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

[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."

[actuallyawolf]

"Dolores was a friend of yours? I'm sorry."

She pauses. "Good riddance to that man, though. Humans are... kind of a mixed bag, sometimes. If you need me to help you fight, I will. Except the captain won't, the coward. But anyone else gives you trouble, I'll help you."

Ylva nods, decisively. "I might not be able to free any of us from this place, but I can at least do that."

[millay]

"I think we might have been if situations were different," she allows. She's lost too many people because of a version of Dolores.

There's a hint of a smile to her expression. "He had it coming and it was cathartic to watch him die." She's not sorry about Serac. Never. "The Captain likes to try to throw people off with little pieces of information. But I haven't seen him fight outside of with words and unsettling information." Her smile grows just a little. "I'll be happy to help you as well. I may not be able to change shape, but I suppose you've seen my fighting style anyway."

Sighing, Maeve looks up at the sky for a moment. "Not sure any of us can really do it alone, but I hope so."

[actuallyawolf]

"I don't think doing it alone is anything we should even try, honestly." Ylva grins. "I mean, I did challenge the Captain to single combat which was probably pretty stupid of me. But we do outnumber him so that has to be worth something."

She shakes her head. "More ways of fighting is just more ways we can win. My way isn't the only way."

[millay]

She's quiet for a long moment. "We do outnumber him, but we also don't fully know everything he's capable of. Which is a little frustrating."

She sighs. "Perhaps there will be another meeting and we can get some more information."