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Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - Printable Version

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

"I'm sorry about your father," Musa said, tail wrapping around them where they sat. "My mother is also dead." They were attempting to commiserate. Hopefully that came across. Of course, their mother had died something like 160 years ago, so it wasn't exactly new pain. Not that they knew how old Anita was. Age. That was a good question. But she was still talking, so they just listened, for now. Plus, this was very good information on humans. They were everywhere now. And by everywhere, they meant 'anywhere,' because prior to 20 years ago, they'd basically never had to deal with them at all except in very rare passing. Lynxes lived in the jungle. Humans did not, generally speaking.

"Fortunately, the humans here seem slightly better behaved. Perhaps because they're more used to it." They were naturally curious little buggers, of course, but Musa was the same way, so they couldn't really blame humans as a whole.

"Oh, oh, the human I work with, they do this!" They slapped their hand against their face in a human gesture of frustration, and dragged it down, rolling their eyes in the process. "The first time I saw it, I thought she was having some sort of fit," they giggled. "She stomps her foot, too, and swings her hands around, though I have no idea what she means by it. It's kind of cute. I guess they have to move around a bunch of random body parts since they don't have tails." They'd never stop being entertained by the exaggerated gestures, though. And lynx men seemed to manage to be a bit more contained despite their lack of 'furry outlets.'

"What is 'high school'?" they asked curiously, deciding to go back to some of the questions they'd developed during her entertaining ramble. "Is it an American thing?" They were familiar with the concepts of both high and school, but it couldn't be what they were imagining, surely. "And if you do not mind me asking, does being part human cause any..." They waved their hands vaguely. "Aging issues? I'm uncertain of how that works for them."

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

Anita shrugged her shoulders with the air of someone who didn’t seem to have much care for the fact that their father was dead. It wasn’t an unsympathetic gesture, she had just failed to remember to mention that her father had been mysteriously and suddenly brought back from the dead and thrust into her life once more. Once again, it was one of those things she just expected Musa to know, because she thought too highly of her own popularity. She did, however, have wits about her enough to offer a sympathetic frown to Musa. She reached out and pat their knee gently, but overall, seemed more content to continue rambling on about her American experience.

She was still working on processing negative emotions.

“My brother’s wife stomps her foot all the time,” Anita managed over giggles. “Everyone makes fun of her for it because I guess she’s done it since she was really young. Just stomp stomp stomp whenever something doesn’t go her way.”

She was giggling and thinking about her spoiled and sister in law when they started asking her more questions. She cocked her head, the tip of her tail curling and uncurling against the ground. “School is kind of a thing everywhere, I think?” She tilted her head and looked at them thoughtfully. They seemed to be unfamiliar however. “School is this awful thing that you have to go to everyday and they teach you stuff like math and science and whatever. Which I guess could be useful if it wasn’t so...boooring.” She rolled her eyes in a perfect half-circle and pulled at blade of grass.

“Yes, definitely,” she answered their question matter-of-fact. “Us half-breeds age pretty normally at first, but the whole,'immortal' thing is pretty fifty-fifty. Sometimes we live forever, sometimes we don’t. One of my dad’s friends can do, like, a test to figure out which end of the stick you got...something in your DNA, I guess. Who knows. I haven’t done it though. I guess I’ll figure it out when I start to go grey or something.” She forced a laugh.

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

The comforting pat was welcome, not because Musa was in any real need of comfort--it was a long time gone, after all--but just because such things were nice. As far as they could tell, civilization-people were much less... touchy... than Musa was used to. Absolutely no one wanted to cuddle, and if you wrapped your arms around someone in the bathhouse, they were alarmed.

"I have read about schools. It is like organized mass apprenticeship. We have something similar where I'm from; it is simply not called that. Is high school a... special kind of school?" Musa clarified, tilting their head. "Or is that simply what they call it in America? Why not call it America School instead?"

The age thing was more alarming than Musa had realized. Their tail flared out in surprise. "That's! Wow. That's, uh..." Their tail flicked awkwardly. They hadn't meant to bring up the subject of death so much, goodness. "So are you very young, then?" It didn't really matter; she was clearly fully growing. Age stopped mattering, basically, after you hit twenty or thirty. Although they were aware that wasn't the case for humans. Maybe society thought differently as well? It had never occurred to them to ask.

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

Anita’s hand didn’t linger on Musa knee. She was cuddly by nature, but she didn’t know them that well and she was thinking the same thing. Most people don’t do touchy.

“High school is, like, a level of school,” she elaborated. “There’s not just one school in America. There are, I dunno, thousands, probably. You’re in school for twelve years in America. The first six years are ‘elementary school’ the next three are ‘middle school’ and they last four are ‘high school.’ I left school in my tenth year.” She waved a hand as if none of it was important and she was tired of talking about it. “It’s different all over the world. It’s...dumb.”

Anita giggled at their awkwardness. Her tail mimicked the movements of theirs, unthinkingly. Partially because of the drugs and partially because she never really had an appropriate action for anything. She fished around in her bag until she found a half-crumpled pack of cigarettes. She lit one up with a black Zippo and leaned back against the banana tree. “I’m twenty,” she explains, flicking ash and blowing smoke. “Doesn’t really mean shit. Not old enough for anyone to take me seriously yet. How about you?”

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-16-2017

“My schooling,” for lack of a better term, “Lasted ten years, so that seems like a reasonable enough length of time to me,” said Musa. Twelve years was far from excessive; that seemed reasonable, although they supposed that to someone who only had one hundred years or so, it had to seem like an eternity. But then, it wasn’t as though life expectancy for feral lynxes was so very high. It was a dangerous sort of life.

Musa didn’t smoke–not those, anyway--but they eyed the cigarettes with mild interest until they realized it was just tobacco. They were of the opinion there were more interesting things to be smoking at any given time. “I am...” Musa paused, as if doing math in their head. “One hundred and seventy...ish? But I have only been here for twenty years,” they clarified. “Perhaps this is why people do not take me seriously yet, either.” As a general rule, they did not. They got taken for a girl, most places, and had taken to encouraging that with hats because there were more people here, and most of them had not met a person like Musa, and they were roughly as understanding as small children had been when Musa was very young. They hadn’t dealt with issues about their sex for well over a century, so it had been an unpleasant sort of surprise.

“Do you have a job, now?” Musa asked curiously, tail flicking behind them. They were very interested in jobs, as a whole and as a concept. “I have been at this one for a while. I have gotten the hang of the work, but the rest is still somewhat alien.”

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 05-18-2017

“Holy shit,” Anita said while laughing. “I never would have pegged you for over one hundred.” She said this as if it were easy to tell. Which it wasn’t, for lynxes. What she had based this assumption on was unclear. Maybe it was the way they sort of behaved as if they were closer to her age. Her age being that age that you sat under banana trees in the middle of the night and got high. Which was a very inaccurate system, since literally anyone could and possibly would do that. “Here, here?” She gestured to the banana farm. “Or like, here,” she lifted her hand higher and waved it above her head to indicate the whole island.

She sighed heavily, her breath a cloud of smoke. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been on a banana farm for twenty years.” The thought seemed to depress her.

Anita still hadn’t quite figured out that Musa didn’t know who she was. She just figured the strange line of questioning was a polite curiosity. Also, they seemed pretty chill to be hanging out with a trespassing stranger, if they didn’t know she was a princess. It was possible that her overall demeanor made it difficult to believe she was a princess. She snorted another laugh. “No, I don’t have a job. I’ve never had a job. I’m the big disappointment of the family.”

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-18-2017

“Do I seem very young at heart?” Musa asked with a shit-eating grin. They had been hearing this since they made the decision to leave the jungle and join civilization at large. They weren’t sure what one hundred and fifty years of civilization-ing did to a person, but they had to assume it made them very dour and sullen and boring. Musa had actually been considered kind of a calm, rational, sometimes even boring individual back home, so it was equal parts amusing and worrying. Hopefully they could exist in civilization without catching whatever it was that made the elderly seem so, uh... elderly, they supposed.

“Both,” Musa said apologetically, because she’d said not to tell her. They weren’t exactly sure what she was indicating with the second here, but they suspected she meant civilization at large. Or perhaps the country. In either case, the answers to all those things was “about twenty years.”

“I have, in fact, been on a banana farm for twenty years. This specific banana farm,” they clarified. “There is food and lodging included, which is good because my first job did not include those things and it was extremely confusing. It has been very useful for helping to adjust to life here. And also, I am very knowledgeable about bananas now,” they added proudly. They hadn’t felt particularly called to the banana life, but after a few weeks, had become very fond of it. After twenty years, they were practically a banana baron. Except in any way that mattered, because they were actually an undocumented ex-feral worker who didn’t know you were supposed to get raises.

Musa didn’t quite understand the disappointment in not having a job, but then, they didn’t really understand exactly the whole concept of jobs other than as a sort of at-will clan-joining combined with a services-for-goods trade. It was a bit overly complicated, in their opinion, but whatever worked. Who were they to judge civilization, or whatever. Either way, it seemed to be a negative thing, so they gave Anita a comforting pat on the shoulder that mirrored the knee-pat she’d given them earlier. This much contact was clearly okay. “You are only twenty,” Musa informed them. “Where I am from, we don’t take on full responsibilities until thirty. And besides...” They waved their hand vaguely at the farm. “If you are doing fine without a job, it seems it would be much, much easier to go without.”

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 05-21-2017

“I’ve sort of already pegged you as being a lot like me,” Anita explained. It still remained that the only evidence that supported this was the aforementioned blunt-sharing, which was still a terrible standard, but Anita was rolling with it. She was sure she would reveal other Anita-like qualities in Musa with more careful prodding.

As Musa spoke on living and working on the banana farm (for twenty years) Anita started shoving items she had skewed around her relaxation space back into her bag. She was suddenly very determined to take them off of the banana farm. It may have been the weed, but she was immediately sure that this was her purpose. That her whole existence was led to this moment where she saved a poor banana farmer, from a banana farm. Yes, of course, that made perfect sense. “Bananas are great,” she said, pushing herself into a standing position and brushing dirt and grass away from her cut off shorts. “But I have a better idea.”

For a moment, her posture read heroic: feet apart, hands on her hips, glassy and elated gazed poised upwards towards the starry sky. She had plan, if it could be called that. She had a loose and vague string of ideas that could have been a plan in a sober mind. “Among the humans I’m already twenty,” she countered. Anita took a step away from Musa, it was large and dramatic and indicative of the idea that they should follow her. “I probably wouldn’t look so bad for being so useless if I didn’t have super smart brothers that made something of themselves.” Months later and Cain’s harsh words still echoed in her mind.

“Hope you’re off-duty, because we’re gonna ditch this banana stand.”

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-21-2017

“That seems like high praise,” Musa said with a grin and absolutely no evidence to back up that claim, considering all they knew about Anita was that she was twenty years old and smoked weed on banana farms. And also had dropped out of high school and was unemployed, but those sorts of things were largely meaningless to them.

They watched with idle interest as she began shoving things back into her bag, not quite connecting the act with the fact she was intending to go somewhere, let alone with them. Not that they objected once they realized, although arguably they should have. Instead, they stood as well, looking curious and mildly enthusiastic. “Technically I am on-duty,” Musa admitted, but they didn’t really consider this to be a limiting factor. This was not guarding the children’s camp at night. This was not an important thing, that they were doing. They could most certainly be excused to go do something interesting instead. “But I am much more interested in your better idea.” It wasn’t that they didn’t like bananas; they did. Bananas were great. But new things were better, especially when they came packaged with marijuana and a cute girl.

So of course Musa followed. It was the only correct choice. They didn’t know what to say about her harsh terminology towards herself. It didn’t seem particularly accurate, in Musa’s opinion, but it also sounded like something with history. Family business, which was always ugly in the jungle and probably just as ugly here. A dead father and over-achieving brothers was something that rang true anywhere in the world, and Musa didn’t know enough to get involved, other than as a convenient distraction. “Are we looking for new and interesting places to get high?” they asked curiously. Perhaps a rooftop would be a thing after all. Or something else entirely. The possibilities were wide open. They had a whole island full of strange things to explore, after all.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 05-26-2017

Anita was already moving forward before Musa explained that they were completely willing to shirk their duties in favor of whatever she had in mind. “Oh, it’s high alright,” she said with a grin, rounding back to a previous conversation because she didn’t want to bum herself out by talking about stupid family shit. She’d save that for later, but for now she was going to ride her high and then get much higher in every sense of the word.

“Cuz I’m totes awesome, and worldly, and fun and shit.” Anyone not living inside her head would probably be lost in the way she quickly changed tones. Harping on herself one minute and then showering herself in compliment the next. Anita conversed somewhat blindly, just saying whatever popped into her head. It was sort of the same way she led Musa away from the banana farm and towards a stretch of forest that she intended to pass through as a short cut.

It would have been wise to question her navigational skills at some point, but perhaps, for Anita, getting lost was part of the adventure.

“I wouldn’t call it new,” she explained, as she switched footing to maintain a sharp right turn. “But it’s def interesting.” Or at least it would be to someone who wasn’t a member of the royal family. Actually, fuck it, it was just interesting.

The spires of Leighton castle could be made out in the moonlight towering above the trees as Anita directed them closer to it. As main residence of the Darkwillow house on the isles, the queen herself was known to live there. Obviously, this did not at all sway Anita’s approach.

“Ever gotten high in a castle tower before?” She wiggled her eyebrows in a manner that was meant to be tempting.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 05-27-2017

Musa nodded in sage agreement. They didn't have any reason to doubt that Anita was, in fact, "totes awesome and wordly and fun and shit." They were willing to take her at her word. She almost had to be more wordly than Musa, despite their respective ages. One hundred and fifty years in a jungle and then twenty years on a banana farm made you a lot of things, but worldly probably wasn't one of them. Musa wondered, idly, if there was a way a person could attend school at an "elementary" level despite being one hundred and seventy. They had no real way of knowing how to even begin to look into it, though.

One of the things Anita was not, however, was good at navigating through forests. Even high, Musa could have gotten them through in a third of the time, but they were having a good time meandering through the forest with her, so they kept their mouth shut about it.

It was a testament to Musa's relative idiocy re: society, that they didn't immediately recognize the castle when the spires came into view. It was a castle. They had been told the queen's castle was nearby. These two facts did not quiet connect in their head right away.

"A castle?" Musa asked, blinking in surprise and peering up at the spires towering over the treeline. "No, I can't say that I have! We don't have anything like that where I'm from. Just very large trees." Very large trees. But still not comparable. "I see you are taking my promise to climb things for you very seriously," they added with a chuckle. Which was good, because they'd made it in seriousness. Climbing things for pretty girls was an ancient tradition, and doing it on something tall and new as a castle spire seemed like an auspicious start to a new era of living in civilization, or whatever. "Are there guards?" they asked, wracking their mind for what little they had heard of castles. "Will we need to sneak in?"

The idea of guards meaning they shouldn't go in at all did not appear to occur to Musa in the slightest.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - megs - 07-29-2018

It had been far too long since Anita hadn't been recognized. It was more common when she was abroad, but it was damn near impossible for her to fly under the radar in the isles. She was absolutely giddy with the possibilities stretched out before her. "Oh, we're definitely going to have to sneak in." But that was only because she had had to sneak out. She sounded very excited about it.

Anita was, for lack of a better word, grounded. She had gotten into a bit of trouble back in the states before her parents had made her come home. Clearly, staying out of trouble wasn't really on her agenda.

"Come on," the secret-princess urged with a nod of her head. "There's a clearing in the bushes over here, that leads to a trellis." She knew because she had forged this path herself for more convenient escapes. "The guard patrols are pretty obvious," she explained. She pulled her phone out to check the time. "We should be all clear." She turned on her heel and trotted off in the opposite direction, expecting her newfound friend to follow.

RE: Apeelingly Bad Decisions [Closed] - SolitareLee - 09-02-2018

Musa nodded again, beginning to grin. They had certainly never snuck into a castle past guards before, but it sounded like the exact kind of new experience they'd been hoping for. Well. Maybe not exactly, but the whole point of new was that you wouldn't have thought of it before!

They had no clear idea what a trellis was, but they followed her nonetheless, keeping a low profile and staying close. They kept an eye out for guards, of the opinion that were they spotted, they'd probably have to fight off the guards or help her make a run for it. Not that they didn't think she could handle herself, or anything, it just seemed like the thing to do. There was no point in wandering off with a cute girl if you weren't willing to fight off some large and imposing wild animal for her. No wild animals here, most likely, but a guard would work in a pinch.

A 'trellis' as it turned out, was basically just a ladder. Musa eyed it approvingly. "They must enjoy climbing their walls! I have never seen a building with a climbing section before, but I approve. It looks much easier than climbing the masonry, and is a fun and creative way of entering a building." They had thought everyone just used doors. This was much better; when they had a house they would definitely use this 'trellis' as an entry method.