come_sailaway | Wolves and other interesting carnivores

Who: Ylva and you!
What: Awoo
Where: Mostly the upper decks
When: Throughout July

A Nap in the Sun

Ylva keeps strange hours, never wholly being comfortable with a fully diurnal lifestyle. Oh, she can force it if she must, but left to her own devices, she sleeps at odd hours and in odd places. The weather, such as it is, is at least very cooperative, and on a lazy afternoon she stretches out by the pool deck to nap in the sun.

And if she happens to stretch out as a large, feathery allosaurus (eyes shut, tail occasionally twitching), or maybe a monstrous snake (asleep but eyes open, tail dangling in the pool), well, these are just shapes that are extra good for soaking up the sun with.

Nighttime

The flip side of this is that at night, she paces the ship when most other people are asleep. She sometimes sits on the railing of the ship, precariously balanced while she eats something scavenged from Windjammers.

If you hear a howl in the night and bother to track it down, you are equally likely to find a wolf or a woman.

Wildcard

Hit me up, you know where and how.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"There's a forest somewhere." He says it confidently, not a single doubt in his mind that beyond the barrier around the ship there's a giant forest full of all the trees and shrubs and debris he's used to.

"Because they can talk." He glances over at her, and then away. "Didn't know how important that was. Couldn't understand the sounds. But they can't talk to things that aren't them. They are separate. Different."

Ylva nods. "I was a pup, really, when I started learning to talk like this. Fortunately, he knew how to talk like a wolf, too. I'd never even -- well." She shakes her head. "It was a lot to learn. I'm still learning. Humans are... complicated."

"They are many packs but they don't know it. All different." He pulls his legs up to sit there with his arms around them, setting the snowglobe on the ground beneath the chair. "On this ship have seen they don't understand each other. Is confusing because are all the same thing but are differences can't see or smell. Then they get mad."

"Yeah, humans are like that."

Ylva slouches comfortably, pulling her feet up to rest them on the seat. "Where I come from, there's more than just humans. Elves, tieflings, halflings, orcs. I had a friend who was a lizardfolk, even. All different, and they fight about it, but more like each other than they think. I mean, you want to be technical," she lifts her hair to show off her pointed ear, "the non-wolf part of me is only half human. And that matters a lot to some people."

He tilts his head in confusion, "Why?"

Blinking he tries to see Ylva through human eyes, which he has now, but he's still not processing things like that. "Look human. But smell like wolf and human. Do they fight you? Because you are wolf? Or because not human enough?"

"Not human enough," she says with a shrug. "And back home, it's 'not elf enough' if you ask the right people, or the wrong people. Even if I look right, I don't act right. Even then, though... I did find people who liked me, even before I came here.

Ylva pauses, then adds, "They didn't usually fight me. If they did, I won."

The benefits of being more than one thing.

"They want you to be part of their pack but you are part of own pack. Of many packs. Human. Elf. Wolf. Are all things." He squints at the ground trying to find the words for what he's now thinking. "Makes them scared. Know how to be more things than them. More than me, I can't be wolf and human."

He smiles at her though, "Good. Kill them if they fight you. Then they are wrong people and dead people."

"Yeah. That's the idea." She grins, toothily. "If I don't need to kill someone, I won't, but that doesn't mean I can't, or haven't. Some of it I feel better about than others, but that's how it is, sometimes."

Ylva squints at him. "Why can't you both?"

"Because am a human." Or at least he is now, and he doesn't know how to change back to his normal form, or if he'd want to. "Never was a wolf so can't be one now. Only human. But still can howl."

He grins because he's not gonna stop howling, or chewing on things. Somethings are just built into his nature.

"Feel things when you kill them? Why? They should have left when they were losing battle. Should not have started fights they could not finish. So now they are dead." It seems so simple to him anyway.

Ylva, for a moment, is keenly aware that while she's not very good at being human, sometimes she's also not very good at being a wolf. She really is both, and neither, and there's a frustrating aspect to not fully fitting in either category.

"I dunno," she says. "I think sometimes I just wish they hadn't made me kill them."

He looks at the ground, gears churning away in his new human brain as he tries to process that. "Only kill when necessary? Not for fun?"

Well that's new, he's not used to that at all. But at least he can grasp the concept. "But they force you and then you hunt them. This is...." A long pause as he formulates a sentence in his head, then rearranges the words, tries again, "Where you are from. But here on boat is different? Or still have to kill people who force you?"

"I haven't had to kill anyone here on the boat," Ylva says. "I've been... making friends. And I never did want to hurt my friends. I never wanted to..."

She grimaces. "I can kill. I can kill for food and I can kill for protection and it's glorious," the feeling of a pulse dying under her teeth, it's been an age, "but -- to kill, when I don't need to eat? That's just... wasteful."

"Something will eat it. Even if not you. Bugs. Grass. Flowers. A corpse becomes a smaller world, teaming with life." The world exists in cycles and he's old enough that he's seen so many of them he doesn't even realize how precious life is. A little hard to when he's supernaturally hard to kill.

"Friends. Yes. Have done that here too. Is new and good." He thinks real hard, his whole face scrunching up, "Would not want to kill them either."

Well look at that. That's a new revelation.

Wolves and other interesting carnivores

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