big fat diction + dialogue practice Nothing Burger. maybe a hint of a story I Zon't Know

will probably cull this later but i felt bad for my sad little abandoned forum who gets no love or attention

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Thick smoke billows from the end of Jela's cigar long after she snuffs out the flame, the wicked tendrils curling around her spire-like horns and casting a dark haze over her already decent at best vision. The General heaves a rattling sigh, the sound produced coming out more wheeze-like than what she'd expected and leaving an unpleasant feeling on the lungs.

She's stalking around her typical haunt tonight, listening to the wails of the damned echo up the dark basalt chambers. If there had been a time when the sound disturbed her, she cannot recall it; as far back as her memory goes, it's been an oddly soothing ambient sound that fills her often dull, shallow existence with something exciting in the environment.

Every shriek more desperate than the last, every cry more sorrowful, some even hoarse and cracking from keeping the racket up for so long... they have some tenacity down there, she'll give them that. Not enough for her to take pity on them or show them any shred of mercy, but something slightly admirable nonetheless.

It's these relentless howls of grief that keep her ears so preoccupied that she fails to detect Belial creeping down the dreary halls. Hooked talons clap around her broad shoulder, barely even able to cover the curve of her muscle despite their length, and Jela finds her lip curling and an annoyed half-snarl leaving her gritted teeth before she even knows that it's him.

"There are better places for a smoke break than inside these cramped halls, you know," Belial makes an awkward attempt to strike up banter with her, as per usual. The General grimaces and shirks away from his talons, even raising one of her own to lightly smack his hand away.

"Touch me again and I'll dump you in that pit with the rest of those filthy heathens," though a displeased scowl paints her sharp features, her tone remains quite bored and lacking the usual venom, if not a little deadpan. It's funny how someone as hyper and giddy as Jela can become so subdued and unenthusiastic around Belial. That's his special talent she supposes. The man need only enter a room to immediately siphon all energy and joy from every living entity that's present.

He forcesc out what he intended to sound like a casual chuckle, rolling his bronze eyes in response. Like Jela, Belial crosses his arms and leans back against the wall beside her - which prompts her to immediately stiffen and unwrap her own arms, busying her hands by messing with the belt of her bloodied apron.

"Why are you even down here, anyways?" Another talent of Belial's is being painfully oblivious to how solemn people become around him. Or maybe he is aware, and he just chooses to not acknowledge this and push through in a fruitless attempt to gain favor. Either way, the brute is utterly obnoxious, and Jela wishes she hadn't grown tired of reminding him.

"I was hoping to be alone. To think," Jela practically hisses, her tail flicking impatiently despite her best attempts to not let him get to her. But how could she not? Damn near no one can keep their composure up with this fool around, and everyone shows it by either having an uneasy silence or a sudden temper, even the most patient folks.

Once again he tries to laugh like whatever Jela's saying is highly amusing. "Oh, I didn't know I was interrupting such a sacred moment," he snickers, that hideous grin on his face, "I hope I didn't completely derail your fragile train of thought,"

She knows he's trying to kid around with her the way she 'kids around' with him and her other subordinates, but the General finds his prods frankly distasteful. Suddenly her bluff from earlier sounds more tempting... maybe she really should pick him up by the hooves and chuck him in there with the other prisoners. Satagova knows they're hungry down there.

"Ha, ha, ha," Jela's eyes meet his as she mocks his laugh, deriving pleasure from how his smile falters.

The usual awkward silence that accompanies Belial falls over the room. It's of course significantly less unbearable when the quiet is filled by headache-inducing yowls, but it doesn't make the air between the two standing above the pit any less... uncomfortable.

Maybe it's pity, maybe it's her desire to just get him out of here, but Jela decides to break the spell first. "What are you doing down here?" she reiterates his question from earlier, her gaze now drifting from his to go stare lazily down the pit. Not that she can see anything down the yawning void, but so she can idly imagine watching him get swallowed up by it. If only his wings weren't still intact...

"...I came looking for you, thought I might find you down here since your shift is over," Belial admits sheepishly.

She really shouldn't be so bothered by this. He's her Lieutenant, after all, he could have some very important news he's relaying to her! But... it's Belial. Of course it's not important. She can only brace herself for what it might be, waving her still smoldering cigar in a small circle to prompt him to keep talking.

He has to swallow first, then stutter and stumble, all the while testing her thin patience. "I was just-- well-- we barely ever get time off-duty, but--"

"Spit it out, Bee,"

"Yes! Yes, I mean-- I was hoping we could... uh... Dinner?"

"..We could dinner?" Jela raises a brow and finally looks back up at him once more, wondering what in Satagova's good and holy name that means.

"I mean-! I mean go to dinner!" Oh Satagova, no. "A-As colleagues of course, I mean unless-"

Jela is many things, and sometimes, merciful really is one of them. Before he can further humiliate himself, the General shushes him and shakes her head, her spine straightening more as she realizes his intentions.

"I appreciate the invitation, truly I do," a blatant lie, and both of them know it, "but I have several meetings to attend tonight. Perhaps you should consider asking... oh, I don't know, Ampelious? You two ought to get to know each other,"

Belial visibly wilts at the mention of Jela's newest arm decor. "...Ampelious?"

"Why, yes, you two are going to be working in even closer quarters now as he flies through those promotions. He's a talented young lad, isn't he?" And now Jela almost smiles, if only because she's giving herself more sick amusement as she recalls how much Belial hates her little prodigy. She knows her Lieutenant is absolutely sick with envy, and watching the subtle crestfallen look crawl up his features gives her the best gratification she's had all week.

"Well... I suppose..."

"That's lovely, Bee! I look forward to hearing about all the fun you two have," Jela already begins a brisk pace out of the prison, intent on escaping before Belial finds something else to pester her with, or throws himself at her ankles and grovels for her to accompany him. Shaking him off is the same as pulling a tick sometimes, she swears. Instead of sucking all the blood from her, he's got a latch on her energy and general quality of life.

Maybe Satagova smiled down upon her chosen one that day, because Belial does not call or race after her, and she escapes the prison tunnels unscathed, if not a little saddened by the loss of her soothing whitenoise. However... even with her back turned to the winding tunnels, she can't help but feel a delicate shiver strike up her spine, a sudden foreboding warning her that maybe she needs to start watching that ambitious Lieutenant of hers a little more closely. As she glances back one last time, she flicks her dead cigar to the ground, noticing one last spark fly off the smoking tip.

e Setting Pratice which will probably just be Lore. But i set the intention. Starring A CHARACTER I MADE UP TWO HOURS AGO !!

story?? story snippet?? who knows i just needed to write.

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At a glance, the blinding white land of Cinerus can be mistaken for an ethereal, eternal winter wonderland. The sun always shines on this northernmost region of the Ald, and yet white flakes drift down from the jagged, hollow peaks of towering black mountains. The land is as silent as the dead of winter too, the only sound being the whistle of wind as it echoes through the canyons and caves and rolls through the small valleys. The loudest sound here is usually the roar of the rare geyser coming out of dormancy for one last defiant cry before it too fades into silence.

But if you touch the snow, you'll find it isn't snow at all. It's ash. Ash of the ancestral homeland of the alder, finally and fully destroyed. The place where their species was born - where sapience as they know it was born - is dead. The only thing that remains is those who were forsaken and left behind, the tribes of the Cinerites that wander the vast expanse of nothingness, weathering famine after famine, drought after drought, and are dwindling greatly because of it.

The typical Cinerite is as pale as the ground they stand upon. If you ask other alder, they may even go as far as to say the Cinerite are a seperate race localized only to the ashen land they're damned to. Their eyes are usually a haunting intense silver, and their sclera is usually a bleached pink color - very different from the rich crimson alder are known for.

Uvien is not a typical Cinerite, but then, her blood isn't even mostly Cinerite either.

Unlike the blank or nearly-blank alder around her, Uvien's pelt is a healthy tan that has almost proved to be her undoing multiple times. Instead of possessing her mother's silver gaze, Uvien has a bright amber. Like the alder to the south, her pelt is streaked with vibrant stripes that cascade around her spine and limbs like the few creeping vines that still cling to the mountains. Appearance-wise, one would never mistake her for a Cinerite. But this is where the lack of similarity comes to a harsh stop.

Survival did not come easy to the alder when she was young; her bright colors and distracting markings made her easy prey. Her survival of early childhood is a testament to her mother's devotion and tenacity to her young, and for that Uvien is forever grateful. Though she has her other faceless parent's coat and coloration, her mother still took on the burden of raising a child in a land designed against it, and Uvien fully credits her thriving to her only true caretaker.

Now, well into her thirtieth year on this wicked planet, she can say that she's not only fully adapted, but she's as true of a Cinerite as those around her. She can fly through the extremely narrow canyons of the Yabolt mountains faster than the brutal winds that carved them, she can squeeze into cramped spaces in under five seconds even with her enormous wingspan and gangly limbs, and - this is a personal accomplishment that she will always boast - she can dive twice as fast as the keyanat that hunt her people for sustenance. At least in her own eyes and the eyes of her tribe, Uvien is one of them. A real and true member of them.

And yet... she often wonders what it looks like southward. The land where her faceless, nameless other parent had come from. Uvien does not know who's pelt she inherited, just that wherever they come from, the world has color. Maybe not good color - she's heard southward is bad - but it looks like her. Right? It must.

It's these thoughts that plague her head tonight as she watches another distant flaming spire reach far into the night sky, way off on the horizon line. She sits at the ledge of one of the many rocky outcroppings on the side of the tallest mountain she could find, facing southward so she can ponder better, watching the land beneath theirs burn and melt. Her mother said that in a few decades, that part of the Ald will region Cinerus, and the endless ash planes will expand again. That's what happens when Satagova's vessel is slain for the final time... they all pay the price for not being able to rescue her.

Behind Uvien, Masha works at working the white ash into her dense fur in preparation for tomorrow's hunt. One clever adaptation her mother thought of was to simply... roll her child in the white ash that already covers the ground. A temporary fix, but clearly one that worked when her mother would have to leave her unattended for a few dangerous moments, because look who's still here. And since the only way to hunt a keyanat is to ambush it, it's probably best if Uvien doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.

"Look at that," Masha quietly muses as ne watches the lava reach high above the distant mountain ranges, peering up over the older alder's shoulder. Masha is a young, inexperienced, slate-hued hunter who's ambition has gotten nim grounded to the cave, banished from using nis wings and even clambering around the steep cliffs until ne proves ne can practice restraint. "Do you ever wonder what it's like down there?" Ne adds as they keep rubbing in fistfulls of flaky ash to Uviel's now-graying coat.

"Well, it probably isn't great," she says as though she wasn't just thinking about fleeing down there. "You'd probably step right on a volcano the moment it did that," as though she predicted it, another great pillar of blazing red claws up into the night sky like a distant firework. Masha scoffs from behind her. That was a jab at the time ne had almost stepped directly on a geyser as it went off, and luckily, their left wing only has some minor bubble-shaped scarring from the boiling water. It's incredible that Masha even thought to shield nimself with nis wing, really... ne isn't exactly hailed for nis quick wit and sharp intelligence.

"Besides, the Paragon is down there, and we don't want to deal with them," Uvien speaks before she thinks, and suddenly the alder behind her goes awkwardly rigid as ne keeps patting ashes along her shoulders.

Ne's stuck in this cave because ne almost got taken by the Paragon's missionaries, and nis father almost died wrenching his offspring from their wretched talons.

She gulps a little nervously as she recalls that. From what she heard, Masha marched right up to a trio of those creepy bastards and outright tried to abandon the tribe in favor of them. Somehow ne thought that the Paragon would offer a better life... though that is the image they try to project. Sanctuarary. Salvation. Food. If Uvien hadn't firsthand witnessed the atrocities the Paragon was willing to wield when faced with resistance, she might still do the same without a moment's hesitation.

"Yeah," Masha finally stumbles out after the pause. "I know."

Uviel watches another few pillars of lava blast upwards into the clouds before they fade out in the distance, her ears just barely detecting what must be eardrum-shattering roars when up close. At least, even though they inhabit the dead and damned region of the Ald, they don't have to deal with active hellfire raining down upon them.

"I can't blame you for wanting to leave, you know," she starts to fiddle with her talons as Masha reaches her mane, which is naturally a thick, curly mess, but she stays on top of her grooming to keep it short and therefor less cumbersome and less likely to get caught on anything. She doesn't want to encourage the young alder, but she doesn't want to pretend her mind isn't actively tossing around the idea of running away either. "They have a tempting bargain, don't they?"

Masha nods wordlessly. "...I just thought things might be better if I went with them,"

"That's what they want you to think," Uvien reminds nim, though at this point that lesson is probably hammered into the young rolm's thick skull. "But seriously, Masha, how many alder have you heard of from the Paragon that aren't soldiers or missionaries?"

"How many alder have we heard of at all?" Masha counters. "We live in a wasteland,"

"Well... well it's a survivable one. If we go south, it will be a whole new ecosystem and even less water, unless you're keen on drinking from those boiling hotsprings," she can't tell if she's trying to convince herself or the alder who's currently purposely dirtying her silky pelt.

"The Paragon has water," Masha's voice is a bit quieter, almost like ne doesn't want to say it out loud.

Uvien sighs at nis quiet insistence. Ne's still thinking about getting away from Cinerus, and... so is she. She never considered running to the Paragon, but they do have clean water, and they do have shelter, and these are all things she's taken into account while fantasizing abandoning this life and her identity as a Cinerite. Her tribe. The life her mother fought to preserve for her and her daughter. Her own sense of honor and moral code. But... really, wouldn't it be nice to not have to cover her beautiful coat just to survive? To be among people who look like her? To maybe, just maybe, find the one that looks exactly like her and know she found the faceless parent of hers that she's always subconciously wondered about?

She's not the only one asking herself similar questions in the following silence as both alder watch the last of tonight's eruptions die out on the horizon.

background for a background character. ran outta steam at the end.

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...They were just here.

Belial's whole body stiffens, a cold, creeping fear instantly prickling up his spine, making his tail and wings instintictively flare up to appear larger. White eyes widening, his gaze flicks frantically from left to right, scanning the steam that chokes out the air. But the fog hangs heavy in the air, making anything beyond three meters completely invisible.

He could have sworn they were just here... right here. He just heard his little cousin bellyaching about a pebble wedged between their hooves and just saw his mother's shadow at the corner of his eye. The young alder pivots around in a small circle, his breath already picking up as he investigates his surroundings - but all he sees is the blank white walls the geysers have created this morning.

Flying is not an option, because if visibility is this bad within the cloud, it will be just as bad above it. That doesn't mean he doesn't try to use his wings as a solution, however. In fact, the moment he gets scared enough - which is humiliatingly fast, as Belial's never been a very courageous young lad once he's seperated from the group - he starts beating his wings wildly, trying to disperse the fog. Too scared to shout for dread of the villapi, he spirals, twisting and turning in every compass direction, ceaselessly flapping his wings like it'll clear the whole geyser field and reveal his family.

But the veil is as dense as smoke, and despite possessing a twenty-three foot wingspan, Belial only manages to banish the fog in a 2-yard radius around himself... and the others are nowhere in sight.

Now he's frightened enough to call out.

"Dad?"

His voice does not carry far. It manages to squeak out as a small, hoarse chirp from somewhere shallow in his throat. Maybe not even his throat. His voice may have started to escape him only when he was at the 'ad' part of the word.

"Guys?!" Not very eloquent, his aunt would chide, but it's funny how Belial doesn't care about appearing respectful and well-spoken when he realizes he's been left behind. This time his voice carries a few feet... but this few feet is only as long as his little circle of clear vision, where his family is confirmed not to be. And this little area is rapidly closing up again, the mist reforming and reuniting once more in a thick white blanket.

Ever since he was a young boy, Belial has felt anxiety in his throat, specifically the jugular. It's an internal tingle, like a parade of buzzing ground bees marching through the narrow corridores of their subterranean cities. Now these bees are drumming their wings so quickly that he can hear the hum of their bzz in his ears, louder and louder, reaching a higher and higher pitch as he gets light-headed from the air this movement produces. The tickle in his throat irritates his nerves, making him ill, which in turn causes his stomach to involuntarily lurch as it threatens to expel his last meal from two days prior.

"HELLO?!" he shrieks, and as though his own scream frightened him into motion, Belial breaks into a wild sprint, galloping and stumbling through the cracked parched ground of the geyser field, sailing over the few boiling pits of hissing water. He doesn't know where he's running, but surely it has to be behind them, right? He had only been looking down, and they had just been there, so they must be ahead--

Except he had spun around in his frenzy. Is he still directly behind them? The ground bees in his veins start rushing even faster, the thrumming of their wings brushing against the walls of his circulatory system, their prickly legs getting caught in the sides. If his parents were responding to his shouts, he would not be able to hear them over the deafening, shrill ringing in his ears. It disorients him as much as the sudden lack of breath and the impenetrable mist. Fuck. He is so fucked.

He's in the ass crack of the Ald. He's not even a spot on the fucking map. There's a million geyser fields like this that he's wandered through with the others. Where is he? Where are they?! Will they know where to look for him?! Should he have held still?! Will-

...

There's another ringing.

Not the insistent scream that fills his ears.

Belial stumbles and trips to a halt, his body trembling, chest heaving with sporadic shallow breaths. He can barely hear it over his loud pulse... but it's out there. In the mist.

Tinkling chimes. Distant - no, not distant, he's just going batshit crazy from fear, and therefor everything is muffled. And... it's a chorus of them. Coming through the fog, getting louder...

He sees their silouhettes first. Five. No. Six. Wrong again. Eight?

Yes. Eight. Eight alder traveling in a single-file line, hands clasped to their chests like they're in prayer. And murmuring. He didn't hear it over his pulse and over the bells attached to their ankles, but they're murmuring. He doesn't speak the language, he thinks, or maybe he's still too deafened by terror to comprehend basic speech. In an attempt to cool himself, he swallows, hoping that takes out a good chunk of the bees in his throat.

...As the shapes drift towards him, he catches a glimpse of sky blue. And as they step through the fog, he realizes they're all wrapped from horn to hoof in it.

Those are not just any strange alder. Those are the Paragon Missionaries. The Paragon Sanctuarary Missionaries.

Belial did not know it then, but this was the moment that his 'true' family rescued him.