Oh look a bear

[canhazcookie]

Who: Raisa and Riza
What: Exploring and caves and stuff
When: Backdated to the first week of June
Where: Helind
Warnings: None


Raisa felt…rather stupid, all things considered. She had said the snows should have gone by now, and they had—for a week. Then after a morning of beautifully blue sky, the afternoon was suddenly filled with glooming clouds. The hawk laguz warned of the winds beginning to turn foul, and there was a brief scramble for shelter before the cave had been spotted.

No, not cave—cavern. They had time to gather extra fuel from the scraggly alpine trees, but barely so—the storm swept down out of the mountain with such speed it left Raisa bewildered for a moment.

The wind didn’t seem inclined to chase them too much beyond the rocky doorways, though the chill would deepen as the light faded.

The back walls, though, seemed riddled with holes like some sort of cheese; some a mouse would find tight quarters, others quite big enough for two horses and their carts stacked high with something or other to pass simultaneously. The rest were somewhere between.

Raisa busied herself attempting to peer into the darkness beyond one of these bigger entranceways, tailtip flicking back and forth.

Comments

[canhazcookie]

Raisa was...slightly--slightly!--jealous. Though the shamans followed her, she had not quite earned the same level of obedience. Her commands were more suggestions, to be considered as a group--suggestions that were often heeded, to be sure, or otherwise only slightly modified.

In this instance, less verbal communication was needed; just a swish of the tail, lifted ears and a paw raised as if frozen midstep before the decision was apparently made. One shaman was enough; no need to have everyone tramping about all over the place, with how insulated the cave already was.

The laguz reverted, rising up to two feet, and waited by the cavern mouth, peering into the dark to try and discern the first details.

[fullmoonhalfbreed]

Riza's following came from two things - her tendency to fraternize with them more as equals than superiors outside of missions, and impressing the others by kicking some unruly asses when necessary. By now, everyone in her squad at least knew not to make a big deal of her half-breed lineage and think that somehow made her weaker.

Joining Raisa over by the entrance to the deeper areas the bear had come from, she sniffed the cold air.

"Storm's making the air go in... I can't really tell much. Guess we'll just have to step inside," she said, taking a torch from one of her raiders and leading the way deeper in.

[canhazcookie]

Something about cats and dogs would go here.

In any case, Raisa was already starting to miss her whiskers. She fell into line behind and to the side of Riza, tail flicking this way and that. There were signs of the bear's recent habitation; a heap of leaves drawn up into a crude nest. The cavern sloped downward, with a few tumbled heaps of stone in the way, but progress was otherwise still easy.

"I don't hear any more ominous breathing, at least."

Her ears stayed in almost constant motion anyway, turning to identify sounds as she heard them. That was a cluster of bats, over there was a drip of water, and as they went further and further down--a change in the echoes, like a room had suddenly opened up above their heads. A moment later the entire party could see, with the torches illuminating a much, much larger cavern.

It seemed like the mountain had been hollowed out on the inside, at least from Raisa's point of view; miles of stone probably still stretched above their heads still. But still!

The cavern walls were riddled with yet more holes, warrenlike; some were shallow, some were deep enough to be proper tunnels leading off elsewhere. The sound of dribbling water had intensified; a collection of fanciful stalagmites grew up from the floor, as if they were trees. The occasional drop of water splashed down on them from above, but the ceiling was too tall for the flickering torchlight to reveal much in the way of details.

"Well. Left or right?"