|
Post by dandan on Feb 15, 2007 21:19:10 GMT -5
Dan-dan slowed the spinning of his oar and the skiff began to decrease in speed to allow better handling in the narrow waterway. His arms were beginning to feel the fatigue of constant bending and he welcomed the shift in pace. Kulap steered them carefully down the narrow waterway which seemed no more than knee deep in places. More than once, Dan-dan had to use his bending to slice through a raised vine that blocked their path with a water whip.
After 50 or so yards,the creek seemed to come to an abrupt end as it all but disappeared into a gently sloped rise in the ground. "I think we're gonna be makin' the next leg on foot," Dan-dan commented as the skiff ran aground on the bank. He stepped out and pulled the craft onto the soil to keep it from drifting away.
With a quick check to make sure his waterskin was full and his traveling bag was filled with enough food to last them a while, he stood at the ready with his oar and looked at Kulap. "You notice it got real quiet in the last fe minutes?" he asked, leading her gaze into the dense, surrounding woods.
|
|
|
Post by choji on Feb 15, 2007 21:54:40 GMT -5
Butchie wined. He did not like this place. He sat in the skift and gave his mistress a look that read you're crazy right? Kulap got out and shook her head. "Butchie is thinking on the same lines as me. I gots a bad vibe, this place is very dark." She got her staff and began to walk into the dark swamp her feet squished in the mud as she walked through the dense forest. She water whipped a vine and continued to walk.
"This place gives me the ooglies. It wreeks of bad chi....but we aren't that far." She took an apple out and munched on it as she walked over a lychen covered rock. Kulap's keen eyes looked around the area carefully as she continued to walk, "It's too quite I don't hear anything. No bugs no birds nothing." Kulap felt sick....this wasn't right until she felt a strong surge of engery. "Dan! I feel something coming and its's pretty nasty. We need to get out of here fast, like-" Kulap's eyes widen and let out a gut wrentching scream.
|
|
|
Post by dandan on Feb 16, 2007 12:30:01 GMT -5
The moment Kulap had started to raise her tone in alarm, Dan-dan's hand had already gone to his waterskin. He settled into a ready stance, his knees bent and feet set wide, his oar brought off his shoulder, and his left hand guiding a stream of water into his palm with his bending. His wife hadn't even finished declaring the need to leave when the trees around them seemed to groan in anger. Dan-dan's heart beat faster as he swivelled his gaze around to determine the source of the disturbance, but it wasn't until a small piece of a tree branch fell onto his shoulder and he heard Kulap scream did he think to look upward.
As his eyes shifted overhead, the first thing that came to view was what appeared to be a massive vine hanging between several of the trees around them. However, after a moment's observation he realized that the silhouette against the canopy was no piece of vegetation. It was grey-green in color and seemed to have a bit of a shine to it, like scales. It was also nearly four feet thick in some places, and most notably, it was Alive!
"What the..." Dan-dan muttered, almost completely dumbfounded by the sight above him. He searched along the canopy for the end of this monster and eventually spotted a serpentine head swiftly lowering itself down behind the pair of swamp-dwellers, positioning itself between them and their skiff. It must have easily been over a hundred feet long. Dan-dan found himself almost unable to take his gaze off the snake's slowly swaying head, its eyes almost mesmerizing, and its tongue flicking rapidly in and out.
It had touchched down the the ground and was beginning to lower its lengthy coils all around them when Dan-dan shook himself back to his senses. "We have to go around him!" he called to Kulap, starting to take off in a slight trot toward his wife to pull her along to the remaining free direction. "We gotta get back to the boat!"
|
|
|
Post by choji on Feb 16, 2007 12:44:13 GMT -5
Kulap was ready to piss herself scared at the sight of the huge snake. Her heart beating a tattoo in her breast. She gripped her staff and narrowed her eyes. This was big hunk of python meat.
She felt Dan-Dan tug her along to the only free spot when then..."KASAHHHH!" The snake struck!!
Kulap screamed again terror permeated her young voice as the serpent now blocked all exits. She and her mate were trapt. Well at least thats what the snake thought. It's infer-red pits tracked Kulap's body heat as she circled around the monsteous devil, its eyes waiting for the right oppertunity to strike at the shaman.
"Alright you sonofa-...." She charge after it with her spear only to be knocked aside with the beast's tail. Kulap vaulted back up and ran to it, ready to stab the beast with her spear, she she saw it to loose interest at her and raise up to strike at Dan-Dan.
"LOVER!! LOOK OUT!" The swamp witch shouted as she ran to the spear and grabbed to charge back to stab the beast, when the snake swirved to catch her in mid-stride, it's focus back on the shaman. The snake rose up and screamed only turn to strike at Kulap...
"Daaaaaaaaan!
|
|
|
Post by dandan on Feb 16, 2007 13:21:28 GMT -5
Surrounded entirely by the body of a massive serpent, Dan-dan stood beside Kulap with his oar gripped solidly in both hands and a glob of water floating at the ready just beyond the front paddle. His eyes were moving rapidly, shifting between the snake's head and the rest of its body as it seemed to wrap a full coild around the couple. However, Dan-dan realized that the numerous trees in the area prevented the snake from being able to attack from any direction. He took note of a tree a short distance behind him and one on his left. He was safe, at least for the moment, from attacks in those directions.
When Kulap made a surprising move and charged, he called out pleadingly, "Wait!" He grimmaced as was smacked aside with a swipe of the giant snake's tail. However, the moment she fell, the snake seemed to turn its attention toward him. Dan-dan gulped down his fear and steadied his feet. And yet, even as the waterbender prepared to lash a waterwhip at the creature who was rearing back to strike, Kulap came charging back in.
The snake turned its attention toward her once more, catching her by surprise, and lunged toward Kulap with is jaws wide and seemingly ready to swallow her whole. Dan-dan couldn't manage to shout much more than a grunt as he lifted up his oar and swung it down hard. The water at the end responded to his will and slashed out at the lunging serpent, coming down with a resounding Thwap! on the top of its head. The waterwhip forced its head down into the ground where it splattered a healthy amount of mud and muck, but otherwise fell short of its mark in Kulap.
"Run!" Dan-dan yelled to her, regaining control over his water as he started to run once more. Behind him he heard the rustle of something moving and he glanced over his shoulder to see a section of the snake's body side-winding its way toward him. He kept running and side-stepped behind a tree for cover. He felt the trunk of the tree shake from the impact of the snake's body, but he kept on moving. He leaped over another section of the snake's hide until he'd reached Kulap.
"We have to head further into the trees!" he breathed frantically. "We can lose 'im if we zig-zag, and maybe there's more water up ahead."
|
|
|
Post by choji on Feb 16, 2007 13:44:53 GMT -5
Kulap was sprayed with muck and her braid was starting to get loose, she was now very afriad. It struck her that she might die today. Oh helll no! she thought as she started to back away. She heard Dan-Dan's voice. She nodded fearfully but complied and dash into the mangroves like a wild tapir-elk.
She ran through the mud holding on her spear tightly her brown eyes wide with apprehension as she sailed over a rock hearing the snake coming after her. She darted passed another tree to hear the beast growing closer.
The swamp was getting thicker and murkier, fog was making it hard to see, she started to shake as she looked around for Dan-Dan. She couldn't she him. Then she heard a very omnious hiss. The shaman gulped and took hold of her staff as she continue to run and dart through the trees, until she tripped. "AHHH!" she fell face first into he bog. Soaked in mud and slime, her braid was undone and spear away from her hand she inched to it. When felt a shadow over casted her. She she chould here her heart thunder louder.
"Dan?" her voice a whisper
|
|
|
Post by dandan on Feb 19, 2007 17:53:33 GMT -5
Dan-dan did his best to keep Kulap in his sights. He stayed right beside her and made sure her footsteps were audible. However, as the trees got thicker and the air started to grow thick with mist, keeping track of his wife while running full-speed bcame harder and harder. "Kulap!?" he called numerous times as he ran, and for a short while he could still hear her not far in the distance.
But soon enough, once he slowed down and checked his surroundings, he realized he could no longer see or hear her. "Kulap!?" he shouted once more, recieving no reply. The air was silent. The mist deafened the sounds around him except for the occasionally creaking tree, which would give the waterbender a start. He gripped his oar in a fighting position and looked aroun him. There was no sound of the snake giving chase and he wondered if it had simply given up.
He cautiously started to the side of his previous path. Kulap had been running beside him on his left when they entered the mist. Perhaps she had simply wandered off a little?
The ground in this area was covered in was seemed to be a shallow lake. In some places it was only mud and puddles, while in others it was about two feet deep. Dan-dan supposed he was lucky in choosing his path which had been somewhat level, but as he started toward where he suspected Kulap to be, the water grew deeper and more irregular. If he were running as he was before, he surely would have fallen.
A splash up ahead caught his attention. "Kulap?" he called out, more quietly than before. The sound of something moving carefully through the water reached his ears, and he could see large ripples at his legs.
Just then, a thought occurred to him. The mist was nothing more than water vapor... and he was a bender! Like a spark in his mind, Dan-dan hefted his oar and began rotating it in a screw-like spiral. Ahead of him, the mist began to swirl and disperse in a cone shape ahead of him. After several seconds, the haze had cleared enough for him to make out the massive shape of the serpent, its head raised above the water and its eyes aimed on something in front of it. The bedraggled form of his wife hunched over in the water...
""Lookout!"he yelled, horrified by the sight before him. Dan-dan quickly slapped at the water with his oar with a sharp motion of his arms and sent a rushing wave at the Snake. He just hoped that he could distract the beast before it devoured Kulap.
|
|
|
Post by choji on Feb 21, 2007 15:25:14 GMT -5
Kulap pants in fear as the shadow looms over her she had been running for miles and she was exausted. She hears Dan-Dan shout. "LOOK OUT!" Kulap eyes grew big as the snake struck and she was only inches from her, the snake was knock down by the wave and it bought her sometime. She rolled away but the snake was close again. It struck once more, missing Kulap. But the shaman was on his tail and continue to move she tried to get to Dan-Dan, but it was too late. She gave one more scream as the serpent struck lighting fast and this time make his mark and knock Kulap down, he immediatly closed in and started to constrict the shaman.
Kulap felt ever bone in her body, slowly being crushed. She didn't see what was going on pressure made her eyes swim. She gasped for air, trying to hold on. Finallly she got her arm free and she use the remaing water to summon a waterwhip sent it flying at the beast freezing and severing it's trechea. Killing it. Kulap wriggled free from the coil and glared at Dan-Dan.
"This is why I hate snakes."
|
|
|
Post by dandan on Feb 28, 2007 13:13:18 GMT -5
Dan-dan watched in terror as the snake coiled itself around Kulap and began to constrict her. "Let 'er GO!" he yelled, lifting his oar and slapping another blast of water at the snake from the water at his feet. The paddle amplified the power of his bending and the water flew at the massive serpent with the speed of an arrow. It hit the beast along its head and neck and sent it reeling back for a moment, but it shook off the attack and turned to look at Dan-dan. It hissed angrily, but otherwise seemed unharmed... though significantly wetter.
Dan-dan readied his oar once more, moving it into a few quick motions to drag more water closer to him in preparation for a more powerful attack. He had a mental image of removing the snake's head. Though before he began to spin his oar, Kulap had apparently gotten her hand free and launched a waterwhip at the snake's throat. The beast's throat opened up from the slashing water and blood began to ooze.
Screeching and wailing, the snake threw his head back in its death throes. Dan-dan rushed forward then, abandoning his attack and running straight for Kulap. Its coils loosened around his wife, but the rest of its massive body was still moving spastically and splashing around the water. As he neared her, a section of the snake lifted up and swept him from the side, knocking him down. He grunted, but stood back up and rushed forward once more in time to see Kulap standing up from amid a pile of lifeless coils.
"This s why I hate snakes," she said, looking very unhappy.
"We should leave," Dan-dan replied, wrapping her in a hug. "This isn't worth our lives."
|
|
|
Post by choji on Mar 8, 2007 11:36:42 GMT -5
The shaman stumbled over to her husband and fell into his embrace. "We should leave," Dan-Dan stated. "This isn't worth our lives." Kulap frown and looked at Dan-Dan with bold look of determination and resolve. “We can’t go back were, to far from the boat. We have to continue. As much as I don’t like it. We have to finish what we started. I’m not gonna give up just over one little snake.” Though the snake was no were near little whatsoever, it didn’t deterred the shaman from her goal. She straightened herself and marched forward. “We’re not far anyway.” She added as she continued walking.
She marched past a dead birch and through a thicket of prickly thorns. "ick, this nasty. Everything is nasty, expecially my hair. Ohhhh my hair...it's all gnarled and ugly." Kulap whined as she trekked though the mud feeling lathargic and hungry. She paused for a minute though and looked at the ground benither her. She nearly stepped into quicksand.
"Dan-Dan, can you hold up for a min, we have a bit of a problem. Quickstand and I don't see place we can cross..." Kulap said with tone of worry. She slapped her neck killing a moqusito. "And I hate the bugs and mess and mud, lets hurry up and finish this." The poor shaman's voice was breaking with fatuige.
|
|
|
Post by dandan on Mar 9, 2007 12:34:02 GMT -5
Dan-dan's jaw dropped slightly when he heard Kulap announce that she wanted to continue, even after nearly being killed. It took him several moments to really register that decision, and by the time he regained his wits and tried to form a response, she was already starting off in some unknown direction. "Uhh, Kulap?" Dan-dan said, somewhat meekly as he started after his wife. She didn't seem to hear him and continued forward, remarking about the horrid state of her hair. "Kulap?" he repeated, a little louder.
Finally she came to a stop at the edge of what appeared to be a puddly of loose, water-saturated dirt and sand.... Quicksand. The shaman seemed to be getting annoyed with these delays, but passing through this latest obstacle wasn't on Dan-dan's mind.
"Kulap," he said, finally commanding her attention and placing a strong hand on her shoulder, "We don't have to do this... I don't care how many people it could save if it costs yer life to do it. We can still head back. Try and find the boat and Butchie..." Dan-dan looked back towards the haze they had passed through and he suddenly realized that might be a little easier said than done. His train of thought lost its steam, and his words trailed off into nothingness.
Still though, he turned his eyes back toward Kulap's, pleading her with his gaze to reconsider.
|
|
|
Post by choji on Mar 11, 2007 13:27:54 GMT -5
Kulap was on the verge of tears she was tired and her muscles hurt. She looked at the quicksand in front of her and froze most of it so she can hop across, until she heard Dan-Dan
"We don't have to do this... I don't care how many people it could save if it costs yer life to do it. We can still head back. Try and find the boat and Butchie..."
She heard her husband's voice trail off into the deep mist. Kulap sighed and leaned on her mate. "Dan-Dan were lost. We're in the middle of nowhere and there is no why to get back, and all I want to do is, just finish this." Kulap voice broke in short sobs as sighed. "I'm just so tired."
Kulap moved on over the quicksand, her eyes dripped with tears and she was in fatiuge. Finally she stopped and gasped. "Dan-Dan. We-we made it!"
|
|
|
Post by dandan on Mar 12, 2007 12:29:25 GMT -5
"Dan-Dan were lost. We're in the middle of nowhere and there is no way to get back, and all I want to do is just finish this." the shaman had sai to him in responsive to his pleas to go home. Dan-dan's brow furrowed slightly in confusion.
"If we can't get back now, what makes ya think we'll get back later!?" he asked exhasperatedly, though his words started to trail off when he noticed wife beginning to sob slightly. Dan-dan closed his mouth and looked at her with concern, but his resolve to leave still remained strong. Then, without much prompting, Kulap began to cross over the frozen patch of quicksand. "Kulap!" he said in a hushed yell, attmepting to call her back, but she kept going.
Dan-dan grunted his frustration and wondered if all marriage was like this... But despite his growing agitation with Kulap's desire to continue with what he felt was an exercise in futility, he couldn't very well let her go on alone. He'd made an oath to stay by her side until death and Dan-dan was not one to go back on his word. Tapping the frozen path of quicksand hard with his oar to test its solidity, he placed a foot gingerly on the undra-like ground and carefully followed.
"Dan-Dan. We-we made it!" he heard Kulap call from up ahead. A look of disbelief crossed his features and he picked up his pace a little bit, wobbling at a few points to avoid slipping off the frozen path, until he reached steady ground and saw his wife standing up ahead. She was at the edge of the dense wooded area, holding aside a handful of vines like a curtain. Before her, lit by the afternoon sun was a tranquil pool of nearly crystal clear water spotted with floating lily pads and reeds along its banks. The reflected light off the surface made it hard to see, but Dan-dan thought he saw a sandbar just under the surface near the pool's center.
"I'll be a hog-monkey's uncle..." Dan-dan breathed, looking at what could only be the Forgotten Pool.
|
|
|
Post by choji on Mar 21, 2007 8:13:56 GMT -5
Kulap made a joyful squeal, her eyes lit up as she ran to the shore. She began to wade in and wash her hair and skin, grimmy and thick with mud. "I knew we would find it! You jest needa lil' faith Dan-Dan. Thats whut Grandad would say. I wunder whut Grandad would say 'bout us here?" Kulap got out of the pool and bended the water off her body and began braid her hair. Kulap sat cross legged next to Dan-Dan. She look across the pool and smiled softly.
The pool seem to be a step back in time. Before the swamp was a wellspring of mud and wildlife. Kulap leaned her head back and looked at the sun and then back at the pool. "Hey Dan-Dan?" She let her feel play with the rock on the shore. Before she proceeded. "I wus thinkin' Maybe...if we survive this misadventure...we could settle down. I mean I had enough of mud, quicksand, giant snakes and magical flowers. When we git home and stuff...ummm..". Kulap cheeks turn pink as she mumbled out the next words. "Do you want to start a family?" Kulap jerked a her head away and skipped a stone. "Nevermind...I don't think ya wanna. Not yet right?" She skipped another stone. Everything was peaceful
For now.
|
|
|
Post by dandan on Mar 25, 2007 23:48:32 GMT -5
Dan-dan had taken a few steps into the pool of water, surprised to find that the sediment along the floor of the pool was not too easily disturbed by his footfalls. The dirt clouded around his feet, but settled almost immediately and the water remained clear. Indeed, that was not something the waterbender was used to seeing.
Kulap began walking out of the pool, apparently done cleansing herslef, and Dan-dan couldn't help but let his gaze drift over her glistening form. As accustomed as he was to seeing her in the mnimal clothing she wore, he was still occasionally struck by her shapeliness. As such, he missed the first few things she said, since he hadn't noticed her mouth moving. He came to his senses around, When we git home and stuff...ummm... Do you want to start a family?"
It took a moment for the implications to settle in his mind, but when they did he visibly recoiled a bit in surprise. Over the months he had come to realize that his wife was a bit impulsive and prone to sudden changes in train of thought, but the sudden proposal of having a child in the midst of a life-threatening situation seemed to take the kabob.
"Nevermind..." Kulap said, "I don't think ya wanna. Not yet right?" Dan-dan closed his mouth, which he realized was slightly agape, and stepped onto the dry shore beside her, leaning over a bit using his oar as a support.
"Well, 'not right now' as in 'not this very moment'," he said, smiling slightly at her, "But I don't think it's a bad idea at all."
|
|