The Raptor and The Mighty Elopus

This is a story of a lost soul, of a sort. And it's set in Charleston; a beach town. Cool in the winter, hot and rainy in the summer, Charleston is very nearly a paradise in the heart of the southern United States. The people are, generally speaking, polite and easy going. But not towards Frank.



Frank, or Frankteder as he was known in formal circles, was newly arrived in Charleston. Though, he didn't know where he was or how he had gotten there. He did not recall having went. He was nesting down with the rest of his pack after a hard day's hunt. With a contented sigh, he flopped down into a small bed of matted grass and reeds. When he woke up, he was in a bed of pine needles with a small rodent sniffing at him. Darting his head forward, Frank snapped up the fuzzball and quickly swallowed it down.



With a start, he realized that he was no longer in the field he laid down in when he went to sleep. Sniffing the air, he was overwhelmed by strange new odors. Flowers, he could recognize, almost. He knew that were flowers, but they weren't like anything he had ever smelled before. There was a foul stench in the air; one that made him think of fire. But it wasn't fire. It was a black and grey smoke, let loose by odd metal boxes, careening every which way and colored every color Frank could imagine and even a few he could not.



When he looked again, Frank noticed something even more odd than the foul stenches and overwhelming noise of this weird land he appeared in. There were large mammals in the boxes. At least, he assumed they were mammals. They had fur on the top of their heads and about their oddly flat faces. But that was it. The rest was covered by fibers of so many different colors that Frank could not believe his eyes. These tall animals, at least twice his own height, were so colorful that each one reminded him of a field of flowers.









SCENE================





When Frank was little more than a hatchling, he and his clutch-mates would listen to the elders of the pack tell tales. Tales of wonder and fire and legends so fantastic they could scarcely be communicated in words. Franks favorite of these tales was of a creature that was so majestic, so beautiful and graceful and deadly and powerful that it was considered by many not to be a creature at all. It was thought to be a deity, a force of nature, a face of the Great-mother herself come to rain hellfire down on the wicked and bless those that care for her; The Mighty Elopus.