When he had pushed through the thick vegetation, into the small clearing mother and daughter occupied, Dretch had abruptly ceased her cavorting, her features blurring and shifting in a mixture of foal and tiger cub characteristics before reverting back to her natural-born form. Startled by his sudden appearance as she was, once the tiny minx had recovered, she had met his stare unflinchingly; whilst her mother did her best to ignore the fact that Set had finally come to fetch them away. She had known months ago that the little girl saw the tiger and her cubs, when Dretch was only days old, and her brush bottle tail had become striped and cat-like for two, perhaps three breaths, then back to natural form.
The little shapeshifter had little control over her gifts yet, nearly as wobbly in its use as she must have been at only hours old, but the prominent creatures that Set already senses beneath her skin gives him cause to believe that she will eventually come into her own, in a way that will force others to stand up and take notice. The inky black girl roves ahead and behind, parts of her shifting at whim as she chases after this creature and that. Salomea follows him quietly, her silver-gray eyes downcast. Fantastically dissimilar from her spitfire of a mother, Set’s daughter, and this vivacious child, it is Salomea’s meekness that is her downfall - a vulnerability that he can neither empathize or accept, the reason why he narrowed in on her like a shark to blood in the water, so many years ago. A pawn of little use, but a pawn nonetheless.
The lush, albeit now browning, grasses of the Meadow soon give way to the dusty reds and yellows that make up Pangea’s sandstone. The sun is high in the air when they reach the border, an imaginary line that Set pays little attention to as he guides them north, winding through the canyons. It is well after dark once they reach his intended destination, the moonlight caught on the earth, beckoning in gently swaying silver. Dretch has pushed beyond the point of exhaustion and runs in feverish circles, squealing and cackling when she flushes a cloud of lightning bugs from the tall grass. Eventually, though, the miles travelled and upheaval of her simple life catches up to her and she collapses in a snoring heap. Salomea settles down next to her, and Set drifts away from them, toward the obsidian beach and the glowing cove, the faint scent of someone he once met drawing him.
@[sochi]