#c deckard

Hello it's me, back from the dead. Here to share some bastards I made in a mix of HD and Not-So-HD resolution.

“Flower” - Fun Choice 

Deckard leans back and the old wooden chair croaks in protest as the front prongs lift just an inch from the ground. He rolls his shoulders back and can feel rather than hear the sharp crack raddle through his cranium as he attempts to push away the bags stooping beneath his red eyes. He bites back a yawn, but it still finds its way out as a strangled groan. He’s tired. 

The chair dips back, dangerously so, before his weight rolls forward and the front end of the chair settles back onto stable ground. His feet spread out, his hands rest once more on a solid black spruce table within, what this town considers, a decent library, and his eyes once more settle on the drawing depicted in the book.

“Hulder.” The word feels foriegn on his tongue. “Or is it Huldra?” He squints at the typed scrawl written in the shadow dialect and wonders, not for the last time, if he should just get one of the librarians proficient in the language to just read it to him like, you know, they would to a fledgling. And yeah, sure, he’d be totally asking to get dunked on for being a total idiot for not knowing something as simple as the language of the region they’ve been travelling through for the last few weeks, but he’d also be saved from a headache. Except he wouldn’t because that’s just how his life is. So, why even bother? 

Besides, he can still pick out more than a few affixes rooted in common draconic to carry him and as for the sentences that look like they’ve been mixed in a blender? Eh, they’re probably not important and certainly not his problem- not yet, at least, but that’s for future Deckard, from present Deckard, with love and mostly apathy. He forces himself to reread the same sentence again; “Hulder...secret..lady?” He squints, leans closer to comprehend the sentence better. “Dark, Obscure? Forest. Maybe they mean den or a lair.” He mumbles, a familiar frustration building behind his temples. “Why do they even put their verb at the end? Ugh, is this mostly attributive?” 

He doesn’t have enough patience and knowledge of grammar to chew through this all. 

Deckard holds his hands around his forehead as he leans forward again and glares at the text before his glance slides to the left where the etching is. It’s black and white, cross hatched, almost like a drawing in one of those old fairytale books or a medical textbook, of a lightly dressed woman- a beautiful, breathtaking, and apparently dangerous hulder- draped so across a large, protruding root of a gnarled black spruce. In the space between the ground and the root, a cow’s tail dangles idly. And it’s her. He knows it’s her. She’s unmistakable. 

It’s a horrible drawing, he thinks to himself as he traces a finger around the form (not even realizing the heart-shaped path his finger has taken). They’ve taken her soft lips and given her a hard line and where her electric blue eyes should be, two, dark, vacant dots stare back. A hatchling could do better than that. 

He could do better than that. 

He lets out another sigh. He came here this morning to figure out what she is, not swoon over some dragon’s drawing. It wasn’t a horrible drawing, but it wasn’t swoon material. Deckard considers ripping the page out anyways- but later, when that one librarian stops glancing his way every five minutes. So, she’s a hulder. Whatever that is. And hulder’s deal with….secrets? They live in forests- which, newsflash, so do most dragons and beastclan, so that’s not really helpful. 

He flips ahead and bites back another groan when more text greets him instead of more images (preferably of her face) like he had hoped. It was a complete accident that he even found this book. It’s not even in the catalogue. The leatherbound book covered in scratches and stains had made a strong enough impression after it had fallen off the shelf that he couldn’t help but glance through it as he nursed his bruised foot on the empty chair across from him. Then, bam, there’s her body curled like a laugh and nestled against a tree that he’d almost swear he’s seen before if it weren’t for the fact that all the trees in the Tangled Woods looked exactly the same. 

He draws his finger along the spine of the sentence, skipping most of the contents and pausing every so often on the words that he can make out. So far, he’s got: 

Hulder, Secrets, Lair (or just a dark forest), flowers- or as the shadow tongued might say, ‘multicolored tree stems’. He chuckles to himself at that. Maybe she likes flowers? Despite all his expectations, there was a florist closer to the coastal part of the town where the forest’s canopy is thin enough to raise sun-thirsty plants. Yeah, he could get something simple. Just a few flowers in a bouquet and something sweet for her to wrap her lips around- 

The wildclaw behind the desk looks up and raises an eyebrow at him as Deckard desperately tries to quell his sudden choking. It takes an aggressive, dismissive wave and a spluttered, “I’m fine, really” to keep her from walking over, but she looks close to calling out for a medic as she continues to watch him. He can feel his face and earfins burn as he borderline buries his face into the journal. Focus, Deckard. This is not the time and definitely Not the place. He needs to Read this Book so he can impress her- so that he knows what he’s dealing with here. 

He can’t read the text like this with his forehead nestled into its crease, so he puts some distance between himself and the book and leans back again. He said he’d visit her again before they left and he’s sure Siren would be thrilled to have someone distract her. Even, if it might be via flirting. If not flirting, then, well, he’s not sure. He should get her flowers. She probably wouldn’t expect flowers. Should he get her something sweet? What do hulder’s eat? He glances at the journal one more time. There’s no way he’s going to manage to slough through that text to find the answer without evolving his headache into a migraine. He’ll have to try again another day. 

He lets the chair fall forward and thud, before pushing the chair back and standing up with the journal in hand. He slips between the bookcases, weaving in and out of sight, and then out the other side towards the exit. If he leaves now, he should be able to get something simple at the florist before the expedition. The treasure on hand should be enough and it’s not like this town has a nightlife worth spending it on.

He steps through and out the doors of the library, grip tight on his satchel. He smirks. And he didn’t even have to tear out the page after all. 

Much later, after walking the length of the town and back, Deckard settles with a bundle of purple strawberries and a medium bouquet of flowers consisting of apple blossoms, pink camellia and carnations with fern woven in. His treasure bag is empty and he has never seen Siren more confused at the sight of these things. Please don’t ask, please don’t ask, please don’t- thankfully, Siren turns his attention away and leads the expedition forward and Deckard breathes out.

Did some more meme expressions with @viperfishy-fr. Top two and the middle of the second row is Jim, last of the first row is Axial, and then the first for the second Row is Peanut and the last is Deckard.