[FIN] No Fear of Drowning [Private]

[Lucca]

Much to her everlasting chagrin, closing her eyes did not make Felix disappear. Eldy's ear flattened to the side of her head and her lips drew back in a snarl, fur beginning to raise. That nickname had also gone from amusing to obnoxious in no time flat. She turned back to the Porcupine as he began to practically beg her to reconsider, her dark eyes narrowed and glinting.

"No! Shut up. SHUT UP!" she hissed, finally losing what little patience she'd had with him. "I can damn well take care of my own ****ing self, thank you very much! And I will not go on a stupid boat, not now and not ever!" The dinner comment? Not even worth a reply. With a growl that made even the Porcupine back up a few paces (Eldy got some small measure of satisfaction from that reaction), she gritted her teeth and forced her wounded leg into high gear, pushing her pain ability forward to at least ignore the stupid thing for a short amount of time.

The Feline managed to get past Felix, going faster now, almost at a run, when she felt a paw grab her TAIL. Her TAIL, mind. She yowled in fury and whirled around. "JUST HOW STUPID ARE YOU?" she screeched, and finally decided she'd had enough of this. One way or another, she was getting away from him.

Time for the trick her Mom taught her. She closed her eyes, drew in a breath, and became shadow.

Basic Magical Ability: She can ignore moderate amounts of pain for up to five minutes.

Basic Shadow Ability: She is now able to change into a shadow once per week. She quite literally becomes a dark shadow of little to no substance. She weighs nothing and her clothing and bindings fall off of her and into a pile when she changes. This has an odd effect on her that it neglected to have on her mother as her binding is more imperative to her psyche than her mother's. While a shadow, she will feel as though she is breaking every important rule that there is. Reappearing without it on, or being caught too far away from it is a recipe for incredible panic attacks. One too many of these panic attacks could lead to some...interesting developments...(PM the admin if she gets caught too far from/without it more than 8 times.)
She can either replace another persons' shadow and follow along as theirs (though they may notice that it's shaped like her), stand in another shadow, or just hover around the ceiling, under a door crack, wherever. After three hours, the effect will wear off and she will change back at once, leaving her to search for her clothes and bindings once more.
The only drawback is that if someone says her name, the spell will be broken at once and she will become corporeal again.

[Lucca]

Felix winced, ears planting themselves firmly against the side of his head as tears prickled at the corners of his eyes. This...this wasn't going at all like he wanted. Even though he was bulkier than the Feline, and his claws and spines could make him plenty intimidating, not to mention his golden horns, the Selkie still felt fear. She was angry, angrier than he could remember anyone being at him in a long time, and it was enough to cause him to back up a bit, out of her way.

But the sight of that brave kitty trying to -run- away from him just made something in his heart tug, and he grabbed for her, hoping to maybe catch onto her arm and get her to pause in her retreat. He got her tail instead, giving it a pretty hard yank before he let go, with a gasped apology, golden eyes widened. He hadn't meant that! "Sorry! I'm so, so sorry!" was all he could say as she hissed at him, turned her back and...vanished?!

Ice cold water went down his back as he stared at the empty spot where the Feline had been a moment before, and now...now, there was only her binding, the ball and chain lying empty on the ground. Slowly, Felix approached it, in a daze, and reached out as if to touch it...but drew his paw back at the last moment, as if burned. It felt...wrong, somehow. Intimate. He knew enough Torquies to know how they felt about their bindings.

But he'd never heard of an ability like this...he could see no sign of the purple Feline anywhere.

The Eldy-shaped shadow fleeing the scene, leaping from rock-shadow to tree-shadow and taking over them briefly, went unnoticed, of course, for now.

[Lucca]

As she became incorporeal, the small niggling feeling from her sprained leg, still there in the measure it went past 'moderate pain', went away. At the same time, as soon as her binding fell to the ground with a small -thunk-, a sort of worried, guilty feeling rose in the back of her mind. She shouldn't be unbound, not even for a small length of time. She shouldn't be 'free', a shadow who could go where she would, unbound, unfettered...-wrong-.

She pushed that feeling down. She had to do this. She'd come back for her binding and accept it back as soon as the big dumb lout was gone. Eldy blew out a breath from shadowy lungs and fled like the wind, sneaking rapidly and silently further away from the scene and into the cover of the trees, where she could hide among the shadows in the forest until alone again.

She, luckily, did not notice that Felix had almost touched her binding, as this would have added to the mental trauma she was trying to ignore. It would undoubtedly have led to paranoid thoughts about him stealing her binding and destroying or hiding it, so that she had to walk about, naked, -wrong-, shamed and haunted by her sin, until she could find it somewhere on the Earth again.

[Lucca]

What had happened to the Feline? Where had she gone? It made no sense to Felix at all, and he looked around again, as if this action would somehow show him the Torque when it hadn't the last several times he'd done the same thing. His mind felt fuzzy (the last lingering effects of the alcohol, or just exhaustion?) and he couldn't stop thinking the same thing, over and over, like a broken record. Where was she? What had happened? Where did she go?...

Finally, the Porcupine found his voice again. "Where did you go? Hello?" He moved a bit away, toward the forest, then turned and moved back toward the rock where he'd first seen her, unsure what to even do. "Are you okay? Eldryia? ELDRYIA!" He cupped his paws to his mouth to yell her name, facing entirely the wrong direction to see the Feline abruptly reappear as soon as her name was called, a dozen feet away under the tree line.

[Lucca]

Eldy had just made it into the trees, where the shadows hid her well and she could lay low for as long as necessary, when the thrice-cursed Porcupine had to do the one thing that could entirely ruin her night: call her name. She hissed out a curse as she was returned to corporeal form, eyes narrowing and ears going back. It was okay, he couldn't find her over here, she could just hide here anyway and eventually Felix would give up and go running home to his mommy.

She backed up a few paces...and froze. Something felt...wrong. Very wrong. Her left hind leg felt far too light. Her gaze abruptly settled on the heavy black metal gleaming in the moonlight, back over near the rock. Her binding. It was still over there, near the Porcupine. Her ear pressed flat against her head and her eyes widened as sheer panic started to build up. No...nonono this was all wrong, she couldn't be without her binding, she couldn't be free like this, it was wrong...she craned her neck, trying to see her back and make sure her wings were still there, that they hadn't vanished, taking her identity with them.

Breathing coming unnaturally fast, Eldy tried to hold herself in place, but she couldn't...couldn't! She couldn't think or breathe, suddenly, and all her training went out the window as she ran as fast as she could toward her binding. Faster than she'd ever run in her life. And even this felt wrong. She had to get the ball and chain back on her as quickly as possible. Before her wings left her, declaring her unworthy as a Torquehelm. Too weak to be bound any longer.

[Lucca]

Felix frowned, hearing no reply (except for a soft sound that he took to be the wind rushing through the trees, and thus didn't even consciously register) to his calls. He sighed, walking as if in a daze toward the rock, and then turning...and jumping, quills bristling, as -something- darted right towards him at about the speed of light!

He lowered his head, horns leveled at the intruder, out of some defensive instinct that only sluggishly awoke inside the peace-loving Porcupine's brain, until he realized two things. First, that the speeding creature had stopped before it actually got to him, and second, that it was Eldryia! His head spinning, Felix stared at her, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

"Eldryia? You're back! Where did you go?" He took a step towards her, frowning when she didn't show any sign she'd even heard him. He closed the distance between himself and the Feline, who seemed intent on getting that metal ball and chain back onto her leg, fumbling it a bit. "Dryia? Are you all right?"

He hesitated for just a moment, remembered what had happened the last time he had initiated unsolicited contact with the Feline, but this was different, right? He placed a careful paw on her back, over one of the white wings imprinted there. "Eldryia?...can you hear...?"

[Lucca]

Blinding panic, inescapable, pressing in on all sides. Her world was narrowed to one thing and one thing only. She had to get that binding back on as soon as possible, at all costs. As soon as her paw touched the cool metal, Eldy felt a measure of control return, but it wasn't enough for her heart to stop beating wildly, wasn't enough for her breathing to slow, wasn't enough for the rest of the world to matter. Not yet.

She fumbled with the clasp, nearly rusted into place from years of not being undone, and she would have been cursing herself in her mind for her own stupidity in using that ability without thinking it through if she'd had a clear enough mind to even manage such thoughts. Felix went unnoticed, as did the water so dangerously close by on her left, and even the rush of hot pain in her right paw as she forced it to work despite the injury were all just background, unimportant compared to the -need- to get this done. Finally, after an eternity, the clasp gave, and, with trembling paws, she replaced it around her leg.

Relief and pain washed over her in a dizzying mix, and she took a deep breath, trying to regain a sense of calm--and felt something touch her back. Ear flattening, still high strung from the panic attack that she hadn't properly recovered from yet, Eldy's reaction was immediate. She whirled and slashed out with the claws of her uninjured paw, feeling blood well up beneath.

[Lucca]

"AHHH!" Felix cried out and reeled back, shutting his eyes on reflex as hot pain burned on his forehead. The shock of the unexpected attack made his breath come in stops and starts as he reached a paw up to feel the affected area, and it came away streaked in blood. He opened his eyes to slits, but it was hard to see what was going on...everything seemed to have slowed down, and his forehead was throbbing from what he could feel as three long gashes from the Feline's claws.

Apparently, his brain managed, it was a bad idea to touch her. Felix nodded wearily in agreement with himself, which only made his forehead burn and the blood flow more freely...right into his eyes. With a strangled, unhappy noise, he fumbled to try and wipe the blood away, but there was just more and more or it...worry set in, then. Couldn't someone bleed to death? He was pretty sure that was possible, and he didn't want that to be him.

But despite that, he still wondered...about Eldryia. Was she okay? Was she still really mad at him? Did she hate him now? That was a surprisingly upsetting thought. He was pretty sure no one had ever hated him before. A lot of Cards didn't care for him, but anything beyond that, well...

He squinted past the blood, but...the Feline was gone again. Vanished, just like last time, only now her binding had gone with her. Felix sighed and turned toward home, stumbling his way as best as he could...and promptly passing out when he caught a glance of his reflection in the lake. No more than five feet from his house.

That, of course, would be where his poor mother found him in the morning.

[Lucca]

At the scream, Eldy flinched back, crouching into a defensive position, ready to fight if she had to--wait. What she was actually seeing finally registered past the base panic, and Eldy's purple eyes widened as the full realization of what she'd just done hit her. She'd just attacked Felix, a man who had meant her no harm. Sure, he was incurably dumb, and very obnoxious, but he hadn't deserved -that-.

Nausea pooled uncomfortably in her stomach, and Eldy turned away, unable to look at the Selkie anymore, the sight of his white fur stained with his own blood looking like something out of a horror story. Funny, because she'd seen a lot worse before, and she knew that despite how much injuries to the forehead may bleed, they were not usually dangerous. But somehow, the guilt was as bad as if she'd done him lasting harm.

"Moron," she hissed under her breath, because anger was easier to deal with. And, after all, if he'd taken the hint to leave her alone, it wouldn't have happened. He brought it on himself.

Yeah, she didn't entirely buy that, either.

Eldy did the only thing she could in this situation...she walked away. Actually, she ran as fast as her hurt leg would allow, the comforting, familiar weight of her binding behind her keeping her from totally breaking down as she pushed herself back to the same trees she'd been in before.

But still, she kept running, until she couldn't even feel her front paw anymore and the pads on her feet were sore and bleeding and her left hind leg had blisters where the metal rubbed against it. She sagged down to the ground in a miserable heap and wondered why, oh why, she'd ever come to Selkie friggin' Lakes.

[Lucca]

It only took Felix a day or two to fully recover from the scratches on his forehead, which he insisted to his mother he had no idea how he got them (and part of him wasn't sure why he was lying, when he wasn't likely to ever see Eldryia ever again, but he did it anyway). He pretty much went back to his normal, laid back life, but he caught himself, several times over the next week, looking out on the water for signs of a Torquehelm (either not remembering that she'd vowed never to set foot on a boat, or hoping she'd changed her mind). Rustles in the grass behind him had him turning quickly to see if he could see the woman again, but each time he was wrong.

It confused even him that he should care so much, when she'd disliked him so. Unless that itself was the reason for his fixation on the encounter. Either way, after the span of a week, Felix really had pretty much stopped worrying about it. He just wasn't cut out to be so high strung and to dwell on the past. He'd never see her again and that was just the end of it.

...right?