nuue » Hibernal Den » Raesh

Raesh

(#20073325)

| hush, you have questions ; but we simply be |

Familiar

Gold-Throated Sparrow

Energy: 50/50

Personal Style

Apparel

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

4.45 m

Wingspan

3.69 m

Weight

351.79 kg

Genetics

Driftwood
Python

Marigold
Trail

Sanguine
Stained

Hatchday

Jan 12, 2016
(8 years)

Breed

Adult
Tundra

Eye Type

Nature
Common

Level 25 Tundra

Max Level

STR

105

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

none

Offspring

Biography

“Please, don't cry. I'm here for you.”
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raesh
_
the archaic
_
he / him

♫
»───────────›
I Will Be Here
♪
The Last Voyager
♪
The Firebird Suite
♪
Ori and the Blind Forest
♪
Heaven and Earth
‹───────────«

Whether you make him king or slave or friend, Raesh is and will forever be the same. He cares not at all for rallying others to him, or seeking approval, or heroic deeds. He is a fortress in times of distress, gentle and solid as the trees. Some think him childish, others soft and cowardly. To these he has no answer. Let them think what they will. Who is he to judge the truth?

He gravitates to the lonely and grieving, to trampled flowers by the wayside. Everyone is a friend to him, and he will stick by them through thick and thin. He will take any blow rather than dodge it, and make something beautiful out of his hurt. There is much he does not understand. But everything has a purpose. It must.

And likewise, he too has a purpose. From the unwavering certainty that he Is, Raesh draws all his strength to face the dark days. He is here to make Life beautiful and beloved. He is here to shelter the vulnerable, to spread his wings and let the claws hit him instead. When all is over, still he will reach out and pull you close.

It's all right, he will whisper, I am here. We are here.

To him, it is a marvelous thing to be alive. Sometimes, he wonders if he hasn’t lived a life before, but when he tries to recall, all he remembers are glimpses of roots shooting down through the earth, and water and light in the heavens. There’s a lot he doesn't understand, but his is a life of doing and loving. If it’s not for him to know — if all the slander is true — then so be it.

“Memories aren't ever forgotten. Just lost somewhere in our dreams, maybe never to be found again.”
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐

He woke from a world of dark earth and flowing water and shining green veins, and the first thing he knew was sadness. Not a grieving sorrow but a longing, aching for Something higher, something gone out of reach. For that is the fate of every tree – to know but not to learn, to see but not to grasp.

Yet this time it seemed he was different. He didn’t wake of his own will, oh no. She was there, calling him. The Keeper of trees. He rose out of a woody sleep and then – he changed. Shaking his mane, blinking at the green world, he left behind the leafy branches spread to the sky and roots clutching the soil, and the slow strong pull of water. And oh, his heart beat and his blood pulsed in his veins, and he was alive in a way he had never known before.

That was when the Now ended and became the Before.

***

Under the pale sky, a lone figure walked among the barren trees, his long tail whisking behind him. The snow clung to his legs and belly, gathering in clumps in his long fur. Somewhere in the silent forest, a bird called. He looked up and caught his breath. In the treetops, the red-green tips of budding leaves began to unfold.

He smiled.

That day, too, became the Before. The Now was him sprinting over the peaty earth, racing the brown wave at his heels that ate up everything in its path. Soaked and clumsy, he looked smaller with his drenched fur tight to his body. Shaking his forelock out of his eyes, he flung out his wings and rowed madly for the sky, but they were wet, waterlogged. He stepped on a lock of his own fur and tore it out as he ran with a sound like ripping cloth. The very earth betrayed him under his feet as the water caught up to him.

He risked a glimpse back and shouted in surprise. On the crest of the wave, a winged body came tumbling toward him. Flinging his fears away, he reached out and seized it.

A rock leapt up in his way. The ground hit his face and chest and the water hit him harder, and the world turned upside-down. He opened his mouth and screamed. The silty water roared down his throat, but he screamed again without any air.

I am going to die!

Then something else hit him, shattering his ribs. Out of instinct, he sank his claws into it, and by some miracle, he held on. Fighting the howl of the flood, he flung his arms and legs around it and held on like grim death. All at once his head burst through into the open. He was so stunned that it took him a moment to remember how to inhale air instead of water.

He had caught onto a mighty old tree whose roots went down deeper than the flood ever would. Draping the body over a branch, he waited for the world to come back in full color. When he could breathe again, he pulled himself up beside the creature and brushed away the mud.

She was so tiny, her delicate fins all tattered and ruined, her little wings torn by the water. Absence of life had left the eyelids open a crack, revealing a glint of green. He was so cold, so cold, and tired, but he dared not rest on the slippery branch. The sad little body dangled beside him, making his stomach turn. But try as he might, his eyes begged to close out the pain in his side and freezing toes.

A voice jolted him into wakefulness. Raesh! It thrummed deep in his aching chest. Raesh! The tree swayed, so violent that he opened his eyes and grabbed at the bark. The body whacked against the branch, making him wince.

You little fool, she’s not dead!

“Who’s talking?” he gasped. But he knew already. No spring breeze would shake a tree like this. The creature bounced on the branch again. He scooped her up and stared as she gagged up a lungful of water. The tree fell silent, but he could have sworn he heard it giggle.

And then the creature opened her eyes. They were wide and green and exhausted, and flickered as she shivered. The starkness of the despair in them sent chills down his spine. Raesh glanced around, helpless. Water. Mud. Trees. She would die in the cold. Clamping his jaws over her fragile body, he hauled them both up and up to a crook where he could sit and not fall. Then parting his soaked fur, he wrapped the little creature into a shaggy embrace. Using paws and wings to keep her out of the wind, he pressed her to his chest, letting her feel his heart. The new leaves rattled above his head. Beyond, there was only the sky.

***

The new Now had another breathing being at his side, when he slept and when he woke, when he dug through the ferns for the tenderest delicacies. He marveled that there was a someone in his world now, who spoke and moved like him.

“Who are you?” That was his first question when she woke, asked with a wondering gentleness.

“My name is Inu.” That was all she would say for a long while. And later, “Thank you.” They lived in silence, Inu weak and Raesh stiff with the pain from his broken ribs.

Much, much later, he asked another question. “Are you — are you a bird? Or a tree like me?”

She looked at him with a little laugh, made strange by her emotionless voice. “What are you talking about? I’m just a Fae. You’re a Tundra, not a tree.”

“No … I am. I was a tree, a long time ago. I can’t remember.”

“Trees are plants, and you’re not a plant if you can talk to me.”

“I’m sure of it,” he insisted, and she shook her head but said no more.

As she recovered, her color came back. Though her face and voice never betrayed what she was feeling, her round green eyes always told him. She was frank, but not unkind, even when she did not believe him. She sat on his back as soon as they were well enough to travel. Raesh did not mind wandering, but Inu wanted to settle down. She wanted a place to call home.

“You can leave me with any clan,” she suggested. “I won’t hold you back.”

“But not all clans are good clans. Some of them are cruel, and I couldn’t protect you if I left you alone.”

With the signature tilt of her head in mock-exasperation, she laughed. “I trust you to try, but I don’t need protecting.”

“It’s what friends do, right? Don’t friends protect each other?”

“Yes, Raesh. You’re a good friend, if a silly one.”

That reply put a skip in his step for the rest of the day.

For all their discussion, they never did find a clan to live in. Instead they found a tree. A massive, ancient banyan, reaching high into the heavens and pushing back the forest growth around it for half a mile around. Its hanging roots stood thick around its enormous trunk like a forest of their own, making hallways and corridors. Inu gaped at it. She had not known any tree could grow so big. Raesh did, though he could not remember exactly how. And together they stepped into the aboveground labyrinth of roots. In the center of it all they found the bole.

She gasped. “Look, Raesh, the tree is glowing.”

“It’s sunlight.”

“It must be hollow, and the sun is shining down through the cracks in the wood.”

When they had slipped inside they found a courtyard three dozen feet across and hundreds high, roofed by the sky. Their feet fell noiseless on a floor of wood and leaf litter. Looking up at the living tower, Raesh breathed in the smell of moist and mossy wood and made his decision aloud. “This is my home.”

“Here? In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by jungle for thousands of miles around?”

Raesh smiled. “Yes.”

They did not know that someone was watching them. The banyan was already a home.

If they had, they might not have stayed for so many months, watching seasons pass and letting Inu take new friends to their woody home. But this Someone was an old and lonesome creature, and it welcomed the long-lost sounds of laughter and singing.

Yet Raesh was not always happy. Inu seemed so different suddenly, joking and elbowing this collection of hunters and bandits, her eyes sharp and her tongue coarse. “Why don’t you sleep with me anymore, Inu? I’m lonely at night without you. Why don’t you curl up in my fur like you used to?”

There was the head-tilt again, but now her eyes were sad as well as amused. “Oh Raesh,” laughed the Fae. “It’s not the same anymore, as when it was just the two of us. I’m not a lover type, really. I don’t know what you did to me, but it’s not me.”

“If friends protect each other, why can’t friends keep each other warm?”

“If only, my silly, fluffy friend. But it doesn’t work like that.” That was the last conversation they had, curled together with her limbs tangled in his fur. Afterwards, she drifted further and further away from the lost creature he had saved. Her frank, laid-back friendliness never left her, but as her little band grew, she changed all the same. Around others who could not read her body language as well and could not tell when she was being dry and when she was sincere, she built walls around her until all that was left was the cool-headed comrade-in-arms with an eye like a hawk.

When he tried to give her a hug, she slipped away with a lighthearted laugh that broke his heart. “Find a mate if you have to, Raesh. You’re not young anymore — you never were. Even I could tell.”

“What’s a mate? Can you be my mate, so I can hug you again?”

“Oh, Raesh.” She pulled herself free from his embrace. “That’s not how it works at all. But I can be your friend still.” And she flew off, leaving the words still on his lips, unspoken.

But then — if they were unspoken perhaps they were never meant to be spoken. Some things were better left buried in the soil. So he let her go. Let her build her life. He would stand behind her every step of the way.

It was different. Above all, Inu looked happy, confident at the head of her rowdy band. When they shot down birds for sport, Raesh followed behind them, without a weapon or a spell in his hands, to bury the fallen animals. The dream was fading. He no longer heard the whispers of the trees, or the mother-tongue of the earth speaking to him in his waking moments. He missed the days travelling through the woods with Inu perched on his shoulders, singing songs from faraway places. But that was the Before. This newest Now was … strange, but not bad. It was good in its own way. Or so he tried to tell himself.

relationships
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Inu—Friend
»────────────────────────────────────────────›
I miss her.

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Inu—Changed
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I want to believe she's back ... but is she really?

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Phosphora—Colleague
»────────────────────────────────────────────›
It was time for them to move on. They weren't ever really satisfied with me, I think ... I wasn't good enough for them. I hope they're happy out there.

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Fractalae—Captain
»────────────────────────────────────────────›
It's time for me to move on as well. I wonder whose fault it was.

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art
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Idlewildly

Cerf

Aeimberdini

Front page 8 feb 17, FR time 13:22-13:23

Original colors: Red/Azure/Lavender
Scatter 1: Driftwood/Marigold/Sanguine (thank you Varekai)

Favorite Dragon Above You: 1
Steal a Gen One: 1

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