RP:The Doctor and The Druid
Damphe was, in years passing, a silent and enigmatic infrequent sight upon the streets ofVailkrin who could be seen shuffling one way or the other at chaotic intervals of time. He had made himself the sort that no one spoke to if only because he spoke to almost no one, his voice rarely seeming to rise from beyond the frightful bird-like mask that disguised his face from view. Oft, his treks lead him to the flesh shops and the places where foul necromantic reagants could be procured and so it was adoubtedly some errand to such places that had drawn Damphe from whatever wretched hole of a laboratory that the good doctor currently called him. At his belt, were the syringes in copious number and pouches - some sullied with a repulsive wetness and others rattling with strange clatterings. One hip held bound to it, a head in a bulbous bottle that floated about in some translucient but yellow-tinged liquid. How the head, still intact of its skin and occular organs, had gotten into that jar was anyone's guess but its eyes tended to follow people as the passed by as lips soundlessly mouthed syllables.
Ayala had been travelling. She was the kind who was always on the move. The young lady would have been a gypsy, if she'd had someone to travel with. She wasn't, however, really the type to travel with anyone. Well, at least, not anyone humanoid. Mostly she just travelled with animals. Cute fluffy animals. Cute, fluffy, foaming at the mouth animals, to be exact. At the moment, she was walking down the streets of Vailkrin, on her way to one of her favorite little stores. Aya had run out of vials for her poisons recently, which was something she found incredibly irritating. On her shoulder was a crow which twitched every now and then, or spastically cawed at some passerby. The crow looked molted; she was keeping it alive with her own magic, a strange and undoubtedly disturbing mixture of necromancy and druid magic. Shaman, she thought to herself. That'd be a nice thing to call herself. Or maybe Apothecary. Or maybe, she thought, she'd call herself a Diddlepaloo. She wasn't sure what a Diddlepaloo was, but it rolled off the tongue nicely, she decided, as she muttered it aloud without really thinking about it. "...Diddlepaloo..."
Damphe maintained a certain amount of awareness of the world around him even as he seemed to so passively allow it to pass him by. Through his own eyes and their constant flitting about from behind the goggles that kept them as hidden away as the rest of his face and through the eyes of the companion strapped to his belt, whose endless whisperings found their way into Damphe's mind. Servitude was its only purpose a second pair of eyes to look one way when Damphe looked the other and he never bothered to learn what the man's name had been. That experiment was a failure that Damphe turned into a success, even if not the success that he ultimately aimed to accomplish. Thus, it was without doubt that the doctor would be made knowledgable of the existence of that crow perched upon the shoulder of its keeper and creator. There was a peculiar nature to be had there, something not fully dead but certainly not alive with a form that suggested things beyond necromancy were at play. Damphe found himself hateful and yet loving of that dark art, the magic made a mockery of life but was undoubtedly the secret to its eternity. By his eyes and the eyes of his whispering bottle, this crow looked just a bit to uncorrupted to be strictly managed by the undead servitude that necromancy granted. His herbs and his meat would wait but this woman in passing may never be seen again. Thus, Damphe altered his course so that it would intervene with the girl's own and he would speak in a voice made raspy from disuse. "Explain the nature of your bird, if you would be so kind. Spare no detail and be as clear as one can manage. Bear in mind, this is for prosperity." An old musky journal would have been taken into had from within the folds of his clothing and a quill as well, one of those fancy ones that contained within a resevoir of ink at the ready.
Ayala looked at the male, whether it meant she was looking up at him, (which she most likely was), or whether she was looking down at him. At a rather small height of four foot eleven, she managed to be just short enough to not be able to reach the top shelf on her own. But that was okay, she had her magic to help her out. She blinked for a moment. Mother said not to talk to strangers. She'd never really liked her mother though... Actually, it was her step-mother, now that she thought about it some more. "Diddlepaloo," she repeated rather decidedly before continuing. "It's a crow, as you can see. I hope you can see. You have several eyes. Two up there, two down there." She looked between the head and his face. "I like your head. Both of them." It was a strange compliment, but she meant well. Well. Sort of well. Well enough, at least. "He's supposed to be dead, but I wanted a friend to guide me through the city. So I made him not dead. Can't do it to people yet though. Not sure if I'd want to do it to a people." She made a little face as she thought about having a people of her very own. She wasn't sure she liked the idea. She was definitely... quirky. "I met him in the forest east of here. He was on the ground, no caw, no caw." She smiled. "But then I gave him a little life, and a little song, and now he's all caw, all caw." The bird on her shoulder cawed. "I like him. I think I'll name him... Mister Fluffybottom. Or maybe Rutheford."
Damphe was distinctly disappointed with the answer that he had recieved, hoping for information that might have enlightened him further in his own goals. But again, he was face with a creature that was merely mimicking the state of being alive with the subtle touches of this girl's particular flows of magic. "Unfortunate." Was the only word that Damphe had to say on the matter, his journal being tucked away once more into the place that he had kept it hidden. But Damphe was never the sort to entirely discount a specimen even if the freshness of those materials were something to be thoroughly questioned. "However, I should like to perhaps acquire your bird for further..." He paused to pick a suitable word. "Studies." He would eventually say, deciding that such a word would serve perfectly to describe his intentions. "I should like to borrow it or make purchase of it from you. Either or."
Ayala looked disappointed that he looked so disappointed. She humphed. "Not sure it'd work. He's attatched to my shoulder, see?" She flicked at the bird, which attempted to fly up. In that moment, it was revealed that a set of vines had sprouted from her shoulder, leading to the soles of the bird's feet, imbedding into them. "I can make him do whatever I want." She smiled fondly. "I think I might be able to make one that's not attatched to me though... but it'd have plants in it. Plants, plants... maybe a mushroom or five... I'm not sure. I haven't tried many birds." She looked up at him again. "You know, for someone who wants to know stuff, you don't ask very many questions. Isn't it the duty of every scientist to observe and identify abnormalities, intricacies, and to question and hypothesize properly?" For a moment, she spoke very clearly. Too clearly. She herself had once been somewhat of an amateur scientist herself. Not anymore. That had been a long time ago. "Maybe you're not a scientist. I think maybe you're a... mad doctor. Yes. Mad Doctor it is." She smiled, content with her analysis. It was probably a very wrong analysis, but she wouldn't mind too much. She looked up at the bird as it settled back on her shoulder, several feathers falling from its wings. She thought they'd make nice decorations for her hair, but... she didn't feel like bending to gather them.
Damphe noted, at once, the nature of the magic at play here and his interest in the machinations of that crow were waned swiftly. He had no reason to believe that the manipulation of plant matter was the answer to Damphe's scientific persuit nor did he posess within him any desire to be called mad. Such was an insult that Damphe would not endure in the face of his brilliant research, his philanthropic questing for the cure to death itself. "We are clearly done here." He would say in that raspy voice and turn himself away from the girl whose name he had not bothered to inquire upon. He had places to be and flesh only stayed fresh enough to be useful to him for so long. Thus, Damphe would not hesitate to take his leave of the girl and make for the first shop on his list of businesses to give his custom to.
Ayala giggled to herself as the male left. She decided, at this point, that his frustration was only exciting to her. While he was faced the other way, she allowed the fine on her shoulder to slowly recoil from within the bird. The bird, now free of the leash that she had been so very dishonest about, flew about her head cawing and flapping angrily, before flying a few feet. Aya didn't like that too much, so, with a wave of her hand, the magic she had been using to keep the creature alive returned to her, and within a moment it fell to the ground, dead as it had been before. She moved over to it, toeing at the thing curiously. She really ought to take samples... "Why don't they just behave when I bring them back..." She muttered aloud. Turning her eyes to the necromancer who had been questioning her before, she quickly formulated an idea. Again, with the use of magic, she caused a tree root, deep in the ground to pop up just enough to trip him. Of course, if he was paying attention, he could walk around it, but hopefully it'd be enough to get his attention... or to make him topple. That'd be a show. But that'd also probably just make him angrier.
Damphe had stopped walking at the very moment that she raised her question in regards to the wretched thing that had once again become part of the recently deceased, musing impatiently upon the nature of the disobedience that she had experienced. To him, the answer was as simple as asking why something ate or why something drew the air into its lungs. "They do not obey because you lack the willpower to bend them to your desires. You are undisciplined and thus they're spirits are left unimpressed by the magic that you fold into them." And as he spoke, Damphe's bottled head whispered soundless words into the doctor's mind that would give the doctor reason enough to watch where he walked. "Until such a time as you learn to impose that dominance, everything you create will be as a mindless beast clamboring to understand the nature of its foul existence; a thing worthy only of being put down lest it disgrace true life with the mockery of its falsehood." There was a vile and poisonous hatred in Damphe's voice as he spoke. His work with the dead was building to something and hers was the flightful fancy of a child who lack comprehension of what those powers were worth as far as Damphe was concerned. It disgusted him thoroughly.
Ayala seemed utterly unaffected by the hate in his voice. She was too used to that sort of thing. In fact, if his hate was venomous, then she'd probably be even more invested in speaking with him, poisons were her life! She was however, not the kind to enjoy being put down too much, so she protested lightly. Sure, her mind was somewhat childish in the way she spoke, in the way her mind pieced together information. But dag nabit, she was proud. "Impose dominance? Interesting. So if I treat my experiments the same way as what..." Her voice trailed into a slight mutter as she continued. "... as what I treat my beasties... then they'll behave properly... of course~!" She snapped her fingers as if she'd made a big discovery. In her mind, she had. She hadn't pieced together what was either painfully obvious, or completely obscure. "The dead are just like the living then!" She clasped her hands together with delight. "Good, yes. This is good. This will have to do with more experimenting then..." She stared at the bird for a while, putting her weight on her hip. "...Hrm... shouldn't try it on humans yet... humans are too big... shouldn't try it on frogs... frogs are temperamental..." She hum hum hummed to herself. As she continued to converse with herself about the details of how she'd conduct her next experiment... she began to conduct her next experiment. What had originally been normal speech slowly evolved into a different tongue, dark words spilling from her lips for a moment, before she went silent, her lips still mouthing words. When she had decided she'd focused enough, she raised up her hand towards the crow again. After a moment or two of twitching, it stood. And that was all it did. Just stand there. "....Well that's disappointing... I'll have to practice... yes... practice... He will be pleased with me though... He'll like it... I'll perfect it and give it as a present, yes... maybe..." Though the root still stood blocking Damphe's path, she seemed to have forgotten the other was standing there. "...Only, that would mean trying to find Him... He's tricky..."
Damphe no longer felt any need to remain vested in this conversation and had once more returned to the task of taking his leave of this girl when she set about her musing one what he had said. To him, listening to her reiterate the lesson in necromancy that he had just given her was a wasted effort when there was more important research to be done. So he would step around the tree root that attempted to obstruct his path, giving it a needlessly wide girth just in case the girl should decide to further nuisance herself upon him. The very fact that he had been the one to approach her seemed regretabble now to Damphe and he would resolve to be certain that such a mistake was not made again.
Ayala 's tree root followed after Damphe, for whatever reason, as she focused on the bird. If Damphe were to leave, he would leave unharmed. In the meantime, the girl would focus herself, getting the bird to hop about this way and that, commanding the bird to come to her, and finally, commanding the bird to fly in a circle. Practice, as she had said, made perfect. Whether or not he'd hear it, she at least tried to be polite, seeming at least a little sane for a moment. "...Thank you, sir scientist. I'll remember you."