01-20-2020, 11:55 PM
[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]Language is a funny thing. Like any art, it breathes of life - it exists as a living being just as it can die all the same, surviving only by careful preservation. In the same way a child is taught to scribble and then to draw, they are taught to speak, to put words to the images in their head and make sense of the world. And while any living thing could speak in grunts and growls, language made communication a mortal thing. It gives birth to new voices, it dies with age. It is driven to extinction simply by forgetting that it occupied the same space as the rest of the world.
Roan is passing the Spanish language to a feral beaver.
The grizzly bristles for reasons he cannot describe. Ironic, how words could fail. He wants to attribute his discomfort to the rodent, for it could easily scratch the boy's eyes out, bite with massive teeth - but he knows, under the surface, that this is not the source of his fear. Ahab hangs back, watches in silence; in spite of his size, he's good at keeping quiet, blending into the thick palm bushes and vines.
A single, dark eye tracks the ocelot as it moves, too casual, into the clearing. There is a part of him, smothered deep, that urges him to react. Call out. Ask if they've met before. Because - it knows him. It - he - has to recall. The clean, white rooms, the voices, the words they spoke to him, often in languages he did not understand. He is the enemy of his enemy, but they are not friends. Ahab works a lip between his teeth.
Thinks - remembers - and forgets.
Roxanne sweeps up her child before him and he is suddenly standing in the underbrush, silent like a nervous fool. The bear muscles his way past a particularly heavy rope of vines, ducking beneath the wide frond of a palm leaf. It's easy for him to get lost in thought. It was something he had to work on; at least, that was what he'd been told. "Is he alright?" A wary glance is cast on the beaver, and he thinks (for the second time, the first forgotten) that it may be a danger.
Roan is passing the Spanish language to a feral beaver.
The grizzly bristles for reasons he cannot describe. Ironic, how words could fail. He wants to attribute his discomfort to the rodent, for it could easily scratch the boy's eyes out, bite with massive teeth - but he knows, under the surface, that this is not the source of his fear. Ahab hangs back, watches in silence; in spite of his size, he's good at keeping quiet, blending into the thick palm bushes and vines.
A single, dark eye tracks the ocelot as it moves, too casual, into the clearing. There is a part of him, smothered deep, that urges him to react. Call out. Ask if they've met before. Because - it knows him. It - he - has to recall. The clean, white rooms, the voices, the words they spoke to him, often in languages he did not understand. He is the enemy of his enemy, but they are not friends. Ahab works a lip between his teeth.
Thinks - remembers - and forgets.
Roxanne sweeps up her child before him and he is suddenly standing in the underbrush, silent like a nervous fool. The bear muscles his way past a particularly heavy rope of vines, ducking beneath the wide frond of a palm leaf. It's easy for him to get lost in thought. It was something he had to work on; at least, that was what he'd been told. "Is he alright?" A wary glance is cast on the beaver, and he thinks (for the second time, the first forgotten) that it may be a danger.
[align=center][div style="text-align:right;width:59%;font-family:verdana;"][font=verdana][size=11pt][color=transparent][url=https://beastsofbeyond.com/index.php?topic=13462.0][color=black][b][i]LET HIM WHO THINKS HE KNOWS NO FEAR
LOOK WELL UPON MY FACE
LOOK WELL UPON MY FACE