[PRP] Princess Without a Realm (Murchadh and Nyla)

[Geyser Eelborn]

The wee fishies were being fair troublesome today.

Murchadh was crouched low over a riverbank, watching fish swim past under his nose. Every so often, the minnows would make way for a fair-sized trout, but every time he tried to scoop his paw into the water to catch one, it swam away, wriggling away from his grasp as if it could see him. Which, considering they had eyes, was, okay, fine, fair enough, quite likely. Or maybe they were smelling them, Murchadh didn't know, and he wasn't inclined to ask questions at the moment. He was just hungry, and really wanted a fish. Fish tasted nice, and they came from water. That was as much a sign as Murchadh needed that fish were to be his natural diet in this life. Why else would he have webbed paws and water dangling from his face? Yes, fish. Fish, fish, fish.

If he could ever catch one of the wretched things! He bit back a sigh of frustration and tried again. He'd been trying all day. Yesterday he'd spent following the river, also trying to catch fish. He'd been successful a few days ago, but to be fair, that was a pool of water, not a river. Rivers were proving to be an extra challenge. His ears were fully swiveled towards the water now, catching every little gurgle and giggle of the flow, every sucking sound of an eddy or a bird call on the other side of the stream. There were a lot of those, and they didn't have much trouble catching fish!

Tail twitching, Murchadh's entire mind was bent towards the water. The rest of the world was outside of his range of thought; it just wasn't important. A bear could have snuck up on him in all this time, and he would not have noticed.

L ii a t h

 

[L ii a t h]

Nyla traveled along the riverbank, shaking mud from her paws. What a predicament... She sighed internally. When she'd woken into existence days earlier, she'd found herself drawn to the water, but all of this dirt...urgh...it always seemed to accompany the object of her affections, and it was so unbecoming.

But she refused to relent. She'd found her abrupt existence upsetting - Who was she? Where was she? Were there others like her? - and she was determined to search for the answers to those questions. Surely a great, big world awaited her, and she only had to reach out to claim it. Surely she was meant for more than mud, and she intended to find her throne.

She had no initial qualms against traveling by her lonesome, but after the first day, she quickly came to realize that such a feat would be harder to accomplish than she had originally imagined. The world was dirty, dangerous and often unforgiving. Feeding herself was cumbersome, as was finding shelter for the night, when large beasts came out to play. She needed aid, protection...a bodyguard. And so she made finding such a fellow her first mission.

However, even that was proving difficult. Fortunately, Nyla was a stubborn lady, and nothing would sway her decision. There had to be someone.

And traveling further down the river, she thought perhaps she had finally found that someone, once a certain orange and blue b'alam came into view. He looked strong and swift, his paws darting after the fish in the stream. Brave too; no one would have caught her performing such a laboring task. Decided, she approached the male, stopping to stand mere feet from his right side. "Excuse me." And then, assuming he hadn't heard, and annoyed she hadn't received a response the second after she'd spoken, she came closer, peering around to get in his face. "Excuse me!"


Geyser Eelborn

 

[Geyser Eelborn]

Murchadh's response would have been difficult to transliterate even if he could write it out himself (which would be difficult, considering he didn't even know what writing was). "Mingenead" might have worked, though. In fact, let's go with that as a transliteration. It's about as good as we're going to get. Whatever it was he actually said, anyone would agree that his words had been fast, strangled, and loud as another B'alam shoved their face into his. In that instant, several things happened, all at once--or rather, in a sequence that was hard to follow without a high-speed camera. But if order were to be imposed upon his reaction, the order might go something like this (based on logic, narrative simplicity, and that ultimate of lies, statistics):

His claws slid out. His paw plunged into the water. A fish that had had the bad luck of not bringing a high-speed camera on the day's jaunt found the impenetrable barrier of a Garribaldi-orange paw blocking its path, the leg attached to that paw gave an involuntary jerk, and the fish flew high in a fantastic arc, into the air, and away from its ancestral home.

If this whole encounter had been in a romantic comedy or a romance novel, it might have ended with the fish, flopping pathetically, gasping its last, its jaw flailing as if to wail "HELP MEEEEE," landing at the feet of the fair lady as the rough-and-ready highlander (depicted in the movie adaptation as a ruggedly handsome man with inexplicably clean hair) gazing in rapt adoration at the vision of perfection before his eyes--love. At first sight. But this was, alas, not a chick flick, and instead the desperate trout hit Nyla directly in the face. Awkward. Unless, y'know. You were trying to do that, in which case, five points for home team and the Russian judge is very impressed? And to cap it all off, Murchadh, who would never admit to reading a romance novel if he a) knew what it was, or b) could even read (see above), snarled at the fish, "Aye, if tha's the way ye want it, Ah dinnae need brekkie a' all!"

Nice going, dunderheid.

L ii a t h

Someone needs to confiscate my collection of Terry Pratchett.

 

[L ii a t h]

Were Nyla more patient, respectful, or selfless, she might have foreseen an error in her ways, and thus, avoided the fishy assault. As it were, the B'alam beauty held little regard for anyone but herself, and this was merely the beginning of a long, fish-to-the-face existence.

The fish hit her square in the face with a squelching smack and in her short time here, Nyla was certain she had never and would never experience anything more revolting. The smell was everywhere; up her nose, in her eyes, on her tongue, embedded in her sleek fur...With an offended screech, she reared back, shaking her head violently, and batting the flopping, wet and slimy offender as far away as she could manage in one swipe. Spitting the taste from her mouth, she howled and growled, taking the expected reaction above and beyond. On pure reflex, she dipped her face toward the grass, but before she could make contact, her mind screamed DIRT!. Bad idea, mixing mud with fish germs. So instead, still screaming her rage, she turned and plunged her face into the water, remaining submerged until she felt her fur was sufficiently clean. Better to be soaked than covered in fish smell...But of course, now she was irritated with her wet fur.

Pulling her face out of the stream, she quickly shook her fur out and then turned her glare to the orange male. "What...What was THAT for?! You fool...URGH!" The fish wiggled across the ground at her feet, and in a fit of rage, she kicked it toward the male B'alam, more to further it's distance from her, than to attack him with it. "I did NOT deserve...Did you MEAN to hit me? The nerve!"


Geyser Eelborn
Sooooooo sorry for the wait! I've been ridiculously busy this semester.

 

[Geyser Eelborn]

It would seem that grace and gentility was on neither B'alam's schedule for the day. It didn't help that that day was just getting worse and worse. The fish that had started off the day as the top predator--or at least, a contender for the title of top predator--of its pond was now flopping pathetically on the ground after making an unsatisfying splatting noise as it hit the stranger in the face. Murchadh frowned at the offending fish and muttered a few choice words--none of them polite or even printable--at the stupid thing. As if it was the fish's fault that it had found itself the subject of a lively game of hot potato! But the flopping of the fish and the subsequent freak-out of its unhappy landing zone gave the orange highlander an opportunity to assess the situation and take stock of the stranger who had distracted him from his breakfast.

She was a nantlil, and a bonny one at that. It would appear that she intended to keep it that way as she hurriedly and angrily tried to clean her face. Oh, like it was his fault that she had been in range of his twitching muscle! She shouldn't have shoved her face into his, this was clearly her fault. But the look of irritation on her face as she pulled it, sopping wet, out of the stream, quickly put to rest any idea of telling her that. That...was not a good sign. Murchadh hadn't had much time to learn about nantlil and tahtll--he hadn't met very many B'alam in his short time since awakening--but the instincts woven into him told him that this was a bad time to tell a bonny lass that she should not have been so rude in the first place. Maybe it was the screaming. Or something. Eh. Either way...time to use diplomacy.

Not that Murchadh had anything even remotely resembling diplomacy. It just wasn't one of his strong points. He flinched from her shouting, and said in what he hoped was a soothing voice, "Nay, tha' was an accident. I didnae mean for ye to get smacked wi' a fesh. T'was just a twitch o' the paw." He settled his paw onto the fish's body and pressed his claws into it to still its pathetic flopping. Well. Looked like he was getting a fish breakfast after all! "Will ye be wantin' a bit o' the fesh?" No sooner had the words left his mouth than he realized that that had probably been a pretty spectacularly dumb thing to say. After all, she had just washed her face after just getting hit with the fish. Would someone who reacted so badly to breakfast while it was alive want anything to do with it once it had died.

Nope, not getting any better.

L ii a t h

It's cool! My semester's been pretty heavy as well. Lots of folks have given up on RPs with me, I've gone so long without replying to 'em!