every single day

[khaleesipls]

WHO: Darlene, Jorah Mormont
WHERE: Maurtia Falls
WHEN: April
WHAT: Darlene lost her turtle.
WARNINGS: Darlene

[ Whatever the set of circumstances that lead a small turtle to escape into the great wide world, whatever the conversation that saw Ser Jorah Mormont, grown ass man, out into the shrill wind and driving rain in his pajamas in search of it: half an hour later, there’s a scratch at the front door. Like a scythe dragged over the floorboards, the sound resonates through the apartment -- through the walls and into bone.

Scratch scratch scratch.

The bear on the stoop slumps into a sit and squints blearily at marks he’s left in the paint, wide as a rake. And deep. Sodden, heavy, drooling thick around the rolo of a reptile he has gripped soft in his jaws -- he doesn’t care.

Windows all down the street are dark. The power’s been out since before he woke.

Runoff cascades off the entrance way and drums off the broad dome of his skull. Lightning flashes near enough to sizzle the air; thunder prickles the ruff of his neck into a spiny crest.

He scratches again, this time with a bit of heft from the shoulder. The door jumps on its hinges, bolt cracking against the frame, frustration garbled low around the taste of turtle. It...could be a dog.

A pair of small ears flick water just out of clear view of the peephole. ]

Comments

[nastygram]

[The turtle is imgoddamnportant. That was the main and driving conceit of Darlene's argument in favor of late night turtle search, and the subsequent conceit of her own personal search after she sent Jorah out to brave the elements.

That's why she's soaking wet right now: because Darlene waited about ten seconds before she couldn't stand the thought of the stupid turtle out there in the rain, probably being overlooked by Jorah's blind old man eyes, plus the fact that he doesn't actually give a shit about her turtle, or about Darlene, he is out there really just to shut her up. Whereas Darlene actually does give a shit about the turtle, not that she will ever qualify why.

So now the turtle's rescue is entirely dependent on Jorah. Not a cheering thought. He wasn't on the immediate block which meant (or so Darlene had assumed until this door scratch) that he was also probably lost in a rainstorm. She is keeping a loose-limbed and shivery vigil right by the front door, soaked to her skin and still in wet clothes and now her tension gets all tenser when she hears the scratch.]

Jesus fucking Christ.

[--Angry, a little relieved. When she tries to stand up, she finds that her foot has fallen asleep so she trips into the door instead and cracks her knee good on the floor, which is why her follow-up,] Jesus fucking Christ, [is angrier.

The pain is clarifying, shakes loose some of her panic. Gives her time to think: why the hell is Jorah scratching when he has an effing key, is this the set up for a slasher movie or what. Second scratch more terrifying than the first but Darlene is bulletproof in how immediately pissed she gets post-panic attacks. So when she does get to her feet, she is clear-headed and mad and yet also competent and savvy enough check the peephole. Sees tufts of wet fur. Concludes (you guessed it) dog, a big ass stupid Jorah dog, thank you magic powers. She has this situation totally figured out.]

Why don't you just grow hands and, [and, she fumbles to wrench the door open and



then shuts up.

In front of her, there is a fucking bear. Darlene is from suburban New Jersey and there is a fucking bear on the fucking doorstep, it is totally a bear, their eyes have sort of met and the bear hasn't ripped her face off or anything, craggy and spiked wet fur put shadows all over the bear, and the zoo was not the Alderson family jam, it's not like anyone was taking her ass to the zoo, but it does not take a fricking Kratt Brother to diagnose this as one hundred percent bear.

She slams the door.]

[khaleesipls]

[ Brow turned down to listen close after the clatter of Darlene’s fall, the raggedy beast lifts its snout up when the door yields inwards to warmer air and a familiar face. He’s of a size that the doorway itself might present some trouble for him, dumpster breath rolling hot and heavy and humid across the threshold. Loops of saliva quiver in cables from the slight part of his jaws. His claws are ribbed over each other like the teeth of an excavator, built for ripping earth and black with the rain.

She’s soaking wet -- he can smell it as well as he sees it, when he sucks his first breath in, reproach in a late look up and down. Did she not trust --

He catches the slammed door full in the nose.

An unappreciative grumble on the far side bottoms out in the pit of his chest, guttural through the cavity of his throat; a blast of steam fogs the peep hole white.

Breathing hard, now, frustration weighing dense under his ribs, Jorah the bear considers his options

and

after a long moment

reaches to pancake one massive paw flat to the door.

Tap tap tap tap, he raps the tippy tips of his claws on the scarred wood, great ursine head dipped against the indignity. Tap taptaptaptaptptp.

A car whisks past down the street, headlights blazing, and doesn’t even slow down. ]

[nastygram]

[Darlene, on the other side of the door, with her hands pressed flat against it and her knees locked, like maybe she is going to hold the door closed against bear assault--or, more likely, like she doesn't know what the hell to do--jumps back at the knock. Withdraws her hands like she's been burned, cradles them against her chest with her elbows tucked in close.

What the fuck, she thinks. What in the actual fuck. Bears don't knock. That was a knock, right? Maybe she's losing it. Maybe she's crazy. Hallucination crazy. Maybe when she looks back through the peephole, the bear will be gone. Will that be better or worse? Better, because she won't get fricking mauled. Worse, because then she has to question whether or not there was a bear at all.

She shuffles closer to the door, cautious in her movements like she usually never is.

Out on the stoop, the shadow of the bear is still there. Closer now. Darlene leans back with an inhaled fuck.

Then she leans back to look again and reaches, simultaneously, for the lightswitch. When she flips up, the porch light blinks on and then off again as she shuts out the lights. On and off. This is how you scare off raccoons, the largest domestic pest she's ever dealt with. It does not seem to work for bears. Also the light gives her a look--]

Shit!

[--at her turtle. Something in Darlene seizes up. She hits the door with the flat of her hand, loud enough to make a dull thud.]

Hey! HEY! Asshole! Put the turtle down!

[khaleesipls]

[ The bear is forced to squint up into the bulb as it bleaches and leeches dark. Dumb. His lips bluster black around a rumble for the attempt, and there is the turtle, lodged like a mint amidst great, crushing teeth that are awfully white to belong to a bear.

Dazzled half blind, his little eyes find the peephole with some effort through smeared comet trails of light.

No bear has ever looked half as resentful.

With pinned ears, some care, and great coordination, he tongues the turtle shell out of his jaws belly up into the upturned plate of one paw and proffers it for the closed door. Coarse fur bristles thin through deep, rocky cracks along the knuckles to the elbow past meathook claws and darker padding -- the bare hide in between elephant grey.

Seated up straight on the stoop, Jorah has to look down when the turtle wobbles to claw one foot out for purchase.

He palms his other paw out over it. Turtle mermaid in a bear oyster. Very normal. ]

[nastygram]

[What the fuck, Darlene thinks again. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. The porch light is firmly settled to ON. She's not even touching the light switch anymore. Glued to the peephole so she can watch this whole weird scene unfold.

What's that movie with the bears. Animated. Disney. Maybe not Disney. All pop culture references are pretty much failing her right now, that's how you know it's bad.

And okay, this is so stupid. And if she dies by mauling, Darlene is going to be pissed at herself when she wakes up, for falling for this bullshit nature communicating-with-the-beasts, come-run-the-hidden-pine-trails-of-the-forest thing. But she has motivation. She wants that turtle, and she wants it bad. Real bad.

So: she fumbles with the handle of the door. Fingers shaking, a little. In her head, like, fuck, fuck, fuck.

The door opens a crack, first. Then a little wider. She can see the bear a little bit, a side shot that's mostly bristled fur. The fucker is huge, and seething a damp heat that smells like the worst wet dog.]

If you bite me, [there's a hitch in her voice, she's practically whispering, pissing herself, she is mad about it all] If you fucking bite me, do not fucking bite me you motherfucking--

[khaleesipls]

[ The bear’s breath rolls in thick gouts of steam beneath the porch light, pierced through by the same driving rain that raps cold between his ears and against craggy mange while he sits there. Watching the door ghost open.

Listening to her swear.

Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that she might be frightened by a bear. She’s not afraid of anything else.

Claws curled in like the prongs of an iron gate, he cages the turtle to the baked leather of his palm and offers it to the cowardly crack of the door. Super focused, overturned shell balanced for her to reach and take. Patience prevails, his grumbling stifled, fallen back into as a sort of dismayed default despite the lightning and the wet and the chill.

They’re meant to be kept warm. He is scholarly enough a dark age brute to know. ]

[nastygram]

[Through the crack in the door, Darlene glares suspiciously at the bear. Which is holding her turtle, so carefully, between the trap of paws and claws, proffered with grim patience. Like some real Disney shit.

The rain plinks and patters on the stoop and the sidewalk and the street, drips off of the craggy lines of ursine eyebrows. And Darlene counts down, in her head, three, two, one, and then she lunges, shoves open the door and grabs for the turtle.

The damp heat of bearhide and leathered paws leeches against her clammy skin as she fumbles to get hold of the turtle's shell. It isn't easy. Her fingers are shaking, especially when she brushes inadvertently against claws. Then she almost recoils, or maybe vomits; instead she sets her teeth together and grabs the turtle, by some miracle does not drop the turtle, and stumbles back with the turtle hugged tightly to her chest.

Hands full, determined to hold on, she'll have to kick the door closed. Her chest is very tight. Get inside now, says every good sense, but Darlene hesitates for half a second, right on the threshold.]

Thanks.

[Small and quiet and clipped. Thinks, what the fuck, at herself. The turtle is still tucked away in its shell. The bear is still sitting there.

Now she kicks the front door closed.]

[khaleesipls]

[ The exchange of turtle from bear to Darlene is a careful affair -- he’s gentle with his paws, breath stifled softer for the pass off. It’s nice of her to say thank you.

But this time, the door doesn’t catch him by surprise.

His talons grapple in around the frame before it can slam shut, and the door springs back on its hinges, rattling. The sound of rain, so close to cut-off, rises back to an open prattle, and he pushes to slither in like a six hundred pound raccoon through a gap in a fence, sodden fur combed back to bony flanks only to bristle up again as he presses through.

There are stairs that lead up to the living area past the entry. He regards them (and any progress Darlene’s made into fleeing for her life) with a dim squint before he rises and turns to push the door closed after himself.

One claw is all it takes to tick the bolt over into the locked position.

He switches the porch light off, too -- tch -- with his usual irritation for it being left on. All that’s missing is the jangle of keys. ]

[nastygram]

[She's halfway up the stairs when the bear shoves the door open. Panic puts her the rest of the way up, what the fuck what the fuck, and only when she's up there does she dare to turn around and see what is happening behind her which is

a sight that is weirdly normal. And familiar.

Darlene hugs the turtle closer to her chest. Its little legs and head are still pulled into its shell, and she's never been to a gym a day in her life, so it runs no risk of getting squished.]

Oh my god.

[Now that the door is closed (and locked) again, the sound of the rain is muffled. The drip of water off of the bear's fur is weirdly loud. So is her voice, even though she's breathless and, still, watery kneed and freaked, somewhere deep deep down.

She gets it. The irritated lightswitch routine is what clicks it all into place. Frozen in place, she stares down at the bear like she can maybe make the shape of her freaking housemate out of that craggy lumpy animal shape.]

No fucking way.

[khaleesipls]

[ It’s there, in broad, rolling strokes -- strips of exposed hide where swords and knives have laid him open over the years, silver wet at the muzzle and around his ears. His left arm is baked dry with disease beneath runs of rainwater. This bear is part chupacabra.

He shakes himself with force enough to mist her at the top of the stairs, and rakes his paws half-halfheartedly over a doormat he disturbed when he shoved in. A speculative look up at the stairwell is all the warning she’s going to get -- a low grunt whuffed in answer for her disbelief.

Still soaked through, even filthier than usual with street water and Maurtia Falls grime, he starts up to the second floor. ]

[nastygram]

Okay, asshole, but you could have told me that you weren't a fricking dog,

[is how Darlene starts anyways, her usual levels of irritation creeping back into her tone. Still hugging the turtle. Still tense like a wire, primed to twitch when the residual rainwater strikes her, which she does with a scowl--and primed to scoot back when the bear rounds and starts toward the stairs with clear intent.]

What the hell dude, no way! [Indignantly, she points back at the spot he just was occupying. Down, boy.] Change back! You can't just climb up here and roll around, you're like the size of a car and you smell like shit. Worse than wet dog.

[khaleesipls]

[ The bear’s eyes flash like fish scales in the semi-dark, following the point of her finger in the moment of pause it gives him. He breathes deep -- first to sniff back at his shoulder, and then to meet her indignation with more of the same, head brought up high under the tuck of his ears.

Nothing in the unit smells more rotten (or more delicious) than the ball of salmonella she’s cuddling, wreathed in animal fear.

Anyway, this is his place, and he outweighs her by the better part of half a tonne, among other pressing reasons to disregard her wishes. He just has to make it to his bedroom.

So he puffs up to resume his advance, one paw before the other, filling the frame of the stairwell with lumbering, smelly bear. ]

[nastygram]

Motherfucker-- change back, dipshit! Change back!

[Like yelling her orders at increasing volume is going to make him obey or at least stay at the bottom of the stairs. Of course the bear that is Jorah is just as stupid and pigheaded as the for real man-shaped Jorah. No surprise.

His path is clear and Darlene is forced to abandon where she's planted herself, with a scoff like a pissed off cat. She flees for the couch, her sanctuary. Without really thinking about it, she climbs up and stands on it, a pretty childish move, but what-the-fuck-ever, who's going to judge her, the giant smelly bear man climbing the stairs, or whatever he is?

The heavy tread of paws and the pained squeak of the stairs makes her heart constrict in her chest, all animal fear. Darlene crouches to grab, one-handed, for the pillow that she claimed long ago off of Jorah's bed. Like maybe she'll lob it at him if he comes too close.]

You are such a tool. You are so weird. Why you didn't just tell me like a normal person, that you turn into a bear--I know it isn't normal but Jesus, dude--

[A diatribe mostly for her own benefit. Darlene watches the end of the stairs with a laser focus, waiting for that first hulking sign of bear.]

[khaleesipls]

[ Thrown across the back of the couch is, of course, a bear skin much like the one he’s currently wearing. It’s nicer. Fewer scars -- a warm, welcoming golden brown in stark contrast to the sun-bleached grizzle and murk of its living counterpart. It certainly smells better.

Jorah ignores her.

But he’s not deaf. There’s a browbeaten hang to his head, a laboring weight to the swagger of his shoulders. The hump of muscle mounted up between them is liable to be the first thing she sees, as he hoists himself up into the last stretch, through the gap and up onto the landing.

From there he crosses to his bedroom without looking at her, nosing in through the crack into the darkness beyond. His claws scrape the wood like jagged edges poked through a dragged sack of garbage.

Barring interruption, he’ll lift a broad foot to knock the door shut after him. ]

[nastygram]

[The uncanny familiarity of watching Jorah slump into his bedroom is not lost on Darlene. Except, you know, she's watching a bear. Distorted shape, same path. She's standing far back enough on the couch that the bear pelt slung across the back prickles against her bare legs, a weird reminder. It's pretty much always been there, like a clue.]

I can't believe you use bear skin in your design aesthetic. [This one is directly at Jorah as he shambles into the bedroom.] You know that's weird, right? Getting into some freaking skin lampshade territory. Nipple belts, or whatever.

[Not the best metaphor. It takes a little while to get warmed up, especially working back from some light kernal panic.

The quiet grate of a bearpaw against door puts her back on edge--good old instinct--and the sooner this is over, probably the better. She still has the turtle hugged to her chest, the pillow in one hand. Wet feet on thin blanket and couch cushions.]

Hey! [--just as the door starts to swing closed, a comment important enough to call after him.

Except, not.] Good night, Gentle Ben.