all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down

It is a messy business, being born. A bit like breaking the surface after being almost drowned, or so she will think one day when able to make the comparison. Arriving into the open air is disorienting, too bright for bleary eyes, and loud with the sound of one's own breathing.

Light weaves around the mare who speaks to her in words she can little understand. Those fingers of light catch on rivers of gold and highlight a sweat-soaked chestnut skin. The infant will remember this only vaguely, for her green and gold eyes track the dapples of sunlight alone. She hardly pays any mind to the sturdy chestnut sabino.

Is this why she leaves? The woman insists that the filly look into her still blurry face and repeat some sounds until they sound correct enough. "Anath." Repeats Anath, and then she stumbles into a patch of sunlight only remembering to look for the mare once she is already gone. Confused, and only knowing she should not be alone Anath calls out fretfully. Her child's voice is too small to carry very far, and what is she meant to call out with beyond a meaningless and lonely whinny?

Turning in a circle, her dark and fuzzy pelt collects a halo of light on the ends of every wooly strand of hair. Anath does not notice this. She turns again, and the sunlight twists with her pulling around her in glowing gossamer threads. In another turn, she wraps herself in light, not a spiderweb tangle but something soft and warm. The filly's legs fold beneath her and she settles into a swaddling nest of sunlight. Gazing across the meadow she imagines the mare returning to her over and over until she begins to doze.

all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down

Anath does not sleep deeply or long, even in the comfortable warmth of her nest. Her green eyes flutter open and like a fawn, ignorant of any danger she merely blinks and makes a soft startled sound at the sight of a tiger cub seated just before her. “My friend?” Repeats the girl, the cords of sunlight loosening, drifting away from her limbs and sides, fading and fraying. Manipulating the light comes easily, effortless and instinctual. Other than this, she understands only that mimicry might be desired.

Sitting up, her pale forehooves planted and her weight resting on her hip Anath tilts her head to study the cub. Bands of light reach across her little body, flattening, enveloping, casting prisms around them. Anath cloaks herself in a tiger’s skin made of light, its stripes drift and shimmer as she tries to capture the exceptional glitter of the cub’s stripes. She flicks an ear, and a tiger’s ear woven over her own moves with it. It’s an exceptional illusion, but she cannot hold it long and the moment her mind drifts toward another means of connection it comes away, falling down her body like molten honey.

“Anath.” Language is complicated. “Hello.” She tries, because she is concerned about being alone again and she must not have paid enough attention before. So she pays all her attention to the cub, trying to remember the color and shape of his stripes, to understand the expression in his eyes, her own gaze earnest and hopeful.

all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down

The boy praises her illusion and mimics her in turn and Anath is overjoyed. When his shape changes and he becomes a colt (for the first time before her eyes) the filly gets to her feet and takes a couple steps closer to sniff him.

She is frustrated that she doesn’t entirely understand what he is asking. Why isn’t she more clever? ”Malik. My friend.” She repeats, a desperate thread sneaking into her childish voice. Just take me with you, wherever you’re going. I’ll learn, I’ll understand. She wants to say this but doesn’t quite have the words. Her mother cannot be entirely blamed for this, Anath thinks more easily in the shifts and shapes of light than words. A tendril of sunlight snakes over her withers, zips between them, behind Malik’s own neck and back again, a bright and brief figure eight looping around them and disappearing again

“Your friend.” She says softly, thinking she might just know what he means after all.

all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down

Anath gasps in delighted surprise when Malik calls forth a thin strand of light to mimic her gesture. It is not perfectly easy for him, she watches the boy concentrate and carefully create the light and it inspires unexpected confidence in her. Some things are not going to be easy.

Like figuring out how and what words to use in response to Malik’s easy chatter. The moments of standing there together move past in heartbeat increments and Anath feels like she is becoming ever more awake. “Yes. I… want to come with. With you!” Malik talks a lot, and Anath listens and tries to make sense of all of it but she knows that  above all she wants to be where he is going. Her mother’s quick exit has left a ragged reaching part of her looking for someone to bond with before the vacancy breaks something in her.

“What’s a shifter?” She asks, perhaps a little too slowly but quickly follows up. “A shapeshifter?” Anath does not believe that she is one, even without having a definition. It sounds like it might be okay that she isn’t one, but it seems very important to know what it is.

all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down

She spots the wings, though they are just a flicker she is drawn to light, notices changes in it, differentiates between sunlight and the intriguing blacklight that Malik manipulates. Anath’s green-gold eyes flick to the wings and back to the older boy’s face quickly, but his excitement is too contagious and she tosses her head happily all but forgetting having seen the wings.

The griffon lands, dark and quiet behind Malik and Anath stares at him, eyes wide. She has seen a tiger and the boy that was inside thus far and so is not thrown too much by this new presence. Still, she has some trouble focusing on what Malik is saying. “Oh… okay. Wha--who that? Who is that?” She forgets the business about shifters (as though she will long be able to)  and moves up next to Malik to look at the griffon a little closer. ” Hi! I’m Anath. ”

Malik is calling someone. She mimics this as well, her whicker following his in her young high voice. It is likely her mother hears it, but Anath does not think of her, that gilded memory, brief and sunsoaked, quickly fading into the recesses of her mind.

A single step is taken closer to the griffon. Why does it have two kinds of feet? “Do you shapeshift?” She asks him, but glances back at Malik just in case the loquacious colt decides to answer instead.