come_sailaway | care and feeding for your wolf

Entry tags:

care and feeding for your wolf

Who: Ylva and the curious
What: Shenanigans with Wild Shape
When: Early September, I guess. Time is soup.

just a little nap

Ylva is a wolf and has no problem telling anyone about that fact. Still, there are other shapes she enjoys. She is not one to be pinned down to one approach to anything. She's flexible that way.

What this means, at the moment, is that there is an allosaurus stretched out on the pool deck, enjoying the sun. Mammals are fine, but have you ever been a large, warm-blooded reptile in a patch of sunlight? Her feathers are fluffed up strategically for maximum sunning, tail curled politely around her, head tucked gently into the classic bird pose of "using my own back as a pillow."

She is very much asleep, but not deeply so.

just a little awoo

When night falls, though, it's possible to hear howling.

The curious will find a large, shaggy wolf pacing the sports deck under the moon, restless and unhappy. She throws her head back to howl, and stops, listening. There's no answer, of course. She knows there can't be an answer. Still, she does howl, and wait, and listen.

She remains alert, though, one ear always out for someone who might come to investigate the actual howling wolf wandering the deck of the ship.

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Pratt is just standing by the railing, listlessly unfurling and dropping parachute army men from the arcade over the side and watching them drown. Well assuming they do, it's dark enough that he can only see the parachute part once they get far enough down to hit the water. There's something soothing there, and he knows why, but he doesn't care right now.

He jerks upright when he hears the howl, moving towards it before he even realizes. It's been so long since he's heard the pack he cared for back home howl, something that was always calming and reassuring. This isn't like that though, the wolf that's howling is clearly sad, calling out for a reply that isn't going to come.

"Hey? Where you at?" Absolutely no fear at all as he goes to look for a strange wolf.

She pauses, listening. It's an answer; if it's not properly a wolf answer, well, she's not always exactly a proper wolf.

Ylva tenses, not sure if she ought to make herself scarce, or at least find another shape to be for a little while. Still, that sounds friendly enough to entertain.

She howls again, a little softer, beckoning.

He casually walks down the deck, not hiding his footfalls, there's no need to since a wolf could smell a human coming their way long before Pratt would even be able to see them.

But once he does, he grins, "Heyo. You're not Aiden. When did you get here?"

Pratt doesn't approach her, but he does sit down in the middle of the deck, palms up on his crossed legs. He is good for sniffing. He is friend.

She looks at him for a moment, tail wagging slightly. She could reveal herself now, if she wanted, but she's comfortable as she is, and doesn't feel like being on two legs. Not yet.

So Ylva wanders closer in a casual trot, keeping a polite distance but there's also a marked lack of fear, as there might be from a truly wild wolf. From an arm's span away she sniffs at Pratt, curious but friendly.

He sits there passively, watching her.

"I'm Deputy Pratt." He tilts his head, unsure if this is an actual wolf or a passenger, but he's leaning towards the later. Wolves would generally approach hesitantly with their head down.

"Out here howling for friends?"

She gives a nod, which should probably solidify any suspicion about her being a passenger. She sits, head tilted to one side to look at him closely, her nose still sniffing to draw in his scent.

But she can't talk like this, not in any way he's going to understand. Ylva shifts back into her regular shape, cross-legged on the ground across from him.

"I am," she says, "though it won't do much good. I'm Ylva."

He should probably react more to that, after all he hadn't actually seen Aiden turn into a wolf, he's just 99.9% certain it was him. But after walking skeletons, magical fancy old guys, and a ship that eats emotions, he barely flinches.

"Yeah, not gonna have much luck. Which sucks, always better with a pack but," He shrugs, "Not much to be done here."

"It at least makes me feel a little better."

Ylva rubs the back of her hand past her nose with a sniff. "I didn't think I'd be here this long," she says. "I thought -- look, I've woken up in strange places before. I've been to other planes. But it was never alone, and it was never... I always got home okay."

"This is way better than last time I was kidnapped. But .. it's still being kidnapped. Even if there is all you can eat garlic bread."

He runs his hands through his hair briefly, "No one else from your world huh? That's rough."

"Yeah. It's not like I want my friends stuck here too, you know? But I miss them. And this place is strange."

Ylva eyes him warily. "Does that mean there is someone from your world here? Someone you knew, or just someone who knew the same places you do?"

"Yeah deff. I don't want them sucked into this place. Even if it is a little better than home. It still has the potential to become a shithole spiraling downward."

Also all his friends are dead. Like himself really so maybe that would be a fitting reunion.

"Yeah, Sharky if you've met him. 'Cept I died in the Collapse and he didn't so now he's way older than I remember. Which is... fucking weird."

"You died."

She looks at him warily for a moment. She has bad experiences with the undead, okay. "You don't seem like a lich, at least. I mean, yes, that does sound very weird. Someone resurrected you?"

She, personally, knows at least one way to raise the dead, even if she's never actually had to do it.

"Yeah. Actually, extremely dead. Got crushed by a tree, then the forest caught on fire, and there was a nuclear explosion. So.. three times over at least."

He shrugs, "The Captain apparently. A lich is like an undead wizard right? I'm not that cool unfortunately."

"Well. I guess if the Captain can bring everyone back to life here all the time, there's no reason he couldn't do the same for you. It seems like extra work, though. No offence. Maybe he likes you."

Ylva considers this a moment, then shakes her head. "I did meet Sharky, though. I stole something from one of the games for him. The game with the claw that you use to grab the prizes, I mean."

"Kinda doubt it. He's probably just hoping I kill everyone. That's what he wants right? Chaos and trauma and turmoil and shit. I don't think I'm special enough to be worth the extra work."

He shakes his head, because he doesn't want to be special, he wants to be unnoticed and not be the reason things go to shit.

"Oh sweet, what'd you snag him?"

Now, that's a hard question, since she doesn't actually know what the thing was. She squints, thinking.

"He called it... a tomo-something. Tomo-goshy? I don't know. It looked like a little egg thing." Ylva tries to indicate the shape of it with her hands, which is not, actually, very helpful. "Made of. Plastic, I think it's called. Someone told me the word 'plastic.'"

Tomogooshy egg thing. Made of plastic. He furrows his brow thinking,

"Oh! A Tamagotchi. Yeah they're little electronic pets you have to take care of. And that Sharky would absolutely call me a total nerd if I had one. That fucking hypocrite." Said affectionately like he just paid Sharky a compliment.

"Did he show you what it turned into?"

"... no. It wasn't a real egg. Unless it's supposed to hatch into a little plastic creature?"

She looks absolutely baffled, still scowling as she attempts to work this out. "It wasn't alive. I'm pretty sure it wasn't alive. Can plastic be alive? I've never even seen plastic before I got here, and I thought it was just like. I don't know. A type of stone or something. But now you're telling me it's actually alive?"

"No it's uh..." Shit, he is the worst at explaining these kind of things. For being a huge nerd he's never actually had to explain this kind of stuff to people who didn't have some common basis of understanding to go off of.

"Alright. Okay. So you know your phone?" He pulls his out even though it doesn't work here, because hopefully he can get through this without either of them thinking the other is insane. "The screen where you can write messages and junk? So that little plastic egg has a screen too and a little image of an animal will show up and you gotta digitally feed it and raise it. It's not real, it's just a sprite. Er uh, it's a picture. That moves."

Ylva barely understands her phone, but that's almost enough of an explanation. She makes a face. "That's so weird," she complains. "Why do you want a pretend animal? I mean. I guess there's no real ones here, but that sounds so... pointless. And you're going to tell me that's not magic, somehow, aren't you?"

"Cuz it's easier. And if it dies you don't feel as bad cuz it's not real. Like I don't have time for a pet at home cuz I work too much." Not that he had a tamagotchi either, but it would kind of be the perfect pet for someone who was almost never home.

"I don't know how the fuck electronics work, so yeah sure. Magic. It's lightning and rocks so close enough."

The look Ylva gives him is equal parts tired and baffled. "First people tell me it isn't magic, and then it's magic that's meant to look like it's not magic, and now it's 'actually it is magic.' Lightning and rocks? I can do lightning and I can do rocks but I don't know how that's supposed to make lights or moving pictures."

All for pretend pets, too. That just sounds sad.

"I mean, I don't fucking know how it works. It's magic to me, I press buttons on this and it sends my message to whoever I want, I dunno how that happens. Like I can tell you it's through the cellular network and satellites - but I don't know what that means." He shrugs, for being super plugged into the internet and tech he has no idea how those internet tubes function.

"I'm just a deputy."

To be fair, most people do not know how the internet tubes function, and lightning through metal may as well be magic. Something something Clarke's Third Law.

Ylva wrinkles her nose, thinking. She knows the word, but only sort of. "Deputy of what? Or for who?"

"For the Hope County Sheriff's department. That's where I'm from, Hope County, Montana." He pauses, scratching his jaw as he thinks about how to explain this.

"And I'm Search and Rescue so basically saving hikers who get lost, people trapped in blizzards, that kind of stuff."

He is not going to even try to explain: helicopter pilot.

awooooooo

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