milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Springs were always an interesting time in the Hallow Hills. Once, equinox had been the time of Pilgrimage, the slipping away of half-growns and a handful of warriors from the Vale across the Great Grass Plain to brave the wyvern territories for a night's vigil beside the sacred pool. With the Hills won back, spring had become instead a time of stories, of dances and of tales sung. Even among the Plainsdwellers, who had no desire to enter the Hills for the most part, felt that change in the air.

Jah-lila was often on the Plain in spring, bringing such tales of the Moondancers as the Free Folk of the Plain might best appreciate. Though she rarely spoke of it to any, she had become quite fond of what others saw as a kind of roving exile; one could not forever be the herd's midwife and wych, after all! With the last of the spring's foals dropped, she took leave of her daughter Tek and slipped away through the milkwood grove, thinking to stretch her legs with a long and proper run in search of some Plainsdweller band.

When she stepped through the last of the trees, the smell that came to her nostrils was not that of the Plain. She threw up her head and whistled in alarm. The wrong grass, the wrong beasts- she smelled daya right enough, and that meant-

Yes. There.

The two-legged race of her youth in the City of Fire.

Ears slanted back, horn lowered, she stepped out of the woods and looked warily about.

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Sheppard was outside, enjoying being a forest where he was fairly certain he could wander without putting his health at risk. He walked aimlessly, stopping when he saw movement. For a moment, he peered, trying to make out exactly what he saw.

...was that a horn?

Carefully, he began moving towards the unicorn, curious but not wanting to be gored, either.

A breeze from the direction of the water-smell caught Jah-lila's attention; her nostrils flared. She lifted her head, turning in that direction.

Hm. They've changed their garb much since last I sojourned among their kind. And this one carries no rope that I can see.

One hoof- rounded as a da's, not cloven as a born unicorn's would have been- pawed at the ground as she watched the two-footed creature picking his way through the trees..

Ow...ow...ow... Picking his way through brush and trees in a t-shirt after getting scratched and brusied the day before, Sheppard reflected, was not a good idea.

But curiousity was getting the better of him, and so he continued on. At least the animal wasn't running away. He stopped, fairly sure the unicorn could see him, and watched her for a moment. "Uh...nice unicorn?"

She tossed her head, black-green eyes widening in surprise. His words were no words of the two-foots who'd dwelled in the City of Fire- but she understood him nonetheless. "What sorcery is this?" she exclaimed in a low, startled tone. "Your own, or some other of this place?"

Holy shit, it talks!

He automatically stepped back. Then the realization hit him that he proabbly shouldn't be surprised, considering the aliens he'd met.

"Uh, no. I'm not a magician. This is Milliways-well, the bar back there is, anyway." He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb.

Jah-lila eyed him for several long moments before lifting her head to peer past him. "I see," she said, and some bitterness crept into her voice. "The outskirts of some two-foot city, no doubt? Though how your kind could have reached the Plain unnoticed I do not know..."

The bitterness couldn't help but make Sheppard a bit uneasy. That horn looked sharp. "No, it's just a bar. No cities-only one building." He glanced around. "I think it's been here for awhile, if that helps..."

She pawed the ground again. "And I suppose next you shall say that there are but a few of you here..." She sniffed at the wind. "Certainly but a few daya, at best. At least it seems you've learned to treat my former kin better."

Honesty, he figures, is the best policy when delaing with an animal armed with a pointy impliment and large hooves.

"No. Actually, there's a lot of humans in here." His head tilts slightly. "Daya?"

As it happened, the honesty was enough to ease her ears at least partway forward. "Creatures like myself," she says, "though without horn or coat this colour, and like as not speakers of no tongue you'd understand. In my youth your kind often used them to carry heavy burdens and haul great loads."

"You mean horses? I know there's at least one here-a girl named Lisa was riding it and ended up here." He frowned as he thought. "The name was...let me think...Prancer."

"Riding."

Jah-lila turned to look behind her, and saw no sign of the milkwood grove. It mattered little. She was thinking: had ever there been any in the City of Fire with nerve enough to throw a leg over the back of one of the daya? Bind them, yes, harness them, oh, yes- but ride?

"And this Prancer-" the word felt strange on her tongue- "she bears her rider willingly? Not through some force or trick?"

He shrugged. "She seemed fine with it-no bucking or rearing. And Lisa seems pretty fond of her."

Jah-lila flicked an ear, considering this. "I would see where these 'horses' are quartered," she says. "Tell me, though- before I come closer- do the dwellers of this place owe their allegiance to the chon, or to the daicha, of the City of Fire?"

He glanced around, frowning. "I don't know. There might be a stable or something, because I haven't seen any horses in the bar." The frown remained as he looked back to her. "I don't know what those are."

"No matter, then," said the mare. She heaved a sigh of relief. Not the two-foots of her youth- some other group, perhaps, and not so dangerous as those. Aye, Jan had brought a new way to the people of that city, but one never knew...

She lowered her head, bowing after the fashion of Jan's folk. "I am called Jah-lila," she said. "And I think I have come very far indeed from the lands I meant to roam."

He nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'm pretty far from where I'm supposed to be, too. A lot of people are. " Sheppard gestured to himself. "Lt. Colonel John Sheppard."

To one of her own folk- Plainsdweller or Moondancer, it mattered not- her look would have been clearly a blank one. Whether the two-foot recognized an expression of bewilderment on a unicorn was another matter.

There were far, far too many syllables to use. Perhaps it was his truename; the Plainsdwellers used them as freely as their use-names, and more oft than not the truenames were the longer. "And... what part of that ought I to call you by?" she asked.

Sheppard, alas, was not familiar with equine expressions. He shrugged at the question. "The 'Colonel' part is jsut for the people I work with, usually. It's a rank. My friends just call me John."

Jah-lila dipped her head, remembering it as the fashion of a two-foot's nod. "I see. John, then. Tell me more of this place, if you would?"

"Well...in taht direction-" he pointed- "There's the bar, like I said. I don't think it'd be comfortable for you, though. And there's a lake, I think there might be a stable or something, but I'm not sure." He paused. "I don't think you'd like it, anyway."

"You think rightly," Jah-lila said dryly. "But it is not that of which I speak. How I might have traveled so far between one stride and the next that the very trees I last passed are nowhere in sight, I do not know. Where is this place? What are its folk?"

Sheppard shrugged. "I don't know-the Bar just brings people here. The first time I came here, I had been walking down a hallway." He frowned again. "Most of the people here seeem to be human, but there's other things here, too. And not everybody's from the same universe. I've only met two people from mine here."

She cocked her head to one side. "'Universe'?" she echoed. "I do not think I know this word of yours; what does it mean?"

"Universe. Reality. What makes up whereever you come from."

"I see," Jah-lila said, though she did not entirely see. Perhaps it would come clearer later. "How far does this place go, then? I would know the limits of this land before I trespassed them."

"I don't know," he admitted. "What's out here and what you can see inside the bar is pretty damn different. And I haven't explored much out here."

(OOC: Er. *points downward* same thing, really. *sheepish grin*)

"Hm. Perhaps I shall have to do so."

(OOC: Ordinarily I'd love to continue this,b ut it's 2 AM where I am, and I'm losing coherency pretty fast. I'm terribly sorry.)

"I don't know how far it goes on for-or what's past, this, if anything. See, inside the bar, you can see the universe ending..."

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