care and feeding for your wolf

[actuallyawolf]

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.

Comments

just a little nap

[millay]

Maeve stops as she spots the creature from the fight again. She still doesn't know what it's called, but she can recognize it now that she's seen it. Part of her wishes that Steven was there. Maybe he could tell her what it was called.

Either way, she sits herself down in one of the chairs and leans back as she does. She doesn't want to bother the sleeping creature, but she is happy to just lean back and relax for a little while in its proximity.

[actuallyawolf]

Ylva stirs, feathers lifting slightly, and for a moment she just looks at Maeve with one eye open. The tip of her tail twitches, in the manner of a pleased and slightly sleepy dog.

She makes a gentle little sound in greeting, a sort of deep, percussive coo.

[millay]

Maeve smiles a little once she notices and waves to the creature. "Wasn't sure I'd ever see you again, darling. Much less sleeping on the deck. Then again, I suppose there aren't a lot of places for something of your size."

She at least remembers that whatever it is can understand English. She'd find it weird, but what does she know about various and unusual worlds? "Don't let me disturb you, though."

[actuallyawolf]

Ah, conversation. Conversation is tricky when you don't have lips, or typical mammalian laryngeal anatomy. Ylva gives herself a shake, and then shifts effortlessly back down into her natural shape. Cross-legged on the floor, she grins over at Maeve.

"It's true, there's not a lot of places around here that are big enough for me like that. But it's such a fun shape to be."

[millay]

Maeve can't help but stare with a mixture of surprise and awe. She's never seen someone become something else and turn into a human again. Was that another magic thing?

"Goodness. I've never seen anything like that." She sits forward, studying the girl in front of her for a moment. "The shifting from a creature into something else or the creature in particular. They didn't have anything like that in Westworld."

[actuallyawolf]

"No? It's easy, when you know the trick. Are you from another one of these worlds where there's no magic? Because that sounds boring."

Ylva pauses, considering her words. Is that rude? "Sorry," she says, just in case. "Westworld is where you're from?"

[millay]

Maeve has had worse said to her, so she's not terribly insulted. "No. We do not have magic. At least not like that." She's fairly certain she might have seen it if they did. "It's fine," she says quietly.

"Yes. Westworld is where I am from. Technically. I was made there." She pauses, trying to decide if that was too vague before deciding to clarify with, "My creator and his partner built us. This is a few upgrades in." She gestures to herself then. She shrugs and leans back. "Where is it you are from? I'm certain it's more entertaining than Westworld."

[actuallyawolf]

"I live outside a town called Hawthorne's Fall. I live there because I guess I sort of work for the people who run it. It's sort of a place for people who aren't wanted anywhere else."

Ylva looks at Maeve hard for a moment, and her nose twitches in a curious way. "'Made'? Are you a sort of construct, too? Or," she catches herself, "Max said 'omnic,' and got sort of upset when I called him that."

[millay]

Maeve nods as she listens. It sounds peaceful, but then...Westworld once felt peaceful before that ended. "It sounds like a nice place."

There a pause and a smile of understanding there. "Yes. It can be a sensitive word to most of us," she agrees. "I do not mind so much, but we are called Hosts back home. I think it depends on the world." But she understood Max's feelings on the subject. "Unlike Max, we were made to look more human."

[actuallyawolf]

"See, I know that people like you exist back home. They're called," she pauses to remember, "warforged. Yeah, that's right. They're a type of construct, and not all constructs are people, but they are. They also run on magic, though. And they don't look so human."

Ylva waves a hand vaguely. "Host, though, okay. I have learned so many new words here. Host it is. What's your name, though? I'm Ylva."

[millay]

Warforged. Maeve doesn't fully understand the idea of constructs. "Ah. We are not human, but I'm a person, I suppose." She knew she counted as a person to most of the people she knew and to herself. "Most of the humans I knew likely wouldn't agree with me, but..." She shrugs.

"A pleasure to meet you, Ylva. I'm Maeve."

[actuallyawolf]

"Of course you're a person. You talk like a person. I've had a lot of conversations with all sorts of things. Wolves, squirrels. Trees. Grass. And there's a difference. I've also," she adds, "talked with constructs that are not people, and there's a difference there, too. Bowen has this skull thing that looks after his library, and it talks, but you can't have a conversation with it."

Maeve. She mouths the sound, committing it to memory. "That's a pretty name," Ylva says.

[millay]

"Humans back home consider us things. Playthings, really." She shrugs. It's not to say she doesn't care, but that she doesn't see much changing. They've been used for their ability to die over and over and be rebuilt. Even Serac had used her for that. To get to Dolores.

"Thank you. I think it suits me even if I was likely made to suit it." She comes back to something from earlier, though. "There was a skull that looked after a library? Just the skull?"

[actuallyawolf]

She snorts. "Stupid. Hate it when people are so eager to keep other people captive. Everyone should be free. Hate this stupid ship."

But her attention is diverted a little, and she nods. "It was stuck in one place, though it could send its eye out to go look around the library if you asked it to find a particular book. It couldn't really talk about anything other than the library, though. It wasn't really alive, not in the way you are. But Bowen -- the wizard who made it -- Bowen likes little magical mechanical things like that. It's sort of what he does. He made a tower with legs on it."

[millay]

Maeve can understand all of that. She also hates it. "It is unfortunately one of those things. I don't trust many humans, but...there are some here I know would look after me if it came down to it." She sighs. "But yes. I hate this stupid ship as well."

It certainly sounded unusual. Maeve has never seen or heard of anything like that. She wonders if Ava's skeleton friend has any abilities like that. To send his eye out. "Ah. So it was made for one task." She hums thoughtfully. She's certain there are machines like that as well. She misses the sound of them. It's almost enough to hope everything comes back after she's dead and die or enough to ask Tendi to turn the chip back on. "A tower with legs? Truly? What purpose did that serve?"

[actuallyawolf]

"So he could make it get up and walk somewhere else if he wanted to go there. It's pretty fast, honestly. I complain about wizards a lot, you know, but they do make some neat things. They also make stupid things, so it's sort of a mixed bag."

[millay]

Maeve laughs. "I mean, that makes as much sense as anything else," she says after a moment. "I have never met any wizards, but I believe Ford would have reveled in the power of being one if he was."

[actuallyawolf]

"Some people really don't have any business knowing how to use that sort of power," Ylva says, shrugging. "But I don't know any way to really stop them, either."

Which isn't saying a lot, considering the sort of things she can do, but that's different, obviously.

"Who's Ford?"

[millay]

"True." Even Serac couldn't be trusted with the power he had and that had nothing to do with magic. "There probably isn't a good way to stop them." Except to kill them, but it probably isn't a necessary thing for all of them.

"The man that made me," she says after a while. "He claims I was his favorite, but..." She gestures vaguely. "He has a curious way of showing favoritism." She pauses. "I only know about this because he found a way to leave himself embedded in the coding of the place and visited me as I was dying. Turned my network back on. Apparently I was like a daughter to him." She scoffs at that part. "Either way, it was enough to get me free and back to what I needed to do, so I guess bully for him. Doing the right thing for once."

[actuallyawolf]

Ylva goes quiet and thoughtful for a moment.

"It's... strange, that people can make you and then leave you like that," she says, but there's an understanding there. She has an inkling of what that's like. "It's hard to know what to do with that, sometimes."

[millay]

Maeve frowns. "I want to think the worst of them because that is all we were ever shown. I don't know what they thought was going to happen going in. That we'd be happy to be used and killed over and over? I wonder if it was worth it?"

[actuallyawolf]

"That's what they did?"

She's startled, and then immediately her face shifts into a scowl, genuinely angry. "Yeah, fuck them, then. Just because they made you doesn't mean you owe them. Anything they might've done for you is cancelled out by that."

Ylva might be projecting a little, as you might expect from a wolf-by-adoption.

[millay]

Maeve nods. "That's what they did."

She sighs. "We weren't aware of what we were initially. It was something set in motion by Ford. To wake us all up. Dolores said a phrase to me to wake me up, to make me aware of what I was." She looks down, frowning a little. "Hard to find freedom when you've been trapped for so long."

[actuallyawolf]

She shudders a little.

"Freedom is important, though. Sometimes you have to fight for it. If someone would fight me for it here I would." The fact that no one is stepping up to fight her is very frustrating. "Did you fight for it?"

[millay]

She nods. "I did. I feel like I'm still fighting for it now. Even the humans were being controlled in small ways...and big ways. But we destroyed Rehoboam and the man that decided to use my daughter as a bargaining chip and couldn't deliver is dead now." She's certain the fighting isn't over, but it's hard to tell.

"Dolores sacrificed her life to bring the humans freedom as well as us. So I suppose that is something."