fandomhigh | Ungulate Yoga, Tuesday, period 1

". . . Yeah, I definitely should have seen this coming."

The unicorns grazing in the yoga area looked up. Duke would swear one of them gave him a smug smirk. One of the younger ones came trotting over to investigate, and Duke couldn't help but fall back a step at that pointy horn.

"I'm not your type, kid," he told it. "Trust me, if the lore on you is accurate, I am really really not what you're looking for."

The unicorn seemed to disagree. It stuck close to him as he set up for class, and the entire time the students were gathering.

"Right," Duke said at the top of class. "So, unicorns. Are a thing. Hopefully by now we've all been here long enough not to be surprised, so we can all just move on from whether or not they actually fart rainbows and get right to practice. Today, we're going to do some inversions. Basically that means any pose where your head is pointed downwards at the ground instead of up, but personally I prefer inverted balances, so that's what we'll focus on today. Who here can do a handstand?" He looked around. "Well, by the end of class, I want everyone to at least try one, even if you need a buddy to hold you up. So if you didn't raise your hand, find a buddy. If you did . . . time to show off."

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Upside down

Karolina Dean

Freya Crescent

Alara Kitan

Alexis Rose

Stark

Or look for farted rainbows

It's a magical day here at ungulate yoga! Maybe magical enough for no one to end up falling on their ass.

Try out the handstand, then maybe go for a headstand. Or a shoulderstand. Or get fancy with a crane or feathered peacock pose!

Was Karolina showing off her shifting, pastel-y glow during a handstand purely because it just felt right when she was around actual unicorns? Yes.

Did it seem like cheating when you considered the glow was directly related to her ability to ignore gravity? Also yes. But she didn't mean it like that! If anything, she'd consider it an extra bit of difficulty, both because even flying, she was usually right side up just like everyone else, and because keeping in touch with the ground didn't come naturally when she was like this.

Also, sorry about the light show, everyone around her. Hopefully the unicorns were even more distracting.

Stark was somewhat tempted to take off his mask and glow himself after noticing Karolina. She was certainly glowy.

Glowy solidarity? He was considering it and fidgeting with the buckle at his neck. He was also considering the fact he had no idea how to stay upside down and didn't really want to fall over.

Freya certainly had her reservations about the interestingly augmented horses (she couldn't help wonder how they might be used effectively in a sort of infantry unit), so she felt relieved that the poses for today were incredibly easy for her, thanks to her own training.

She may have shown off a little over being able to easily execute a handstand with only one paw, switching easily between the two, though she was noteably stronger on her left paw than her right.

And as she moved into the crane pose (which seemed like it could be very effective to start a good leap) and then easily into the feathered peacock, just to try it out, she had to ask, "Is it truly safe to be doing these poses with these horses around?"

It was only natural for her, after all, to see long pointed objects and immediately start thinking of weapons and doing damage, and having been officially attacked by island fauna last week, she may have been on high alert.

Thankfully, these poses were good for leaps. Which meant, any sudden movements by the unicorns meant a skittish dragon knight launching herself up into the air immediately and bouncing back down at a safer distance.

Duke looked at the unicorns consideringly. "They seem pretty careful with those horns. I think we're good."

Freya, from her single-handed handstand, craned her neck to look at Duke, look at the unicorns, and then back to focus on the ground and her lines as she pushed herself up a little bit and switched hands.

"I hope you're right." Her voice seemed a little...pointed. "I'm not sure I cared for my last unexpected encounter with this island's wildlife very much."

"What, the zebras?" Duke shrugged. "These guys have a reputation to uphold. For being all kind and gentle and shi -- stuff."

Freya looked at Duke again, seemingly unperturbed by the hair that had loosened from her ponytail into her face.

"No," she said, "after the zebras. Those little gremlins at the obstacle course activity..."

Honestly, if he'd somehow managed to forget about the incident entirely, then color her envious.

Duke winced. "Ah. Yeah, them. Well, those have . . . a very different reputation than these do."

He had not forgotten that. He had maybe forgotten her involvement. (She'd been a blue long nosed . . . thing in his mind at the time. And he hadn't ended up trying to make out with her.)

And weren't they all incredibly grateful for that.

Freya's attention shifted again, as did her legs, as she set down her other hand and folded them in, her tail compensating slightly for the shift in the center of her balance. She considered the unicorns once more.

"What sort of reputation is that?" she asked, curiously, because her world may have had dragons and magic and rat girls and monkey men and whatever these were, but oddly no unicorns.

Edited 2020-06-02 15:44 (UTC)

"These are, like, the quintessential good guys. They can heal injuries and cure poisons and only like the 'pure of heart' and all that crap."

"...they seem remarkably more equipped to cause damage than to heal it," Freya remarked, after another moment to consider it.

"But I suppose," she added, after another beat, "looks can often be deceiving."

Edited 2020-06-02 16:26 (UTC)

"That they can," Duke agreed. "And that horn's actually where the magic supposedly comes from. Like . . . a wand jammed into its forehead."

He was so poetic.

Alara wasn't familiar with unicorns at all and was finding them quite fascinating.

She managed to focus long enough to try out a handstand, even though she actually hadn't done one before but it turned out to be relatively easy with her Xelayan strength and so decided to try some of the other moves to see how she'd go.

Alexis was trying. She was. But one unicorn kept nudging her over, constantly.

"Okay, so I think this unicorn hates me?" she announced.

". . . Maybe it just wants you to pet it?"

He hasn't quite decided if the unicorns are Danny's fault, or if the island thinks this is a treat for his birthday.

He's pretty sure it's Danny's fault.

Ungulate Yoga, Tuesday, period 1

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Listen to the lecture

Inverted poses and unicorns!

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Talk to Duke

OOC