you're the life of the party // creating yule tree

[ninazu]

BURN
BRIGHT

Ninazu stepped through the crowd of wanderers collected in their central camp. Stryker’s aggressive campaign left no wanderer untouched; nearly everyone she passed proudly carried bandages, wounds, scars. They blinked away sleep from their eyes, finished polishing their weapons, and watched the guru. She knew their thoughts, their guesses, as she surely as if she stood among them. Another raid announcement? A captive to torture? Yet one more demonstration of their might?

“It has come to my attention that there are no trees tall enough for our yearly Yule Celebration.” Ninazu spoke the words quietly, but heads looked up from the resting wanderers.

The wanderers murmured amongst themselves. Several licked their lips and glanced at the spot where previous Yule Trees stood, one after the other, for decades since the group’s formation long before Stryker and Ninazu’s arrival. But the spot held nothing now, not even char or debris, only an empty spot where vegetation had once flourished. As successful as their war was, they couldn’t restore the land with bloodshed.

Ninazu placed her paw on the ground, clawing the depleted soil. Greenery refused to grow in the Condemned’s camp since the meteor, but she sensed nutrients and life recovering. The lioness’s golden eyes narrowed; she breathed in, smelling the muggy soil, and focused on the soil between her toes. The land fought her, bellowed its exhaustion in her ear, but she braced herself. After her previous experiment yielded nothing but overgrown carnivorous plants, she anticipated the mental struggle and knew how little she could get away with asking.

The soil before her trembled. The ground shifted, rising up in a bump and then parting around a sprout. The plant shot up to the sky and thickened, forming a palm tree. When it stopped growing, it stood over ten feet high—commendable, but nothing compared to the glorious palm trees on the island before the meteor. Ninazu touched its bark with a sigh, biting her tongue, and shook her head.

“This is the best I can do. But next year—no, next month—we will have a new home, one filled with real trees.” She grit her teeth and licked her fangs. “We are so close. It will be done.”

Ninazu shook her head, took her paw off the tree, and turned to the crowd with a lopsided smirk. “But let’s forget about all that dreadful business for a moment. I believe tradition calls for decorations. Who has an offering prepared for the Yule Tree?”

© MADI

[rhosmari]

She was quiet, eyes half open as she listlessly weaved in and out of her nap. There was nothing to do but to recuperate from her meager injuries and they were just that. A simply bite to the back of her neck was not something that was going to keep her down and she allowed herself the time to heal from it. After all the lion that had done it would soon find that he was no saint, no immortal that would be able to continue pushing their buttons and she would gut him when she was better. She would make sure he was nothing more than a lifeless corpse on the ground. All for those scared little Tanglers to see. Besides with their leader dead and gone who could take the reigns, they were just sitting ducks now and she hoped that her father would let her pull the strings with them. Oh, she could hope. But she was pulled out of her tired thoughts by the sound of a familiar voice. Her mother. Lifting her head she watched with intrigue at the topic that was presented and then toward the empty spot. She was right. How long had it been since they had had Yule tree, when the land wasn't barren. It was a hopeful prospect.

All of those groups, they thought they were fighting and doing this for shits and giggles. They didn't know how bad they were suffering because of the meteor strike. They didn't realize what they had to deal with and when a cornered animal had nothing left to lose it struck. That was the Coalition and she hoped that they would all fall so that they could have a better future. Rising up from her paws she quietly watched as Ninazu forced a tree to grow, forced the earth to give nutrients to a large palm tree and she understood the sadness of it. A frown pulled at her maw then as she stepped forward aiming to lightly brush against her muzzle. ''I think I got something.'' The blue tinted lioness spoke as she looked up at the tree. Taking a deep breath, she turned her head and pulled water from the air, slowly crystalizing it and shaping it to form large but light spiraling chains. She weaved them around the Yule tree carefully and with narrowed eyes of concentration.

[SirDio]

⸺ BRUTEI TSUNE ⸺

FRATER MEUS - YOU'RE BEAUTIFULLY MADE, AND TO YOU, I'M FOREVER GRATEFUL!

Talk of a Yule tree was new to Brutei. One, he wasn't around before the meteor said hi, and two, he never really celebrated holidays, when his brother got everything good and sometimes things that his parents promised would be for Brutei. The thought of having something like that happen again made him a bit angry, but he knew the entire group needed a pick-me-up. From the information he gathered from wanderers who had been there far longer than him, he would have been stupid to think this entire takeover by the coalition was for fun. The Coalition was desperate, and he knew about being desperate; he can get behind it, he could list the things he done out of desperation. Albeit, it was only like one thing, but it changed his life.

Seeing how everyone looked at the Yule tree, their shadows of sadness in their eyes, the despair that had resurfaced, in a way, he looked around. His old bandana hung by the entrance of his home. Gently, he grabbed it and walked to the yule as Sojourn made her chains of ice. [color=#fe1f14]"Stunning. I don't mean to take away from the beautiful chains, but is someone willing to toss this up and onto a frond?" he presented his tattered cherry bandana, spare feathers tucked into the tears. [color=#fe1f14]"I'm sorry it's not extravagant, but it's my offering."

"TALKING"

[TIMBRE.]

[div style="width: 90px; border-radius: 100%; height: 90px; border: 2px solid white; "]

the harsh winter bled away when the considerations of such victories. The tangle wood, the elysium under their thrall and the typhoon in quick succession to being subjugated. All weak in comparison to his parent's reign of the condemned: who's camp was in tattered, who's lives had been nothing short of hell for years. Even now the thrill of such news awakened a vigor in camp. There were smiles, snark, joviality in camp where there had once been weary glances traded like blows in a cold war. 

Since the battles, there had been a life brought back into camp, But as the seasons grew colder, and prey was brought back from lands more plentiful than here. It was easy to forget: the devastation that had heralded here on their island. It was only in camp, the barren almost scorched dirt: with how ot refused to grow even the blades of grass. There was simply no greenery. He gritted his teeth at the reminder, watching mother step up to grow a small palm, even from the edge's the strain of her power's present in her features. It made him furious, a quiet fury that shimered in pale red eyes as he walked closer alongside the rest that are present in camp.

A Yule tree. Timbre remembered the holidays before the strike. Quietly listening to his mother and father both explain to him the importance of winter in all things. It was important to remember to celebrate life, just as much as one engages with death. Timbre stepped up alongside his mother and sister, the black lion gently set down the white paint that the lion usually reserved for his own fur down. Pushing a paw into the mixture and placing his own paw print down at the base of it. [glow=black,2,300]"Just like old times, hm?"[/glow]

[align=right]Timbre Totatum-Harbringer-Malus  | Timbre of Coalition of the Condemned

[ninazu]

BURN
BRIGHT

Ninazu returned Sojourn’s nuzzle greeting with a grin and flick of her tail against her daughter’s shoulder. She couldn’t see the neck wound—due to being shorter than all of her children—but she noted the absence of an infected smell. Though the guru took immense pride in her children’s wartime accomplishments (especially Sojourn’s), it wouldn’t stop her from worrying about their every little wound turning gangrene.

Nodding and stepping back, Ninazu looked up to watch the water crystalize into sparkling chains. “Lovely. It’s just what the tree needed, and so very you.”

She watched their formation until Brutei’s words grasped her attention. Ninazu nodded to him and stepped towards the shorthair. Her head titled, and she gently took the bandanna from him. “It’s from you, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter how extravagant. I’d rather have a chaotic collection representing every wanderer than pure aestheticism.” She offered him a smile right until she tossed the bandana up and watched it land on an evergreen frond.

When Timber stepped over, she attempted to brush her tail over his shoulder in greeting. “Now that you’ve brought the paint? Yeah. Like old times.”

© MADI

[SirDio]

⸺ BRUTEI TSUNE ⸺

FRATER MEUS - YOU'RE BEAUTIFULLY MADE, AND TO YOU, I'M FOREVER GRATEFUL!

He simply smiled, nodding to Ninazu as he watched the bandanna land on a frond. He stepped back, his smile seeming to grow with his thought. Hopefully, after everything was settled and the conquest was over, they could finally have a proper Yule tree. The thought surprised him, but he welcomed it. [color=#fe1f14]"I never was one for holidays, but I think I may like this."

"TALKING"