[open] they say nothing good happens here when midnight rolls around; any

[Malik]

Malik watches Raum as he approaches the entity. The young shifter’s eyes are wide and wary, and a soft gasp of astonishment rises at the way the younger boy rounds on the statue and begins to attack it. Surely that’s not good, he thinks, though no one has ever told him not to kick the entities.

He’s frowning, about to say something about caution, when Raum screams. The sound of his voice is impossibly loud, carrying across the wide clear lake and echoing off the stony mountains. He wants to shush the other boy, but it’s clear that the colt is in pain, and from the coppery smell of blood probably quite a bit of it.

Malik’s heart is pounding, rattling about his chest. He looks between the statue and Raum crumpled beside it, his bicolored eyes wide with fear. The black shifter dislikes pain but is accustomed to it. There are times his father forgets to erase his memories or his mother to tell a convincing lie or otherwise hide from the child what the pair of them truly are.

‘Where’ - the word startles Malik, the freeze of his reaction rattling apart until he can cautiously step closer to his buckskin companion. Where? Where will they steal someone from?

He’d not actually given that much thought.

The striped colt knows little of the world outside his mountainous home. He knows the names of places, and a generalish sense of where they all are. But as far as he knows, he has never left Hyaline. (Those memories his father had managed to permanently steal away, and nothing of his early childhood in Tephra remains)

“Loess” He says, and then nods for emphasis. He’s not ever been there, but it sounds like a good plan. “Do you know how to get there?”

@Raum*

[Raum*]

His red eyes flick back and remain pinned to Starlace's smug statue as he shakily finds his feet again. The pain is something he almost cannot bear but he sneers and hisses and stands anyway, stubborn, furious. The pieces of them shift strangely and a shudder runs through his feathers, his stomach flip-flopping, and the way the pieces of the once-whole shell of his hooves move apart to spread beneath his weight makes him stumble when he tries to step forward again.

"Loess." He's nodding, still growling with the pain of his newly cloven hooves, but the screaming has ended. The word rumbles nearly under his breath. Yes. Loess. He does not know much about the kingdom itself except for the fire that killed his mother's friend, like Malik he has never been there before, but he has a rough idea of where it lies from Popinjay's stories.

"Cross the river at the Mountain and go until the trees stop." His voice is fading into a whimper that he swallows thickly, "That's Loess."

The pain settles into a throbbing hum vibrating up his legs and he casts around in the shadows for something to focus his attention away. There in the darkness, the images of their future play on, futures where they are successful, and ones where they are not, and the horses that they may run into there. The buckskin frowns, twisting his face up in an attempt to understand the possibilities laid before them but he's not used to linking the intricacies together. Everything seems as apt to fly to bits as to not. The only futures where they ever succeed show them leaving now. Immediately. The searing ache in the bones of his feet makes him pause and wince. There's no way he can walk that far.

"We could get there if we flew," he mumbles softly, more to himself, because he does not have wings and he does not know if Malik can take a shape that has them, but he sifts deeper into the shadow theater and finds it. There. There are futures where they fly, too. But how?

"Can you fly?" He asks, suddenly, pained expression brightening slightly, "I think... maybe I can fly too..."

But how? He's never done that before.

Raum

in every bird a black thought

@ Malik

Please tag ratty or Raum* (<--with the asterisk) in threads!

[Malik]

Raum knows how to get to Loess, and Malik nods with understanding at the direction. Down to the Mountain (that’s easy enough), across the river (so simple), and walk until the trees end (how far could that possibly be?). They could be back by dawn, Malik thinks with growing excitement. And wouldn’t that be a story to tell his parents, how he’d organized a raid and come back with captives.

Let’s go, he begins to say, only to close his dark mouth as he sees Raum’s face.

The other colt is lost in concentration, and there is a brightness to his eyes that Malik recognizes. He is Seeing, like one does in the fiery tree, or his father does, or the Fortune Tellers and Scryers. Malik hadn’t realized his companion has this skill, and is rather impressed without even knowing what it is that Raum is looking at.

He nods at the boy’s quiet musings, the motion growing firmer and more exaggerated when Raum asks if he can fly.

“Yes!” He says, becoming in a flash of iridescence a winged falcon instead of a colt. This is his quickest shift, and he wonders what else (other than Seeing) that his buckskin companion might be hiding beneath his feathers. Invisible wings, perhaps? The ability to become a great bird like his mother?

“Come on!” He cries, taking off in a great flapping of wings. It takes a moment to gain any height, having started so low to the earth, but once he does he circles and calls down to the other colt: “C’mon Raum! We’re wasting moonlight!”

In the distance, the black griffon finds a perch beside an osprey, and four blue eyes look down as Gale emerges yawning from a high mountain cave. He’s responsible for the boy tonight, and letting him wander off into enemy territory alone is unlikely to result in the type of fight with Mazikeen he most enjoys.

@Raum*