a collection of tales [[ chronocompass writing ]]


Authors
Sunlitsecrets
Published
5 years, 3 months ago
Updated
3 years, 3 months ago
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47 72668

Chapter 1
Published 5 years, 3 months ago
1609

So I'm in this group that has me write quite a bit about some of my characters, and I figured I could put that stuff as a series on here! These short stories probably won't connect much, if at all.

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forested wandering [otulius and teeba-ei]


Otulius woke Teeba up a little while before dawn with the consistently exuberant but patient energy of a bear hoping to catch a good fish. It started with his dreams slowly fading to reality, and it ended with Otus’s scaled snout right in front of his own face. He was being poked. Grumbling as he shook the tired feeling from his mind, he sat up. You coming along, Teeba? the cheerful dragon thought in his head.


The lizard man’s mind was still clouded by the fog of his dreams. “Coming along for what?” he asked, voice groggy.


Still haven’t been able to fix your arm, have you? Now’s as good a time as any to go looking again. Otulius turned towards the window of their tiny home, where she sun was just beginning to shine above the horizon. We’ve got a solid couple of hours to look before we’ve got to do anything else, after all.


“You’re right, as you always are. Give me a minute and we’ll head out.” Teeba-ei smiled warmly at the hope of discovering... well, something out in the woods that day. He slung his scarf over his shoulders, made sure his metal arm was firmly attached, and the two set off then and there, out into the forest he knew so well. He hopped up on Otulius’s back - they needed to fly off a bit further than usual to find something, or at least that’s what he shared with his dragon through their connection. And there was no faster way to travel than flight.


The sky was a brilliant shade of orange hues, soft, warm colors that warmed up the chill in Otus’s scales even with the still faint sunlight. The duo flew above the trees for ten minutes, a short time by all means, and then they set to looking for supplies, as they always did.


It seemed like a boring, simple task at first glance, honestly. ‘Look around for anything useful and take it home with you!’ Simple. But Teeba had been on too many worthless outings to know that it was pretty challenging to find anything worth taking. Or at least in terms of the things he was seeking out. Although berries and herbs were always useful, he and Otus combined only had some basic medical knowledge. No, metal work was their true calling. But finding scraps of metal out in the wild was a rare thing indeed. Perhaps next time they would fly out to a city - certainly more things would be there for them to gather up, yes?


”Maybe we’ll get lucky today!” he called out to Otus, who was a short ways away and currently starting at a tree like it had done him some deep and terrible wrong.


‘Perhaps’, he whispered in their shared mind. ‘But either way, I am glad to spend this time out wandering with you, my friend.’


Teeba picked up yet another log and grimaced as several large spiders scurried out from underneath it. Nothing here. But as he did so he felt peace from what Otus had said. “Me too,” the Tsotska spoke quietly. “Me too.”


- - - -


The sun was definitely up by now. A couple hours had gone by, nothing had turned up, and Teeba was overall ready to give up and work on some other things for the rest of the day. “Otulius!” he called, both out loud and mentally, and he got an image back of a general direction to go in. Lucky they could speak like that - he might have gotten lost otherwise.

He found the feathered dragon in a small clearing, with a certain familiar black cat purring up at Otulius. “What’s he doing here?” Teeba asked. Usually their feline friend didn’t venture too far from home, so this was mighty curious.

“Lonely, I think. Came to find me,” Otus replied, a content smile upon his mouth. And in his mind, a Teeba felt the concern for the cat as well. ‘Far away from home. He must really have missed us to come all the way out here.’

“What about Fox and his brand-new dragon? And that... pink thing?” Teeba said, confused. (He had never learned the actual name of the fairy armadillo.) There was plenty of company at home for sure - their little shack now housed more people than probably good.

Otus simply sent various feelings through their mental link in response. Ah, dear, Otulius wasn’t in a speaking mood today. “Well I guess we can walk back,” Teeba-ei sighed as the cat jumped up onto Otulius’s back. Yes, flying was definitely out of the question now. “Keep looking as we go, okay? I want to see if we run into anything good on the way back home.”

Yes, he knew his chances were slim. He’d been through these woods for close to fifteen years now. Been up and down all the secret trails so often he didn’t think he could get lost in this neck of forest even if he tried. But something in Teeba didn’t let him give up that easily. (He always was a determined lizard, even in childhood. There’s a fair bit of dedication one needs to be able to figure out how to craft oneself a mechanical arm. With only one working arm, too!)

Otus nodded his head once, a slow down and up, and started to plod along, wings tucked carefully back. There were far too many obstacles in this forest to open them up right now. The cat was still purring. Were cats supposed to live 10 years? That sounded like a cat that age would be fairly old, and yet this little wonder still looked as young and oblivious as ever.

Ah, but distraction was taking him away from his goal. Teeba-ei picked up a couple smooth stones and slid them into one pocket. Perhaps this would serve as a handy decoration to have around - and also an emergency material if it ever came to that.

Otulius was humming worriedly in his head. He looked up and saw that he was quickly falling behind. Teeba picked up one more stone, examined it closely, and smiled.

If nothing else, he’d enjoyed the little adventure they’d had today.

- - - -

The first sign he noticed of something being wrong was all the frantic chirping. Otulius knew the sounds of panic when he heard it, and this was that. The cat on his back had fallen asleep, but at all the noise they awoke and began meowing confusedly. ‘Teeba,’ he thought at his mind partner. He slowed to a halt, unsure of what to do next. ‘Do you have any idea of what’s going on?’

“I know as much as you,” the dragon’s lizard friend said, gaze full of concern. “But I suppose it would be good to find out?” Now that was something Otulius agreed to easily. He couldn’t handle the suspense of not knowing about things, and this was a thing he really needed to find out about.

They slowly crept forward through the underbrush. The chirping kept on growing louder and louder as they approached, and at long last the panicked birds came into view. There were perhaps four or five here, all up in one of the mighty oak trees that made up the majority of the landscape around here. But the birds above weren’t what was wrong about this situation - no, it was the tiny baby bird that had fallen onto the ground and was now lying there, seemingly motionless, while their family chirped anxiously around them.

Teeba saw the poor bird and rushed forwards at once. “Oh dear, oh dear,” he said anxiously, whole face filled with tension. Otulius hurried on over to look at whatever was going on and his face soon took on the same fearful look as Teeba-ei’s.

‘Do you think we can save them?’ Otus thought, ready to do whatever he needed to help. This bird was in pretty poor shape, after all. Part of their beak missing, one wing at a definitely wrong angle - it didn’t look good, but the two were always pretty optimistic.

“I hope so,” Teeba said. He started to unwind the scarf from around his neck to hopefully put the injured bird in while they walked the rest of the short way home. The black cat on Otus’s back started moving, then jumped down entirely. Otulius was fairly concerned, tried to stop the cat (didn’t cats eat birds?) but instead of causing any harm, the cat started purring at the baby chickadee. It was a sweet scene, or it would have been if not for the bird’s very concerned parents and extended family.

As the Tsotska picked up the feathered creature with his scarf, he looked up at the other chickadees. “I promise they’ll be okay,” he said. Otus knew it was to reassure himself as well as them.

The walk home was taken at almost a run, and once they got inside Teeba started rattling around in the cabinets and shelves for the supplies he would need. “You and I both know we might not be apothecaries, but we’re the only ones close enough to help right now, and I dearly hope we can do some good here,” he said, grabbing herbs and scraps of metal from the shelves .”Come on over and help, I can’t do this without you.”