Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed]

Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - Printable Version

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Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-05-2017

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-05-2017

Musa was on night guard duty. Again.

It wasn't the best job, especially if you had a shift the next day, but it was a cool night despite the blistering summer heat, with a nice breeze. There were worse ways to spend a night, really. It's not like anyone ever actually broke onto a banana farm. Kids, out for a good time and to steal a couple of bananas. Sometimes. Hardly ever anything else. Twice, Musa had come across wildlife.

But they were big, and strong, and good at being a guard. The owner of the farm had long since figured out their idiosyncrasies, although they now wore a hat to help cover them up.

They meandered idly, most of the way to bored, when a whiff of something weird hit their nose, carried by the cooling summer breeze.

That was definitely not bananas, or anything even adjacently related to bananas. It was bitter, and thick, and a little familiar. Curious, and also doing their job, Musa broke route to track the scent down. It was a welcome and entertaining diversion, and they enjoyed the sensation of tracking something down by scent, even if it was... this.

What they wound up finding was both exactly what they expected and not at all. A woman, young looking, though that was hardly telling, with light brown skin and dark hair... sitting at the base of a banana tree, leaning against it. In one hand, a banana, not quite ripe and half eaten. In the other hand, the source of the smell, a rolled up little blunt of something Musa hadn't seen in twenty years. They had assumed that people here just didn't have it. It was a bit bemusing, to see it now, in the well-manicured hands of a trespasser.

Even more interestingly, she didn't appear to have ears either, though she did sport a long silver tail that mirrored Musa's dusty yellow-brown one, which flicked idly behind them, betraying that their mood was curiosity and not irritation.

They cleared their throat to draw attention, since the woman seemed, ah... distracted, and squatted down to be more on level with her. "Why are you getting high on a banana farm?" they asked, face neutral.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 05-06-2017

To be precise, Anita didn’t know what she was doing on a banana farm. She had been stoned when she had stumbled upon it, since her indulgences led her to wandering, and she had only proceeded to get more stoned since finding a large leafy tree to sit under. So, when a stranger appeared asking her about her current life choices, it was safe to say that she didn’t have an answer.

Throat clearing had the desired effect of drawing her attention. She didn’t turn her head, but dual-colored eyes rolled behind dark sunglasses and upwards to the source of the noise. She assumed it was a person, given that they had spoken to her. Gaze followed the person-shaped outline that dropped to her level. The time of night did not at all warrant the use of the over-sized shades, but very rarely did Anita wear them for their intended purpose.

Upon being questioned, her mouth remained a red-painted line across the bottom half of her face, but her eyes narrowed behind the lenses. “Are there better places to get high?” she asked, and she hid the smug curl at the corner of her mouth behind her hand as she brought the paper to her mouth for another hit. She inhaled deeply, and the held the breath for a few moments. She didn’t seem at all concerned at being caught trespassing. Anita blew a thick cloud of smoke in her company’s directions, perhaps to be rude, but mostly because she was careless. Dropping the half-eaten banana onto the ground, she pushed her sunglasses into her dark curls, so she could see them.

“Or is that just a polite way of asking me to leave?”

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-06-2017

The puff of smoke made Musa's nose twitch. It wasn't exactly a pleasant smell, but it had been twenty years. It was making them all nostalgic, for lazy summer nights just like this one, but far away from anything so quaint and orderly as banana farm.

They should probably just ask her to leave.

But she wasn't actually doing any harm, just loitering about. Musa stole more bananas than this on a daily basis. It was only the principle of the thing, and Musa barely goddamn understood that concept at all. The closest they could think of was 'making an example' out of someone, but that seemed largely unnecessary for something so simple as defending bananas.

Also, she was cute, and had drugs.

"I was curious," they replied honestly, tail flicking behind them. "There are, in fact, much better places to get high. On cliffs overseeing the ocean as the sun sets. In a field of fireflies at dusk. In a cave full of mushrooms that light themselves in a rainbow of colors when you extinguish your lantern. By a waterfall pool with friends. On the roof of a tall building, I suspect, though I've never had the opportunity to try." They grinned slightly. "Though I suppose if one is stuck in organized civilization, a banana farm might be the best to be achieved under the circumstances."

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 05-06-2017

Anita hadn’t expected her smart-assed reply to be countered with actual suggestions of better places to smoke a joint. Her tail flickered, amused, near her arm as she listened to them rattle off a number of places, that did indeed sound like a A+ choices. In general and especially when compared to a banana farm. Was this really a banana farm, she wondered. She sat up slightly and looked around. Her eyes caught traces of moonlight and reflected it back in a familiar feline glow. Yup, she was surrounded by rows and rows of broad-leaved trees, heavy with the bearing of fruit. She hummed, because she had honestly thought she’d just happened to find the one banana tree in an otherwise uneventful forest.

She leaned back against the tree again, and almost looked like she was settling in. Half-grinning, and half-lidded. Like they were telling her some kind of story and she was just along for the ride. “Never had the opportunity, huh?” She smirked at them. Her eyes widened enough to make a perfect semi-circle that portrayed her disbelief.

After another long hit, Anita leaned forward suddenly and thrust the joint in their direction. “There’s a first time for everything, right?” Her brows lifted towards her hairline, and she wiggled the joint at them, in a manner that was meant to be tempting. She was not good a peer pressure.

Or introductions.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-06-2017

Musa considered the proffered joint carefully. Well. As carefully as Musa ever considered anything. On one hand, they were supposed to being doing a job. On the other hand, marijuana. Also: girl.

Really, they'd been doing "job" for 20 years, now it was time to try "smoking under a banana tree with a stranger" on for size. This was supposed to be about learning new things and alternate ways of living, after all. This was certainly one of those. There could be a part of this civilization dedicated to the imbibing of drugs in strange locations, for all they knew. They'd never find out without poking around.

They plopped down onto the ground, crossed their legs, and accepted the joint. "Yes," they said sagely. "And I am supposed to be broadening my horizons." They took a careful hit; it smelled like ordinary marijuana, but one never knew. They could have a completely different kind here. But the taste was familiar in the back of their throat, and their exhale was a contented sigh.

"It has been twenty years since I last tasted this," they informed the woman. "I was beginning to think society had simply never discovered it, somehow." They took another hit, a bit longer, before handing it back. "Do they have farms for it, like this one?" They asked, gesturing around at the bananas. "Perhaps I should seek an alternate form of 'employment'."

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 05-07-2017

Anita grinned, almost victorious when they dropped into a more comfortable position and accepted her peace offering. She tilted her head enough to cause her sunglasses to drop back down to the bridge of her nose. She had gotten a good enough look at their face, and it was time to hide again. “Well, allow me to be your guide on the extraordinary journey of horizon broadening.” An amused noise sounded in her throat, her phone chimed from where it rested on her stomach, but she ignored it. She spoke as if she was more than a 20-year-old high school dropout drifter, who had very recently been forced to move back in with her parents.

“First time for everything, huh?” She was too amused to sound accusatory. “I can’t believe I let you trick me out of my weed.” She huffed with faux indignation and finally picked up her phone. The tip of her tail tapped a gentle rhythm against the ground. The screen lit up of her face as she red and quickly replied to a message and dropped the device back down. “Oh we’ve discovered it,” she replied, even though she wasn’t quite sure what they meant by ‘society.’ “And then we went and did some real weird shit with it. Science always fuckin’ with everything, you know?” She laughed and took the joint back from them.

“All the weed farms are on Macrilan,” it was an explanation and also a complaint. “But it’s not like it’s hard to get.” For a princess, she didn’t say, because she made the bad habit of just assuming everyone knew who she was.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-07-2017

This woman was perhaps too stoned to be guiding anyone anywhere, but if Musa was just as stoned, then it seemed like it would be much more reasonable. Bad decisions were better made with a head full of smoke, because then anyone could have made them.

"If it will make you feel better, perhaps later we can find a tall building to climb," Musa suggested. They were not at all worried about their ability to climb tall buildings, both in general and while high. "Then it can be a proper first time."

They were starting to feel it a bit now, the first tentative waves of tingling hitting their brain. They flopped their back down against the ground, a motion which, of course, squashed the heck out of their sun hat. They leaned up enough to take it off with a frustrated noise. It wasn't as if it mattered--this person didn't have ears either. Clearly it was more common than they'd been informed.

"Yes, science is!" Musa replied, a bit more enthusiastically than was perhaps warranted. "Like these very banana trees, for instance. They are nothing like the ones back home, which are full of seeds and frankly terrible for eating. But your scientists and farmers bred the seeds out of them, and made the fruit much larger! And now..." They rolled up onto their feet in one smooth motion, and yanked a somewhat-riper banana from the tree, then immediately plopped right back down. "A delicious, soft, seedless treat! A testament to how much society can change a thing." They were definitely feeling the weed now, and peeled the banana so they could take a bite. Mmm. Twenty years, and still delicious.

"Macrilan," they repeated thoughtfully. It was something to consider. But they would probably have to finish figuring out money, first.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 05-07-2017

“I’ve got a tall building you can climb,” Anita replied, suggestively and automatically and with a snort of laughter. It quickly dissolved into actual and prolonged laughter at her stupid, and dirty joke. “Sounds like a great first time to me,” she continued when she was finished laughing. Clearly stuck on a tangent of inappropriate witticisms.

At some point, Anita had drifted out of the conversation. It was possible she had dozed off, she could never be sure when she had been smoking. And she had been smoking for...most of the day. She snapped back the moment with a sort of jolt, just as they rose from the ground to pull at bananas that hung just above her head. Her eyes narrowed behind her glasses. Science...they were talking about science...and bananas. She snuffed out the joint on the ground and rooted around in her bag and pulled out a metal cigarillo case. She tucked the roach inside of it before snapping it closed and hiding it away again.

Anita tried to recall important parts of the conversation that she had mostly missed, because she was very high and terribly rude. “Where...are you from exactly?”

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-07-2017

It took Musa far longer than it should have to recognize the innuendo for what it was. It wasn't that they were unfamiliar with the concept, it was just that, so far as they could tell, the metaphors and slang terms differed from what they had grown up with. It made flirting a challenge. But that didn't mean they wouldn't try.

"I'm certain I would at least try to climb anything you asked me to," they said with a lopsided grin. It worked as a metaphor, if metaphor it was, and as an honest statement, because they were very good at climbing, and 'climbing very tall thing while high to impress a girl' was an ancient tradition.

They were totally unaware that the woman had sort of drowsed off a bit while they were speaking, because they got easily excited about bananas and bananas as a metaphor for how different things were in an organized and rigid society as opposed to growing naturally and wildly out in the jungle. And also, easily distracted when high, which they were, a little.

"I'm from the jungle," Musa replied amicably, gesturing vaguely out towards where farm gave way to trees, though in truth she wasn't actually from anywhere near here precisely. But after twenty years, she'd found a vague answer worked best. "Though I suppose now I am from this farm, but that is recent. What about you?" They tilted their head to the side. "Are you from here? I have been studying geography." This was mostly meant to assure the woman that they might be at least passingly familiar with any region they may or may not be from. At least, if it was nearby.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 05-11-2017

Anita wiggled her brows at they played along with her ridiculous joke. She didn’t know if the gesture could be seen from behind her large sunglasses, but she didn’t much care either. All she cared about was the fact that they had offered to climb something for her and that was more than enough to catch her attention. Anita was fond of things that did other things for her attention. In short, she was fond of attention in general. A ruthlessly needy child, who’d recently begun to feel neglected at home. Not because she actually was, but because her main source of it (her father) had found himself more entertained with her younger brother.

“The jungle?” Anita repeated in a monotone, leaning forward to follow the direction in which the gestured. “So, not from around here,” she mused, rather than asked for clarification. She was taking their statement literally. Eryra, where the currently were was mostly comprised of deciduous forest. She mulled over the other islands in her head. Macrilan was a chaparral, Laine was a taiga; which left Dakannore as the only actual jungle. Anita briefly considered that maybe they were being facetious and using ‘jungle’ to indicate something close to transience. Were they feral? She was suddenly very interested. “I am Veridian, but I was born in Colorado,” she replied. “It’s in the United States. North America, like halfway across the world. Well, technically, I am half Veridian. My mother is a lynx and my father is human.” Her tail suddenly appeared in her vision, to emphasize the fact that she was a half-breed.

“What’s your name by the way?”

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-11-2017

"No, I suppose not," Musa agreed, although in reality they weren't sure how far from home they were in the grand scheme of things. They'd wandered for a while. Boats had been involved. They had a very loose grasp of geography and wasn't one hundred percent sure where on a map they had started, exactly.

Frankly, they were more interested in the girl and her history than going into the details of their own. They already knew their own history. She was more interesting by default, and also specifically, being something very new and outside their realm of experience thus far. "Colorado... Oh! I have heard of the United States!" they said enthusiastically. They even owned a few things made there, in fact, though most of their scant possessions had been made in China, one of the few other countries Musa knew more about than their location on a globe, or locally here on one of the islands. "Is it much different there, in the United States? Is Colorado different than other places? It seems rather large."

Musa blinked tilting their head curiously. They had heard, at some point, probably when they were much younger, than humans and lynxes could interbreed, but to their knowledge, had never seen the result. She looked perfectly normal; she had a tail and everything. Oh... but no ears. Well, they didn't have ears either, and they were purebred lynx. It could have been totally unrelated; they didn't want to be presumptuous. Though they were very curious, they very well understood those were questions of a personal nature. They got annoyed enough at fielding probing questions about their own 'unusual' nature.

"I'm called Musa," they replied, remembering last minute that they'd decided to stop appending 'now' to the end of that statement, to make them sound less foreign. "What about you? What is your name?" they asked curiously. "And would you object to additional questions? I will confess to a great deal of interest."

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 05-12-2017

Anita laughed at their enthusiasm and pushed herself up into a sitting position. It was the least she could do, to seem actually interested in their conversation. They were excitable, and being nice to her, and she wanted to encourage the attention they were willing to give her. She crossed her legs and set her phone to the side even though it chimed in her hand. She could be polite when she wanted to.

“Colorado and the states are much different,” she confirmed, lifting a hand to run it through her hair. Or she tried anyway, forgetting that she hadn’t bothered to straighten it that morning and her numerous rings got caught on her curls. She wiggled her hand and pulled herself free with a wince that was only visible around her mouth. “Everything is much more...chill here,” she had faltered, unsure of whether her meaning was getting across to them. “Americans are all keyed up about everything and anything all the time. It’s like something is always going wrong over there.” Anita shrugged the rest off, not knowing enough about the landmasses to express whether one was larger than the other. “I mean, Colorado is pretty small compared to other states, but I guess the country as a whole is pretty huge.”

She pulled the sunglasses off as they questioned her further, now that she was having to focus on something, the added darkness was straining her eyes and giving her a headache. “Oh, I’m Anita. Anita Hart.” There was something smug in the way she said it. Usually her name was enough to impress people without having to tack ‘princess’ on at the beginning. Her tail twitched. “I mean I guess you can ask me more questions if you want.” As far as she was aware her life was an open book to anyone that bothered to use the internet. She didn't see what they could want to know.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-12-2017

Musa nodded sagely. That made sense. They had heard that any number of ridiculous things were illegal there, and in other places in the world. Their knowledge was fragmented, derided mostly from magazines articles--the farm owners received farming magazines and The National Geographic, old ones of which they were often willing to let Musa read. Their knowledge was mostly focused on obscure cultures, miscellaneous animals, and farming equipment. And of course, everything they'd learned in 150 years in the wild, but that was sometimes more hindrance than help.

"My knowledge of the United States is very limited," they informed her. "But it seems like a very tense place that is uncertain as to what to do with the sheer size of its populace." That was probably because they'd read an article about how many people were hungry over there, which seemed somewhere between reasonable and silly. They had a lot of people, so it might be hard to keep everyone fed, but also, they had so much land, so it seemed like producing enough food shouldn't be an issue. They hadn't thought much of it, since it was outside the scope of what mattered to them.

"Anita Hart," she repeated happily, as if trying it on for size. "That is a very pretty name." They ran their limited etiquette knowledge through their mind before giving up and settling on her first name. "Anita, is your father from the United States, then? Are there many fewer lynxes there? Do they react strangely to tails? There is a human woman who works on the farm here, and the lack of tail threw me for the first three years. I still have trouble understanding what she's feeling," they admitted. "I've been told some women have similar problems with me, due to my lack of ears." They gestured vaguely towards their head. It made them come across as more stoic, apparently, or more masculine, to those concerned with such things. They seemed to use the terms interchangeably, frankly.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 05-15-2017

“My knowledge of the United States is pretty limited, too,” Anita replied with a snort of a giggle before she pawed at her face with the annoyance of an old house cat. She wrinkled her nose and rubbed at it with her fingers. She opened her eyes and blinked a few times, before smiling wide at them. “I lived there my whole life, but I’m not really the brightest,” she joked. “I dropped out of high school when my dad died. Seen a lot of stuff. Didn’t learn anything.”

Her tail swayed, very pleased to have been told her name was pretty. She had always appreciated her name. She didn’t realize that her company still didn’t recognize her as the princess. She looked like a cat with cream, lapping up the attention that was being showered upon her. It didn’t take long, given Musa’s line of questioning, That however, did not dissuade her from from pleasure. “My father is Eskran, but as far as I know he lived in the United States almost his whole life. There are many, many, fewer lynxes. In Colorado, sometimes, it seemed like my family were the only ones. American react strangely to...everything. Especially tails, and especially ears. And they do not hesitate to touch them. It’s the worst. They do not understand personal space.”

Anita was rambling now, but she didn’t seem to notice. She loved complaining about American’s even if she was one on paper, and the smoke only made her more talkative. “When you grow up around humans you learn all the weird things they do with their faces and their hands.” She giggled, as something occurred to her. “Like my dad, when he gets frustrated, especially with my mom, he throws up his hands like this:” Anita mimicked the way Owen would through his hands up into the air and dropped them back down on to her bare thighs with an audible slap.

She nodded when they gestured to their own head, a lack of ears was the first thing she had noticed when she’d made not of their tail. She had quickly just assumed that they were a half-breed, like her. “I don’t think humans like to be understood,” she mused. “They keep everything all inside and just wait for it to explode. I think they would be much better off if they had furry outlets for those emotions.”