04-22-2018, 02:18 AM
Glim is more like her mythical mother than she first realizes. She used to nurse heavy and long from the teats of the oily black mare that spat her out from those same loins until she took to wandering. Then she stole milk from other mare’s until they caught on that she wasn’t theirs. Usually they’d chase her off with kicks of theirs heels and snapping teeth. She couldn’t help it - the myth of her mother had been built up after a fashion by her father because of his love for the mare.
How could Glim ever live up to that kind of love or expectation? She couldn’t. Never realized she didn’t need to. She was just as cherished by both of them in different ways for different reasons. Still that didn’t stop the spotty filly from answering the call of the wild, even if she really was too young to be off on her own. Neither parent saw fit to bring her back to the warm tether of their side.
Instead they trusted that she could look after herself. Or somehow knew that she would survive. That was probably because Glim was never truly alone. She had her one constant shadow-friend Dim and she could shape him into anything she wanted him to be. Usually it was an animal she’d already tracked and studied the habits of, preferring to keep her yellow-eyed companion in a more realistic form easily found in nature.
It was a hard lesson to learn that others typically ran away from a huge dragon trailing oneself even if that dragon was entirely made up of shadow and imagination.
Dim was oftentimes the voice of reason inside Glim’s head. How a shadow could be so smart was something that she had never once questioned. She just accepted it as it was - as he was, smart and snarky for something she had conjured up into creation once she unknowingly tapped into her shadow-power. Now they’re inseparable and often found insufferable to one another for some reason or other.
Like now as Dim tries to warn her against randomly straying into places that she so very clearly should not be doing without permission. Glim played loose and fast with her life though and sojourned on boldly. It left her yellow-eyed companion no choice but to follow her even as she morphed him into a mighty little monkey.
Stop tugging on my tail!
Well you turned me into a monkey and this is a bad idea.
But I want to see the water glowing blue at night.
It’s not even night though!
I know, we got here early. Isn’t it great?
and so the conversation between the almost-weaned foal and the shadow-monkey went as they moved from sandbar to sandbar.
@[Grye]