Novel
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Years are so easy to lose track of when one pays as little attention to them as she does. The simple and mundane pull one in until one almost forgets that a day, a week, a year have passed. And when the sky is her home with the vagaries of the earth her only guide, everything else simply falls away, as though it has never before existed.
She had become so much more familiar with the body of the raven than that of the equine. Some small, distant part of her brain still recognizes her true form. But birds are easy, and horses are… not. There is freedom in the sky and the wind, away from the stifling confines of the earthy loam and endless cycles of drama plaguing the race of equines inhabiting Beqanna. She likes simple. And raven's are, ultimately, very simple. More intelligent than most give them credit for, but with absolutely zero cares to give.
So very simple.
But if ever there was a curious creature, it would be a raven, and even she is not immune. And so it should come as no surprise that such an easy life cannot satisfy her forever. And so there comes a day when boredom becomes too great, and she finds herself fluttering to the ground. It takes her a moment to remember how this works. To remind muscles long since forgotten and disused how to become a horse rather than a bird.
With an agonizingly slow ruffle of feathers, her body undulates and elongates, shifting and contorting until she has become a creature of far greater size and heft. Stretching out a neck the color of a sunset, she braces herself as she shakes awkwardly, settling into a skin she had not worn in far too long. Ambling over to a nearby pool (gate stiff and slightly unbalanced), she peers into her reflection, head tilting in a manner very reminiscent of a bird. An unfamiliar reflection stares back at her. A mare, tall and lean and delicate, the sunset upon her skin and a more familiar curiosity in her black eyes.
“Well hello there,” she rasps in a soft voice hoarse from disuse. Perhaps it might look odd to any standers by, to see a horse talking to herself. To her though, she is simply greeting a very old friend.
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.
I'm sorry, this is probably terrible DX please excuse me while I shake the rust off