iridescent flint beetle - caterpillars

[fulzanin]

WE'LL MAKE A WAY WHERE YOU CAN FIND YOUR PLACE
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If Feza were to be asked about who she cared about, her answer would be very short. She cared about a lot of things. Not many people. She didn't have friends, and family? The snow leopard would never comment on her family, not if she was able to help it. They didn't care about her. She didn't care about them. Feza deemed it fair. Perhaps she would say that she cared about herself. It was hardly truthful, considering how she pushed and pushed in order to try and bring a smile onto everyone else's face. That was what she cared about. Not specific people, not even herself. The overall wellbeing of the emotional state of those around here was what the snow leopard strove to improve. That was what Feza cared about. Her antics were supposed to make smiles and joy spring up between everyone that attended. She wanted everyone happy. A good person would want such a thing. Feza figured she did it well, so she had to be a very good, very festive person. That would make the cardboard box gods proud of her.

Despite her sporadic and festive mind, sometimes she ran out of things to throw parties about. Her mind wound itself into a rut and refused to budge. No amount of rolling on the tiled floor of her home would fix that. It resulted with her vibrant form awkwardly sprawled, staring at some of her materials. Now she was bored, and bored wasn't festive. No party ideas wasn't very festive, either. There wasn't anything else she could devote her time to. She wasn't able to hunt, because she was so vibrantly colored. Her hues weren't helped by her lack of knowledge. Hunting usually ended in failure. She would pounce, and sometimes she wouldn't have even been stalking food to begin with. Sometimes it frustrated her, but mostly she left it to sit in her mind. It'd be dealt with another day. When that day was? Feza didn't bother to think deeper into that. With hunting and party throwing out of the way, perhaps some would have considered sleep to be the next logical choice of spending time. However, Feza assured herself that she was not tired. She needed something to do! Sleeping wasn't really doing something! It was laying around, doing nothing, and doing nothing wasn't festive at all. Slowly she shuffled back to her paws, her icy eyes squinting. What else was lazy, her mind began to question. Insects, maybe. Insects were small. Cute. Some of them were, at least. Others were creepy. What were cute ones? Had she seen any around?

With questions her sporadic mental processes again began. She wanted something to ease the loneliness. What was the cutest insect that she could remember right now? Moths. Butterflies. Caterpillars. Caterpillars had the word 'cat' in them, and wasn't she a cat in a way? Were leopards cats? Feza shook her head as she strode over to her door. Focus! Where could she find caterpillars? Where would she keep them? No, not keep. Feza wouldn't keep them. They weren't hers. She'd make them a nice and little and festive place outside. They'd like that, wouldn't they? Her mind supplied thoughts in a way similar to that of a child. A child that believed that their bike wanted to be rode, a child that believed that a car in the garage was lonely. The caterpillars, surely, would like a place to stay. Nearby was her choice for many reasons. She wouldn't be lonely, one, and for her second point Feza would say that she'd constantly have to be fixing things up. She'd care about them. Be a good neighbor. Who wouldn't want to be her neighbor?

Her wings spread after she finished shoving her door open. The snow leopard launched herself into the sky. Where were caterpillars? She wasn't sure. She'd never looked for them before. It was like hunting, but different. She wandered throughout the territory, nudging leaves and branches and whatever else in her search. Eventually, though, she found what she was looking for. A squirming mass of tent caterpillars. They were so cute! Her fluffy tail wagged behind her as her claws trailed down the branch. Carefully she used her claws to break off the branch, and her jaws to make sure that the caterpillars suddenly weren't slung away. Feza trotted back to her home, happy and absolutely proud of herself. Something to care about, something other than parties and festivities was now in her grasp.

Upon returning home, Feza realized that maybe she should have set up their home first. Her ears flattened to her head, a brief feeling of discomfort swelling in her chest. She could still fix it! She set down the branch that was covered with tent caterpillars, and rushed off to fetch more branches. Carefully the vibrant female began to weave together an absolute heap of branches and twigs and leaves. It was an exhausting feat, but Feza would have to raise the question of what wasn't. Soon she had a decent pile, and the snow leopard began to carefully spread them out. She wanted to make it natural, like the bush that she'd found them in - or more accurately, a tree canopy. Feza rushed off back inside of her home, returning with more materials. Just to make sure nothing snuck in and ate any, the vibrant snow leopard began to set up an inch tall net around the somewhat enclosure. It's purpose? Well, it certainly wasn't keeping the caterpillars out, but apparently Feza thought it would keep bigger predators from being able to do so. Then was the final step. She picked up the branch that was covered in squirming caterpillars, and gently placed it in the middle of the enclosure. "So cute," Feza commented. Another idea came to mind - water, really - and in the spur of the moment she forgot about her icy powers. She turned and sprinted off again, so blinded by the joys of caterpillar neighbors that she seemed to entirely forget where she was going. The guardsman wound up bumbling into a few people as she sprinted off, until she actually full on tripped and tumbled along the ground. Feza slid to a halt, huffing a little. "Why don't my paws want to, want to work! I need to get water for the caterpillars!" To whom she was complaining? No one, really, her sitting up and carefully lifting her paws to ensure that she hadn't somehow managed to slam dirt and rocks through her heavy pelt.

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THE EMPTY CHAIRS WILL BE RESERVED FOR OUR PITY

[wormwood.]

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AURUM

DO NO HARM BUT TAKE NO SHIT !

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Aurum, unlike Feza, often found his caring nature spread across many different subjects, and not just focused solely on one task, like Feza and her party planning. Ever since he had arrived in Tanglewood – and perhaps even before, if anyone ever asked him – Aurum had found himself caring. In fact, occasionally the lion cared too much. Cared too much about his friends, cared too much about his family, cared too much about everyone but himself. He cared so much for so many different specific people that he often found himself giving up parts of himself, plucking away pieces just so that he could offer them to others. He had spent so much time in the past being selfish, and all it had ended up bringing to him was disaster and heartache, so why would he now choose to stop being selfless? He liked it this way. He liked being a caretaker, pouring himself so fully into working until his paws bled just to make sure that others were safe, and happy, and felt like they had a home with him. He and Feza were similar in that they cared about seeing others happy, but they were also so, so, painfully different. Feza threw herself into her schemes and festivities, working herself to exhaustion all to see that end result of a happy smile on someone's face. Meanwhile, Aurum threw himself into the people he loved, and the things that he did to protect them. He worked himself to exhaustion so that his home would know how much he loved them. So that his family – and truthfully, all of Tanglewood was his family, at least in his eyes – would know how much he loved them. Did it hurt sometimes, tearing himself apart bit by bit just to help others who sometimes didn't even care? Yeah, of course it did. But would that ever stop him? No. He didn't think it ever would. Because there would always be people that he loved. People that deserved those torn away pieces of himself.

Also unlike Feza, there were times where Aurum would actually allow himself to rest. These occasions were few and far between, often squeezed between large events that drained him so fully that he needed to sleep and allow himself to recharge, or he would literally collapse from the stress of it all. The lion had seen Feza on that cliff more than a few times, smiling giddily even as she stared down into the abyss of exhaustion and injury, all because she believed she was only useful if she was making others smile. Sometimes Aurum wanted to scream, just because Feza could be so surprisingly and frustratingly stubborn at times. Even when she didn't mean to be. She would laugh nervously and ramble on and on while plastering a plastic smile on her face all because she didn't want to allow herself even a second of shut eye. If Aurum didn't think she would never, ever trust him again if he did it, he probably would've already knocked her out by now, just so that she would actually get some proper goddamn rest. It annoyed him even more, knowing that there were many moments like the predicament she had been in just an hour before. Phases where she wouldn't have anything that she needed to do, and wouldn't have any odd festive little weird ideas in her head, begging to be fulfilled. These would be the moments where he would most expect her to finally fucking relax, and get the sleep that she very obviously needed. However, that was never the case. She always had to find something, in her own agonizingly frustrating way.

Of all the things that the male had ever expected Feza to do in one of these moments – although really he should've never expected anything of Feza, since none of his expectations was ever right – he had never thought that she would turn to caring for bugs as an outlet for her aversion to sleep. It just seemed like such an utterly ridiculous task that it wouldn't have surprised him if it was the setup for a joke. Hey, what happens when you find a Feza searching for a bunch of caterpillars? You know it's just a regular Tuesday! If Aurum was a weaker animal, that knew he wouldn't chomp clean through the bone and muscle of his tail if he bit down to hard, he might've bitten down on the appendage just to keep himself from screaming. Who in their right mind went out and collected a bunch of caterpillars to raise in a little habitat? Although at this mental question, Aurum's response probably would've been that there was no way in hell that Feza was actually in her right mind. He had seen her out of her right mind firsthand quite a bit, in fact. And while he liked to think that he had grown used to her particular brand of antics over the many months now that he had known and lived alongside Feza, there were still certain times where he just had to question what the hell her motivations were. Where he just wanted to find a really tall tree where he could scream, why the fuck are you not asleep?

The week thus far had not been the kindest in the world to Aurum. His brother was back, which was both a good and a bad thing at the same time, and really overall just a stressful thing. In addition to that, he now knew that he needed to move houses if he wanted to live comfortably with all those that he kept around him, and in addition to that? The proxy had to deal with Vathmos and Snarl being at each other's throats, things even escalating to such a point where a physical fight had almost broken out. It had only been a few days, but it felt like eons had passed in those last few days, and Aurum felt like he hadn't slept for a single second of those eons. His body was so tired, with his wings and ears drooping, and his eyelids constantly feeling heavy. His mind spun occasionally, an unpleasant reminder of the fact that he was actually real, and expected to live like a normal fucking person. As a result of all of this, Aurum had been in quite the state when Feza tripped and stumbled to the ground nearby. He had been in front of his house, his large body spread out in the son as sweet voices lulled him towards rest. These voices were cruelly interrupted, however, by Feza's shrill and annoyed huffing. A heavy sigh left the angel, and he heavily considered just ignoring the brightly colored snow leopard, but... well, he was a sucker. A curious sucker, who was also vaguely worried that if Feza didn't rest soon, she was going to have an actual heart attack.

Opening his one blue eye slowly, Aurum shoved himself up to his unsteady paws, eventually just opting to plop his hindquarters down into a sitting position. He eyed Feza curiously as she sat up as well, all huffy and annoyed, although he truthfully wasn't sure with who. After a long yawn that wrenched his jaws open wide enough to clearly see his gleaming rows of white teeth, Aurum finally spoke to Feza, his voice slightly rough and drowsy, "You need to get water for... what? Did you say that you're getting water for caterpillars?" He didn't even bother justifying her initial question with a response. Mainly due to the fact that he was fairly sure it was rhetorical, and also because the answer would just be because you're a fucking klutz.

━ I'M GONNA WIN.┆PROUD. WARM. PROTECTIVE. ━

[beck.]

[align=center]

    The idle buzz of town activity was enough to interrupt his morose thoughts with a persistent pounding, just behind his eyes. He could remember some lonely paragraph in a sea of fuzzy words, detailing the symptoms of a migraine. Remedies were duly listed off as the next paragraph island, meaningless words he could only associate with cheery adverts for the fast-acting beneficial all-natural tablets of manufactured health, lining pharmaceutical shelves miles from the wilderness he resigned to. Tylenol, Advil, ibuprofen, Aspirin -- nonsensical syllables strung together yet all the same connected to pain relief. Colorful and happy people in memories of numbly watching a screen only made his mind ache more. Beck leaned against the wall of a partitioned yard, rubbing sorely in the gap between globe and socket as though massaging the pain away were viable. A sharp tsk slipped past pallid lips.

    Voices perked his ears, prompting him to straighten while still heavily using the stone wall as a crutch. Paws pressed on its rough surface, splaying in search of stability as he shuffled his hindlegs closer to his upright body. Pinpointing the sleepy conversation to be sourced from around the corner, the poltergeist shifted to poke his head out to glimpse who spoke. Disappointment pulled the corner of his mouth down; why did that damned lion have to be everywhere? Were there multiple clones of him, conveniently inserted into every situation to taunt him? The boy forced his attention to the hot pink leopard crooning over her paw, split brow quirking in curiosity. A new person, at least to him. Hopefully, one who didn't know of his reputation as an unstable basketcase only deserving of pity and caution.

    Beck shifted his weight uneasily. He could dare to approach and offer his concern, but then again... he rubbed uselessly at his forehead once more. What would Selby tell him to do? He flopped back, stubby tail twitching as he conjured up the image of the sawbone in his pained thoughts. Probably tell him to be social. With a quiet groan, his body sagged in defeat. Fine, whatever. The little poltergeist pushed back to stand, taking a shallow breath before limping towards the pair. Pointedly ignoring Aurum, he inched closer to view Feza's cradled paw. "Ouch," he murmured, a wheeze of rarely expressed sympathy, "You okay?" Glassy eyes flitted up to her unsurprisingly bright face, seeing past the glitter and rosettes to find that he was looking at himself. A lonely creature, deprived of affection to the point that she was likely desperate for any attention. Beck thickly swallowed. What was it she had been talking about before? He bit down on his lower lip, eventually opening his mouth once more, "...Can I see the caterpillars? I'll help get water for them if you want."

[charactercemetary.]

[glow=#000,1,400]THE WORLD IS BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN NOW THAT YOU'RE HERE — ｡+ﾟ.[/glow]

There was a lot for her to take in. So many sights she hadn't seen. When she heard of these "caterpillars" she just had to check them out. She flies down, having explored the skies for some time and skidding to a stop near the rest. Her eyes held wonder as she stumbled forward, hearing the chatter of others, and she blinked as she tried to get a better sort of view of such an event. What was going on?

That was answered when another brightly colored snow leopard bolted and ran into her, causing Amaris to spin around. The adolescent had to steady herself before she saw a tripped Feza, and had to take note of her colors. "If, um, if you need me to help, too, I can!" Amaris adds on, slowly stepping forward, as if she expected that to happen, and tilting her head. "Especially if you're hurt!"[/b]