musical heartbeat (open)

A low bellow, sounding sort of like a groan, echoed across the lake. It was followed by the sharp sound of snapping foliage; the sound of snapping branches and the crackling of trampled bushes. The vegetation was trampled easily under large, diamond-hard hooves, and the branches above blended perfectly with the huge rack of antlers that brushed them aside.

It was a large – giant rather – Caribou that was wandering around in the forest near the local lake. It was an odd sight; one would normally never see a Caribou this far down south unless it was in a farm or zoo. He stalked along at ease, not caring for much in the world. He didn’t look as if he were paying any particular attention to anything, just going with the flow like he usually does.

His name was Satoshi Ando, but would rather be called Reyes if there was risk of his name being mangled.

As Reyes walked among the trees, his ears pricked forward as he heard something quite familiar. It was a smooth melody, something that came without thought. It had sustenance and feeling to it as it rolled along smoothly. The sound was familiar because he sometimes made that music himself. It was the sound of a guitar; acoustic to be certain. Reyes played a guitar himself, though a bit less then his tenor saxophone. He preformed his music at Oceana on weekends and people seemed to like it fairly well. They also seemed a bit surprised that he didn’t know how to play the piano.

Following his ears towards the sound, he continued to listen to the music and trying to be careful not to disturb whoever was playing it. He was cautious though; he had no idea who was playing the guitar and whether they were a threat or not.

Suddenly the music stopped just as he was nearing the edge of the wood, and so did he. His ears flicked back and forth, searching for warning signals or any sign of him to get the hell outta there. Taking a few long strides forward, the lake was finally displayed before him; glittering in all its radiance. That’s when he saw the boy sitting across the lake from him. Reyes’ ears flicked again and his eyes sparkled in curiosity; who was that kid?

Bay only seeing antlers from the trees wich then moved forward to show a caribou made Bay blink and imeddiatly his head snappe dout of his thinking, thats how he liked it, not thinking about it made it hurt less. Moving the guitar from his lapa he slowley stood. 'whats a carabou doing out here? wrong time of year isn't it' he thought slihgtly confused. He was a young Hunter, knew to it, he had never seen someone actually be a animal he'd been told it was able and most he was told could do it but he couldn't he actually thought they were ewinding him up, but it hadn't been nromal for him to say such things.

In curiosity he slowley moved forward 'don't wanna spook it' he thought, he mind was focused know, locked up to the trust of course. He slowley reached out his hand, all he could see was an animal, in the wrong place sure, maybe it was sick he wondered. Trying to get it to move towards him he stayed his distance. His hand reached out, not like a jab but with his palm faced up allowin the animal to smell him, he didn't want to frighten it, he wasn't as hostil to animals as he was to other people. He didn't even realise that Ofelia was there.

She'd looked away only for a moment to make another fold in a petal of the iris, but when Ofelia looked up again, the boy and his guitar was no longer there. What the--?

A crunch of dried grass to her immediate left, and her head snapped around to catch sight of the boy, who had somehow transported himself over here in a matter of seconds. To her surprise, he seemed entirely unaware of her presence; instead, his attention was focused on a massive, antlered animal--a caribou, who, apparently, was aware of her as well as the boy.

Ofelia gave herself a mental kick as she silently began to stow her materials away. How was it that she had noticed neither approach? The boy had walked past her while carrying an unwieldy musical instrument; the caribou had hooves and was walking on dry ground. She should have heard both coming from ten times the distance away, and yet--what was a caribou doing this far south, anyway?

She shifted her legs underneath her into a crouch, just in case she had to get up in a hurry. Watching the scene play out in front of her, she wondered what the boy was thinking, if at all. Was he seriously trying to befriend a wild animal? Too much Disney as a child, perhaps. And there was the issue of the misplaced caribou. Even if the boy thought it was a Talisman, approaching it like he was was pretty much asking for a missing finger or two.

A look at the beast's intensely intelligent eyes further cemented her suspicions. Careful not to make any sudden movements - the caribou was enormous, even for a caribou, and she didn't want to startle it, Talisman or not - Ofelia closed her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

Whoever these two were, this was bound to be interesting. Or so she hoped.

The boy seemed to give up after a few minutes and sat back down at the water’s edge, playing a soft though fleeting tune. He had also noticed the girl had changed from a cross-legged sit to a crouch position, she was wary of both of them, probably. Okay, so the layout; the boy directly in front of him playing the guitar and the woman to his left that looked like she was about to jump him. He was surrounded on three sides, with the forest behind him making a run for it rather noisy and destructive. Imagine an approximately 700 – more or less – pound, large antlered moose-like animal crashing through the forest at full speed. It would be rather loud and much fauna would have been flattened by the time he was through.

Reyes flattened his ears again and snorted; creating a stream of smoke from his nose reminiscent of fire breathing. He wasn’t exactly sure what to do in the first place so, Reyes being Reyes, came right up behind the boy and took a sniff of his hair. It smelled of shampoo; that generic kind that always has that ‘shampoo’ smell, with a bit of grease… Ew, where did that come from?

Anyways, while the boy felt safe to him, the woman did not. She had something about her that just seemed wrong. The alerts were becoming audible I his head his head, that tell-tale warning though sequence that mostly came with animal instinct. He took a few wary steps towards her, stopped to see if she would react, then continued towards her. Soon he was practically standing right over the woman; 700 pounds of muscle and pretty much everything else.

His ears flicked back and forth as he listened to the continuous guitar in the background mingling with the sound of lapping water and songbirds. The woman he could easily remember; she was one of maybe three Asians in the little Canadian town. There was him and Aurelia and this Chinese-looking lady, but that pretty much summed it up. Noatak wasn’t exactly the most culturally diverse settlement in the world, to be honest.

Reyes leaned down and sniffed the woman’s neat brown hair. It was a sort of apple-y smell, which was sort of odd, but who was he to judge? Taking a single step back, he tried to gauge both the boy’s and the woman’s reaction.

Bay hadn't washed his hair in probably a week, yet it always looked clean, but he couldn't account for the smell, it probably smelt awful. Not that he really knew, he wasn't going to sit there and smell it. He closed his eyes for a moment and continued to play, but ti slowed adn went quieter, he was trying to relax but finding it hard he opened his eyes when he felt hot breath on his head he turned to see big nose in his face. But it soon turned away.

Thats when bay noticed the other girl, why hadn't he noticed her before? he stood up his hand gripping tightly onto his guitar, it was imprtant to him he had another one though. That one he never took otuside though, that one was his first guitar, something very important to him. This girl was she a hunter too? She seemed interested in them and that made him wonder. The carabou seemed happy with him but unsure on her. He looked to her in confusion.

The bony antlers swinging back and forth half a meter from her face did absolutely nothing to assure Ofelia of her safety, but the distinctly un-caribou-like behavior all but confirmed that the creature was a Talisman. There was always the possibility that it was just a very confused caribou that had been raised by horses, but she wasn't willing to bet on that.

The boy finally seemed to notice her, which was a shame, because the guitar music stopped when he did. His perplexed expression made her raise an eyebrow at him. What was there to be confused about? It was simple: some Talisman had decided that it would be fun to interrupt a peaceful day, and since it had a few hundred kilograms of muscle and a set of ingrown weapons affixed to the top of its head, there was nothing they could do about it. Unless she let her Talisman nip its ankle, but that meant she would risk having those quartz-hard hooves crush her. Besides, what good would a dead caribou be to her? A fur coat, perhaps--but that was just weird, because this wasn't an actual caribou.

The caribou froze, ears swiveling toward the forest. Ofelia remained as still as a coiled serpent, ears straining to hear the noise that had rooted the caribou in place.

There--a snap of twigs, a crackle of dried-brown leaves. She was again displeased with the toned-down senses of her human form; she wanted to be able to feel the terrestrial vibrations that would tell her what manner of creature was approaching. As of now, she would not know until their visitor to came into view.

Slowly rising up out of her crouch, Ofelia waited.

The woman had gone into a crouch; he could see that from the corner of his eye. He also heard the boy moving around behind him but was too concentrated on whatever was making that noise to turn around. After a few seconds it seemed to die away long enough for Reyes to take his eyes off it and turn to the boy. He just wanted to check out what he was doing, but in doing so he had forgotten rule #1 in the talisman world; never take your eyes off an enemy.

Wolves were a pretty common talisman in these parts; one would see them roaming the mountain range and in the nearby forests. However, they rarely came close to town or in the more commonly traveled parts of the region. Reyes would exactly consider the lake a very frequently traveled area, but the wolves seemed to think differently. He was pretty sure these weren’t normal wolves because wolves would never attack a fully grown, healthy Caribou.

They pretty much ambushed him, like he thought they would. There were at least five of them, if not more waiting in the bushes. Before he even realized it, one had jumped on his back and was clawing and biting at his shoulders. Another was aiming for his left foreleg, and the other two were stalking towards the boy and the woman. Within a few seconds he found himself shrieking and kicking and bucking around in a frenzied attempt to get the wolves off him. By this time the human side of his spirit had pretty much curled up in a corner and relinquished all control to his Caribou side, whom knew what to do in such situations better then he did. His human side just watched his talisman side buck wildly, swinging his antlers every which way.

It wasn’t long before blood had streaked the coarse fur on his back and ran down one leg. He was just lucky the wolves hadn’t aimed for his belly yet, or his throat. By this he knew they were sort of inexperienced, both by their lack of aim to vital points and their choice of attack.