[Ander]

Monolith

Morning rose over the Whisper's trees, dawn's rays dappling green through the canopy's clustered leaves. Dew glistened wet on the shaded leaves beneath, trickling from the edges of shrubs and dotting the scattered scrub-brush. Fog crept across the earth, the shimmering, misty grey sweeping with an easy familiarity over foliage and foot-claw alike.  

Those foot-claws were covered in moss and set deeply into the dirt. They attached to heavily scaled feet, melding into bristling fur halfway up the leg. Feather and scale wrapped around those six-foot stalks, easily half their bearer's height all on their own and each as wide around as a man's torso. These fed into a furred belly and puffed-out barrel chest. There, tucked cozily into tufts of fur, nestled the massive pointed skull of a Gyrraptor. With the exception of size, all the typical features of the species were there. Its eyes were open and unseeing, the lightly pebbled grey...of cut stone. So it was not a creature at all, but a very large statue, despite the accuracy of the carving. Plants of the forest lent credit to the assumption, sprawled overgrown across its surface, making it clear that it had stood in this secluded place for some time.

It was a terribly ornate statue to be abandoned, little more than a path-marker in the shadows of the trees. There was no inscription on its surface, no maker's mark to serve as a clue to its origins. It merely stood, as if sleeping, and waited: for what, there was no sign.

[Meesh]

Mara

The fog brought with it a sort of heavy silence, a peacefullness. Of course, it didn't take long for that silence to be interrupted by a frantic spluttering, and a heavy flapping of wings.

The Morloth went tumbling out of the sky, all flailing wings and tail. Ears swiveling around furiously as the Morloth clicked frantically to gain her bearings, just barely managing to change direction at the last minute and grab onto a branch of a tree, settling after a few more quick wingflaps to settle herself.

"For the love of.." Mara rubbed her head with a wing, wincing. What should have been a quick and simple flight home had nearly ended in disaster as Mara, for some reason, had blacked out midflight. When she came to, she was speeding towards the forest and just barely had time to avoid a crash.

She allowed herself a few minutes to settle on the tree, regaining her breath and bearings. Finally, deciding she'd had enough moping around - it was high time to go home after all - Mara allowed herself to drop once again, this time landing on the head of a giant statue of... of some creature or another. She paid it no mind, however, now gazing upwards carefully, trying to detect the opening in the trees she had come through. Forests made it irritating to take to the skies again.

But that quick pull out of a crash landing had left her more tired than she thought. Wing drooping a little, Mara allowed herself to flop onto the statue, taking a deep breath. "Maybe a few minutes won't hurt..."

[Ander]

It would be some time after the Morloth's landing that the stone head beneath her...would begin to move. The slight tremors shivering through the rock could, perhaps, be explained away as the smallest quake ever to shake the Whisper - except that nothing moved with it. Instead, as the stone stretched, it sent small cracks and pops rippling through the air in stark contrast to the stillness of the misty forest. The platform upon which Mara lay shuddered, the bridge of its nose scrunching gradually, as if the great statue suppressed a sneeze. And the blank stone facets that were its eyes began to leak a strange fog of their own. Each turned impossibly clear, and a white glow began to well up from within each sphere of glass.

Monolith paused for a moment, once again indistinguishable from a statue, save for the glowing white eyes. He'd been asleep for a very, very long time. It was hard to remember what he was doing here, to be honest. Wherever "here" was, exactly. Pretty place, though. Such nice trees, and warm light. So much wonderful green.

There were even creatures! The white orbs seemed to focus - for all it was possible for them to do so, sans pupils - on the Morloth on his nose, once again scrunching his muzzle in attempts to get a better look at it. Such a small thing! "Hello?" The stone giant rumbled, in a voice composed almost entirely of the low grate of stone-on-stone.

[Meesh]

The rumbling shaking feeling went unnoticed by the Morloth at first. When the shuddering finally registered, she blearily opened her eyes to look around, frowning as she squinted at the world around her. Of course, given that she was sitting on the thing that was doing all the rumbling, it looked to Mara like the whole world was shaking around her. She blinked a few times before deciding that she didn't care, flopping back down onto her stone perch.

She did care a lot more when the crackles of noise were followed by a glow coming from her own stone perch! Mara straightened hastily, tensed now for some sign of magical attack. What was happening to this statue? As Mara gaped onwards, the eyes turned clear, then a pristine white, and almost seemed to... to look at things? That wasn't possible, stone was the one thing Mara could see better than.

Under her scrabbling paws, a giant nose wrinkled, and a shocked Mara found herself face to face with a giant stone creature that spoke to her! Its voice was a grating rumble, the sound reverberating through Mara. It felt more like she had felt the words rather than heard them.

"Well I never." Mara tilted her head as she leaned in close to one of the glowing eyes, squinting as she tried to peer at whatever was creating that light inside. "Now where I come from, stone statues tend to not...talk." she blinked helplessly at the thing. "You're not...oh, I don't know, some sort of magical prince cursed by an evil witch, are you?"

[Ander]

The bridge of Monolith's muzzle smoothed before crinkling once more. The massive creature seemed to be giving the idea some significant thought, for all it lacked the ability to really emote 'thinking' in a way most might recognize. The white orbs of his eyes stayed on Mara, unblinking - they had no lids or lashes, after all. The white light within was little more than fog, just barely opaque enough to hold color. It swirled in soft circles within each clear 'eye', glowing faintly as it went. "I don't think so," he responded at last. "I am not a statue. I am Monolith." He didn't think he was a statue, anyway. He had such vague memories of such things: made of stone, true, but without any oomph. No movement, like the funny little bat said. No wonder. And certainly no conversation.

He couldn't remember where he had seen those other statues, though. Their figures were other animals whose names he couldn't quite recall, and people whose names were utterly lost to him. "I do not know if I am a prince, though; I have never met one. No witches, either. Are there many were you come from?"

His idea of a witch was less solid than his idea of a statue, but there was still something there: Monolith was absolutely sure that witches meant magic. The latter was a concept he understood fairly well, at least enough so to know that he, himself, was magic. At least, he was made of it. Maybe a witch would be able to tell him more.