toni-graves
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Just Toni, 39 and 125, Earth Attuned
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jupitergeorge:
♃
“Hot damn, a whole hundred years,” Jupiter said, looking impressed. She’d heard of long-timers like Toni, it seemed there were a few of them roaming about from North Beach, maybe even a couple OG South Beachers too. “How’s that been for you? Like - what’ve you done in a hundred years? I feel like I gotta start making a - like a long-term game plan.”
Back home, she’d been starting to make a retirement plan. A bit late at her age, but now was better than never, Jupiter and Kirk had agreed. But if you lived forever and never aged, why retire? And in the Labyrinth, the only plan to focus on was the plan for now, never for the future.
For now, Jupiter was really enjoying the way Toni talked; everything about it wasn’t just Southern, it sounded olde tyme and incredibly charming. Like talking to a museum dress-up recreationist people, or watching a TV show about turn-of-the-century USA. “Noooo it’s not blowhard, if you got something to say then say it, girl! What else you gonna do here.” She giggled. “Cultural stonefruit. I really like that. You say all the neatest things.”
Jupiter made an ‘mm-mm’ noise. “No ma’am. Maybe you mean, uh…overused?” Jupiter didn’t consider anachronism. “Groovy’s a pretty good word to overuse though!”
These goats were getting out of hand, now with Toni in the pen with them. Jupiter didn’t want to make matters worse with her air-power. She could tickle them but that would only make things worse. Sucking away their air, same. “Hey Toni! You’re earth-powered right? Can you move the earth, maybe sink them into a little basin?”
【 𓆣 】
“Well shit. I may be rounding up jus’ cause I like them big ol’ round numbers. But I trust you’re the generous sort who wont’ accuse a lady of exaggeratin’ fer outta’ some need to impress.” She rolled her shoulders. “Mostly I just done and gone with the flow sort of things. For the first half I’d disappear into the caves for the dry season and come up agin’ when I got all rained out. Can’t do that no more.”
She shook her head. Forlorn at the loss of the familiar. “Spose now tho’ I got some nice mountainsides I can lay out on. There’s some ledges I been scoping out. Prime real estate- none of that lived in tents shit fer me. I don’t want ta be interrupted while I’m napping by some mole-person that wants to collect rent. Nossir.” Toni rattled on happily now, as Jupiter had given her permission.
“Hah! Well, iffin’ you like what I say and you ain’t too bothered by my words being overused I’ll talk your ear off one of these days.” She threw her head back and laughed. Nothing but meridium felt familiar to Toni now. Each new person that came here just had a more alien dialect, more stories that felt beyond what was possible. Which was ironic considering what she was about to do.
“Well, I’m not sure ‘bout making a sinkhole. But let me see what I can go head and wrangle up.” Toni set her feet into the ground. Stance wide as she called up roots from the ground, vines. All of them sprouted from the ground and tying down the goats hooves. The herd all bleated in dismay, trying to tear themselves free from their vegitive prison. The sudden fear response too strong for the typical hunger to set in. “Haw! That’ll get ‘em. Growin’ up like weeds they are. Aw She-it. ‘Spose that means Tommy’ll want me to weed it.”
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jupitergeorge:
♃
“So how long have you been on Meridium, Toni? Where’d you come from in the States? I’m guessing somewhere in the South?” Jupiter asked, truly curious now. Toni seemed to have either an old-fashioned or a crazy way about her. Maybe both? But she seemed pretty harmless and friendly - not racist, which was nice - and Jupiter liked how easy she was to chatter with. Sometimes Jupiter missed the ease and pleasantries of small talk. In the Labyrinth it was all important planning, orders, panic, strategies, info-dumping of personal things. South Beach, even with all its weirdness, still managed to squeeze in chit-chat.
She laughed. “Boy you just gotta explain your name to everyone, eh? I love that story though, I think it’s so sweet of your momma. She loved Versailles, so she wanted you to be the Queen of it. I mean, all the regicide and French Revolution stuff notwithstanding,” Jupiter giggled. “I hope you didn’t get made fun of for the fancy name, while you were growing up.”
It was cute, how she called ‘G.O.A.T’ like a poem. Jupiter, modernized and inundated with slogans and soundbytes and the de-clevering of wordplay for the sake of consumerism, had never considered that. “An acronym?” she guessed, not entirely sure the word for it.
“Oh no no no! Where’d you think you’re going!” Jupiter jumped up to herd the goat back to the centre of the pen. “Geez this goat is stubborn as hell! I think she just doesn’t like playing with her friends. Anti-social goat? Poor baby.”
【 𓆣 】
“I been down here on this here island for near to hun’erd year’s I’d say.” Toni shook her head. Though the gesture failed to communicate if the passage of time was disappointing or surprising.
“Haw! I got some jabs, but nothin’ that’d make me cry. S’pose I ought’a thank my Momma.” Toni shook her head again, less enigmatic and more animated this time. “It do make me a blowhard though. I know it. Jawin’ on about the providence of my name like a bag of hot wind. Shit. But don’t it beat all that everyone knows that french lady Antoinette still. No matter if they’s older’n me or younger.” She beamed. Happy for her hot air to be so indulged. “It’s a sorter, whats-it., cultural stonefruit. Somethin’
Acronym? Huh. Must be. Though I thought that were when I used that word groovy to damn much. Like it meant ta’ use words too much.” She was thinking of anachronistic. Which to be fair was most of Meridium, people from all time periods using this blended island only slang.
Toni circled to the side of Jupiter, just incase the goat was thinking of making a run for it in another direction. Recovered enough from the midair spinning she expected she could at least match wits with a farm animal. “Naw, don’t tell me our goat-goat here’s bein’ bullied by the other goats.” Over-estimating her own recovery Toni opted to hoist herself over the fence into herd. Mostly she intended to try and pull their reticent goat-friend in from the other side. Instead what happened was she wobbled slightly on her feet and had upset more goats. All of them unsure if Toni was some kind of new predator they should be worried about.
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@solocrow
Toni swung overhead from a vine. Toni wasn’t the most avid reader in her youth, and she wasn’t flush enough with cash to catch too many movies, but Tarzan was an old enough character even Toni knew how to impersonate him. It was an effort to expand her more vegitive earth powers. Or at least that’s what she told herself. She wasn’t as accomplished with it as Amelia was with her tree’s.
Her inexperience showed when she took a big swing and a leap to land on a tree limb only to have it crack underneath her. One misjudgement, her slim frame too much for the thin branch. She plummeted down toward the unlucky person below her.
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@ameliaxdalton
“What’re ya gobbing on me about I weren’t the one who touched you! You tripped over me.” She’d been minding her own business since this whole mess started. Sequestered among stones and practically napping before she was thrust into a past that was not her own. In the other person’s defense Toni easily resembled a lichen covered rocks which they had intended to rest against.
“Don’t just run off on me!” Toni just had a flash of a wondrous world where she was up in the air, flying who knows how many hundreds of feet. If not an even bigger number. It was a five hour flight that the retreating islander had found desperately boring at the time, but it was better than Memories Toni gave in return. Desperate, with blood and dynamite wafting in the air. “Che! Shit! Ain’t no manners the lot of you! I swear y’all actin’ like done grew horns and covered myself in slime.”
She backed up toward the trees. Facing the beach still and headless of whether she’d bump straight into any friend waiting in the jungle.
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jupitergeorge:
♃
“Goats probably have teensy tiny little brains, what’s there to learn? Gotta eat, gotta potty, then repeat. Day in and day out, same routine. Man, I’d love to be a damn goat -” she laughed. “Minus the humans spinning me around in a tornado!”
Toni’s pat did feel surprisingly matronly; and Jupiter couldn’t help feeling instinctively comforted but it. When her grandma got sick she became a skinny thing like Toni, but she was still grandma. Hopefully Toni wasn’t sick, just scrawny. “King of the planets, yeah. Antoinette is a pretty name! Is it a family name or something? Toni’s a good way to shorten it. I guess Annie works too. ‘Jupiter’ is real hard to shorten, but I’m stuck with ‘Jupe’.”
She didn’t know why she was rambling. There was something about the sing-songy cadence of Toni, and her easy-going dusty ways that put Jupiter at ease, after the whole tornado fiasco. At least Toni didn’t seem angry at her.
“A rolling stone collects no slime,” Jupiter riffed on the old saying with a little giggle. “Well, if the goat-herder asks, we’ll play innocent. No tornado’s, look! The goat’s perfectly fine. A goat-goat.”
She paused, not sure if Toni would know the acronym, so she spoke it out. “Greatest of All Time. GOAT.”
【 𓆣 】
“Haw!” Toni crowed in response. “She-it, wouldn’t that be the life. Small goat brain, small goat problems.” If her eyes weren’t pinched closed as she cackled to herself they’d be twinkling up at Jupiter. “Lest ways it won’t have to worry ‘bout the goat giving away all what it went through to that goat herder.
Toni was always a scrawny thing, thin as depression soup as her family joked. Though she would have countered that she was more scrappy than anything. “Yeah, Antoinette were something my Mama’ got in her head living in Ver-sails Kentucky. Apparently they got another one of them towns in France. ‘Cept all I learned from the name was what rich folks was liable ta’ get when they pissed off too many of us poor ‘uns.” She was happy to prove that when she stopped her plodding and started to hop over to the gate of the goat fence. Somewhat dissipating the dustiness of her actions, as spindly legs raised up, soles pressed to the wood. Far more flexible than her age should allow.
“An’ I like Jupe! And Goat-Goat!” She echoed the words, enjoying the repetition before she did it again. Enjoying the ramble of the conversation and the stoping points along the way. “A Goat, that’s a goat! Did you just think a’ that?” She smiled so wide every ince of her face wrinkled up in it. “Greatest of all time. That’s one of them letter games, ain’t it. Poem-y things, where them initials spell out a word. Shit, they ought to make a name fer that. It’s clever as hell but it sure is long ta’ say.”
She leaned further into her splayed stance, creaking the fence beneath her as leg bent. The goat, seeing other goats were close at hand, seemed to again become more interested in escape then it had been. Turning it’s head back to where they came from, as if neither Toni nor Jupiter would notice.
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jupitergeorge:
♃
Jupiter started to try and dust Sheena off, which, like the Pigpen kid from Peanuts only seemed to make a bigger dust explosion around the tiny woman. Still a little shaky, Sheena stumbled on her skinny little ankles and Jupiter caught her carefully.
“Oh - oh, oh. There we go,” Jupiter supported her, then smiled hopefully as Sheena pet the pathetically bleating goat. Startled and like it suddenly remembered it didn’t need to be here, the animal bucked up to its feet and swayed unsteadily for a moment. Then as if nothing happened, it just yummed up some of its own grass-cud-whatever and began to chaw it again.
“Okay you fine,” Jupiter proclaimed to the goat, and turned her attention to Sheena, who she still held onto. “Damn, I didn’t do you much better than the goat did, huh. Poor Sheena - arg, sorry. That’s not even your name. I’m Jupiter, by the way,” she introduced herself, slowly walking Sheena towards a small bench.
She perched them both on it, and idly rubbed Sheena’s back as if Sheena was a child, or friend. “Phew! Farm life ain’t easy, huh. Are you the goat-herder? Looks like you got your work cut out for you, honey.”
【 𓆣 】
Toni huffed. She used to stamp her skinny little bird legs and the earth would shake around her. It was frustrating that after all these years she’d have to work up to that kind of power again. It didn’t help that all her forrays into plant magic were being nibbled away by unrepentant ungulates.
“Now wouldn’t you look at this little shit.” Toni still leaned on the other woman. Unrepentant herself for whatever dirt clods or smudges she left by just bumping up against Jupiter. “Bet he’d do it all ag’in too. Jump out of it’s pen and munch on jus’ about anything it please. Even if that meaned a tornado would throw it up in the air. Feh. Ain’t learned no single lesson.”
Toni pat Jupiters arm. In her mind she was settling into a more elderly ladies role than a child’s one, a role Toni felt she was overdue to fill. “Jupiter! I like that. Strong name. S’them king of planets ain’t it? I’m Toni, my christian name from my Momma’s a fair bit longer but even Sheena might fit me better than Antoinette.” She laughed, throwing her body into it as the bench was a perfectly suitable counterbalance
“Haw! I wish I were the goat herder. I’d whip them goats inta’ shape. But naw, I ain’t got the stick-to-it-iv-ness needed for on the regular farm work.” Toni shook her head. Again patting Jupiter’s hand genially. “I’m a rollin’ stone. I ain’t never kept to a routine. Goats need a fimer hand than a lady liable to wander off and abandon them cause she’s stuck lookin’ at slime in a cave.” The goat seemed more than happy to munch on slime while they both watched it.
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kazxraval:
.
Her earth breaking ain’t what it… what? The hinge of his jaw tightened. “What do you mean by that?” A fine time to tell Kaz, already at a disadvantage in fending off a thing without looking directly at it. His attunement whipped at the slanted and stretched imitation of Toni, which rumbled in response like a dog protecting its territory. Out of the corner of his eye long tendrils and roped vines erupted from the earth, and they slithered and wrapped wildly around each other in some sort of battle over the beast.
Kaz had offered his typical noncommittal form of help: offer suggestions while planning to bail with a casual ‘gotta go’. Before he could, vines shot from the ground around Toni, around him too. Attempting a stranglehold on anything in the path.
He ripped up one offending unearthed runner around Toni’s arm, the roots looking skeletal as they twitched, torn free from the soil. I don’t know if I’m doin’ any good. “Try harder,” his voice firm and on the verge of an aggravated shout. Despite what she’d said, the beast still wrestled with vines in a thick wrap around it. The growl turned into the vile clacking rattle sound he had heard before. “I can hear it, it’s fighting now. Keep… doing what you’re doing.”
With a small knife in hand he sliced through another vine poised and ready to strike Toni again. In between cutting through and batting away the ground that fought back, he finally dared to glance at the beast. Kaz harnessed the air again to blast the thing once more, to tangle and knot Toni’s earth magic around it further. “I can lift us out of here too.” Maybe. Just thought of it. Might as well try it, if Toni ran out of her fire and brimstone.
【 𓆣 】
Toni, encouraged, could only keep at what she was already doing. Just harder. Which meant more grunting and grinding of teeth.
It wasn’t just hypnotism that kept Toni’s eyes plastered shut. Kaz’s wind power whipping up the broken earth into a gritty sandblast. It was a shame that the beast didn’t properly retain injuries, otherwise between Kaz and Toni it would have been sandpapered smooth.
The real Toni missed all of Kaz’s heroics. Never realizing how close her airway was to being cut off by a vine before Kaz intervened, risking his own autonomy with the sharp eyed defense. Another grunt and deeper roots burst out, coated in deep red clay, trying to wall them off from the attacker. More dust spit out into the air. False Toni, the beast, rattles further beginning to lose the Toni look of it, desperate.
“Do it! G’awn do it!” Toni called back. “You fly us out of here now Kaz, cause I ain’t got no vinegar left in me to take it down. An’ I’d like to fly once in my life ‘fore I die.”
#just with kaz#thanks for being so patient with me on this#I figure we can end with yours?#old thread#past plot
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jupitergeorge:
♃
“You guys got melons here??” Jupiter sounded excited at the prospect. Who knew a cantaloupe could become a great motivator. Of course she didn’t actually know if Sheena meant cantaloupe, but a girl could dream. She definitely would not say no to any melon of any type. “Do not talk about sick goats while I’m spinning that poor thing around like a top.”
Jupiter both loved and hated how comical this was. Like an episode of I Love Lucy level of ridiculous antics, and she was freaking Lucille Ball. She didn’t want to hurt either the goat or the woman, but once a mini tornado started it was hard to stop without everything just collapsing. “I should’ve just tickled the goat. Are goats even ticklish?” Jupiter grumbled, recalling Kaz’s incredulous reaction to her solution for the beast.
As she guided Sheena and the goat away from the river and towards the goat smell (which was not easy to discern until Sheena said ‘shit’ and suddenly: yeah. Jupiter could definitely pinpoint that sweet grassrot of manure), all hell broke loose.
“Oh no!” Jupiter said in dismay as the poor animal spewed goat-version of cud. She dropped the tornado out from under them then, because that goat wasn’t going anywhere now that it was sick.
Rushing over, Jupiter helped Sheena up. “Are you okay? Oh god-” she looked at the goat, lying on its side and bleating in weak confusion. “Oh god, I killed it. I’m so sorry! I messed this up good, didn’t I.”
【 𓆣 】
Toni was thinking of avocados, which weren’t technically melons though they did fit Toni’s exacting standards for ‘melon’. Those standards being something fruit-adjacent and mostly round-ish. This could not be easily expressed while spinning in the air. Nor could the history of Toni committing Tomas’ yields to memory only to categorize them as melons and leaves in her head.
Instead Toni just screamed back, though through the wind it came out as a warble. But even that was cut off when Toni knew better then to keep her mouth open with the cud flying. Not that the quick thinking saved her much when both her, goat, and the goat’s expectoration landed more or less in a heap.
“Naw, hun, I ain’t dead yet.” Toni chirped up helpfully. Even with the other woman’s help it was hard to find her balance let alone focus her eyes. She half expected that her eyes were still spinning around in her head. Expecting to look like one of the jelly-armed cartoons she never got to see enough of to any onlooker. “Goat’s prob’ly fine to, ain’t ya goat?”
As if it knew it was being addressed the animal’s weak bleats took on a whinier tone. No doubt a reinforced behavior to get the attention and doting affection of it’s caretakers who might forget and forgive an adventurous snack.
“Ye’hear that. She’s fine. S’al- whoop.” Toni missed her footing and tilted hard into the wind-caller’s side when she meant to lean down and pat the goat. “Well, shit. That ain’t where I aimed myself. I ain’t never had to get my sea-legs on land before.”
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WHAT COLOR IS YOUR AURA?
Chic Beige
You love a challenge, and try out anything that peaks your interest. You think you can learn more from experience than from textbooks.
You don’t find much merit in anything you can’t enjoy right then and there. You prefer to live in the moment than anywhere else.
You value efficiency. You like people who get straight to the point rather than those who go on and on with their long-winded speeches.
If a problem occurs, who try to find a solution as soon as possible rather than spend time moping.
You have a lot of friends and acquaintances. You may not open up to every one of them, but you have a knack for remaining on friendly terms with everyone.
You have the special ability to jump into things that require courage without hesitation.
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tamyrawilliams:
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
“I shouldn’t chew your head off?” Tamyra echoed Toni’s words, even more aghast than she was before. “You were the one who tackled me and thought I was the beast and wanted to get rid of me and I shouldn’t chew your head off? I can’t decide if you are developping a sense of humor or just completely delusional. Maybe both.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. “I am not carrying around bottles of water to create bigger monsters for you Toni, I need to drink that to hydrate. Now once we’re done here, I am going to have to go refill because that was the last of what I had on me.” And it’s not like she could create any sized creatures. SHe was good, but even she had her limits. The bigger her creations were, the less intricate it was. Granted, a stone creature required no real intricacy, not in a way that creating a lion would.
(She still weeped for the power boost and the real-sized lion she could create just out of fun, without much effort.)
So when Toni asked her if they could chase the beast away with her water creature, part of her couldn’t help but think about how she couldn’t do a full beast-sized rock monster from water or if she could, hold it for too long. But she would not admit that, no, not to Toni, not after everything, instead she gave Toni an unimpressed look. “And what do you exactly expect me to do, Toni? Chase people around with a blob of water? Run it over everyone until the beast reveals itself? Don’t be fucking ridiculous.” And just because she felt like it and she was still annoyed, she moved the little water figure over Toni’s head and released the control over it, letting all of the water drop onto Toni.
【 𓆣 】
“Aww, well now when you go an’ put it that way.” Toni grumbled, chewing on her lip. Eyes rimmed in red as she narrowed them at Tamyra. “I ‘spose I shouldn’t throw glass houses a tea kettles or whatever in the hell that sayin’ is.” She watched Tamyra with caution. Though she’d begun to feel the creep of guilt about her mistreatment of Tamyra she wasn’t so trusting ot meet the beautiful woman’s eyes without a sense of unease.
“Feh!” Toni pursed her lips, unimpressed. “Iffin you had big ol’ water monsters carrying around your water bottles for ya’ you would get all the hydra-nation you needed. Hell, if you got their water all freshened up enough you won’t need that bottle no more.” Toni wasn’t thinking in limits. She should have been, considering her much reduced powers as of late, but she was spoiled with her years of experience being powered. “You could just lean over and take a sip outta’ yer water butler, probably mostly the top part course. You ain’t want to have a swig full of whatever they been stepping on.”
Toni was not a picky eater in the best of times, but even she turned up her nose at grotty water.
“Shit! Maybe I do. Maybe I want you, what’s that called. Rollin’ down with them rock water things. Have yerself a crew that can sort out all them who need protection.” She crossed her arms. Obstinate to the core and unwilling to bend when faced with equal and well-deserved stubbornness. “Iffin’ you did then you would’na had to deal with me in the first place. Not with them ‘round to protect you.” The hard look she was giving Tamyra was completely ruined with the perfectly timed release of all that water over her head. Unfortunately for Toni she was sniffing in just at that moment only to get noseful of water that left her sputtering.
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jupitergeorge:
♃
Jupiter couldn’t quite tell if the shaggy-woman was having a good time or not. She seemed sturdy enough, almost comfortable with her spindly limbs clinging to the goat. It was the goat that seemed more uncomfortable than anything and a swell of laughter burbled out of Jupiter, but she quicky stifled it.
“Oh shoot, goats in the garden! That ain’t good,” Jupiter agreed, after being brief by someone about the food scarcity. Or what South Beach called ‘scarcity’ - so long as Jupiter didn’t have to resort to eating raw bugs or cave-fish, she considered South Beach meal plans a bounty. But agriculture needed protection, and so it seemed Southern Sheena was doing good here.
Blinding the goat set it into a momentary panic. It bleated wildly - as high-pitched as Sheena - and started to buck like a rodeo. “Oh no you don’t!” Jupiter said, trying to help by surrounding the goat with tighter wind-boundaries. It wasn’t that easy though. Instead of containment, Jupiter accidentally caught goat - and Sheena - into a mini tornado that picked both of them up off the ground, swirling them around and round.
“Sorry! Don’t get dizzy! And don’t fall off! I can do this - maybe I can pull you guys both to the pen! Just hold onto to goat, don’t let go…” Arms twirling like that little monk-kid from the Avatar cartoon, Jupiter looked around, then asked. “Which way’s the damn goat pen?”
【 𓆣 】
“Goats in the garden! My garden, but it were only a matter of time for they got a taste for it and munched up al them squishy melons an’ spicy leaves.” The goat shook it’s head and Toni had to swerve out of the way to avoid getting headbutted. “Fuckin’ ain’t no telling what’s goin’ on in them goat guts what with havin’ et up all my vines I attuned up.” Most likely nothing, as any plants grown with earth attunement lacked nutritional value. But neither goat nor Toni were nutritionists.
She might have gone into further detail, either on the reason for her garden or her distaste for trespassing goats, but Toni was swept up into the air. Spinning in the whirl of air, ass over teakettle, while the goat she just let go of did the same. Goat and Toni bumped into each other, Toni no longer sure which direction the ground was in as her head spun. It was the first time since her power went wonky that she couldn’t feel Meridium.
“Tryin- Not- Tooo-” She spoke with each whirl. Buffeting the bleating goat away when it knocked into her. She twisted upside down, looking at the good Samaritan the wrong way round. “Hold? On? But” It was hard to talk while the wind whipped her about but scrawny arms tried to swim against it like a current. Hands snatching at the struggling animal. “Theres- River- Near- Can’t- Discm- Bobulate-” She grabbed hold of a hoof.
“Follow- Smell- Goat- Aw- Shi-eet” Apparently whatever had been going on in the goat’s stomach came out of it when the goat was too frightened and too dizzy.
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wrenscrest:
↤ ☾🔥☽ ↦
Wren felt stuck, watching between the two Toni’s as they shouted to her opposite instructions on what she should do. Run. No, stay. Listen to me. No, me. It was making her head spin and she was doing her best to think clearly. She hadn’t seen Toni in such a long time, she wasn’t sure if that was making it more difficult for her to pick out the correct Toni but she continued to look back and forth as they fought.
She felt so useless standing there staring, not wanting to hurt the real Toni or make the wrong choice in who the real one was. As Wren struggled to do something, she watched one of the Toni’s getting kicked off the other and that was when she realized how close they were to the water.
That video camera that showed up out of the lagoon, the one with the videos that she and others watched multiple times over to make sense of it. It doesn’t like water the man in the video told them. “Toni! Get in the water!” She shouted, pointing over at the open ocean. “The copy won’t follow you! You need to go to the water, now!” This was the only way she’ll know for sure and actually be able to help and she made sure to watch which of the two would actually start heading into the water and which would falter.
【 𓆣 】
“The what!”
“The water?”
Both Toni’s sounded almost lamentful. Toni, the real Toni, was attuned to earth and like all earth attuned getting in the water was dangerous. They tended to sink like a stone. Toni had taken her avoidance to greater extremes. She didn’t grow up with the ocean. And what she had grown up with, crick’s and washtubs didn't make for a strong swimmer.
“Aw, Wrenny girl, you know me an’ the water don’t mix well.” The Toni-beast complained. And real Toni felt her stomach flip hearing protestations in her own voice. Especially when she was about to make some of her own.
“Naw, that’s where you're wrong beastie.” She twisted to take hold of it’s now skinny neck in the crock of her arm. “You and I know I sink like a stone but iffin’ Wren says I got to go in the water then I’m gonn’a go in that water. Sink or swim.” With a grunt Toni pushed off of the ground. Some earther force put behind her her kick sent her and the tangle of the beast spinning. Rolling over each other and closer to the waves. The beast shifted and struggled in Toni’s arms. As their path hit the waves it was no longer possible for Toni to hold on, the beast more interested in running away then attacking Toni.
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jupitergeorge:
♃
The goat had a sudden fit when the wildwoman bit it a little too close to its ear, and it started bucking, as if in a rodeo. “Careful! Oop!! That goat’s got standards too!” Jupiter couldn’t help saying, trying not to burst into laughter at the sight. It looked like a clown rodeo, something cute and entertaining for the kids they’d put on in Calgary. The woman was cackling and Jupiter couldn’t tell if it was laughter or screeching.
“Okay! Just keep holding on, don’t let it get away!” Jupiter said, looking around for anything cloth-like. She wasn’t even sure what was going on - but she did notice the goat wasn’t in a pen. Maybe it got out. Maybe this woman was trying to wrangle it back home. Or maybe this woman just wanted some roast goat tonight.
With a noise of frustration, Jupiter eventually just whipped off her own blouse. She had a bikini top underneath, so whatever. “Here! Try that! I’ll make sure it don’t go too buckwild.” Jupiter collected the air around her, buffeting the goat with invisible walls.
【 𓆣 】
“Haw!’ Toni laughed hard. It only made the goat more uncomfortable. It wriggled to get further away from the noise. Apparently disturbed by it.
“This naughty beastie got out of its pen! Worse’n that even it got int’a my garden.” Toni felt the surge of respect for the other woman. Not only because Toni could see how good she looked in a bikini top, but the quick thinking and the ingenuity it took to use her own shirt. Let alone sacrificing it for her cause of goat wrangling. That practically brought a tear to her eye.
Toni took the blouse in hand and wrapped it around the goats head. Using it as part blinder, part harness. “It’s a fighter I will say that! Goin’ round, eatin’ up magical plants. Escapin’ from it’s pen. I won’t take no chances with no more beasties. Not after what happened.”
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tamyrawilliams:
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
“Wash you awa– I cannot create water, Toni!” Tamyra exclaimed in disbelief and frustration. “I use and control the water that I have, but I cannot create it. Where would I have gotten a full wave that washes you away? And anyway, that is not sandy water, that is my drinking water, for your information, you are just so dirty that there is no part of you the water could touch and you wouldn’t pick up a shitton of actual dirt. You need a bath. And then at least five more.”
She let out another groan, “I’m not trying to do anything to you, I am just trying to prove that I am not the beast, but I swear Toni, you are making me more and more annoyed, maybe I will just– how would it get bigger?!” another exclamation came. “Again, I don’t create water. I just used what I have in my bottle. I cannot make it bigger without more water.”
But it seemed like Toni was more curious now, her fingers poking at the little water creature with a child-like curiosity - something Tamyra would have appreciated normally, but she was still worked up and annoyed, so on a whim she flicked her finger and the water creatured started “rolling ahead”, rolling through Toni’s hand and then up and around Toni and Tamyra pulled out another bottle, opened it and the water flew out of it in a streak, heading right into the water “rock” creature, growing bigger once it stopped in front of Toni again. “Impressed yet?” She wasn’t sure why, but she needed to impress Toni now. She needed to prove just how good she was.
【 𓆣 】
“Hey, hey now! Don’t you go round chewin’ my head off. I thought there were water everywhere. In the air an’ shit like that. That’s my own thick-skulled self believin’ what anybody tell me ‘bout the world with any sorter confidence.” Toni groused back at Tamyra. Who was being incredibly gracious considering Toni had attacked her out of the blue.
“Well there ya go! Get yerself a bigger bottle and you got a bigger water-stone man. Shit. You’re a smart lady you could figure out that much.” Toni shook her head, clucking her tongue. Tamyra had done nothing to deserve this kind of interaction today. But Toni had never been courigible. She watched the golem-like thing move up her hand and over her shoulders. Head snapping to follow it’s path.
She lowered herself to the ground entirely. Laid out on her chest to watch the bigger stones move about with Tamyra’s will. Beady eyes shining up from the ground Toni grinned wickedly at Tam. “Think if we walk your beastie down to the ocean’s edge you can make a bigger beastie to fight of this nastie beastie roamin’ round?” She really ought to have more guilt for overusing the word beastie.
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ameliaxdalton:
.
Brave was a word seldom associated with Amelia. But she supposed she was just out of touch with reality enough not to remember that declaring yourself foolish was probably a bad idea, and if Toni wanted to think that was brave… Well, Amelia wasn’t going to speak out against it. She liked being thought of as brave, and Toni didn’t seme to be laughing at her. “Yeah.” Amelia said after thinking over the rest of what she said, gaze darkening a bit. “Yeah, I knew some ugly foolish too.” She didn’t elaborate, but immedietly shook her head to dislodge the thought.
“Ah, I wouldn’t say I saw lots of it. More like I saw enough, and figured I could make it more fun.” She admitted, shrugging. “Where are you from, though? I bet even having not seen much, our versions of the world are plenty different to talk about, if you want.” Amelia didn’t mind talk like that, recollection of california itself wasn’t upsetting for her. She chuckled, “Iyaz isn’t quite my type, anyway.” She said of the doctor.
Here was another way their worlds had been different, and a bit of a communication block wasn’t unfamiliar to Amelia, so she would tackle it happily, especially when it was about explaining words. “You’re thinking of frequently.” She said, “frequency is radio waves. Like… Wavelengths.” After glancing out across the island for a moment, Amelia smiled, having thought up a much simpler point of comparrison. “Different train tracks. The island has one route and people have another. They don’t cross, so we can’t know where the island is going.”
The wording itself mattered much less than the wording that got it across, Amelia felt. Some of the texts she’d had to read for university had been so heavy with academic jargon they had been a slog to get through. She never wanted rading or thinking to be hidden behind some impossible to understand rubbish.
Stuck in the tunnels. Well… Things could always be worse, then. Amelia couldn’t imagine having to live down there. “…I hope they’re doing okay.” She said softly, “it seems cruel even of this place to cut people off like that.” It was cruel of anywhere, anyone.
As if Toni could tell her thoughts were tending back towards melancholy, she plucked another, far lighter, subject out of the air. Or perhaps she dug it up from the ground.
“I… Didn’t see that much of Matthew.” Amelia admitted, though she went ahead and squinted at the rocks anyway, “He came by to check on me every so often, but he knew I preferred being alone. But… Yeah, I can see it.” She smiled softly, “I think that’s a charming enough reason to name the place.”
【 𓆣 】
“Yeah?” Toni echoed back at Amelia. Smile still plastered on her face in the daze of the sun. “Maybe sometime you’ll want’a tell me ‘bout that.” She shrugged haphazardly. “Or you ain’t gotta. I know some folk around here like talkin’ ‘bout there old lives. Helps focus themselves in themselves if that makes any sorter sense. But I know folk who like to leave all that behind too. Can’t blame anyone for wantin’ that.” She inhaled, lungs filling with mountain air. “
Y’know Meridium ain’t much different from my life before. Sure we had the mines, and automobiles about but we had to hunt for our food. Mend things most’a the time instead of buyin’ them. Most of what changed here were magicky powers and magicky things tryin’ to kill me.” Her heel hit against the stone. Chin jutting up to the sky as her head tossed back. “I grew up in coal country kentucky. Harlan county iffin’ your familiar.”
“Now. Is it to presumpt-shew-us of me to be askin’ jus’ what your type is?” She grinned slyly.
“Waves? Hmm..” Toni didn’t quite understand what Amelia meant to explain but she was glad enough for the explanation. Given time enough to roll it over and over in her mind and smooth out the hard edges she might even understand it plainly. “Hah! Like the train, ain’t it? Us islanders just stuck in place, standing still in time like that train up in the weeds goin’ nowhere. While that island got’s it’s own thing.”
She sucked at her teeth, tunguing over them. “Well, caves aren’t so unwelcoming if yer not spoilin’ for sun like them fire eaters. But you're right. Ain’t no one deserve to be stuck like that.” Toni was back to watching Amelia. “You feel for them mole people even. That’s a kind heart you got. Even for them molepeople sneakin’ around. Shit, you even found me sneakin’ round up here. Looking at mountain Matthew.”
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wrenscrest:
↤ ☾🔥☽ ↦
It definitely sounded like the Toni that she knew but she had to stay vigilant. Wren didn’t know how clever this beast could be. Claiming not to be the beast as a way to reassure people was an effective way to get their guard down. But she was doing a good job of avoiding eye contact despite her loud welcome. When she saw her mom and dad, they did everything they could to make sure they got eye contact so she did her best to relax herself a little.
She didn’t even have the time to acknowledge and process everything Toni was saying, oh it had been far too long. Gone were the days she could make sense of everything out of Toni’s mouth with ease. It was going to take some time to get back into it like she was relearning a language.
But the sight of a second Toni seemingly appearing out of nowhere to tackle the first Toni down took priority. “Shit!” Wren exclaimed as she watched the two wrestling looking between the two of them, now even more confused about who was who. “Damn it, Toni! Ah…I don’t know…which is which…” she muttered the last part to herself, running forward to get a closer look. The first Toni seemed so real, but now the other was claiming they were the real one? It was going to be much harder to tell with the two of them grappling on to one another so in any attempt to help decipher who was real and who was the beast, Wren went and tried to grab the second Toni off of the first.
【 𓆣 】
“Wren! Wren you better run. Save yerself. This’ere beastie an’ I tangled a’fore and I ain’t been dead yet so don’t you put yourself in danger for me.” Toni shouted up, directionless because with her eyes closed and the beast tossing her about the ground she had no way to tell were Wren was.
“No Wrendy, don’t you go squirting off by yerself. That’s the beast trying to send you to your death. Don’t you lissen’ to it none. Lissen to me.” Something sounding very much like Toni cajoled Wren to listen to it, let it’s advice weave it’s way into her head.
Toni planted a kick to the other-Toni’s ribs. Yet as hard as the heel of her foot could hit that beast Toni knew it made little difference to a monster that would morph away any physical damage. Hardly discouraged, it only made Toni more intent on figuring out a way to beat it back.
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kazxraval:
.
She practically rose from the earth. Dust in her nostrils, decades of coal still between the teeth. Bites, scratches, strikes to the softest of spots was the approach. It did not matter. The fight was never a physical one. If they wanted to think that, all the better.
He was too jaded to attach to anything. No one to weigh him down meant he could be blown away in the slightest breeze of a deeply buried but significant memory. They both only used up vital energy in delaying the inevitable.
However, the beast was delayed too.
–
Kaz was being led the long way ‘round to the heart tree. He’d forgotten a few things along the zig zagged and all too winding route. Then a tumbleweed of dueling but identical bodies, accents, and wild hair rolled across the ground.
Toni– yeah, definitely Toni– said his name and he paused. Taken out of his blissful mental emptiness, as though Toni had broken the glass and reached for him in the immediate emergency.
How could he tell them apart though? Was she… did she think he could?
He might as well be watching a fight in the reflection of a mirror. Everything doubled. As he danced back and forth beside the wheel of Toni’s, one kept their eyes welded shut.
Ah, smart. That was her.
It played out easily in his head. The approach, what he needed to do. The tap on the back of his skull of Gabriel’s (paraphrased) words that he couldn’t lose the next fight.
The only problem being: Kaz had one working arm. The range of motion in his shoulder had (mostly) returned. Swelling had decreased on the fingers, but those were the delicate pieces too.
So as the impersonator leapt towards Toni, his air whipped under them. The harsh, hot heat that continued to live in his attunement sent the second Toni in a high arc. Up, up, and then crashing down yards away.
He turned to the Toni with her eyes shut. “Hey, hey, Toni– can you open the ground up? We’ve got to bury them.”
【 𓆣 】
Toni did not risk peeking. Not even once despite the temptation to do so when she could hear the gale suddenly whip up from nothing. When the force of that wind did not hit her the greatest source of her anxiety dissipated quickly.
“One problem Kazzy, my earth breakin’ power ain’t what is used ta’ be.” Toni pitched to the ground. Burying her hands blindly in the sand and soil. As if getting a better connection to the ground would give her attunement a better chance of working.
“Now down’t- Thaa-aat- beast all” The Beast tried to call out. Sew more seeds of doubt, catch his prey with a look. But the force of the wind buffeted the words back into it’s Toni shaped mouth. It growled and reached out with his own copied attunement.
Toni’s fingers flexed. With a grunt to match the growls she extended her will as best she could. Except instead of the ground opening up it was like vines grew out of the ground. Sandy and composed of the earth itself and yet growing upward like plants. Roots shot up as well, vines snaked around each other, then the Toni-beast.
Vines fighting to entangle the beast and pull it towards the ground, and others pulling them away and fighting to free it. Throughout the elemental tangle of magnitude Toni clenched her eyes tightly closed. Trying to feel through the ground what was happening.
“Kaz I can’t- I don’t know if I’m doin’ any good.” Her hands were still pressed to the ground when a root vine wrapped around one arm. Toni’s eyes shot open in surprise. “Fire and brimstone”
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