Even without a sense of smell, you could tell when you walked into a clan's borders.
There was some deep instinctual feeling, some wrench shoved into your soul, a tightness in the chest - a feeling that you, suddenly, were an outsider, and that you, suddenly, were liable to be a target. It was the sort of feeling that made the hairs on your back stand on end; rather, the hairs all over your body, as in Abathur's case, the sudden shift in atmosphere from regular liminal space to owned liminal space sending every one of the hypersensitive strands of hair on his body to stand on end, as if each one were an antenna, reaching out, trying to grasp at whatever danger may lurk around him.
He let off a low grumble to himself. Truly, he wished he had a mastery over his own biological functions, because he knew the flight or fight reflex that was building inside him was mostly baseless. He was here for a reason - talk to someone, somehow find shelter even in his body, and then wing it from there. And in case someone decided to attack him, to send him reeling away from the border as they oft wanted to do, he had developed a backup plan, specifically involving the lovely trees all around him. Felines (as were most common in inhabited areas such as these) were good climbers, but they were no match for him, especially with his years of practice in tactical retreats.
Many, many years. People were never too kindly to his kind, which he, as far as he knew, was the only one of - were they to have thumbs, he was sure he'd have been chased by torches by now. Given his massive legspan of three feet, though, he supposed it was somewhat reasonable of a reaction. Most didn't respond well to regular spiders, and given that he was three times the size of the biggest other spider species... well. That didn't bode well for his odds of not getting persecuted.
Ironically antsy, the great black spider shifted his presence, moving just another meter forward, before settling next to a nice looking tree and waiting. Had he had eyelids, he may have closed his eyes and listened, but since he didn't, he simply watched and waited, proverbial fingers crossed that someone would run across him soon, for better or for worse. He may have a lot more time to live out, given his relative youth, but he'd be damned if he was gonna spend too much of it waiting just to probably be attacked - push comes to shove, he'd just keep marching through the marsh and find some life on his own.
There was some deep instinctual feeling, some wrench shoved into your soul, a tightness in the chest - a feeling that you, suddenly, were an outsider, and that you, suddenly, were liable to be a target. It was the sort of feeling that made the hairs on your back stand on end; rather, the hairs all over your body, as in Abathur's case, the sudden shift in atmosphere from regular liminal space to owned liminal space sending every one of the hypersensitive strands of hair on his body to stand on end, as if each one were an antenna, reaching out, trying to grasp at whatever danger may lurk around him.
He let off a low grumble to himself. Truly, he wished he had a mastery over his own biological functions, because he knew the flight or fight reflex that was building inside him was mostly baseless. He was here for a reason - talk to someone, somehow find shelter even in his body, and then wing it from there. And in case someone decided to attack him, to send him reeling away from the border as they oft wanted to do, he had developed a backup plan, specifically involving the lovely trees all around him. Felines (as were most common in inhabited areas such as these) were good climbers, but they were no match for him, especially with his years of practice in tactical retreats.
Many, many years. People were never too kindly to his kind, which he, as far as he knew, was the only one of - were they to have thumbs, he was sure he'd have been chased by torches by now. Given his massive legspan of three feet, though, he supposed it was somewhat reasonable of a reaction. Most didn't respond well to regular spiders, and given that he was three times the size of the biggest other spider species... well. That didn't bode well for his odds of not getting persecuted.
Ironically antsy, the great black spider shifted his presence, moving just another meter forward, before settling next to a nice looking tree and waiting. Had he had eyelids, he may have closed his eyes and listened, but since he didn't, he simply watched and waited, proverbial fingers crossed that someone would run across him soon, for better or for worse. He may have a lot more time to live out, given his relative youth, but he'd be damned if he was gonna spend too much of it waiting just to probably be attacked - push comes to shove, he'd just keep marching through the marsh and find some life on his own.
tags - "speech"