Just Another Manic Punday
Characters:
Magramba, a warrior
Aden, an acrobat
Setting:
At a campsite, hidden among the woods near Marshank.
As night falls, the winter storm has finally abated, leaving the ground covered in a slurry of slippery wet snow-mix. Magramba lies under the canvas covering, just trying to relax a bit before he drifts off to sleep.
Aden is going to make that a little more difficult. "Hey, do you have any dry shirts left?" The squirrel asks, finally giving up the search within her own pack and crawling towards Mag and his. "I'm hanging a bunch of stuff up, tomorrow - by the way - so let me know if you have anything you want me to clean." Maybe these heathens she travels with don't mind nasty, sweaty travel wear - but she certainly does. And she isn't going to sleep in something damp, muddy, and torn, either.
"Shhh," Magramba hushes, reaching out a paw towards the other squirrel. "Quiet time now. No cleaning." The warrior slowly eases himself up onto his elbows to stare her down, then deliberately pulls his pack over, tossing the flap back and rooting inside. "Here, you can wear this," he offers, pulling out a simple linen shirt that matches his exactly, only it's still black. Like, never been worn.
"Do you /never/ change?" She asks, ignoring the shushing, as she crawls back to the other side of their tarp to change. "Seriously - I don't think I've ever seen you wear something different." Her voice is periodically muffled as she switches shirts - it's a little loose on her, which is fine by her. Her torn, muddied tunic is just...tossed away. She doesn't care about it by this point. And then she's back, messing with her bedroll and collapsing on it in a silvery heap. "Hows your head, by the way?"
"I /change,/" Magramba protests, laying back on his bedroll as she comes over to lay herself down near him. "My head is... alright, I guess. Still throbbing from the impact. That tree was /hard./" Shockingly. "Don't they have any softwoods around here?" Oh, the jokes.
"Yet I have the /overwhelming/ suspicious that I'm the first beast to wear this." She laughs, pinching the fabric of the shirt in question. But she lets it slide - teasing him for being gross isn't /nearly/ as easy as getting on him for whatever terrible pun he just made. "That was awful." Aden smirks, twisting about to prop herself up on an elbow and raise an eyebrow at the squirrel. "Like...Really awful. You really need to...put a cork in it." Get it?
"I feel like I've still got a knot in my back," Magramba replies, straight-faced. These two. "I know I'm getting alder, but seasons."
"What, pine-ing after your youth already?" She quips right back, not bothering to keep a straight face. Her smirk grows, a little, with each passing pun. "I feel like we do this a lot. We may need to work on our sense of humor - you know...Branch out a bit." She can't help herself, and elbows at him with that last one.
"Ouch!" Magramba starts back as her elbow smacks him in his bruised ribs, rubbing ruefully at his side. "Don't make me root against you, Aden. We've always been fronds, but I will lumber right out of your life and leaf if you keep barking at my innocent stamen-ts."
Oh, that's how we're going to play, then? "Aw, /shoot/, don't be such an Ash, Mag." Aden grins, though she winces apologetically at the soreness she re-inspires. "I'm trying to think of somebeast who would make you a better friend than me, but I'm drawing a plank. There just isn't anyone who would love /yew/ like I do, you know that, right? Of course you do, there's no use even aspen." The grin is splashed from one end of her muzzle to the other, now.
"I wald-not even suggest it," Magramba replies, grinning himself as he relaxes again, still rubbing distractedly at his sore ribs. "I'm not maple to continue, I fear; my faculties have been im'pear'ed by my injuries. Willow you carry on for me, Aden? Your cherry smile is all that sustains me."
"You should stop trying so hard, I've got a feeling in the pit of my stomach that you're just going to sap the rest of your strength." She pokes her tongue out at him. "So I will gladly accept this burden. Now, you should get some rest - you've been put through the ring-er, and I wouldn't want you to push too hard and soil yourself." After a brief pause, she adds: "I, myself, am going to sleep like a log."
"You just had to toss in one more twig, didn't you," Magramba teases, nudging her with his foot as he stifles a yawn with the back of a fist. "Okay, seriously though, what were you thinking getting between me and that wolverine? He could have crushed you."
"Look whose talking, you nut!" The acrobat laughs, settling onto her side and using her arm as a pillow, satisfied by a hard-fought game of punnery. But as the talk turns to their encounter with the wolverine, her ears twitch back. "Well, he had already crushed /you/, and I didn't want him to get bored, so..." She replies with a little, wisp of a shrug.
-- Things become decidedly un-punny from this point, forward. --
A sigh puffs up from Magramba's lips to ruffle the top of the canvas cover. "...I just don't want you to get hurt, especially for me. It's happened too many times. I don't want that for you, I don't want that /from/ you." The squirrel seldom expresses what he's feeling, and when he does, it's difficult to find the right words. "Just. Just be careful, okay?
"Variety is the spice of life, doncha know." Aden concludes, but as the warrior speaks, her gaze averts from him, tracing the lines of dirt that pepper her bedroll. As he finishes, her resolve hardens, and her eyes flick back to the other squirrel, brow furrowed. "I'm never going to just /leave/ you in a time of need, okay? I know that I get myself into trouble...Um, more than most, perhaps -" At least she finally admits it. "- But you've known me long enough to know that even though 'careful' isn't, exactly, my strong suit, that I enjoy living. I like life - I do what I can to keep living it - but I'll be damned if I stand by while you're in trouble. Life is great, but I wouldn't think twice about giving it for you." That may have just gotten /way/ too serious. "O-Or Flick, or any of my friends." There, fixed it. Her emotional proclamation seems to have surprised even her, as her ears splay back, eyes going a little wider. She back pedals. "I'll be more careful. Good night." She rolls over, suddenly; turning her back on Magramba.
"Aden." Magramba's short, semi-frustrated pronunciation highlights that he knows either he struck a nerve or she did, but his tendency is to assume he's the one who did the offending. "I'm not trying to- to tell you how to live. I'm sorry if it came out like that." The warrior sits up, bracing himself on his arms. "It's just. I've lost friends. Beasts I cared about. Loved. A lot of them." Stuck in his mouth, dried-up honey, he slowly pries his feelings out to lay them on the dropcloth. "I- I can't. It's not you, making your own- whatever. /I/ can't."
Aden has always felt that Mag reflects a gruff breed of simplicity, and has appreciated that for all those years. It's offered a stark contrast, an anchor, against her own whimsical brand of chaos - flying and twisting out of her at every opportunity, chasing after half-baked ideas, struggling against a sea of half-followed impulses. Completion has always been her downfall - but he gets things done with a sense of one-track singularity that she has always admired. It is her inherent faith in that simplicity and 'it is what it is' mentality that throws her completely off his point; but, as he clarifies, the hidden depth of what it was just sort of...hits her. "Oh." Her back still turned to him, those ears twist back. Her voice is soft, and she is unable to bring herself to look back at him: It's always the same with her - when reality shifts its way into deeper waters, she looks for a way out, or escapes to a more convoluted ideal of the world within herself. But not tonight. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be, it's just. Me. I'm... I don't know." Magramba brushes it off, unable or unwilling to work his way through the emotions tonight. The warrior rolls over, pulling his cloak tight around himself, then turns back, opening his mouth to say "Aden, I-" before dropping his eyes for a moment. "I just don't want anything to happen to you."
"It's okay, really. You don't have to try and /explain/ yourself, Mr. Stoic. I know it seems like I don't get it - but I do." She rolls back over to flash him a half-hearted grin, catching him while his back is still turned. She can feel his hesitation, more than she hears it, and can only smile at him, fondly, as he turns back her way. She regards him warmly, an eyebrow slightly raised at whatever is left unsaid. But she doesn't push it: she knows better. "It won't - I'm sturdy, and, honestly? /Unnaturally/ lucky. Seriously - if nothing else, I'll always make it by on a fluke." There's a soft laugh there, before she reaches out to - in true, cheeky fashion - ruffle at his headfur. "Night, Mag."
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