[Feint]

In a crooked little town
They were lost and never found
Fallen leaves
On the ground
Run away before you drown
Or the streets will beat you down
Fallen leaves
On the ground

"No. You need exercise, Saru. You can't sit at home all the time--it makes you grouchy and soft. Out."

Saru felt a shoe shove itself under his belly and lift him off of his soft couch. He screamed in protest, tearing at the fabric of the shoe with his claws in anger. It held him over a trap door, which opened, and the shoe turned sharply, attempting to dump him into the darkness below. Saru clung to the shoe with his fingertips, flailing and screeching. The end of a broom came in for aid, and the little rengosett dropped like a brick.

He landed on his head painfully to the sound of a slamming door and footsteps quietly fading somewhere above him. The little room he was in had shed its darkness in favor of a soft, quiet pumpkin-orange glow due to Saru's fiery tail. He squinted in the dim light he provided and examined the room a bit more carefully. There were several doors perched on the heavily rippled dirt floor (which very much made it appear as though he were jammed into the hollow trunk of some large tree), all midget-sized and misshapen, with a single, acorn-like handle on either the right or the left side of the door--there was really no rhyme or reason for which way the door handle was placed. Each door was a different shade of brown, and each led to a different, completely random destination. Saru was used to this room--it was the only way anyone left that house, and it was a very unfun game for its inhabitants to find just where that door went so that they could go back home. Whenever someone said it was time to get "exercise," this was what they were referring to. Groaning loudly, Saru firmly grasped the handle of the door directly in front of him, closed his eyes, and pulled.

There was the feeling of being shoved from behind, and he landed on his face in a pile of Autumn leaves. Shaking and spitting, the rengosett raised his head from the pile and took one good look around. He was... In a forest? He sat up and furrowed his brow, looking a bit more closely. It wasn't Roraldi--the shining, happy trees of Roraldi forest were a far cry from the twisted oaks that dominated these woods. Saru inhaled deeply, balled his paws into fists, and screamed at the top of his furious lungs. His high-pitched, screechy sound of wrath echoed loudly between the gnarled trees for quite some distance, silencing what little timid whispers there had been, alerted to someone's presence. This wasn't Roraldi--meaning, he had never been here before. Usually on these outings, he had visited that location sometime prior, and had a general idea of where the second door might be hiding. It made the worst part of his day much faster and much less painful to bear. When he didn't know where he was, well... He might be here for weeks, just searching for a single door that only he could see. His face turned red from the duration of his scream. It wasn't fair.

Somewhere far away, a slender figure rocked in their chair and grinned, patting a broom handle into the palm of their outstretched hand. They knew exactly where the door went--as a matter of fact, they were waiting on the other side of it!

"Come on, Saru," the figure hummed softly, "We're all waiting."

1

[crow]

(Giselle's in her human form, hope you don't mind)

It was a slow day for Giselle. Not that any day was ever terribly exciting, living as she did with a doctor who daily preached to her about the virtues of a peaceful world and implored her to give thanks to whatever powers for preserving that peace. Still, even then, most days there would be some sad sick individual to take care of, or those wounded from various types of misadventure, or occasionally a trip on which they would embark to treat a very ill patient who was unable to move. Not today, though. Kenric had been in rare form today, as there was absolutely no-one to tend to at all; his zeal had threatened to reach a religious fervor, and in light of that, Giselle had excused herself from the office-cum-household with the completely bland excuse of going to look for herbs. Herbal medication was being used less and less these days, considering they had technologies on one end of the scale and magic on the other, but all the same, they were running low on stock, and she was sure to be reprimanded if she came back empty-handed.

That was how she found herself in the forest, picking plants. It was the lamest endeavor imaginable, and brought back only memories of her early apprenticeship, when she had been but a child. That's all this plant-collecting was, in the end--- a child's errand, and a poor excuse indeed. She winced at the thought of returning to Kenric though, and suddenly fussed about looking for more useful plants in the dense underbrush, as if afraid that her mentor might somehow materialize behind her.

It was then that she heard the scream.

Her first thought was to analyze it. It wasn't human, or at least she didn't think so. She couldn't be sure, but the quality of it struck her as wrong, somehow. It didn't sound so much pained as frustrated either, for she'd often seen animals in hurt in her line of work, and knew enough to differentiate a little now. But while this quelled her immediate concern, it did occur to her that the source of the cry might serve to alleviate her boredom somewhat, if not through involvement then at least through observation. Even if it did turn out to be boring, she would have taken the time to investigate it. It gave her the opportunity to do something other than stare at leaves all day.

"Kenric couldn't possibly fault me if I went to investigate a scream," she said to herself, trying to sound convinced. After hemming and hawing a bit, she decided that she'd probably end up going anyways, regardless of how much she worried over the consequences, and set off in more or less the right direction. Her movement through the forest was not as quiet as a hunter's or someone truly at home in this setting, but there was a bit of deftness to it, from a long acquaintanceship with forests in general in the past.

[Feint]

"GAAAAAAAASP."

Saru dropped forward onto his face, a black blob of fluff with a tail, and wheezed, very out of breath. His heart fluttered in his chest from exertment, and Saru waited patiently for it to calm down, not wanting to risk an injury.

Once it was at ease, no holds barred.

Screeching with monkey power, he flailed on the ground, flinging fistfuls of leaves and whatever creatures there may have been underneath them in all direction, causing an orange cloud of autumn dust to swarm around him like a large and beautiful halo. He flailed to his feet, then began picking up large fistfuls of leaves and slugs and hurling them deliberately at the holes in trees, loudly blaming the squirrels for all of his problems and cursing their family names (whatever those might happen to be).

He was about to feel better when a jay shot out of the tree, not a squirrel.

He wailed in defeat and flopped forward, grinding his head into the dirt as if to dig his way home. He squalled and flapped his arms and legs in protest when a grain of sand found its way into his eye, and choked on even more dirt since he hadn't bothered to lift his face from the ground. Oh what a day. Saru rolled onto his back, blinked out the sand, spat out as much dirt as he could, and rested. His heart was at its fluttering stage again, a state his master had once noted that only he could reach so easily. She had been concerned for his health since he was very small, as his element--energy--was highly unusual for his species, causing him significant physical stress in everything he tried to do, as it was usually with the greatest amount of gusto any being had ever achieved. He gave the nothing in front of him a highly unamused, grumpy stare, sighed softly, and flicked the end of his tail. Stop go stop go stop go. It was little wonder he had such a terrible sort of temper.

The sound of footsteps came up from somewhere behind him, but he was forced to resist turning and merely listen to its approach as his heart was still a little on edge.

Watch it think I'm dead and try to eat me, he griped to himself.

[crow]

Giselle had to admit to herself after a bit of walking that she may have misjudged the distance between herself and the screamer. She attributed it to the loudness of the thing, whatever it was, muddling her perception of closeness. Hopefully it would be worth the trouble. Her progress was also impeded by the need to make markers as she went, so as to find her way back to familiar ground again... As familiar as one ever got in these parts anyways. This particular forest was fond of mist and fog, and sometimes Giselle was convinced it was really changing itself around at irregular intervals just for the sake of confusing those who traversed it.

When she found the source of the screaming, she almost overshot her target, taking one glance at the lump of black fur at the periphery of her vision and dismissing it as nothing more than a slight irregularity which she might use for a landmark. She'd almost walked past it entirely before it occurred to her that such a thing wasn't something that one found in the foliage of a forest, not even this one. If it had fur, it was probably alive too...

She turned and stared at the thing. How odd... Was it really alive? Most creatures of the forest, if this was indeed a native inhabitant, would have fled long before she came close enough to notice much more than a blurry flash of color. She was no hunter, able to track their movements and sneak up on something with senses better than her own. But she didn't know what to make of the odd behavior, and immediately began to hypothesize, taking cautious steps away from the thing. It could be dead, or ill, or even a trap set by a more clever predator to lure in prey... The latter was, admittedly, somewhat unlikely. All the same, she didn't trust the prone creature.

There was only one feasible course of action.

Giselle cast about for a stick and, upon finding a suitable one, proceeded to crouch at what she deemed a safe distance and gave the black-furred thing a few tentative pokes.

[Feint]

Saru had very much expected the footsteps behind him to be some form of predator, despite his earlier sarcastic manner. Upon feeling something sharp in his back, his mind raced to the only possible conclusion--it was a tooth, and this thing was trying to eat him.

With a wild howl, he launched himself six feet in the air and in sort of a sideways direction, arms and legs spread like a starfish and flailing for a nonexistent branch, his whole body turning a slow and graceful flip and a half before coming in direct contact with the trunk of a rather large tree with a smack and rolling down into the ditch at its roots, the abandoned home of some sort of wild or feral fenling.

Saru would have exited the hole to try and make a run for it, but, being the coward he was, he decided he would much rather remain buried, praying whatever it was that had found him was not one that was able to dig.

He stuffed his forepaws into his mouth, trying to muffle his frantic wheezing. His heart was going crazy. I just want to get home to my beloved couch in less than two pieces! THIS ISN'T FAIR! he wailed mentally, whimpering.


((hole in one!))

[crow]

... Wow, okay, so Giselle hadn't been expecting that. The black shape, which quickly resolved itself into something with four long and flailing limbs, saw fit to leap into the air as soon as she'd made her jab with her stick. It would have been quite the impressive feat if the thing hadn't then proceeded to grasp about desperately and smack into a tree. She considered clapping in a show of sarcasm; she would certainly have done so if it were someone at the Estate (or, well, someone who wouldn't have skinned her for it), but the creature looked jumpy and she was sure the effect would be lost on it anyways.

What did they recommend for talking to startled animals? Giselle was studying the healing of people, so animal husbandry almost never played a part in her life. She recalled trying a 'here kitty kitty' once with Rhodes, but boy had that gone badly... With an educated guess based mostly on common sense, she crouched down and approached slowly, she herself poised to spring away in case of another flailing fit. "Hey," she said in a soft, low voice, "I'm not going to hurt you..."

Now that she was closer, she could see it was trying to dig, and hastily angled herself so that she avoided the flying clods of dirt as well. Actually, she didn't like the noise it was making either... It could be sick, or it could be insane. Maybe it was both... Boy, wasn't this her lucky day, then? It must do wonders for her education, meeting this kind of specimen. "Gee, what's the matter with you?" she asked it, though honestly she didn't expect much of an answer, even if it could talk.

[Feint]

It TALKS?

Saru popped out of the hole and faced Giselle on all fours, legs apart, teeth bared, panting heavily.

"What's the matter with ME?! What's the matter with YOU?! Scaring the begEEzus out of people like that--no respect, I tell you! Who goes around prodding people with sticks?! Why..." Saru babbled furiously, and on and on he went, stiffly hopping a couple millimeters straight up on every emphasized syllable. He didn't have much to say by way of his opinion--really, all he wanted to do was vent his shock and embarrassment at this hapless victim that had fallen into his paws. Although he was only repeating the same thing over and over again with different verbiage, it was difficult to catch on to that unless one took the time to listen, which one was typically not apt to do under the numerous, heated waves of rengosett wrath.

Saru went on until he was out of breath, then took a massive inward gulp and flopped forward, exhausted. His tail lashed once in anger, then he merely lay where he was, facedown and catching his air for just a moment before popping right back up again and continuing exactly where he had left off in his extraordinary, extremely educating speech on the rights and wrongs of society and the treatment of albies to lowly rengosett like him, and how this should not be so, how it was wrong and cruel, and how that splinter in his toe was all entirely her fault.

In this rambling, he happened to mention his predicament of not being able to go home because of "that blasted door."