Of Shadows and Swords (Chiarra)

Archer nodded, grinned, and gave a salute. "Yes, sir!" Then grabbed Melody by the hand and pulled her quickly to the nearest tent being disassembled. She could help with this, at least. It was just clean-up.


******************


"Ummm. . ." He shrugged a little, unsure. "I just . . . I would see things, as a child, and I would get bored, so I would try to imitate them. It's something little, and something I could practice without anyone seeing, so . . . I just got used to it." He'd learned the way some small animals moved, and learned to imitate them realistically. "I fooled a cat with this once. She wasnt very happy with me afterwards."
 
Melody smiled, relieved that he had agreed and happily followed Archer to the nearest tent. "So..." she began. "How do you actually do this?" she asked. She watched some of the workers and just went to do what they did and what Archer was doing.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


She giggled at his last statement and said, "I'm sure she wasn't." Alrin came over to them then. "Natalie," he said. "We have tents to finish taking down."


She sighed but nodded, getting back to work on the tent that was close by.


"And I told your friends that you are welcome to stay," he said to Lucius. "As long as you help."
 
Archer shrugged a little and gestured around. "You have to take the pegs out of the ground, for one, or at least untie the ropes, and do so in an order that won't drop the tent on top of you. Think you can untie ropes? You can try this one, and ill go to the other side."


********************


Lucius startled a little when Alrin approached, dissipating the mouse into the air and just giving a quick bow at Alrin's instructions. "Y-Yes, sir. Of course. We would be very glad to help, and are grateful for your allowing us to stay."
 
"Yeah," she said. "sounds easy enough." She struggled with the rope at first, but soon she managed to get it untied and took out the peg. She worked her way around the tent, thinking this was easy work. That is, until the tent came down on top of her.
 
Archer ran over and caught the tent as soon as it started to fall, stopping it before the support poles of it could fall on her, just the fabric blanketing her head. "All right in there?" He asked, laughing, and started to push at it with a hand to dig her out. "You can just swim your own way out, you know."
 
"I'm fine," she said, chuckling a bit at herself and crawled out. "Thanks for catching it though. I just need to be a bit more careful. At least the tent is down now."
 
Archer just smiled and let it fall once she was out. "Now we dig out the poles and start folding up this big piece if fabric so it can be packed away and shipped with us. Looks like they're just wrapping it around the poles once they're out, so we can just do that."
 
She smiled, nodded, and said, "Can do captain." She got to work and started trying to dig out the poles then. That was a bit harder, but still easy. She neatly set the poles down when they were out and worked until they were all out before helping him with the tent part.
 
Once the tent poles were out, they wrapped the tent material around it, then used the ropes to tie it all together, and Archer grinned at Melody. "See? That wasnt too hard. Didn't take that long either. Lets find another!"
 
She smiled at him. "Nope, it wasn't and we can go and take the tent we stayed in down," she said. She headed in that direction and got started on it.


((Time skip past taking down the tents? lol))
 
((Yeah, sorry I went to the store then got distracted. Still at friends house, not sure how much ill reply))


When everything was dismantled and they were starting to move again, Archer and Melody caught up with Lucius and Natalie, at the back of the almost caravan-like group. They walked together, and while Archer kept lookout, Lucius would show Ntalie little shadow animals to make her smile. It would be good for him to have another Raven around.
 
((Totally fine ^_^ ))


Melody smiled, watching Natalie and Lucius and she really wanted to walk next to Archer, but for now, she couldn't because it would be too tempting to hold hands. She wished he would already hurry up and tell Lucius.


Natalie smiled at all the shadow animals and tried making one herself, but it didn't work out as good. "This is all I'm really allowed to do," she said, picking up a rock and dropping it into shadow, making it disappear. "Master does magic tricks and when he does the disappearing acts, he lets me do that part so I can at least use my shadows a little bit."
 
Lucius blinked and then smiled a little, nodding towards her hands. "That - That was very good. Do you . . . Do you know where it goes? Can you bring it back?"


Archer waved back at them over his shoulder, eavesdropping. "Remind me never to travel with her."


Lucius shook his head. "We don't need that anymore. You can relax."
 
"I have control over it now," she said. "So yes I can and Master usually has me be the disappearing act and I use my shadows to disappear and come back, easy when it's in a dark box," she chuckled. She looked at Archer, "I guess he doesn't like traveling that way?"


Melody shook her head. "Not at all."
 
Archer gave a dramatic shudder and turned to face them, an unpleased look on his face. "It's like floating in cold mud and only someone else can pull you out. I was never very fond of the dark anyway."
 
Melody smiled softly at him and said, "It does feel really creepy and strange, but that's just because I'm not used to it." She sighed softly and said, "Do you know how to do anything else?" she asked.


Natalie looked around, making sure Alrin wasn't there, before she started manipulating the shadows to make little shapes, but not animal shapes and she couldn't really move them and keep the shape too. "I don't get to practice much of anything else," she said. "But I do when I can."
 
((sorry, wrapped things up and finally came home, then wanted food lol))


Lucius nodded a little. "I can help you, if you want. Sometimes it just takes some observation, to figure out how things move. And a lot of practice." When they were settled and no one was watching, he could try to teach her. "Maybe you could visit our tent when everything's done for the day, and we can do that."
 
(( ^_^ fine))


"I would like that," she smiled. She would just have to sneak out and not be caught or she would be in trouble. "I'll try to come whenever it's possible," she said.
 
Lucius smiled a little. "It'll be nice to be a teacher for once."


Archer just laughed from in front of them, having been turned around. "Sorry, sorry," He said once he'd cut himself off. "Just got an image of you as the old man. Trying to school us all the time." Archer had never stood for being taught at like he knew nothing, and though Aaric had never done that, Archer had seen it that way. He'd been a stubborn child. Lucius, on the other hand, had always wanted to soak in as much as he could. He'd always been more eager to learn anything Aaric wanted to teach him.
 
Natalie chuckled at him softly as well as Melody. "I'm also sure it would be nice to teach someone about shadows," Melody said. She looked at Archer as he laughed and spoke, smiling happily. She loved being around these three, including Natalie even though they just met, it was so much better having to be alone or with her fiance or parents. Her life was so boring up until now, she sighed softly.
 
"So I was thinking about earning our keep." Archer said once they'd fallen silent, and turned to walk backwards again. "What about something sort of like this?" He asked, and immediately bent over backwards. He landed easily on his hands, swinging in a smooth arc back to his feet, his hands, his feet again, and back to his hands, then just walked that way, backwards still. "I could probably do this for a while."


Lucius just smiled a little as the girl's watched, having already known about Archer's acrobatic talents. Archer had a lot of talents he'd learned to help him thieve.
 
The girls watched in amazement, especially Melody. "That's so cool," she said. "How do you do that?"


"We don't have any acrobats, the last one's quit," she said. "So maybe you could, you'd just have to bring it up with master."


"Why did they quit?" Melody asked.


"Nothing we did," she said. "They just got a better offer was all, they moved on."
 
"Traitors!" Archer exclaimed, but with only mock-anger, and swung back up to his feet again, grinning. "It'll be perfect then! Melody can play music for me, and Lucius can help set up all the stunts. We'll put a whole routine together!" He looked at Natalie. "And perhaps you ladies could help me with the appropriate costume. I can sew a bit, but not enough for the whole thing. I mostly patch holes."
 
"Sounds amazing," the girls said at the same time.


"Do you think you can stand still long enough for measurements?" Melody chuckled at him, teasing.


"Only thing left, is what color's would suit you?" Natalie chimed in. "We can work on that later though, when we stop next. We have plenty of spare cloth and if we can't find anything we can probably get some at a shop in the next town, only if you can join though."
 
"Of course!" Archer was grinning widely at the prospect of having an audience. "I can stand still as long as you like, as long as I've the proper motivation." He glanced at Melody, but only briefly, and turned forward again, dropping back so he walked with them instead of ahead of them. "As for the colors, I -"


"White and red." Lucius interrupted, and shrugged when Archer looked at him, smiling a little. "You're a showman to the core, and black doesn't suit you." Archer, despite the secrecy that thieving involved, did love to be the center of attention when appropriate. "Anything bright and eye-catching."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 3 (members: 0, guests: 3)
Back
Top