Closed Scene: Palandasya: Contacting the Departed

[Amikia]

Sabiri's paws step lightly over the flat savannah. She'd been searching for any sign of him since their chance meeting the day he'd lifted the curses from her daughters days ago. Now, with fresh evidence burning in the back of her mind, she feels deceived and presses on through the moonlit grassland with eyes and ears equally tasked to any hint that she may be near some sort of clue that she might be on the right path. Trying to find a dead king isn't easy, evidently.

"You'd think there'd be some sort of royal cemetary for past kings," she grumbles in complaint to the cool night air, the temperature of the autumn's late evening making her breath visible. With a sigh, she stops to rest her paws, twitching her tailtuft.

[Isoba]

A cemetary for past kings? There may have indeed been such an edifice for the other dead kings of the Laghai (the name of the Palandasya pride during and prior to Olumide's reign), but Olumide certainly wouldn't have been counted among them, by any means. Displaced ruler though he was, he might still have been accorded a royal honor upon his passing- it was his insatiable, hedonistic whims that would ultimately deny him a place among his regnant peers, securing his undesirable posthumous position as one of the Seekers of the Stars.

Now, though the unfortunate king is nowhere to be found. The evening air is chilly, though not unduly so- no unexpected temperature drops, no frigid breaths of spectral wind. A lone egret beats slow time in the air with large, steady wings, croaking down with interest at the solitary lioness. What was this one doing, straying so far from the den? Even he wasn't all that far from the silty land of the mudflats, his home.

[Amikia]

Sabiri emits a defeated sigh as she rigidly sits herself in a forfeiting posture onto the grass over which she'd been walking for the past hour underneath the moonlight that sets her fur aglow. She's at a loss, and the blankly hopeful expression with which she scans the grassland in front of her is visible evidence of her emotion. She curls her long tail around her curved thigh and lets the brown fluff at its tip rythmically tap in front of her forepaw. Had she a name to call out, it might make her search easier, but her query vanished before submitting that considerably important information. Now she's left to search for something she doubts she'll ever find - in the middle of nowhere - in the middle of the night.

The sound of the avian overhead breaks the monotonous silence that only the modest night breeze brings to her sensitive ears and her gaze quickly ascends to view its owner with only a briefly hopeful aire. That's soon replaced by a look of annoyance once determining it's not what she's looking for. "Oh shut up," she grumbles to herself and looks down at her forepaws before shifting them forward one at a time to lower herself even more onto her belly. She sort of feels comfortable out here all alone. Solitude had not become a stranger to her after her war, but then she always did feel a bit of comfort in what others would deem otherwise uncomfortable situations.

[Isoba]

With a final squawk, the egret disappears completely over the horizon, dipping below the crest of distant hills. Beside the reposing lioness, dry spires of grass crackle disparagingly in the dusty wind, as though muttering a wry, sullen rumor of sorts. With the disappearance of the egret, the sky is now completely clear of all substance, save only the grey, nebulous streaks scudding across the crest of the sky like the paw of an invisible painter. All is silent- silent, and Sabiri is alone...

But, now. A warning- a warning appears in the clouds above- a message transcribed but unwritten, scrawled across the firmament to be understood by the discerning. To all else who saw, to the unwise or unattentive, it was merely a phenomena of weather, a natural occurrence above the golden savanna. But those who observed carefully noticed that the clouds were moving against the wind, now, and the stars were slowly winking out of view...The clouds themselves seem to clot together, drawn towards one central point into a heaving, coagulated mass, swirling heavily, lethargically. A flurry proceeds to blow from the bulk of clouds, arising to fling itself coldly and forcefully up against the body of the prone lioness below. And the warning? It seems to be this: Do not seek what may not be seeking you. Oh, be warned, be warned. For you may find what may not be seeking you. Oh, be warned, be warned...

[Amikia]

The change in weather certainly does not go dismissed by the lonesome leonine for the moment she watches the shift in the skies overhead, her heart skips a beat. To be changing that quickly is certainly unnatural and her cautious biological alarm is tripped. Her reaction to that is as any warrior's would be: defense. Brows lower and her eyes scan overhead quickly, making note of every motion regardless how smoothly a transition the heavens make. Whatever's happening, she feels, she shouldn't be here to observe.

It's not until the cold wind whips harshly against her does she quickly lift herself to her paws with a bone-chilled shiver, her fur bristled and breath visible past her suddenly clenched fangs. Her eyes remain wide and alert, hurriedly scanning the landscape in front of her before ascending upon the sky again, ears flattening against her skull. The warning is, to her, clear as though it were spoken. "But.." she begins to say aloud, then stops herself, unable to keep from shivering. She's never experienced cold like this before.

The meeting, though brief, that she'd had with the past king was, in her opinion, a pretty good one. Why she would be turned away now is a confusing turn of events. She's not a clue how the dead operate in the first place, having only sent others to their eternal fates without meeting them afterward. Her heart pounds in her chest, for the first time feeling genuine fear, so much that she crosses one forepaw in front of the other and turns as though to leave at a high rate of speed. She never departs, however, in fact stops and turns back around to look back up at the sky. "I have to know!" She calls out to the clouds as if that was where she's supposed to direct her statement. It makes sense. "I must know who you are!"

[Isoba]

Suddenly, there is discord within the rampant melody playing out in the heavens- only a lone voice at first, terribly small, a thin, wailing thread as though one of a clarinet’s upper register- fighting, heaving, weaving its way past the rest…and then it grows stronger- solidifying into a mourning sax, a shrieking trumpet, and finally a deep baritone, long and low and noble, enormous vibrations emanating across the whole of the heavens…or so it seemed. And something very odd begins to happen as this sole, dissonant articulation gains slowly but tremendously in volume and strength- it begins to bend other components of the empyrean symphony to its will, and in but a short while, the clouds are churning oppositely than the way they had been before, but nearly twice as fast…

The wall of clouds stiffens all of a sudden as though wounded, suspended in its circular path, and then goes limp. The solid-grey curtain is cleaved asunder by a muffled (though abrupt) rumble of thunder, in sound not unlike a drawn-out, contented growl-roar orchestrated by a male lion…

They knew whom Sabiri was after, certainly… of course they knew. But the spectral figure that emerges from the crack in the clouds is not that of Olumide… for one thing, his mane shines sinuously with a sickly florescent green (Olumide was only capable of cerulean-blue and pink-gold), and his body was too lean, too narrow for Olumide’s enormous bulk…his jade-like eyes were slitted (Olumide’s were wide- almost unnaturally so), slanted downwards in a cruel, curving gleam… he speaks, and his voice is like that of a forest of pines rush-rushing in a storm...but certainly nowhere near the tone of a baritone. “Whom do you seek, frail daughter? Whom is it that you seek? And how do you dare…?”