I’m breathing in the smoke of my mental illness’s cigarette // Tyrinn, any

[Trekori]

The journey from the field to the sandy shores of the canal that leads to Ischia goes quickly as Tyrinn and I chatter absently through the hours. Our complimentary colours match the changing of the season, golden and red as the leaves that litter our path. But as we draw up to the shore, such autumn things fall behind us, for the tropical kingdom of Ischia is stuck in perpetual summer.

“The tide is lowering, if you don’t mind a little swim in the middle.”

When he agrees to surge ahead (for a stallion as powerful and proud as him would never turn such an easy task down), I follow and eventually find myself ahead of the other. The warm water comes up to my neck and before long the bottom drops out from beneath me completely; snorting and spraying water with the breath, my legs and my wings work at the waters, pushing me ahead quickly until the bottom returns beneath me.

Sodden and heavy, I drag myself up the beach and distance myself a little from Tyrinn. Spreading my stance, I unfold my alabaster wings and shake out my whole body like a dog would, water droplets flying maniacally. Immediately I feel lighter and more myself. Springing a little too jauntily back to the wine splashed man (I am still a yearling after all, and therefore allowed some teenager antics), I come up beside him and give him a grin.

“It shouldn’t be long before someone’s here to greet you! We’ve many winged members, and they do an excellent job of scouting the borders.”

@[Tyrinn] phone post!!!

[Grye]

He's alone, investigating the very first tide pools that the receding tide will leave behind. There will be many, many more before the channel is at its lowest point, but he's already enthralled with the large crab scuttling back and forth in this one. However it quickly becomes clear to him that the crab is not pleased, and he feels a little twinge of guilt. He lifts anxious eyes to the tree line, hoping for advice, but slipping away from his babysitters in a supposed game of hide-and-seek (Drax's idea, of course, but only Khaeli had been hard to convince to go along) means he's alone on the beach. After another long moment of consideration, he concentrates just so to shift hooves to fingerlike talons and snatchs the angry crab with his grabby pincers and takes off for the water, in a weird three-legged run supported by the frantic flapping of his baby-downy wings.

The saltwater hits his feet and then his knees, and he launches the crustacean into the surf with a high-pitched whoop, and only then notices the pinto brother and the stranger emerging from the ocean down the shore. "Kori, Kori!" he calls excitedly as he canters towards them, giggling as he is showered in water droplets from the older boy's shaking even as he closes the distance between them and ducks shamelessly beneath Trekori's large wing to brush against his side, cat-like, and peer up at the stranger from that sheltered spot. He's already decided even in his short tenure of living in Ischia that the gold-and-white yearling is his favorite of the Brothers, and plasters himself to Kori at every opportunity. Brennen tries to leave the kids with mostly family to babysit them, feeling absolutely no guilt with using his older descendants to watch the younger, but in a pinch one day the King had recruited Kori to watch the boys and Khaeli  while he stole Galilee away for a little private tryst, and that had begun his grandson's endless fascination with the pinto.

It wasn't that he didn't like Cagney and Alonwy and Belgaer and Mosrael, but he likes Kori more. He digs his talons into the sand and wriggles a little with extra energy. "Did you see, I just rescued a crab! And I didn't get pinched!" Gaye whispers to Kori, and then he blinks at the stranger, and offers a shy smile but doesn't address him directly.

@[Trekori] @[Tyrinn] I invented a backstory for grye and Kori, hope that's ok <3