#edifice au

[quibble-auk]

I made more of my transformer OCs as the animals they are loosely based on. This time it’s bird edition.

These are a weird mix of actual bird pattern mixed with the general design and color of the characters.

Echo- Lord Derby’s Parakeet: he actually doesn’t have green but the bird does so… yeah.

Overstrike- Harpy Eagle: the pattern follows the birds more than hers, the colors are right though.

Oh, and a doodle for the edifice au.

[quibble-auk]

Hehehe, just the fantasy AU that’s been rolling around my head for a bit.

Theremin would be a fae, little insect man hehehe.

@thebrokenmechanicalpencil it’s finally done

Heh, I also have a close up cause the photo is kinda crappy

He’s got fun eyes. Oh! And a maybe Dropmix, still in the works. As well as unicorn Jeopardy

[thebrokenmechanicalpencil]

Old world Edifice

@quibble-auk

(Just a blurb as sort of an introduction for the Fantasy au, get a prologue of sorts. Not that I have the capacity to actually write a book on this. Though it would make an interesting one. Maybe this is alright.)

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-Don't speak their names.-

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Slow and gut wrenching, thick and hot. That was the ever reaching drag of the claws within his stomach. He was so cold the cramps almost felt warm in comparison to the frozen parched world around him. Parched due to the snow, snow that his father whispered hasn't melted since the bones were carved to make the mountains. Of course Daimhin had gasped, the very idea of seeing such snow older than the village he roamed was world trembling. 

He had to touch those frosting flakes, let that old man’s snow melt into his skin and be water for the first time since the gods tore the first giant to pieces and stitched the world. That had been his wish, his father in his dark eyed gaze had laughed at the request. Teasing him and snatching him into his arms like he was a mere boy again. The child still was one, but in his own mind his beard was heavy and thick. Face scarred and hair long. Only blonde instead of black. The only difference between his vision and his father’s own face.

Daimhin had begged to go hunting , go searching the ridges where that old snow fell for whatever had stolen two other familie’s milk cows. His mother firmly forbade it, saying it had to have been a fae. His father had scoffed.

Mother in her braids and set jaw had glared at the large dark man, remarking with a whip snap. No tracks had been found, the cows in their whimsy at a fairy’s voice had wandered away tracks for the high mountains. If the fairy had wanted them it was best to let it have them. 

Father had turned a black eye to his fair mother and rolled it, voice scratched from too much woodsmoke he replied that those families could suffer severely in the next long winter without a cow. One of them had been with calf, a blessing and not something they wanted to lose. The tracks of man or sharp beast were missing, but prints from the cows led up towards the peeks.

His mother in her grand wisdom had sighed, and eyes glittered like ice in the spring. Covered in a thin layer of water. Sharp words flew and ducked like snapping birds, both man and woman crunching painful words in beaks. Daimhin had seen his mother be hugged tightly by his father when the yelling stopped, two sides of a moon. One dark and known for his bravery, one light known for her breath of thoughts. They made a whole. Behind that hard wooden frame, Daimhin watched, the sun barely peeking past the mountains.

He had asked his father that morning, why his mother feared the mountains so? With a calloused hand his father had whispered close to his ear that the legends of the giants tore her heart. Scattered her mind and made her bones brittle with fear. Steeled her eyes against argument. 

That steeled argument was snatched and ripped when one of the men who would be journeying to the peaks in minutes, fell ill. Those within the town murmured of it being a bad omen for the hunters, who had to leave before the tracks disappeared. Mere hours. Father however was no coward in the eyes of the townsmen. He turned his black eyes to Daimhin.

So he got his grand wish, on the look out for cows he strolled the grand slopes and sweated till he shook beneath his layers of furrs and cloth. His father leading the party of five high into the mountains after the soon to be covered tracks. They moved on swift feet, a horse traded between them with herbs and food on his back. Things for the cattle if found injured.

Two days he walks and carried his fathers water and his own dagger, walked and tugged his furs on and then off as they went higher. Soon men were panting thin breaths, air thinning by ridgeline. 

But no cattle were found.

The tracks were clean and well pressed on any scrap of soil they could press into, a warning bell ringing within the boy’s blonde head as he stared at the track between two rocks. He had watched cows manoeuvre between the stones before, but the steady print made no sense nestled where it showed. Like someone had stamped it.

In the back of his mind his mother’s well honeyed voice whispered, he had been five. Reaching for a stone carved in the perfect shape of a face, its heavy thick nose begging to be traced and held. His pudgy hands did not get far before his willowy mother in her wool skirts snatched him, pillowed against her heavy apron she used when picking herbs amongst the trees. Glacial eyes glinting she had shushed him, young at the time and easily startled.

“If it seems too good, my baby listen, if it is too perfect, leave it. Say nothing, do not speak. Leave it. Fairies make traps in any way they can.”

“Father this hoof print is odd,” He had called, his raven father kneeling beside him. Thick cloak over his face against the cold wind, how it could be warm within the valley and freezing here was astonishing. 

“How it sits?” 

“Betwixt the stones.”

Daimhin nodded, his young boy’s braids bobbing. Hair thicker in its own confines Father narrowed his eyes. “It's not the only track, there are more, she could have backed up. Seeing something that caught her interest. See..”

Smoothly his father pointed out the slight dirt scuffs along the other rocks. Daimhin nodded slowly,  quickly clapped on the shoulder and dragged up as they moved to catch up with the group. Cresting another ridge.

Then another. 

The tracks continued, simple and perfect. Other signs continued, the sight of fur and such pressing them onward.

Almost a week they walked, following the tracks and catching snowflakes in their hair. Twisting and curving through down drops and thin passages a cow would have been mad to slip into and out again, yet the hoof prints marked a trail. Both creatures too precious to let go, to let die.

Nights spent curled with one another within furs, eating the small game hunted and jerky they had brought. Daim pressed into his father’s broad chest, a strong arm around his shoulders. He was too old to be cuddling like a suckling puppy, but neither said a word. The deep dark peaks whispering while the night was chased and had her heels snapped upon. It made the son and father hug close, after the third night none of the men offered to light a fire. 

As if afraid they would be seen, as though mice within an open field.

Soon snow was on either side of them, Daimhin grinning with circles under his eyes as he watched the cool fluff melt and sting his knuckles. His father smiling with a slow gentle smile, eyes alight with love. “You’ll soon be sick of that snow boy, come.”

Rocks gray and lined with inches of hard packed stagnated water, Daim found himself weary and ready to go home. He was deeply tempted to tug his father’s rough hand and whisper he wished to travel back. All the men seemed to feel that way, none willing to truly say so. The threat of winter looming, of their own families suffering to support the ones who lost the cattle. The men of those houses with empty stalls had faster strides, eyes darting. 

Desperate.

Daimhin had felt a horrible flash of hot and cold, as they passed that last hidden crack within the peaks, prickling his skin and warning bells clattering. His father snatched him to his side, breaths shaky and grip tight. 

Bad omen.

The argument had started soft, whispers as the other men gently tried to gather the two owners of the lost respective cattle. Whose tracks winked in the snow temptingly. Untouched. They had walked until a slope rolled before them, huge and deeply pitted mountains jutted and spiked around them and far above them. Mountains that were eerie, felt wrong. Too large and rolled so far along the spine. Diamhin took a step back, a horrible ragged fear gnawing at his gut. 

His father held him tighter, jaw clenching. His eyes flashing, as the other men began to yell. Tension snapping like a tendon. Yells and rage, fear and hunger. Cold nipping and only made the tempers shorter.

“Son, move for the way we came, quickly.” His father shoved him, his breaths picking up and making Daimhin’s own fear morph into a blind terror. 

His father was afraid. 

“Now, move-”

The crash of the rumbling snow had been quiet. Like a calf’s first few fluttering breaths.

Then it became thunderous, hooves galloping. A bull charging. 

A wash of horrible white.

His father’s hands tight around him, the old man’s snow cutting the boy’s face as he struggled to choke out the cursed powder.

The world being drowned. 

Suffocating.

Blinding.

Sudden rush of air, men screaming, a jerk as he was snatched tight to a rock face. Panting they clung tight, watching with half blinded eyes as the river of snow snaked past them. The heart wrenching cry of his father when his gloved hands slipped.

“Don’t breathe!” and back in the torrent they went.

Only white. The flesh of his body numbed and crying out at the lack of world to touch. His father now a block of ice and chains tying them together.

Daimhin screamed as he was air born, feeling his father wrap himself around the smaller frame of his son protectively.

“Hold onto me.”

They hit the bottom as the final dregs to the running snow piled behind them.