Epic Quest

[Kitan]

Kitan couldn’t remember how he got here, but it didn’t seem terribly important.

The kitsune was wearing clothes he had never before seen in his life. The slim but athletic figure he usually displayed was covered not by a postal service uniform, but instead by a royal garment. Golden epaulets decorated his shoulders, making them look broader and more masculine than usual. Both the epaulets and other gilded ornamentation were worn over a coat of royal blue. He could feel a circlet upon his head which had been shaped to fit his fox ears, just has his silver-grey pants accounted for his tail. The gold, blue, and silver all conflicted with his red hair, as if to reaffirm the abnormality of it all. The light of his surroundings seemed to saturate it more than ever, though he could only judge by pulling his tail forward to look at it.

He fidgeted through his belongings, slung from a slanted belt, and pulled out a silver hand mirror, which he had somehow known would be there. It had rounded edges and was as exquisite as his clothing. Kitan was dimly cognizant of the fact that it should burn him, but it did not.

He looked like he always had, bodily speaking. Small freckles dotted his face, and his hair was as unkempt as ever. He fancied he could still see the scraps of leaves up there, but the angle grew awkward as he leaned further backward to check. He was the same as ever. His surroundings were not.

He ran through hills with colors as garish as his clothing. The gravity of the world around him seemed immaterial. To his left, the hills extended from what looked like a wall. The long grass upon those hills extended sideways as if it were the most natural thing in the world, never mind that they were of a vibrant yellow coloration. To his right was the water of an ocean. Above that ocean was not a sky, but a forest. With so much physical matter on all sides of him, one might assume he had found himself in a cave, but the world was filled with ambient light bright enough to match that of a cloudless day. The light would periodically change its hue, gaining just a touch of blue before reverting to normal.

Kitan himself stood upon a long pillar that shot upwards into the forest-covered ceiling. It was built from in an orange, mossy rock that strained the boundaries of plausible coloration, like everything else in this place. He ran up the slope of the pillar, strangely unperturbed by the alien situation he now found himself in.

When he approached the woodlands, he noticed a symphony of color even more varied than those of his surroundings. They were flowers at the base of several smaller trees. His pillar intersected with the ceiling’s earth at this clearing. Most curious of all was the shape of a girl resting at the base of one of the trees. From his perspective, she rested on the ceiling as if gravity moved in the opposite direction for her.

Without heed to his safety, Kitan leapt from the pillar to the trees around him. He soared over the ocean, hundreds of feet below him, and landed upon the underside of one on the branches. He was fairly certain he had never before climbed an upside-down tree before.

He climbed upwards towards the roots of the tree, and poked the girl in the head with his pointer finger. He dropped back down to the branch, striding along it with impeccable balance, as he waited for her to wake up.

[Talia Idris]

Talia's head hurt. Or at least it felt like it should hurt. The last thing that she could remember was going for a walk and that was it, everything seemed to have just faded away. She wiggled her fingers and toes - everything felt like it was still there. The fresh scent of grass, flowers and trees managed to draw a lazy smile across her face, one that quickly froze as she opened her eyes.

Everything seemed so vibrant, colours that she never knew existed seemed to blossom unexpectedly around her in various forms. The circle of plants around her and the landscape around her fell aways as she looked up her mouth wide open as a young man with a tail and ear dressed in the most ornate clothes that she had ever seen, climbed on the underside of the branch as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The second their eyes met Talia looked away modestly before jumping up shocked.

"What did you put me in!" She almost shouted, her cheeks turning pink at the thought of some strange male dressing her in her sleep. Her legs were nicely defined by a tight pair of green leggings that seemed to shimmer with gold in the light. A corseted purple shirt seemed to try and show off curves that she lacked but at least the long loose sleeves showed some promise of normalcy for her. Her normally braided hair was loose and flowing around her in softs waves. Vines were wrapped around her fingers and hands for almost a glove like look.

She looked up at the fox-boy again with a glare. "Who do you think you are and where have you taken me?" She asked again, her voice shaking anger that barely covered the fear that she was also feeling. Her eyes couldn't help but dart from him to the world around her - nothing seemed normal yet at the same time it all felt like it was normal and totally reasonable for their to be an ocean in the sky and the distant hills to change from orange to red as the wind ripped through the grass.

[Kitan]

“I didn’t dress you like that.” Kitan protested his innocence. His voice was measured and distracted, not embarrassed by her words in the slightest. He set his hand against the tree trunk, then pushed his weight against the branch beneath him. Testing the feeling of the branch beneath his feet, he bobbed up and down until he heard a crack. With the treetop grace of a squirrel, he took a confident step to an adjacent branch.

“And I don’t know where we are. I think I might be dreaming.” He looked at her for the first time since waking her up and smiled softly. Before either of them could comprehend the mechanics involved, he was standing right beside her. His feet now resting upon solid ground, the werefox contentedly scratched at the back of his ears.

“I don’t normally dream about humans though. It’s usually dwarves. I always like meeting dwarves.” His tail wagged with merriment as he regarded her seriously. In the spirit of jest, he adopted his father’s accent as he said, “Yer a nice lass now, aincha? Not a spot o’ the elf about yeh.” The surreal effect resulting from the accent and mannerisms of an old dwarf escaping the body of a small werefox somehow managed to be as uncanny as their surroundings.

Quickly growing bored with her, he turned his attention back to the woods. They looked normal, albeit perhaps a shade too dark. Otherwise their boughs and needles were a healthy green. There was next to no underbrush, barring the occasional flower which radiated from the human’s clearing.

He didn’t see any particular reason to spend too much time with a figment of his imagination, and set off into the darkness. His eyes were alight with curiosity as he walked past her. Without looking back, the werefox announced in afterthought, “I’m going to explore.”

[Talia Idris]

Talia's eyes narrowed at the young fox-boy talked. And the more he talked the more confused she got. "You can't be dreaming otherwise why would I be here - I am not some dream person you thought up and I am certainly NOT a dwarf! Hey! You can't leave me here!" Panic seeped through her voice as the foxish boy started to wander away. Moving quickly she started to follow him, pleasantly surprised at the ease her new garments allowed her to move in. Something still felt strange though, besides the fact that she was in a get up that she would have never thought to wear much less knew where or how she got here.

Looking down she shrieked and jumped to the side, and repeated the motion before stumbling and landing backwards on her bottom. Her mouth open and shut, no sounds coming out any longer as she gazed as the places where she had stood and started walking. Each place her foot has touch, wild flowers of all colours had bloom, and even as she sat gazing dumbstuck at her own foot prints, flowers, longer grass and tiny saplings started to bloom and grow around her.

Talia tried closing her eyes and willing the world around her to return to, anything, anywhere NORMAL. Opening her eyes she sighed and tried to breathe normally, the grass growing taller around her and all but obscuring her from view of anyone around. "What am I supposed to do with all this?" She whimpered to herself picking at the small flowers beside her as she tried not to think that these plants were all growing because of her - someone who was in constant denial that magic could ever be anything good.

[Kitan]

Kitan flinched at her open display of fear. For a brief moment, he looked like a child caught stealing from the cookie jar: frozen in place in the midst of walking, his head defensively lowered. No child could ever match the expressivity of his ears, which flattened on the side of his head. When she shrieked moments later, Kitan was startled out of his hesitation. He whirled around to see what had frightened her. He hoped it wasn’t his tail. Sometimes people acted strangely around it.

Instead, he was greeted by the growth of the flora around the human. As quickly as he had begun to leave, he began to move back towards her. His interest in her had been magnified sevenfold. With a confidence that bordered upon a lack of consideration, he hoisted her back to her feet. Standing right next to her, his ear brushed the side of her head because once again his eyes were not on her. The green orbs were affixed to the similarly colored plants that moved with serpentine grace around the girl he held.

“That’s amazing!” Kitan said, giddy with anticipation. Even as he said “I wonder…” an illusion was forming beside him. It remained indistinct, as if the object it created was seen through a thick fog, but Kitan eventually forced it to take the approximate form of a sheathed silver longsword. He eagerly sent his hand towards the weapon, which floated in the air. When his fingers closed around its hilt, Kitan smiled. “I can feel it!” He said, giddy with power. His illusions had solidity here.

Kitan’s mind became a whirlwind, and the sword faded into dust as he lost concentration upon it. Dozens of objects whirled into being around him in rapid succession: his quarterstaff, a handful of mail, and a chicken dinner set upon an ornate table hurtled in and out of existence. Their details varied wildly even during their brief time of existence.

“I wonder if I could make a person.” He said, thinking about the werefox he had met in the woods. A beautiful kitsune briefly flickered, translucent and insubstantial, around the edges of perception as he contemplated the notion. His face grew a bit darker and he said, “I probably shouldn’t.”

[Talia Idris]

"Amazing?!" Talia sputtered before falling silent as she watched the strange show the kitsune put on, things both real and unreal fading in and out of sight. "You have magic too?" She said in a hushed tone when she finally found her voice. The saplings were starting to become small trees around her but thankfully the grass has stopped growing at hip-length.

After seeing such a display Talia started to accept what was happening - at least to her. She had always been aware that there was something 'wrong' with her, but she was always so scared to admit it, much less to show it to anyone, even herself, because then it would make it real. But recent events were proving difficult to make life anything resembling normal. She closed her eyes and breathed again, the grass swaying softly along to each breath she inhaled.

Her eyes popped open at last, fear for the most part gone. "Well if you didn't bring me here and you clearly don't think I did, then we both have to be here because someone wants us to be. Not that I know what I could be any use for. I don't have money or any talents really besides baking.....and I suppose growing things with my feet?" She looked over at the boy, or fox or whatever he was, for the first time really. "I am sorry for panicking.....I am not used to anything like this...ever." She confessed looking down at her toes where tiny green rose like flowers were growing. "I'm Talia, Talia Idris. Please don't go off without me? At least not until we figure out what is going on?" She looked up with a weak smile, her eyes hopeful yet at the same time scared that this young creature was too carefree to really care about some silly girl who knew nothing about her own 'gifts' where he clearly seemed to know so much about his own. She knew she sounded weak and horribly feminine in the worst 'damsel in distress' type way but everything was happening too fast and was far too overwhelming for her to handle it on her own.

[Kitan]

“Okay!” Kitan replied merrily. He reached down and grabbed her wrist, then started dragging her along. Her fear was plainly lost upon him. “We’ll go find out what’s going on. If you do turn out to be some sort of dream person, warn me before you do anything weird?” He chuckled, looking behind them at the plants that were growing in her wake.

“Well, you know what I mean. Neat plant powers, by the way. I bet I could fake it! Here, watch.” Kitan focused his will into the creation of plantlike illusions. As soon as he did so, vines sprung into existence all around them. They danced and twirled at his discretion, forming into strange spiral shapes which rolled across the ashen earth.

[Talia Idris]

"How can I warn you if I'm going to do anything weird? For me everything happening feel weird." She said with a half smile - the energy was finally starting to catch up with her. She didn't know if it was this strange dream world or if was the strange tailed boy but something was pulling at her worries and they were slowly starting to fade.

"Not fair!" She exclaimed at Kitan copied her ability grow plants. "How did you do that? Do you think that I could do what you did?" Focusing like she had seen him do she tried to conjure the image of a kitchen before trying something smaller, like a whisk. Nothing showed up though, not even a flicker. "Well clearly that didn't work. But perhaps that's why you are dressed so fancily while I am in whatever this is supposed to be." She said gesturing to her strange outfit.

Looking around at the ever changing scenery she felt a twinge in her fingertips as she faced what she assumed was West. "I think......I think we should go this way." She said slowly as she gazed in the directions of range of mountains that seemed to grow and shrink at their own discretion. "I know I just met you and all, but I feel...something this way." She took a couple steps forward before turning and holding out a welcoming hand. "Shall we start an adventure and see what happens?"