The Avatar's Journey

[Boneman]

I had a good look through the threads, and I hope I'm not replicating, so here goes: Inspired by Harebrain's entry in Re: Untitled Project: Ch 1+2 in critiques (his first posting, anyway) I thought we might give our avatars some exercise. The idea is that you post a few lines, a paragraph of your avatar on a journey, and the only requirement is that he/she/it accompanies the avatar who posted above you. It's up to you to interpret your own avatar, and where the journey goes, what happens etc. Naturally I'm starting, so I don't have a companion yet:

Boneman did not start his journey with a heavy heart. Mainly because he didn't have one, and it never occured to him that ambulation should have been impossible without muscles. He could never be described as spineless: the 7 cervical, 12 thoracic and 5 lumbar vertebrae were always on show. But as he trudged through the deep forest, his tarsals and metatarsals crushing the autumn leaves, he felt a bone-deep loneliness. He hoped someone might join him for a while on his adventure......

 

[Moonbat]

Awoken from the deepest of his deep sleeps by the careless leaf-crushing of Boneman, Moonbat drops from his pearch whilst still semiconscious and falls for several seconds before opening his wings and swooping beneath Boneman's feet as they come crashing down on more leaf litter. The giant Boneman barely notices the small winged creature, but he can hear the melodious whistle that the Moonbat is most noted for drifting gently on the breeze as it rustles through the impressive trees of the forest.

 

[Precision Grace]

Precision Grace rose from her mushroom hunt, nose deep in the forest floor, to see a two headed beast looking at her with two pairs of expectant eyes. Wrinkling her nose in mistrust, PG dug into one of her bottomless pockets and fished out a small, rock like object. She thrust one half of a rare white truffle towards the beast's left head. She contemplated the wisdom of her decision to part with more than half her annual income while the creature before her strained to sniff the proffered fungus with both it's noses. Will it attack her? Or will it eat the mushroom and Then attack her?

 

[Moonbat]

Attack is not in the Moonbat's nature, but then again neither is eating mushrooms, yeuch! But the Moonbat is a curious animal and ventured a sniff of proffered truffle, flexing its left neck it took a deep inhalation of the rare white truffle and instantly it's left head passed out. The right head looked at the, now limp, left neck with dismay, it looked warily at the truffle and decided if it was good enough for the left, it'll be good enough for the right. A second large sniff of the white truffle and right head passes out alongside the left. Do Moonbats dream of lunar sheep?

 

[HoopyFrood]

HoopyFrood squeezed herself out of a nearby cave, turning to an official looking person with a clipboard.
"It's no good, too small. And rather draughty. I'm fed up of caves, haven't you got something in a nice, furnished, one-bedroomed apartment?" The suited woman mumbled something about "getting back to you on that" and hurried away.
Hoopy snorted a thick plume of dark smoke, watching her scurry away. "Just can't the staff these days".
About to take a step forward, she halted abruptly, noticing a small creature mere inches away from being squashed beneath her large orange foot. Lowering her head, she cautiously nudged the passed out winged creature with her scaly nose.
"I might have to rethink moving to the area if such strange things live around here!"

 

[Boneman]

Boneman noticed the limp form of a two headed moonbat lying on the ground. He felt he could not leave it there at the mercy of the elements, so tucked it under his humerus, and continued on his way through the forest. The village was only a few leagues away, perhaps he could get a good price for it.

 

[Boneman]

aaargh! Simultaneous postings...ignore mine......

 

[Boneman]

or continue...
Hoopyfrood jumped out of her skin when she caught sight of Boneman who had dropped what he was holding. He had no vocal cords, so he gestured to her, a hooked index phalanx waving for her to come with him. There was no way she was ever going to move into this area with all these weirdos, but on reflection she saw that Boneman had no body to accompany him, so she decided to walk as far as the village, and talk to the letting agents again. They set off together.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Hoopy stomped along side Boneman, occasionally getting distracted by an unusual plant, or having to squeeze herself between particularly tight trees. She took a moment to examine the walking man of bones next to her.
"Let's hope we don't meet a pack of dogs along the way."
She suddenly snickered to herself.
"Why didn't the skeleton go to the party? Because he had no body to go with!" She glanced at Boneman. "Um...sorry."

 

[The Ace]

"Typical," thought the Ace, "Lost again and now I'm seeing dragons."

He ducked behind a bush and dug out his map.

 

[chrispenycate]

"No, it's not a duck; I think it's a drake. A fire drake, from the look of it, and I only know one of that colour in the region, so you can probably throw bread at it."

The outer child swung his arm around in an arc which projected the lump of bread into the mud, a good three inches in front of his toes.

"No, don't cry; it would prefer chocolate anyway. I know, so would you, but you can give it half, can't you? It's just a dragon, and a walking skeleton, a legionnaire and a two-headed little monster - oh, and a witch – out for a stroll; you're right, it is a bit odd even for here. Perhaps we ought to follow them and make sure they're not doing anything naughty…"

Curiosity might have been framed for the cat, but it's caused more human downfall than you could imagine.

 

[Parson]

"Lost again!" said the Parson. "How does my circuit of preaching bring me into these strange places. "Ahhh! a grandpa and his grandchild, I'll ask them where Hemlock Castle might be."

But as he goes up to the fair child and grandpa, a fair menagerie of odd bones, odd ducks, odd dragons, and who knows whats appeared. Shaken to his very core the Parson ran in the opposite direction saying a shaky prayer as the wind tore at his coat. "Father forgive me, for I know not where I am."

 

[HareBrain]

Every muscle in the hare's body ached with fatigue. For two days solid he'd been running from the hell-hounds, who'd reacted with more ire than he'd thought possible to the taunts about their mothers. Now they were only a few seconds behind. Rounding a corner, he saw ahead of him, salvation! A man made of bones! (Accompanied by a collection of freaks.) How could any hound, hell-born or otherwise, resist? Thinking only of self-preservation, he charged between the skeleton's legs ...

 

[Moonbat]

The Moonbat was rouse from his truffle induced unconsciousness by a sudden movement. He woke to find himself bound inside a humerus, not sure what do make of the commotion around him he tried to wriggle free of the protection that Boneman had offered him. The sound of approaching hounds added an impetus to his wriggling and soon he was poking his head out from behind the humerus to see a Hare dashing between the legs of his Boneman chauffeur. Moonbats prefer to pull thier own weight and this Moonbat decided that the air was the safest palce for him now. He spread his little wings and hopped off the Boneman's hip. He rose up to the canopy and glided slowly along keeping a set of eyes firmly on the travellers and thier pursuing hounds, and another on the 3D maze of leaves and branches.

 

[Boneman]

As the hell hounds saw their next 20 meals laid on, they forgot themselves, and headed straight to the osseous eldorado. But they forgot the dragon, who was feeling bad about her joke to Boneman. Gouty flames spilled from her flared nostrils, and consumed every last one of them. Luckily Boneman had a hand free as the moonbat swept up into the trees, far out of the reach of the hell hounds, and he scooped up the sylvilagus who had unwittingly led the hellhounds straight to them, and welsh rarebit was not on the menu. The disparate group continued on their way. Ahead of them a path stretched towards the horizon.

 

[HoopyFrood]

She trudged on after the group, her guilt about the earlier joke now thoroughly coated by her measly feeling of having arbitrarily killed a group of dogs -- it certainly wasn't her style to eat any animals, despite her large scaley appearance, and killing things wasn't far behind on the list. She tried to reason to herself that it was likely her earlier comment would've come true otherwise, and that the small hare that had joined the group would've been dog food along with the man of bones.

 

[HareBrain]

The hare was mighty impressed with the fire-dispensing power of the big lizard in the bowler hat, just as he was impressed by the skeleton's vocabulary. He'd never been called a "sylvilagus" before, and whether it was strictly accurate or not, he liked it. Now as he lay resting in the crook of the skeletal arm, he began to wonder if such a collection of talented individuals might be of use in completing his secret mission, the mission that had led to him having to lure the hell-hounds in the first place.

 

[Parson]

It had been a fair two days since the incomprehensible fright flight from the odd menagerie. The Parson, though not as lost as before, he thought he was headed toward Hemlock Castle and its fabled hell hounds, God's rounds were not without their dangers, but something was wrong. By now there should have been some sort of braying as those dogs gone wrong sensed the approach of a Parson.

In a few minutes all was clarity. The hounds had met their fate at the hands, or more properly teeth, of a dragon. Maybe he had allies? As he rounded the bend in the path there stood an odd hare with a brain. What did he know? What were the chances of an alliance? So with a trembling spine he approached to learn what he could learn.

 

[chrispenycate]

"See, I thought it was a firedrake. And those weren't nice doggies; the baying and the slavering give a clue. They wanted to play, all right, but you would have been the toy, and you'd probably have finished up in the same shape as your Teddy bear, needing all the bits we could still find sewing back on.

You can offer some orange centre chocolate to the dragon, and introduce yourself. It shouldn't be too dangerous."

Short legs stomp off through canine roast, confident that an offering of chocolate will defuse any situation.

 

[The Ace]

Folding his map in disgust, the Ace decides to ask the least threatening members of the group for directions, "Excuse me, I'm on a quest for Hemlock castle, have you any idea where it is ?"

As an afterthought, starts to offer chocolate around.