The sweat streaks his piebald hide, and Ivar’s dark forelock is all but plastered across the left side of his white face.

He has been running ,checking the perimeter, and has just drawn up short, his head raised as he pinpoints the source of the unfamiliar scent. The summer air is heavy with scents, but only one does not belong. It’s from farther south, closer to the border that Loess shares with Sylva. Ivar moves quickly, traversing the valleys between the numerous hills with ease and familiarity. He is breathing heavily by the time he finds the intruder, and when he draws up in front of her he looks almost…disappointed?

She is not at all what Ivar had been expecting, and it shows in the curious way he lowers his head to her eye level, clearly completely unconcerned for his own wellbeing.

“What’re you doing here?” He asks, concern in his brown eyes. “Are you lost?”



kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis

On an even level, Ivar’s brown eyes easily catch the surprise in her amethyst gaze. Surprise and something else, something he cannot quite put a name to. It doesn’t ever occur to him that it might be recognition – she is just a child, after all, and he has certainly never seen her before.

“Night time is not a good time to go exploring,” he admonishes, and is surprised to hear an echo is his father’s voice in his words. Isn’t that the same thing that he had told a curious young Ivar? He’d caught him sneaking off in the dead of a crisp fall night, when Ivar had been doing his best to keep quiet. “Does your mother know you’re out here?” He pauses, frowning for a moment in concern. “You do have a mother, don’t you?” She must ,he reasons ,she’s said that she’s come from the River and not the Den,. So surely someone is watching out for her.

Not watching very well, he decides, not if she’s cavorting about in strange lands in the dark of the night.

“I live here, little star girl” he tells her. “This is Loess.”

Then, because he’s not cold hearted or at all tired, and because it has not been terribly long since he was adventuring himself, he adds: “The bats are going to come out of that cave over there any minute. If we run, you might be able to wake them up a little early.” Ivar has always enjoyed spooking the bats and watching them soar out in a great living wave, and he supposes that a child who thinks night time exploring is a good idea might also be the kind of child who likes bats.



kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis

The idea of being motherly is startling. He would probably break her, Ivar thinks – she looks very fragile with her thin legs and spindly figure. It’s a marvel she’s made it this far, really; she would make an ideal meal for one of Beqanna’s rare predators.

Well, perhaps not so rare.

Still, she gives him little time to be concerned, having brushed off his worry in favor of the proposed trip to the cave. At least he can watch her while they’re in Loess, he decides; if she gets eaten on her way back to the River…well, that blame would lay on her actual mother.

“I’m not your mamma,” Says the piebald stallion, rolling his eyes in exasperation. The teal filly is jesting, he knows, but the term still feels uncomfortable, like a dangling noose he has only just managed to avoid. (If only he knew, that in a few short days he’d willingly offer to hang himself.)

“You’ve got to be quiet,” He adds, quickening his pace to trot abreast of the girl. “Otherwise you’ll scare them too early.” He clamps his scaled muzzle shut at that last word, emphasizing his silence as he begins to slow his pace. The cave mouth stretches ahead of them, and there are soft peeps of slowly waking bats. They’ll grow louder until they spread out into the sky, and Ivar knows that they’ve arrived at the perfect time.

Lowering his head, he whispers into Celest’s ear, his muzzle barely brushing the brightly colored stands of her hair. “Now you’ve gotta yell. Loud as you can.”



kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis

The scowl she gives him feels unwarranted, and without thinking he scowls back.

Had he done something wrong? He’d just wanted to show her the bats after she’d wandered in uninvited into his home, and yet he’s the one that get scowls at? He is almost bothered, but before he has time to ask she’s leaning back toward him. Ivar stands still, not entirely sure how to react. It would be very easy to

(take her down.)

but she is also

(small, unsatisfying.)

as well as

(a child.)

He settles on the last, unwilling to trust instinct when it seems to battle with itself. Ivar stands still, feeling the occasional soft puff of her breath as she traces the scales of his pale shoulder to where they fade to black along his neck. The tall stallion has to twist his head around at an odd angle to meet her gaze, and the word she has to say do not seem to meld with their situation. Him? What had he done?

There’s no time to ask, because she’s already racing off toward the cave, shouting loud enough to wake them (and probably loud enough to wake all the bats in Beqanna).

For a split second there is only silence – the peeping having stopped entirely – and then there is a cacophony of sound. The flap of leathery wings and the chittering voices of a dozen species of bats, all streaming out of the save mouth at once. There are tiny fruit bats and gigantic flying foxes, leaf-nosed bats and vesper bats. In the night, they vary only in size, but Ivar knows from closer inspection that the unique landscape of Loess has drawn the little mammals from every end of the world. Some will fly to feed on the fruit of the prickly pear that grows beside the plum and palm trees, while the more blood-thirsty creatures might swoop down on the unsuspecting herds of gazelle or sleeping mobs of kangaroos.

“Careful,” he calls to her from the safety of distance, doing his best to keep the laughter from his voice, “Or you might come away with a little more white on your coat than you started with!”



kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis

Watching from the safety of distance, Ivar’s eyes trace the swarm of bats up into the navy sky. The spiral there for a moment, like a flock of birds, and then, with no visible signal, they separate. Each heads in its own direction, and the chatter of their echolocating voices eventually fades away. A few stay nearby, emitting little peeps as they hunt the powder-winged moths, but it is difficult to track them against the darkness.

When his attention leaves the sky, he realizes he has lost the teal filly. She is no longer standing where he’d last seen her, and for a brief moment he entertains the possibility that she might have pulled a Karaugh and flown off with the bats.

But then he hears her, asking a question across the distance, and he steps forward to see that she stands in the mouth of the cave. Ivar moves closer, following her gaze into the yawning mouth of the cavern, and then glances down to her. There was something in the way she’d asked if he’s been inside, something in the eagerness of her expression. She’s going to ask to go inside, he just knows it.

“No,” he tells her honestly, “You can’t see it now, but it gets narrow in the back. Even sunlight doesn’t reach all the way back during the day.” That should be enough to dissuade her, Ivar thinks, surely a child won’t want to go stumbling around in the darkness of a cave with no visible end.


kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis