Post by Spiderfly on Jan 31, 2011 11:14:00 GMT -7
Taenosa had grown up in a pleasant sort of way. Her parents were both fairly well-off, having their own little bungalow in one of the towering Balan trees of a small group of homes. The community of her village was made up of Defore, and everyone looked out for everyone else. In fact, it could be described as growing up with 40 close family members and 15 brothers and sisters, whether they were related or not.
Often times the younger children would venture into the jungle, though never far enough that their parents couldn't hear them. As soon as it went quiet the adults of the village would search them out and bring them home. Luckily, there were many flowers and fruits within hearing distance, and Taenosa had no want for anything more than she already had.
She quickly developed a certain amount of dexterity from climbing through the treetops and hanging by her tail to reach the ripest of fruits that were just out of reach for everyone else. Most of the time she shared, but sometimes she'd keep the sweetest fruit all for herself. There was nothing quite like hanging upside down off a branch, with a melon gripped firmly in her hands as her tongue reached out every last bit of overripe flesh. This was heaven, swaying in the breeze and hearing the paper-like rustle of the canopy's trees around her.
She often wished she could make that wind stronger so she could float from branch to branch like the Sugar Glider boy in the village. She always watched him with a certain amount of longing, though only for his ability to be weightless for a moment or two. Still, her tail was amazing and she was one of the few in the village with a fifth limb. She appreciated this inheritance from her mother and put it to good use.
One particularly lazy afternoon Taenosa was lounging in a branch nearer to the ground than she usually went except for when she was searching for a bug or two to hunt. That was a fun game too. . . though she rarely decided to actually eat them. She just enjoyed the chase through the undergrowth, so very different from the branches above. A strong breeze came along, catching her off-guard, and the little Defore took a tumble. Legs, and tail and everything she had reached out in panic, trying to catch some sort of branch and she managed, just, to grab onto one a moment before she hit the jungle floor. It was enough to break her fall but she still hit with a fairly hard THUMP.
It took Taenosa a moment or two to catch her breath, and she sat back on her hindquarters with a little giggle. Her head was spinning slightly, the same feeling she got when she hung upside down for too long. Ungracefully she pushed herself backwards to slouch against the massive trunk of the Balan tree her village was built around.
It was then that she noticed the most amazing of things, the ground where she had landed had a perfect imprint of her small body pressed into it's surface. She could even see fur details where her face had struck the ground. A small finger reached out tentatively and poked at the weird substance, and her finger print stuck. Now she was really intrigued.
With a small chirp of interest she grabbed a handful of the malleable reddish-brown earth and pressed it together into a clump, and again, it stuck the way she had smushed it. Another small happy noise escaped her maw and she grabbed more of the substance, pushing and pulling, and punching, and smushing, until she had an extremely crude little shape that looked roughly like the boy next door. Well. . at least in her mind. It rather more looked like a blob with 5 blobs roughly where there should be a head, and legs, to everyone else.
But she didn't care what others said after she got back to the village, she knew what she saw in the clay and that's all that mattered. She was even more surprised when the next day after waking up at home, she found her little sculpture to be completely dry and hard. . and STRONG. It didn't crack or crumble, it was amazing.
She had to do more figures, it was fun and she never passed up things that were fun. Every few days Taenosa would climb down the tree, grabbing as many handfuls of the clay as she could carry before skittering back up towards the village to find a nice private place to play with it. She had tried to play with her new hobby in the house until her Mother had yelled and told her to stop messing up the house making her 'blobs'.
Several times, a piece when just about finished, would go tumbling from her hands only to SPLAT on a branch, or the ground below. But she would just grab more and start all over again. It was only when she became a bit older that her parents started to notice some skill to Taenosa's little pursuits.
"Oh my, is that Jula?" Her mother exclaimed to her Father one day. And Taenosa's beaming face could not have been any happier. Finally! Someone recognized something she had done. She ran out of the house to grab a few more out of branches where she had hidden them, and brought them in to the house, handing them over to her parents.
Her Mother gasped as she looked down into her hands at the figures that Taenosa had placed within them. Sitting, perfectly shaped and dried, were three figurines of Taenosa, Yulan (her husband), and herself (Popea). Tears sprang to her eyes and carefully she placed them on the wooden shelf near the window, all together, one happy family.
Her hand cupped Taenosa's face and she murmured quietly "I love you, don't you ever stop making those wonderful things."