"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
03-26-2020, 05:08 PM (This post was last modified: 03-26-2020, 05:08 PM by Tickaani.)
Tickaani grazed on the dewy grasses while a spring-loaded colt romped in the dense pasture. Her deep brown eyes sat half-hooded as she dozed, ears flicking to and fro in the morning air. That is until things got a little too quiet. It was too much to hope that the boy had fallen asleep somewhere. Her blocky head lifted suspiciously above the tall grasses.
She almost wished she hadn't.
Her eyes rolled with quiet dismay, as the scene unfolded before her. There was a pool that their herd had claimed, cool mercy in summer's heat and welcome refreshment the rest of the year. She nudged the shoulder of the horse next to her, gesturing silently to the drama unfolding before them. A spindly shadow rippled through the grass, brindled in shades of green except where glossy brown eyes peeked out. She could only really catch the shape of her son when moved, slow as a snail on a leaf. At the edge of the water, a filly was standing. It didn't look like she knew what was coming up behind her.
Tick knew she could intervene. Should intervene, even. But the larger part of her also knew that this might end up being hilarious, and so she only watched, and waited.
He'd been watching their family, there was no doubt of that. It showed in every little calculated step he took on legs not made for prowling. Little colt didn't realize most days that he was not made the same way as his daddy, as his playmates. As thoroughly equine as his dam, if only a bit more colorful. But if he didn't know any better, well, she didn't see any reason not to burst his bubble. Clearly, the boy was having fun.
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory
He’s dozing, pleasant dreams flashing behind closed eyes even as the wildflowers that sit atop the tall grasses tickle his belly. His dreams are full of pleasant wonder – because he’s still not sure how any of this happened. Ryan hadn’t known he even had family left in Beqanna, but somehow he’d stumbled across his cousin, the daughter of an uncle he’d never met, here in this beautiful land. Even more wondrous, both of the mares who hold his heart had found him, and joined him here. Now Tickaani and Keeper’s children - Ryan’s children - play safely amongst the fields and streams alongside his cousin’s young daughter Noma.
The stallion blinks sleepily awake at Tickaani’s touch, glancing at her with question in his eyes, but her message is clear enough. He shifts and turns his head, to where Noma stands quietly at the edge of the water, peering intently into the liquid’s surface. She’s slightly older than Mikael and Fiadh, a yearling, but she has been joyful to have playmates and gentle with her cousins.
Ryan spots his son slightly faster than his mother or his aunt might, but only because Mikael inherited his color-changing abilities from his father, and Ryan from his mother, and he had played similar games as a youth himself. He hums in quiet appreciation, the cat coiled inside him all the time quite appreciative of offspring’s growing skill in subterfuge. He might not have the easy defenses that Ryan, Keeper, and Fiadh have, but he will not be defenseless.
Because sometimes the dreams are not as nice as today’s had been. Sometimes, Ryan has nightmares about what Noah had told them of her life – that her father his uncle had been murdered to try and destroy Beqanna, to unleash the plague that he remembers vaguely. Ryan had been little more than a nomad then, a wandered existing almost entirely as a silent big cat, but he remembers the taste of fear on those whose paths he had crossed. He does not wish his children to ever see such a day, but if such a day were to come he wants them to be strong and smart and loyal to each other.
He glances back at Tick, at Keeper, a laugh in his eyes at the antics of the children, but a look from one of them makes him aware that he has seen only two children about to clash at the water’s edge. Where is the third cub? Ryan lifts curious green eyes back to the water’s edge and gives a sweeping inspection of their surroundings…. ah. There. Fiadh is also creeping through the grass, her shifter form almost as big as her brother, on a path to intercept. He stays quiet to see what will happen, but can’t resist leaning into Tick, and reaching out to touch Keeper’s shoulder with his golden nose. Fiadh is clearly waiting to try and pounce on her brother when Mikael tries to catch their cousin unawares – and Ryan is very interested to see who will end up with the upper hand. Hoof. Paw.
Deep and grumbly snores populate the cave-dark. They come from the snout of a grizzly bear sow with a big belly indicative of pregnancy. She hibernates; deep in dreams and a thick winter-sleep as her body consumes its fat-stores.
The babe inside takes shape and grows along with the deepening hibernation. She’s not sure what shape it will hold: horse, bear, wildcat, or something else altogether. Her dreams don’t tell her this.
Like any good grizzly sow worth her salt, she births her cub in the dark during her long sleep. She trusts the babe to know what to do as she moves from dream to dream, still snoring until Spring reaches a warm welcoming hand inside her den.
Keeper wakes instinctually.
It is Spring and she has shifted back to her mare’s shape sometime in the last few hours unbeknownst to her. She takes a moment to blink the sleep from her eyes and the fog of dreams from her brain.
Something doesn’t feel right… she feels lighter, as if her hibernation has voided her of something that she shouldn’t have been. Panic strikes her then as she realizes she doesn’t feel pregnant anymore. Where is the baby?
A quick fruitful search turns it up tucked into her side. Keeper, in her panic, just hadn’t felt the little one there. She sighs in relief and is glad to see it is a foal after all. Her brain can’t fathom how a bear could carry a foal or birth it but she trusted her body to do what was necessary.
Looks like the little one was a survivor at any rate, with a nice round milk-belly. She smiles, before touching her lips to the soft baby-brow and decides it is time to emerge from the protective dark. “Wake little one,” she encourages softly before sniffing her den for any signs of intrusion, welcomed or otherwise.
Keeper is scenting for Ryan. Would he have checked on them or stuck around in his cat form? The foal stirs sleepily before finally climbing to its tiny hooves. She had missed its first wobbly steps and futile searches for nourishment before landing on its mother’s teat. But then, Keeper has missed lots of things while in grizzly shape or sleep.
She doesn’t think about that now as the foal reveals itself to be a filly and cavals around the small cave. Her mouth is a proud mother’s grin as she fondly on her small bright daughter dancing about in the absence of sunlight and fresh air. “Come,” she beckons and together, they emerge from the dank and the dark to look for the father.
Keeper calls out softly into the spring sunshine, trusting that he’ll somehow be there. “Ryan?”
Now —
Herd.
Home.
Keeper isn’t certain how or why this happened exactly but she knows she’s happy. Except for a tiny part of her that looks up and into the nomadic wind every time it blows, like she expects it to blow her away too. Or perhaps for a particular scent that gets all tangled up in memories of moonlight and mushrooms.
This is also the longest she has kept this shape.
Usually, the grizzly nature has taken over by now.
Keeper joins them in turns of grazing and dozing; sometimes, her eyes flicker to catch the whereabouts of her daughter but she is never overly concerned. The growing quiet merely makes her look up from the grass she is munching on to watch the foal’s’ antics. Amusement paints her face in a grin and a brightening of her eyes until she realizes Fiadh is not quite amongst them.
She chokes back a chuckle once she sights their daughter but throws a look at Ryan. Fiadh is bound and determined to intercept and she looks on with thinly veiled interest at how the rest of the game will unfold between the children. It reminds her of the days beside her brother and sister, beneath the stern glare of their father’s unhappy eyes.
Keeper is glad the children are so happy and untouched here, for the time being. She leans back into Ryan’s touch, chortling just a bit now as the moment approaches when they will discover who will get the best of who! Her body shifts to align better with her companions so that she can drape herself along and across Ryan and nibble at Tick’s side while still keeping an eye on what’s going on.
ooc: perfect opportunity to combine birth post and a reply to this! except it got crappy at the end lol ❤️
Tick smiled at the children's antics, her spring-molting shoulder comfortably being itched by Keeper's gentle gnawing. She'd emerged with the new year's sun, leggy filly in tow. Her own Mikael had bounded with joy at the introduction of his half sister, and Tick had crooned and crowed at the beautiful lass her sweet Keeper had given them.
They'd held on to bright, warm days of springtime. Easy, hopeful days that the roan mare never wanted to see the end of. Land knew there had been enough strife in the world, enough grief and pain to last many lifetimes. She knew her blessings when she saw them, and leaned easily into the embrace of her loved ones. Her inky tail swayed idly in the sunshine as the trio of adults watched the youngster's play.
One by one the pieces of the game moved.
Tick's mischief-loving heart laughed to see her son prowl so carefully towards his elder cousin. Young Noma was such a sweet soul, ever patient with the two foals and their never ending energy. There was another player in this game, however, and it took following Ryan's line of sight to notice her. Fiadh. Clever girl, so alike Mikael in looks and as daring as they came. Today her figure borrowed its predatory likeness, a shape Tick had no name for but what was clearly somewhere between Keeper and Ryan's shifted shapes.
It was a struggle to hold back her snort of amusement when she saw the girl's focus was not on the unwitting Noma, but on her own sneaking son. Inch by inch they moved, Fee carefully angling herself to intercept her brother. It was a slow motion dance, until it wasn't.
"ARGGGGG!"
The snail's paced race came to an explosive conclusion when colt and filly leapt, one just behind the other. A hair too slow, Mikael rolled beneath his sister's weight. She'd caught him mid-pounce, hefty paws bringing down her brother just as he'd erupted from his hide to bring down their pied cousin. The siblings tussled in the grass, paws and hooves flailing amid shrieks of outrage and laughter.
Tick's own mirth burbled out in a hearty laugh. "Oh, well done!" She called out, breaking away from Keeper and Ryan to referee the impromptu wrestling match. Mikael had developed a tendency to bite harder than was strictly necessary, perhaps making up for his blunted teeth. As if that made it not hurt.
05-01-2020, 09:19 PM (This post was last modified: 05-01-2020, 09:20 PM by Ryan.)
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory
Their very quiet watch comes to a noisy and spectacular end; the large feline and the colt collide with no few noises and start to struggle for the upper hand, while the copper-and-white yearling spins around with wide eyes and a little yelp. Not for the first time, Ryan is glad that his daughter’s shifting form has retractable claws like his own as she attempts to bring her brother to the ground, and that foals of Mikael’s size aren’t particularly dangerous as he returns fire with hoof and tooth. Tickaani walks forward to referee before Ryan can move, her voice bright over the sound of theirs.
Keeper leans into him and he turns to breathe her familiar scent, equine-and-ursine, and with one mulberry-tipped ear flicked to catch all of the words exchanged between Tick and the children, he wonders if she ever grows tired of how quiet – literally – their existence has become. Ryan has never been one of many words but it seems like nowadays he speaks even fewer, and years of existing alongside Keeper in their second skins with no line of direct communication has made the two of them more adept at communicating nonverbally than elsewise. The Pampas itself is quiet too, and his cousin their host as soft-spoken as the wind through her beloved wildflowers.
Hearing Fiadh give an expressive grumbling growl instead of replying to something spoken aloud to her by her aunt, he resolves on the spot to do better. To speak more often to the children themselves, as well as to Tick, and stop relying so much on other forms of communication. It was fine when it was just Ryan-the-panther and Keeper-the-bear, but they are a family now and noncommunication was never something his own mother would have condoned.
The gold stallion brushes another kiss along Keeper’s neck and draws away to help parent, stepping smoothly into Fiadh’s space in a way that gently separates her from her brother, both of the children seemingly unpleased at not having a clear winner in the wrestling match. He sympathizes, but not at the chance of any real injury if their play would become too heated. “Perhaps a new game,” he suggests, smiling warmly over Tick’s back at his niece to include her, trying to draw her closer into their group. “What about a scavenger hunt? You could go and find your mothers and I five new types of flowers or bugs we haven’t seen before. I’m sure Noma would help you.”
Conveniently, it would also keep them occupied for some time, because he knows it would take them some time to find things they agreed the adults had never seen, as well as trek all over the Pampas to find the far-flung treasures. It’s a peaceful game, as well, to give everyone a break from the sneaking and the pouncing. And the adults can do…adult things. Even if those adult things mainly consist of their mothers able to nap in peace, for once, while Ryan keeps watch for them.
Ryan
( I love only that which they defend. )
I'm the worst on timing but have a thing? TT_TT @[Tickaani] @[keeper]
06-09-2020, 03:27 PM (This post was last modified: 06-09-2020, 03:28 PM by keeper.)
Family.
It has been the basis of Keeper’s existence since her birth. She had tagged along at her father’s heels with a bevy of half-siblings in tow and then for a time, as she grew a little older and a title wilder, she’d struck out on her own in search of a different kind of family. She found that in the Hyaline deeps until something in her blood beckoned her away. That inner wildness that’s demanded she roam and see lands she’d never put names to.
Now, there is a new kind of family: this family, small and strong, but good even if it is entirely odd. Sometimes those are the best kinds of families to be, she thinks, lazy and content to watch the goings-on of the children as they play and learn and grow. It was good to see their babies grow up together, as it should be. She actually thought the herd life suited her with her beloved friends to surround her. It definitely kept the bear subdued and this was the longest she had gone without that shape.
One by one, the game of chase gave way to stalking and some predatory part of her exulted in the way her prehistoric daughter slunk forth to join the fray. She never ceased to admire the way the girl moved and became some arcane blend of bear and panther. It should have tripped every instinctual alarm in Keeper’s body to see her daughter like that but the bear roared back at her equine instincts and silenced them.
Predator stalks predator stalks prey; she looked on in amusement as she continued to scrape at the wintry scruff lingering on Tick’s lovely mottled blue coat. She wanted things to stay like this forever because it was easy and peaceful and beautiful. Keeper knew better though, it has to rain sometimes and storms are meant to be weathered. For now, she chortled into that peppery blue skin at the children’s antics, deciding on unequivocal joy and love rather than the possibility it could all end.
Tick’s hearty laugh pulls her from her thoughts as the roan breaks away to go referee the play-fight. She is glad of Ryan’s shoulder against her own; doesn’t mind the quiet existence they’ve eked out for themselves amongst the places they’ve dwelt and now, amongst the wildflowers and grasses. It tips her heart over with a heavy peace and fulfillment that keeps her grounded there amongst them. She’s happy about that, knowing a contentment she thought she’d never really know.
Keeper is good at communicating that contentment to him with a loving nibble along his skin. She loved him regardless of his shape, having been non-communicative companions for a long time before this. Words never seemed much like something the two of them needed between them. He knew without a doubt that she loved him and this life they’d built for themselves with Tick and the children. Just as he knew that sometimes, she had to let the bear out and sometimes, she had to be Keeper who runs away in the dark looking for adventure.
What they had worked and that was all that mattered to her. Then like the wind, with a kiss, he’s gone to give some help to the tumultuous children and she looks on, still content as ever as the sounds of their family reaches her ears. She liked the idea of the scavenger hunt and anticipated what the children would find and bring back to them. Of course, she could guess at some of the reasoning behind the suggestion - to give the adults all a break and she chortled aloud to herself, tucked back in the wildflowers and grass.
She was thinking of another kind of tussle; or letting the bear out for a good honey hunt or salmon catching. Then again… she was distracted by the sight of her beloved family with their skins shining in the light of the summer sun.
@[Tickaani] @[Ryan] timing? What is this thing you speak of?!
