Weebles wobble
Jan. 17th, 2012 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shelbyrouIt is currently 13:15 Pacific Time on Tue Jan 17 2012.
Currently the moon is in the waning Half (Philodox) Moon phase (41% full).
Edgewood House: Meadow
A long, hard-packed dirt road winds almost a mile through the forest off Sunrise Road, eventually opening out into a small front yard, and coming to a stop in front of a large house, which may be the very definition of ramshackle. The house is not visible from the road, nor can one hear anything but perhaps a gunshot. Its foundation and general structure are solid, but its once crisp grey-and-white paint needs updating, and some of the trim is having trouble staying attached. A fixer upper, one might say. Off to the left, there's a former garage, long since converted into something of an in-law apartment. A connecting flyover attaches it to the second floor of the house.
There are no fences surrounding either the front or back yards. In the rear of the property, the yard (larger than in the front) eventually comes up against a well built garden, with the very beginnings of sprouts. Shaded and obscured by surrounding trees, there is a small (but deep) natural pond, with a chuckling brook leading out of it, into the woods. There's a rope swing hanging from one of the trees. The yard to the southeast of the property stretches on for a time, and then is eaten by woods, into which there may or may not be a path; it apparently fades away quickly. There's a certain looming feel to these woods.
Obvious exits:
Narrow Path Sunrise Road Front Door Barn/Garage
It's a cold, wet, miserable day, just too warm for rain and far too cold for any sort of comfort. It is, in fact, a perfect day to spend inside cuddled under an afghan, drinking hot chocolate and reading trashy magazines - which explains nothing of why Shelby's outside, nor what she's doing dragging sawhorses, mats, and other items from the garage out to the yard. The items are scattered fairly haphazardly over the wet grass, some upright and some not, forming a bizarre obstacle course.
Viv's old white Econoline van comes grinding up the track from the road and pulls up outside Edgewood. Viv herself hops out and gives Shelby a quizzical look. "Whassup, mate?" she asks as she comes over to investigate. "Moving day?"
A short, tough-looking woman standing only five feet one or so in height, usually dressed in an urban-grunge style with ripped jeans, kicker boots, and a truly ancient leather jacket which looks -- and smells -- as though it's been slept in multiple times by multiple people, not necessarily one at a time. The back of the jacket has a Phranc logo stencilled onto it and one arm boasts the words 'Kate Wolf Lives'. She smells as though she, and all her clothes, could do with a thorough wash and scrubbing. Her hair is trimmed short into a flat-top, and seems to be naturally a ratty blonde, though it shows signs of frequent short and long term artificial dyes. She has blue eyes, a nose too large for the rest of her small face, and comes across as a strange mixture of menacing and benevolent.
Shelby straightens and dusts off her jacket as the Get approaches, polite curiosity fading to the more honest sort and from there, perhaps, vague remembrance. "No," is what she says as these emotions traipse across her face, "it's an obstacle course." The taller woman offers a hand. "It's... V- Viv, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Yeah, that's me," Viv says. She clicks her fingers a couple of times. "Shelley, yes?"
"Shelby," the so-named woman clarifies. "Yes. I don't think we've seen each other since the Hunt." Hand ignored, she reclaims it, tucking both within her pockets. "It's Fostern now, Bright Eye Sees to the Heart of the Ambush."
Viv stops clicking her fingers and holds out her hand just as Shelby drops hers. There's a moment of awkwardness. Viv shrugs. "So what's going on?" She looks at the various items from the garage scattered around.
Awkwardness indeed, with Shelby trying to free her hand but too late. To brush past what's left of the moment she turns shoulder to shoulder with the Get, to consider her work with another's eyes. "An obstacle course," she repeats. "Also called parkour, or free running. Have you heard of it?"
Viv's blank look makes it completely evident that she has not. "Par-kour? Is it some kind of test for the cubs?" she hazards.
Shelby shakes her head, white hair jouncing. "Nope. It's an urban thing, but I didn't feel like going into town." She casts an irritable look up the the clouds and gets rain in her eye for her trouble. "Dammit. --Anyway, most people see, oh, a light post and ignore it, or walk around it. But if you grab it, you can use it to change your direction. Same with a park bench. Don't sit on it, leap over it, or vault it." Notably, neither of these two items can be found in the meadow.
Viv frowns slightly as she regards Shelby, then looks back at the obstacle course. "I'm not getting this," she admits. "What's the actual point of this parkour thing? And why are you setting it up here? Can you, like, show me, give me a demonstration?"
"It's exercise," the Ragabash claims, "it's a way of thinking about things." She adds with a sly, sidelong grin, already moving out of Viv's reach, "It's a way to avoid being picked up by the scruff of the neck and used as a club." As she moves farther away she picks up speed until she vaults over a sawhorse, leaving it wobbling behind her. A dash straight at a tree turns into a couple of steps of her running -up- it instead, though what's probably meant to be a back flip turns into a fall. Even that she manages to turn into a tumble and a roll, so that she's barely on her back for long before once more on her feet. "I'm not that good at it yet," she calls, half-shamefaced, before aiming at a pile of mats.
Viv stands watching Shelby perform her routine with fascination, hands on hips. The Jarl's brow furrows a little and her expression becomes pensive.
Shelby ends by diving through (or perhaps over) an invisible hole in an invisible fence, landing properly so that again she rolls, this time on mats, and is back up on her feet and ready to continue. Or would, if she didn't turn to face the Ahroun. "See? It's good training. I've seen videos where people jump off roofs or over bannisters. I'm not nearly that good yet, Garou or not."
"I'm going to have to check this shit out," Viv says. "How do you learn it? I guess there's more to it than taking a random heap of junk and turning it into something that looks like it escaped from a modern art gallery.
"There are videos," Shelby repeats, bouncing a little and grinning, "all over YouTube. Just search for 'parkour'," she spells it, "or free running. I met this man in Harbor Park who does it too, and Salem-rhya says he's been doing it longer than I've been alive."
"Oh! It's not a modern thing, then?" Viv exclaims. Then she gets a suspicious look. "Please don't try and tell me it's some ancient Oriental martial art."
Shelby shakes her head and comes over to rejoin her. "Nope. Well, sort of. Supposedly they were doing it in the movies back in the 20's, but it's been around for longer than that. But it's really only gotten big here in the States in the last, oh, twenty years or so. And like I said, it's an urban thing. Not enough obstacles out here in the sticks."
"Sure as hell never heard of anything like this down under when I was there," says Viv. "How long've you been doing it?"
Shelby says, "About," and checks her watch, "a week." The grin she gives Viv is pure Ragabash. "But I already knew how to fall, from when Chandini-rhya and August-rhya were teaching me. I wouldn't try doing this without having that down first."
"Oh, yeah? What made you start it now, then? Just a whim?" Viv still seems genuinely curious.
"Sort of." Shelby shrugs, tucking her hands back into her pockets. "I was in Harbor Park and saw this man doing it. I asked him about it, and he told me. I thought it looked interesting, so started asking around. That's how I learned about Salem-rhya."
"I can picture Salem doing it," Viv agrees. "With that hair of his flying all over the place. Go on then, how do I do it? Do I just run at it and bounce off things, like a human pinball game?"
"Um," says Shelby, and gives the Get a long considering look. "Sort of? I mean, the first step is knowing how to fall, and use that momentum to get back on your feel. Like I did, on the mats." She gestures. "Do you have that down?"
Viv draws herself up to her full height, which isn't all that big, and declaims "The Get do not fall!" haughtily. Then she grins. "Well, how do you fall properly, then? This is still sounding like martial arts to me."
Shelby, still thoughtful, says, "Well, it sort of is. Only it's you against the environment, not you against a foe, and you aren't trying to conquer it, you're trying to move within it. Here," she adds, and walks back to the mats, beckoning. "When you fall you don't want to try and stop it." She demonstrates with held-out hands, wrists bent and elbows locked. "Instead you want to roll back onto one shoulder, and use the momentum to keep going. Here, I'll demonstrate. Give me a push, and watch what I do."
Viv steps smartly up to Shelby, and brings up both hands to give her a good hard shove in the small of the back.
Rather than fighting back, or trying to keep herself upright, the Silver Fang falls into the shove, tucking her head and angling to the side. Over she goes into a somersault, and onto her knees, and from there back on her feet and turning to face the Get again. "See?"
Viv applauds politely. "You make it look easy, but I bet it's not..."
Shelby shrugs, but can't hide her pleased smile. "Thank you. And it is, but it isn't. It's all muscle memory, and pretty basic. August-rhya started teaching me this before he ever showed me how to gut something with my claws. You start off kneeling, first, and let yourself fall backwards. Then you start standing up, and then you go back to kneeling but with someone else pushing you. Once your body knows what to do you can start adding in the vaults and things." She gestures toward the obstacles. "The whole point of parkour is the flow - you keep moving no matter what."
"What happens if you stop, then?" Viv wants to know. "Do you get disqualified or something?"
Shelby shakes her head. "No, don't think so. Though if you're running with a group, you might get laughed at. Especially if you flail over something simple. Depends on who you're with, really."
Viv frowns, and looks again at the obstacle course. "Do you want to try it?" she asks dubiously. "Or should it wait till new moon?"
"It's up to you," says Shelby with another, smaller, shrug. "You and your self-control, I should say. I'm not going to laugh at you - not at a student. If you just want to practice falling, I can give you pointers or whatever."
"Go on then," Viv decides. "You never know when this kind of thing may prove useful. How do I begin?"
"Come onto the mats," the Ragabash invites, "and down on one knee." Which she does, to demonstrate. "Then - and this is the part I found hard at first - you have to fall over." She tips away from her upright knee, slowly, until gravity takes over and... it's just like it was before. Shoulder tucked, head to the side, somersault and back up.
Viv gets down on her knee, frowning again, and evidently feeling that her dignity is at risk. "I just roll over, and like, keep going?"
Shelby says, "Pretty much. Don't fight the movement, embrace it. It's judo - use your opponent's movement against him, though in this case your opponent is gravity." She does it again, on the other side this time.
Viv takes her courage in her hands and rolls over. Unlike Shelby, she doesn't get up, and sprawls for a moment in an ungainly position, like a beetle turned onto its back, limbs waving. By the time she does regain her upright position, she's a little pink in the face, and is already looking bad-tempered.
Shelby, safely out of immediate lunging, says encouragingly, "That was good, for a first try. I think you flattened your shoulder as soon as you went into it, though. That will stop you going. Remember to keep it curled. --Keep your head tucked, too," she adds after a thought. "Don't need to slam your head against the ground."
"Good," says Viv in a sardonic voice. She tries again. This time she doesn't bump her head, but she still doesn't bounce back up the way Shelby has.
"I didn't say it was good, period," the Ragabash points out, and demonstrates again. "Think round. Think... oh, think river, not rock." Sympathetically, "It probably goes against everything you were taught as an Ahroun."
Viv is breathing quite hard, now. "I think," she says, in measured tones, "that we ought to perhaps defer this lesson till the moon is a nice thin one." Whether she means what she says, or whether this is just an excuse to put the class off sine die, is open to question.
"All right," Shelby agrees promptly. "You can do it... well, I was going to say you could do it out on the bawn, but only if you can find a clear spot. Doing it in glabro will help with the bumps and bruises, too. Plus there are mats in the garage." Or in the meadow.
Viv nods a few times. "I only came over here to get some blankets for Jane," she recalls, with a faint smile. "Are there still some in the garage, or have they all vanished?"
Shelby ums, and looks that way. "No, they're still there. I saw some in a cabinet. Lower shelf."
"Ah, good. I'll bring them back when we're done," Viv promises. "Or if Jane rips them up I'll replace them." She heads for the garage.
"All right!" Shelby calls after, and resumes her obstacle course.
Currently the moon is in the waning Half (Philodox) Moon phase (41% full).
Edgewood House: Meadow
A long, hard-packed dirt road winds almost a mile through the forest off Sunrise Road, eventually opening out into a small front yard, and coming to a stop in front of a large house, which may be the very definition of ramshackle. The house is not visible from the road, nor can one hear anything but perhaps a gunshot. Its foundation and general structure are solid, but its once crisp grey-and-white paint needs updating, and some of the trim is having trouble staying attached. A fixer upper, one might say. Off to the left, there's a former garage, long since converted into something of an in-law apartment. A connecting flyover attaches it to the second floor of the house.
There are no fences surrounding either the front or back yards. In the rear of the property, the yard (larger than in the front) eventually comes up against a well built garden, with the very beginnings of sprouts. Shaded and obscured by surrounding trees, there is a small (but deep) natural pond, with a chuckling brook leading out of it, into the woods. There's a rope swing hanging from one of the trees. The yard to the southeast of the property stretches on for a time, and then is eaten by woods, into which there may or may not be a path; it apparently fades away quickly. There's a certain looming feel to these woods.
Obvious exits:
Narrow Path Sunrise Road Front Door Barn/Garage
It's a cold, wet, miserable day, just too warm for rain and far too cold for any sort of comfort. It is, in fact, a perfect day to spend inside cuddled under an afghan, drinking hot chocolate and reading trashy magazines - which explains nothing of why Shelby's outside, nor what she's doing dragging sawhorses, mats, and other items from the garage out to the yard. The items are scattered fairly haphazardly over the wet grass, some upright and some not, forming a bizarre obstacle course.
Viv's old white Econoline van comes grinding up the track from the road and pulls up outside Edgewood. Viv herself hops out and gives Shelby a quizzical look. "Whassup, mate?" she asks as she comes over to investigate. "Moving day?"
A short, tough-looking woman standing only five feet one or so in height, usually dressed in an urban-grunge style with ripped jeans, kicker boots, and a truly ancient leather jacket which looks -- and smells -- as though it's been slept in multiple times by multiple people, not necessarily one at a time. The back of the jacket has a Phranc logo stencilled onto it and one arm boasts the words 'Kate Wolf Lives'. She smells as though she, and all her clothes, could do with a thorough wash and scrubbing. Her hair is trimmed short into a flat-top, and seems to be naturally a ratty blonde, though it shows signs of frequent short and long term artificial dyes. She has blue eyes, a nose too large for the rest of her small face, and comes across as a strange mixture of menacing and benevolent.
Shelby straightens and dusts off her jacket as the Get approaches, polite curiosity fading to the more honest sort and from there, perhaps, vague remembrance. "No," is what she says as these emotions traipse across her face, "it's an obstacle course." The taller woman offers a hand. "It's... V- Viv, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Yeah, that's me," Viv says. She clicks her fingers a couple of times. "Shelley, yes?"
"Shelby," the so-named woman clarifies. "Yes. I don't think we've seen each other since the Hunt." Hand ignored, she reclaims it, tucking both within her pockets. "It's Fostern now, Bright Eye Sees to the Heart of the Ambush."
Viv stops clicking her fingers and holds out her hand just as Shelby drops hers. There's a moment of awkwardness. Viv shrugs. "So what's going on?" She looks at the various items from the garage scattered around.
Awkwardness indeed, with Shelby trying to free her hand but too late. To brush past what's left of the moment she turns shoulder to shoulder with the Get, to consider her work with another's eyes. "An obstacle course," she repeats. "Also called parkour, or free running. Have you heard of it?"
Viv's blank look makes it completely evident that she has not. "Par-kour? Is it some kind of test for the cubs?" she hazards.
Shelby shakes her head, white hair jouncing. "Nope. It's an urban thing, but I didn't feel like going into town." She casts an irritable look up the the clouds and gets rain in her eye for her trouble. "Dammit. --Anyway, most people see, oh, a light post and ignore it, or walk around it. But if you grab it, you can use it to change your direction. Same with a park bench. Don't sit on it, leap over it, or vault it." Notably, neither of these two items can be found in the meadow.
Viv frowns slightly as she regards Shelby, then looks back at the obstacle course. "I'm not getting this," she admits. "What's the actual point of this parkour thing? And why are you setting it up here? Can you, like, show me, give me a demonstration?"
"It's exercise," the Ragabash claims, "it's a way of thinking about things." She adds with a sly, sidelong grin, already moving out of Viv's reach, "It's a way to avoid being picked up by the scruff of the neck and used as a club." As she moves farther away she picks up speed until she vaults over a sawhorse, leaving it wobbling behind her. A dash straight at a tree turns into a couple of steps of her running -up- it instead, though what's probably meant to be a back flip turns into a fall. Even that she manages to turn into a tumble and a roll, so that she's barely on her back for long before once more on her feet. "I'm not that good at it yet," she calls, half-shamefaced, before aiming at a pile of mats.
Viv stands watching Shelby perform her routine with fascination, hands on hips. The Jarl's brow furrows a little and her expression becomes pensive.
Shelby ends by diving through (or perhaps over) an invisible hole in an invisible fence, landing properly so that again she rolls, this time on mats, and is back up on her feet and ready to continue. Or would, if she didn't turn to face the Ahroun. "See? It's good training. I've seen videos where people jump off roofs or over bannisters. I'm not nearly that good yet, Garou or not."
"I'm going to have to check this shit out," Viv says. "How do you learn it? I guess there's more to it than taking a random heap of junk and turning it into something that looks like it escaped from a modern art gallery.
"There are videos," Shelby repeats, bouncing a little and grinning, "all over YouTube. Just search for 'parkour'," she spells it, "or free running. I met this man in Harbor Park who does it too, and Salem-rhya says he's been doing it longer than I've been alive."
"Oh! It's not a modern thing, then?" Viv exclaims. Then she gets a suspicious look. "Please don't try and tell me it's some ancient Oriental martial art."
Shelby shakes her head and comes over to rejoin her. "Nope. Well, sort of. Supposedly they were doing it in the movies back in the 20's, but it's been around for longer than that. But it's really only gotten big here in the States in the last, oh, twenty years or so. And like I said, it's an urban thing. Not enough obstacles out here in the sticks."
"Sure as hell never heard of anything like this down under when I was there," says Viv. "How long've you been doing it?"
Shelby says, "About," and checks her watch, "a week." The grin she gives Viv is pure Ragabash. "But I already knew how to fall, from when Chandini-rhya and August-rhya were teaching me. I wouldn't try doing this without having that down first."
"Oh, yeah? What made you start it now, then? Just a whim?" Viv still seems genuinely curious.
"Sort of." Shelby shrugs, tucking her hands back into her pockets. "I was in Harbor Park and saw this man doing it. I asked him about it, and he told me. I thought it looked interesting, so started asking around. That's how I learned about Salem-rhya."
"I can picture Salem doing it," Viv agrees. "With that hair of his flying all over the place. Go on then, how do I do it? Do I just run at it and bounce off things, like a human pinball game?"
"Um," says Shelby, and gives the Get a long considering look. "Sort of? I mean, the first step is knowing how to fall, and use that momentum to get back on your feel. Like I did, on the mats." She gestures. "Do you have that down?"
Viv draws herself up to her full height, which isn't all that big, and declaims "The Get do not fall!" haughtily. Then she grins. "Well, how do you fall properly, then? This is still sounding like martial arts to me."
Shelby, still thoughtful, says, "Well, it sort of is. Only it's you against the environment, not you against a foe, and you aren't trying to conquer it, you're trying to move within it. Here," she adds, and walks back to the mats, beckoning. "When you fall you don't want to try and stop it." She demonstrates with held-out hands, wrists bent and elbows locked. "Instead you want to roll back onto one shoulder, and use the momentum to keep going. Here, I'll demonstrate. Give me a push, and watch what I do."
Viv steps smartly up to Shelby, and brings up both hands to give her a good hard shove in the small of the back.
Rather than fighting back, or trying to keep herself upright, the Silver Fang falls into the shove, tucking her head and angling to the side. Over she goes into a somersault, and onto her knees, and from there back on her feet and turning to face the Get again. "See?"
Viv applauds politely. "You make it look easy, but I bet it's not..."
Shelby shrugs, but can't hide her pleased smile. "Thank you. And it is, but it isn't. It's all muscle memory, and pretty basic. August-rhya started teaching me this before he ever showed me how to gut something with my claws. You start off kneeling, first, and let yourself fall backwards. Then you start standing up, and then you go back to kneeling but with someone else pushing you. Once your body knows what to do you can start adding in the vaults and things." She gestures toward the obstacles. "The whole point of parkour is the flow - you keep moving no matter what."
"What happens if you stop, then?" Viv wants to know. "Do you get disqualified or something?"
Shelby shakes her head. "No, don't think so. Though if you're running with a group, you might get laughed at. Especially if you flail over something simple. Depends on who you're with, really."
Viv frowns, and looks again at the obstacle course. "Do you want to try it?" she asks dubiously. "Or should it wait till new moon?"
"It's up to you," says Shelby with another, smaller, shrug. "You and your self-control, I should say. I'm not going to laugh at you - not at a student. If you just want to practice falling, I can give you pointers or whatever."
"Go on then," Viv decides. "You never know when this kind of thing may prove useful. How do I begin?"
"Come onto the mats," the Ragabash invites, "and down on one knee." Which she does, to demonstrate. "Then - and this is the part I found hard at first - you have to fall over." She tips away from her upright knee, slowly, until gravity takes over and... it's just like it was before. Shoulder tucked, head to the side, somersault and back up.
Viv gets down on her knee, frowning again, and evidently feeling that her dignity is at risk. "I just roll over, and like, keep going?"
Shelby says, "Pretty much. Don't fight the movement, embrace it. It's judo - use your opponent's movement against him, though in this case your opponent is gravity." She does it again, on the other side this time.
Viv takes her courage in her hands and rolls over. Unlike Shelby, she doesn't get up, and sprawls for a moment in an ungainly position, like a beetle turned onto its back, limbs waving. By the time she does regain her upright position, she's a little pink in the face, and is already looking bad-tempered.
Shelby, safely out of immediate lunging, says encouragingly, "That was good, for a first try. I think you flattened your shoulder as soon as you went into it, though. That will stop you going. Remember to keep it curled. --Keep your head tucked, too," she adds after a thought. "Don't need to slam your head against the ground."
"Good," says Viv in a sardonic voice. She tries again. This time she doesn't bump her head, but she still doesn't bounce back up the way Shelby has.
"I didn't say it was good, period," the Ragabash points out, and demonstrates again. "Think round. Think... oh, think river, not rock." Sympathetically, "It probably goes against everything you were taught as an Ahroun."
Viv is breathing quite hard, now. "I think," she says, in measured tones, "that we ought to perhaps defer this lesson till the moon is a nice thin one." Whether she means what she says, or whether this is just an excuse to put the class off sine die, is open to question.
"All right," Shelby agrees promptly. "You can do it... well, I was going to say you could do it out on the bawn, but only if you can find a clear spot. Doing it in glabro will help with the bumps and bruises, too. Plus there are mats in the garage." Or in the meadow.
Viv nods a few times. "I only came over here to get some blankets for Jane," she recalls, with a faint smile. "Are there still some in the garage, or have they all vanished?"
Shelby ums, and looks that way. "No, they're still there. I saw some in a cabinet. Lower shelf."
"Ah, good. I'll bring them back when we're done," Viv promises. "Or if Jane rips them up I'll replace them." She heads for the garage.
"All right!" Shelby calls after, and resumes her obstacle course.