, Oath had struggled to breathe, struggled to move, struggled to do anything at all when she was away from a fire or other strong source of light, because while the air here wasn't a miasma as it had been deep in the earth only seasons before, the fires were giving snagging, sucking gasps of smoke as they were fed whatever fuel their keeperss could find for them, in order to keep hope and visibility as good as possible for a population in crisis.

Her son had goaded her into action, in between one fit of gasping coughs and the next. If nothing was done, there was a good chance the darkness would continue, as with the fact that the offerings had to be made high when they had been at the obelisk below. She'd been useless to her family for days, now... and following her son to try to do something productive, "just as a distraction,", wouldn't do anything but help the time pass faster, so she'd let him lead her to the place, and then set off with a slow, mincing pace as she tried to navigate the root-choked paths around her. The first several motes she saw flitted out of her vision, or too quickly for her to follow easily, but she remained patient. Others had managed this and she hadn't heard of anyone breaking their necks here, so it stood to make sense that if she waited enough, one would head towards her, and all she would have to do is strike--

But when her mouth should have closed around it, she had no mouth to bite. She would have gasped if she could, or drawn back in surprise, but she was rooted to the spot-- she couldn't move, could only feel the way the sluggish wind rustled around her as she quickly became completely immobile, blind and incapable of drawing breath to scream. She couldn't breathe-- she couldn't breathe!-- but... for some reason, the lack of ability to pull air down a choking throat didn't really matter. She felt it as a squirrel ran across her back, climbing to perch on a branch of hers, making her leaves rustle, and she was finally able to make sense of the situation she was in. Trees didn't have mouths to grasp, or throats to squeeze, or breath to catch and gasp and sputter. They were slow, they were calm, and they were patient-- as she would be, from now on.

Time... didn't mean much of anything to her, but after a while, she realized she had a mouth for the first mote, and she felt something strangely insubstantial bumping against her teeth and tongue as she trapped it-- the first mote! She carefully worked her way back to deposit it in its lantern, then continued on her hunt, waiting for the next mote to approach her, and then cutting it off of its path with another skilled lunge.

When she caught the second one, however, she found herself to be blind. She cocked her ears around as she tried to make sense of this new predicament-- she couldn't feel her eyelids, couldn't blink or open them, and something near her was glowing so, so brightly... when she swung her head to press against it, her own flank, she found it to be glowing so brightly, that she could see the glow as a hazy, red-gold diffusion that lit up veins in her own eyelids, as if they were trapped closed. While she was blind to the world around her, she could still find she remembered the way she had come from, and as she delicately trotted her way back, someone was willing to help her to deposit the second mote. "Why are your eyes closed?" her son asked, and she found that her eyelids were back, and she could open them once again.

"It's nothing,, she reassured. "One more to go, I'll be back again then."

The third mote practically jumped down her throat, and this one made her choke a tiny bit, then struck her blind again. How had she thought she could see for those brief moments? Her eyes were glowing so brightly that she could make out nothing else, and the wind around her made her shiver. As she rested a cheek against her flank, she felt the soft, velvety nakedness that only a Zikwa had... and again, the blindness helped her to focus. Even breaths were all she could take if she was going to pay attention to her surroundings, and even breaths were what she would need to keep the mote from possibly choking her for real if it made a jump against the back of her throat.

She didn't know how she would explain this to Fish-- hopefully the mare would recognize her, or believe her when she claimed herself to be the totoma's fast companion. If nothing else, Fish was always willing to listen to a story, and willing to keep an open mind, and they had both heard of and personally seen kin transform into much stranger things than simply another shape of kin. It would... it would have to be okay, wouldn't it? She felt strangely distant as she deposited the second mote, and as she pondered how she would explain this all to her love, she realized that her vision was clear again, and that she was no longer glowing.

A quick check of herself from nose to tailtip confirmed it-- the illusions she'd suffered had been temporary-- and some gentle conversation with Small Game on their way back home to Fish made it clear that he'd seen no indication on her return trips of her being anything other than the mother he'd grown up knowing.

Still, that made three more motes for the keepers, which would hopefully mean a faster return to normalcy... and she'd had somewhat of a breakthrough. If she was struggling to breathe easily, all she would have to do is close her eyes and reach inwards... and the strength that Fish had told her she had was waiting there, ready to be tapped into, as long as she was patient and calm.

ON THE HUNT FOR MOTES!
Kin Name: Agave
Preference List: Just glows, thanks!
RP:

Agave used to think of himself as a buck comfortable in the dark. In the dark, kin drew close to one-another for celebration and comfort. In the dark, there was rest. At home in the dark under the earth...there had been Sootstripe.

But darkness unending, moonless, starless, darkness was deeply troubling. Like so many kin, he had found himself drawn to the Helper's grove. And so what else was there to do? He gripped the little cage in his teeth and set back into the darkness to hunt for what light remained.

Peeking out from behind a tree, Agave was startled by the sudden appearance of a mote of light, resting on the side of a tree trunk. He leapt for it, cried out—and lost the handle he was carrying in his mouth. The so-called lantern rolled away, but Agave suddenly found himself dropping heavily to the earth. He felt heavy, and stiff-backed. His legs cramped up, swelling up into thick, blunt, stumps. Twisting his neck back to look at himself, he was alarmed to see the rugged dome of a desert tortoise.

How will I catch them now? he moaned, softly. It might be a trick of the light. It might not be. Either way—he'd probably better return the mote-cage. He bumped around in the darkness, feeling for it. Tortoise had terriblenight-vision.

Stick once again in mouth, Agave began to drag it back towards the camp. Was the sun truly gone? What if that was yet another, grander, trick of the light? There was something so-very-much of the trickster to Catches Fire. As the motes flitted and danced by, tantalizingly out of reach for a squat tortoise, the trees and canopy of the swamp closed in. The darkness was as impenetrable as stone, wasn't it? And the only light they truly could rely on was the soft glow of kin, the dim radiance of mushrooms.

What if they had all been transported deep into the caverns? These motes already distorted the mind and body, perhaps they'd been used to weave some greater illusion? The longer he walked, the more certain that cavern walls and damp cool air were what chained them all. He'd need to go back and discuss this with the others. They could find their way out of caverns, and back to the light.

Closer to the grove, there was more light: more motes, more kin, and more fires. More light...meant shadows. Agave's shadow, cast on the stony(mossy) ground and cavern walls (tree trunks), remained acha! It had kept its original shape. Indeed, it sauntered along without a care in the world, holding the mote-cage in its mouth with insouciant ease.

You give that back! he thought fiercely to his oldest double. If you've kept our shape, give it back to me! As fast as a tortoise could flail its splayed, stumpy, legs, Agave chased his shadow. But his clawed feet were outmatched by the spindly legs of an acha buck, and his shadow stayed ever ahead of him. Unaware that his own lantern had captured motes of light within it, Agave followed his own shadow away from the light casting it and back into the darkness of the swamp.

ON THE HUNT FOR MOTES!
Kin Name: Tincture
Preference List: Just glow, please!
RP:

1: Your kin imagines they are very, very tiny!
9: Your kin imagines they are completely covered in motes!
3: Your kin imagines they have become a type of familiar!

With darkness like this, wearing the skull headdress that the acha generally did was beyond impractical-- it was useless and dangerous. The healer's symbol of business had been left safely at home as they had ventured out, helping kin they had come across with injuries here and there, as they had learned more of the lingering night. When they'd heard of the motes that were now out in abundance to catch, they thought of the way that things had been before, below, with the obelisk, and decided to help out a little.

Mote catching, they'd been told, was fairly straightforward, but also fraught with one singular danger-- hallucinations. They'd been told that nobody had been seriously injured while experiencing the illusions the motes wanted to grant, but they had seen kin in the grips of a 'perfectly harmless' mushroom die because of a break to the neck after stumbling off a cliff, believing they could fly. Tincture would have to be cautious, if they could. If they could just keep their wits about them, they would be unlikely to be the first to injure themself in any grievous manner.

When they managed to snag the first mote, however, the potency of the hallucination made itself known. Clearly the kin warning them had been wrong-- mere illusions couldn't account for the fact that they, alongside the mote they were grasping, were quickly shrinking, falling into the leaf litter and threatening to be consumed. It took a heroic effort for the normally small acha to work over a giant log of a twig, and then a large expanse of curling, crispy leaf. As they approached the raised edge, it crumbled underneath them, leaving them tumbling, and stumbling... and they were back to their original size, knees in the leaves, head against the ground, but with that first mote still secured!

The illusions are brief, at least, they were able to conclude, after dropping off the first of the motes. It hadn't been long enough for them to feel thirst or hunger, and nobody seemed to be startled by the time it had taken them to gather the first, so onto the second they went.

When they captured the second mote, they were able to walk back towards the lantern-keeper normally. Another mote floated to bump against their body, alighting upon their fur with the most curiously numbing sensation... then another, then a cluster, then more. When their sight began to be impaired, they slowed, and then stopped completely, for risk of turning an ankle... but they steadfastly clung onto the one they had captured, trying to make sense of why they were completly enveloping them as a response to one of their brethren being spirited away. They weren't stinging, or making a threatening noise, so the whole thing felt rather like a strange, numbing hug... And eventually, they began to float away, leaving the acha puzzled as to why that had happened at all.

When they snatched the third mote, however, they fell to the ground. Their hooves were gone, their body was sinuous, and after several moments trying to make sense of their new shape, they realized that they would simply have to squirm and writhe to try to move, as their body seemed to be a single, sinuous stretch of scales, unmarred by complications such as limbs.They had a powerful urge to swallow what was in their mouth-- to let it be crushed and digested and to then find someplace to curl up and rest... but they had somewhere to be, and the ground was uncomfortably cold to rest on. They'd be exposed here, but near where the keepers were, there was a lovely abandoned rabbit den... the perfect place for a snake to rest while digesting their prey.

It took some time to become aware of the fact that their legs were curled up against their chest, and their "slithering" was a strange sort of kicking with their legs splayed behind their resting torso. Now thoroughly covered in leaf-litter, but still in possession of their third and final mote, they stood gingerly, examined the sensations of each leg to ensure none were strained or injured, and carefully, soberly, walked their way back to deliver the last mote to its waiting lantern.

Ah, well. At least nothing bad happened this time, they mused, before heading towards what they supposed was a kin making noises like a dying cat. Those sounds were generally a good cue that someone was injured... or that a hapless bystander was about to be.

ON THE HUNT FOR MOTES!
Kin Name: Sootstripe
Preference List: Just glows, thanks!
RP:

1: Your kin imagines they are very, very tiny!
6: Your kin imagines their shadow has taken on its own life!
7: Your kin imagines they are a different species of kin!

Sootstripe, as a Zikwa that grew up in caverns, felt comfortable in the dark. It was the other kin, unaccustomed to gloom, that could make this dangerous. Or it was the swamp itself, which in contrast to the caves Soot grew up in, were never marked with guidance to help blind travellers safely navigate.

He followed the smell of smoke to Helper's grove. His arts were visual, so he thought they'd be little use to bolster the spirits of troubled kin. But he knew he could hunt for light in darkness. He'd hunt as a bat does, or an owl.

"But...the motes are silent?" One kin gave him an odd look, not understanding.

"True. But the sounds of misadventure will mean that another kin--and the mote that let them astray--are nearby."



It was a plan better in concept than in practice. No sooner had Sootstripe closed his jaws around a lonely wisp of light, that he felt himself falling, falling slowly, trees growing enormous around him. The mushroom-covered log he'd delicately snapped the mote up from was the size of a hill now, the woodear mushrooms fruiting off the side of his as tall as a rugged totoma buck. But he still felt the mote wiggling and fluttering inside his mouth, and light, he figured, was light. He retraced his steps and walked back, at his tiny snail pace, back towards the camp. The sound and light from it were an unmistakable beacon. After what felt like hours and hours, he released the mote from his mouth--and found his sense of scale restored.

The second time Soot snapped his teeth at a mote of light, it zipped away, quick as a dragonfly, and swirled and sped around him as he tried to catch it proper. The activity seemed to intensify the light cast--or his eyes were adapting to their former sensitivity. Either way, it made Sootstripe's eyes catch on his shadow. He couldn't help but watch. As the mote fluttered out of reach, Soot watched as his shadow lifted its feet off the ground, detaching them from himself. Shadowsoot stepped away, then paused, looking back at his counterpart. It wanted him to follow. The shadow led him in ever-expanding circles around the Helpers' grove. Sootstripe tried not to be anxious--be this illusion or dream, it was his own shadow, a constant companion. He trusted it.

But detached from his own shadow, Sootstripe felt...loose. His skin and flesh didn't feel fixed. He pounced for a third mote of light, missed, leapt again, missed again. If only he'd the endurance for greater feats of athleticism. How did the Kiokote do it? Sootstripe tried to remember a study he'd made of a volunteer, she'd been proud to show off her jumping technique, the way she coiled all of her energy and focus together. Sootstripe tried to feel that supple strength flowing into his limbs, and leapt a final time for the mote of light. He was alarmed to find himself landing on heavier hooves, tail swishing behind him like a flag in the wind, energy surging through his limbs. He'd better be careful trotting back to the grove with this mote--the too-real daydream was making him feel giddy.

ON THE HUNT FOR MOTES!
Kin Name: The Heart Shines With Light
Preference List: Just glows, thanks!
RP:

At first, the motes of light reminded of Heartshine of his naming dream--a luminous experience where each and every tree and stone, beast and kin, mountain or river or twig in a path, shone with the light of its own nature.

He quickly discovered they were very different. Or where they? What did it mean, Heartshine mused, that this particular mote gave him the perception of a marshfowl? As the warmth of the mote quavered in his mouth, he felt himself proudly perched on not four legs, but two. His feet felt stretched out, pulled away from each-other into long toes. And the wings--ah, not so good for flying perhaps, but wings! He could leap and flap to gracefully slow and extend his fall. How splendid it might be, to be a marshfowl!

...Until he missed a rock in the dark, jumping around, and twisted his ankle.

Still. Once he'd been treated and rested, he was back out into the darkness. This time he'd be more careful in pursuit of the motes' visions.

A mote settled on his flank, and he turned--and turned--and turned--to try and capture it. In his zeal, his jaws closed around the mote of light--and Heartshine swallowed it. The mote's warmth filled his throat, then kept spreading, and growing. Warmth became a searing heat that reached down into his belly, a roaring filled his head, and when Heartshine opened his mouth to gasp for air, to cough, the breath
ignited the flame in his lungs. Heart was a bonfire, a torrent and blaze that strained away from the each to stretch into the dark sky. He let himself be carried away--if his body was flame, surely it was not safe for him to be in the swamp, not safe to approach or touch other kin. He felt himself dragged further, further, up, for the only safe place for an untended blaze to be was as a star in the sky, wasn't it? But there were no other lights around, and looking down at the swamp, it seemed to Heartshine that the motes were as faint and fleeting, twinkling in and out, as stars.

But how could he bring light to the others, trapped up in the sky? He needed to ground himself. But how? What could bridge the distance between sky and earth?

There. A tall and lonely ash. Heartshine strained at the bonds of the sky, reached out, galloped down in a rush of flame, and touched the tip of his nose to the mote of light blinking on the tip of the ash tree.

As soon as he touched it, he felt the tree opening up, as if every leaf was covered in tiny mouths to swallow him up. He felt his body pulled out of the flame and down into the tree, felt himself become as sap that rose and fell through the body of the tree. He was bound now, surrounded by leaves and bent into the limbs of trees and pulled down into the very roots deep in the earth. Heartshine-the-tree shivered and swayed in the night breeze.

After a time, he realized that the old tree's roots were reaching out and entwining with other trees, with other shrubs and grasses, with the burrows of animals and the tiny gnawing of insects, and the dense and vibrant web of life that surged through all the soil.

Or, it would have. All through the swamp, in every tree and plant, there was a wordless concern. A hunger. A yearning for the return of the light.

It was a feeling of terrible urgency that would linger with the kimeti buck long after he'd returned to Helpers' Grove and coughed up the swallowed mote.

3: Your kin imagines they have become a type of familiar!
5: Your kin imagines they are made up of one of the four elements!
4: Your kin imagines they are a tree and cannot move!

There are 21 prizes for this contest, and 23 people who included prefs in their list. I don't like excluding 2 people, so I will be adding 2 semi-custom nudibranches. They'll go to people whose prefs are taken, to try and get everyone a prize.

I took people who said glow only out of the raffle list. Here we go!

1. AstoriaFallen
2. SerinaNight
3. SerinaNight
4. SerinaNight
5. HuniPi
6. Aria Starstone
7. Baneful
8. AstoriaFallen
9. Owlsomniac
10. Owlsomniac
11. Owlsomniac
12. lilacfishie
13. HuniPi
14. Ruriska
15. Dawns_Stars145
16. lilacfishie
17. AstoriaFallen
18. lilacfishie
19. Beejoux
20. peanutbutter
21. Ruriska
22. Ruriska
23. Dizzy_Kat
24. Lirilei
25. Beejoux
26. Dizzy_Kat
27. Appeal
28. subducting
29. subducting
30. subducting
31. Appeal
32. Appeal
33. Mima
34. Scaramouche Fandango
35. Scaramouche Fandango
36. Scaramouche Fandango
37. Lirilei
38. Toshiful
39. Toshiful
40. Toshiful
41. Prolixity
42. lolternative
43. lolternative
44. Prolixity
45. lolternative
46. Mima
47. Lirilei
48. Prolixity
49. fluo
50. fluo
51. fluo
52. Dawns_Stars145
53. LOLLI qAq
54. peanutbutter
55. LOLLI qAq
56. peanutbutter
57. LOLLI qAq
58. Eevee
59. Baneful
60. Baneful

rerolls!

1. Aria Starstone
2. Beejoux
3. Beejoux
4. Prolixity
5. Prolixity
6. Prolixity

congrats all!

peanutbutter wrote:

AstoriaFallen wrote:

SerinaNight wrote:

HuniPi wrote:

LOLLI qAq wrote:

fluo wrote:

Dawns_Stars145 wrote:

Toshiful wrote:

Mima wrote:

subducting wrote:

Lirilei wrote:

Dizzy_Kat wrote:

lilacfishie wrote:

Owlsomniac wrote:

Baneful wrote:

Eevee wrote:

Scaramouche Fandango wrote:

lolternative wrote:

Ruriska wrote:

Appeal wrote:send me an image for a semi-custom!

Aria Starstone wrote:

Prolixity wrote:

Beejoux wrote:send me an image for a semi-custom!

Glow tickets have been added for all participants!