The Stone Jungle

[Hyacinthus]

Well, this was a fine mess he'd found himself in.

Kinara Ljanta was many things-- headstrong, a good listener, and even a bit of a dancer. Now, he could add 'impossibly clumsy at the worst conceivable moments' to that list as well, as he quietly hung about five feet in the air, his dagger on the ground below. A right fine place for it to be, really... Instead of in his hands, in a situation like this.

The further a person went into the Kishahn Jungle, the more likely they were to encounter 'natural traps' of the environment. The heavy foliage caused everything to blur into a series of shades of greens and browns, with the occasional glint of yellow or red being the most obvious of things to avoid, according to the handbook Kinara had bought on his way in. The problem with that, was that it became way too easy to miss small details as you walked, such as the elevated roots of trees, or natural pits.

In Kinara's case he ran into a combination of the two, tripping over an exposed, mossy root and stumbling downward along a natural decline in the path. As he did so, he lost his dagger and bow-- both coming free from their holsters and tumbling a bit away, while Kinara himself found himself caught up in hanging vines from a large tree. They wound him up quickly, as hanging vines tended to with any prey not paying attention as they passed through them... and now here he hung, some five feet from the ground, just barely finding his bearings.

"Dad would laugh at me right about now... 'Starlight, this is no time to be hanging around'. I can already hear it..." The young man muttered to himself as he tested the amount of leeway the vines gave him. The overhead sun indicated he had a bit of time before it started to get dark... ideally he wouldn't be out here for so long that it would be a problem.

[nephero]

   The jungle had many, many lessons to teach. It taught you to be conservative with your movements, as normal processes of cooling the body failed in overly humid climates. It taught you what was safe to eat, as the fruit that had smelled so sweet took a swift and merciless vengeance. It taught you to be wary of silence, as the lack of calls from nearby birds and beasts all spoke of a much more dangerous predator.

   It taught you where to step, and following a failure to learn that lesson, it taught you what that sounded like. The jungle cracked and groaned and creaked as a full grown bipedal body went tumbling around in the brush, taking vines and chunks of muddy soil along with it.

   Judging by the length of time it took before the noise stopped, the body had ended up going right down a hill.

   Interesting.

   Sunyi tilted her platinum blonde head as she looked out from where she had been hunched over a well-worn stone carving. It hadn't come from anywhere close to the direction of the archaeological camp she had joined many months ago, and this close to the hottest part of the day meant much of the camp would be firmly taking a break from their excavations until the sticky heat subsided some.

   Which left the young Thanati scholar with a bit of a choice. If it wasn't part of the camp, then it could be anyone. A poacher, a rival archaeologist's mosquito-crazed bodyguard, a trap, something entirely not-human at all but only fractionally mimicking the exact way a human body might go rolling down a vegetation-choked hill...

   Or just some poor bastard who was probably in the process of being eaten. Or already had.

   Sunyi took a breath, let it out in a deeply annoyed sigh, and rose up from where she had been considering the almost indecipherable script written into the stone. Armed with only her machete, she stepped through the jungle, much more careful of her footing and trusting her bare feet to lead the way.

   If whoever it was was being eaten, it might be interesting to look at.

[Hyacinthus]

Kinara would shift and wiggle a bit more within the confines of his green bindings before ultimately going somewhat lax, and allowing his body to hang somewhat lifelessly above the jungle floor. He was at least... five, maybe five and some what more feet off of the ground at this point, and thus didn't need to worry too much about his long, furry ears getting wet in hindsight. Had he given up on trying to get free? No, not really-- but with him being suspended so high up, he didn't need to worry too much about getting eaten by anything he couldn't see coming from a little ways away.

That gave him a minute to really admire the scenery, and so admire he did. Traveling through the forests, his eyes were occasionally glued to the ground and his footing after all; He didn't stop all too often and take in the sights and sounds of the Kishahn Jungle. It was, at least at midday, a pretty beautiful place in it's own right, he quickly noticed! The stray beams of light that managed to penetrate the deep and varied layers of foliage above gave an incredible contrast to the dense foliage. The sound of running water, and what was likely some sort of songbird fluttering from one tree to the next did put Kinara's heart at such blissful ease that he debated how safe it would be to take a small nap, secured as he was.

A bead of sweat rolled up the boy's face, rather than down; an amusing side-effect of hanging awkwardly as he had been, which caused an itch he couldn't scratch on the side of his face. Well, safe or not, it would've been hot sleeping-- the humidity clearly wanted him to keep at least that much in mind.

Nearby shuffling broke Kinara from his mental musings and alerted him to the presence of something much larger than a songbird-- and on land, no less. From his awkward position, he couldn't quite see who, or what, it was... But that didn't matter too much, given his current situation. A predator might make easy prey of him-- a passerby might be a bit less bite-y. Might. "...Um, hello? Is anyone nearby? I somehow got tangled in these vines, and could use a hand!" He called out, still unable to actually see in the direction the shuffling was coming from. Admittedly, this was probably really stupid-- his dad, master pragmatist that he was, would've bonked him on the head for announcing his presence and helplessness so readily. But, really, what difference did someone knowing he was easy pickings or not knowing he was easy pickings make when he couldn't even move?

[nephero]

"I can see that," came a soft voice from below his right. Sunyi stepped around him, machete in hand as she considered the vines coiled tightly around him. She only looked away when her foot touched something decidedly un-jungle-like, and looked down to see the dagger that had fallen uselessly far from its owner.

It was a lovely dagger, Sunyi decided, as she picked it up and inspected it from every angle much like she did for literally anything that caught her interest. She flicked it this way and that, testing the balance without much chabge in her expression. Still, she seemed pleased enough with what she saw, and once again turned her gaze upwards at the predicament before her.

"What are you doing out here? You're not a local." The last part was stated very matter of factly, and she stepped just so she could look at him somewhat face to face.

[Hyacinthus]

Being at the very obvious mercy of someone other than himself wasn't something that Kinara was particularly used to. No, in fact, it might've been better to say that he'd literally never experienced it before? He'd wrestled with his father in the past-- who used his size and strength advantage to beat him into submission on a few occasions, sure, but that was nothing like this, the furry-eared boy thought to himself as he quietly hung from the jungle vines while a complete stranger casually played around with his dagger near his body.

She seemed nice enough, at least!

Kinara could say that solely due to his still currently being alive, and not stabbed to death with his own dagger. Fairly sure she was nice, yeah. He refrained from making any silly comments all the same, of course; Nice didn't necessarily mean tolerant of his corny jokes or overly-friendly personality (at least he was self-aware of his flaws!). It was only when the blonde woman asked about how he'd even ended up in this situation that he suddenly snapped to attention, so to speak, and spoke up. "I, um, I'm an adventurer! I was actually on my way to deliver some documents from Adela to a research group that's supposed to be out here... ish. I have a map in my back pocket, but I can't really reach it now, hahaha..." Aaaaaand there came the nervous jokes. Classic Kinara.