"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
The black sand of the beach is perfect for landing, and Malik touches down not far from where he had arrived on his first visit to the Silver Cove. This time, there is no piebald stallion waiting to greet him, and this time, he is not alone. A griffin lands beside him, the creature’s iridescent black feathers a perfect match for Malik’s.
The pegasus folds his glowing wings, and as he does they disappear into his sides, leaving only a mantle of shiny black feathers across his withers. The iridescent stripes of his black hide glow faintly, outshone by the bright light that emanates from Malik’s left horn. The lower tine had been damaged, and the glowing core exposed. It makes him nearly impossible to miss, and so he most often shifts it to something less brilliant like the tines of an elk or the spiral ram’s horn that he dons now, the right horn retaining its tined shape.
Beside him the griffon stretches out the long claws of its dark feet, then looks up at the black stallion curiously.
They’re here today to find something of the Cove’s silver deer, and his companion has already cautioned Malik. They can find an antler, the griffon had suggested, something simple. Malik had acquiesced at the time, and even now means to keep to the plan. Perhaps he can even find someone who lives here, someone who might tell him where to look to find something for the fairies.
He lifts his bi-colored gaze, searching for someone, or perhaps a trail that will take him to a more populated part of the land.
Hyaline had begun to feel too small for her. She had been quiet as a child, preferring to keep to herself, save for the companionship of her twin sister, and for a long time she had been content roaming the mountainous home she had been born into. But as she grew older, as the unmistakable need to hunt drove her further from her home each day, she found that the mountains did not call to her as they once had. She always returned, of course, though sometimes days or even weeks passed before she did. Her mother had tried to reassure her that it was fine, that she did not expect her to root herself there without first finding who she was meant to be, but there is still a certain kind of guilt that she cannot shake when she leaves.
The easiest way she has found to ease this uncomfortable feeling is to hunt, perhaps not the best coping mechanism inherited from her father, but the only one that she has.
Currently, though, she is not in her panther form. After tracking a deer along Hyaline’s eastern range she had found herself distracted by Silver Cove’s oddly colored grass and its black sand. She wasn’t too terribly familiar with this place, usually preferring mountains and forests, but she supposes there is something to be said for finding other distractions that don’t involve bloodshed.
Her mother would be proud, she is sure of it.
When her rose-gold eyes settle on the shape of the stallion in the distance she comes to a stop, angling her head in curiosity and contemplation. She thinks she has seen him before, in Hyaline, but cannot say for sure since she had so often chosen solitude over interacting. She approaches anyway, the faint sunlight catching the rose-gold rosettes that rise from the velvet-black of her skin, far more noticeable now than they had been when she was younger. It was a peculiar phenomenon, the way with every passing month the rose-gold rosettes that she sported in her panther form began to linger even on her equine coat, where they now remained permanently.
“Hello,” she greets him—and his companion, her gaze lingering on him inquisitively perhaps a heartbeat too long. “Are you lost?” She asks him, as if she has any more right to be here than he does.
The griffon spots her first, but a moment later Malik’s eyes turn toward the stranger coming down the beach. Her pace is unhurried, and Malik finds himself releasing a quiet breath. He’d not expected to be accosted, yet remains ever on edge, and the slow pace and relaxed posture of the woman approaching him does much to set him at ease. He still watches her carefully, his unmatched eyes flicking across her in blue and orange darts, unperturbed by her equal inspection.
She has a look about her, as though he’s seen bits of her face on others. That’s a common occurrence in Hyaline, where sprawling families cluster in the valleys and around the lake, and most everyone is Malik’s family - or family to one of his relatives. Not to mention the rosettes that decorate her sides, which the curious stallion sees are an unfamiliar but intriguing shade of pinkish gold. Does she have another shape, he wonders, or are her markings a reminder of what she does not have?
This line of thought leads him back to his quest, and the silver deer that he seeks, so he is smiling both in greeting and anticipation by the time Iliana greets him.
“No,” he says quickly, just after the griffon nods his head in acknowledgement and then glances away again. “I’m here to find a silver deer.” The griffon shifts its weight, settling back on his hindquarters, and Malik amends: “Or an antler from a deer. A part of a deer anyway. It’s for a quest. Do you know where they are, the deer? Could you show me?”
He’s speaking rapidly, the words spilling out in a flood, and his awareness of that only seemed to make them come all the faster. “”I’m Malik, from Hyaline. Are you? From Hyaline, I mean. You look like you might be but I don’t think we’ve met.
One of the first things she notices about the young stallion—Malik, he introduces himself as—is that he talks a lot.
For one as introverted as Iliana it would be easy to assume that she found this irritating, but in reality, she preferred it this way. It was appreciated when she did not have to make a concentrated effort to keep conversation flowing, since if it were left up to her it would likely come to a screeching halt nearly every time. She didn’t really see the point in small talk, and it is another point in Malik’s favor that he had almost immediately launched into the very heart of why he was in Silver Cove.
She soaks in his river of words with an almost unblinking stare—which he might interpret as being rude, but really it’s just how her face looks sometimes—as she waits for a pause to signal when it would be her turn. When it finally comes there is at last an amused smile that turns up the corner of her dark lips, her rose-gold eyes seeming to light from within as she takes a moment to better survey him. “Well Malik from Hyaline, that was….a lot.” She follows this with a short laugh, but already she can feel herself beginning to relax. “My name is Iliana, and yes, I was born in Hyaline. I thought you looked familiar, but I tend to keep to myself. Most of my family does, honestly.” She knew that at one point in time both of her parents had been in the thick of Beqanna’s politics, but it was so long ago the kingdoms they had led didn’t even exist anymore.
She only knew this version of Atrox and Ryatah; the ones that were more interested in each other than anything else happening in Hyaline or the rest of Beqanna.
“You were sent on a quest to find deer parts?” she asks him a bit dubiously, circling back to what he had said earlier about needing to find a silver deer. “I could probably help you track one,” she says, perhaps a bit too nonchalantly—he doesn’t need to know immediately just exactly how good she is at tracking deer. “But, I mean….what’s in it for me?” She looks at him with an angled head, expectant, even though she intends to help him regardless of his answer.
Had he been raised by Gale and not something wearing Gale’s body, Malik would have found nothing unfamiliar about Iliana’s long and unblinking stare. But he had not, and the stasis in her expression does not aid the anxiety that has him babbling so.
When he is finally able to staunch the flow of words, there is a pause that feels infinite. She is rethinking her lack of hostility, he suspects; he has managed to do something to upset her. But then her still faces blossoms instead into a brilliant smile, and Malik feels for the second time in their short acquaintance the joyous rush of relief.
He’s smiling now too, a small shy thing while he shakes his head and wishes away the bashful embarrassment that glows on his dark cheeks as she teases him. He black stallion shrugs his feathered shoulders in acknowledgement of her assessment (that had been a lot), but he doesn’t look up just yet.
But when Iliana confirms that yes, she is from Hyaline, Malik’s bicolored eyes finally rise to meet hers at this, bright and delighted by this information as well as his own correct supposition. She’s kept to herself, she says, and Malik who has done much the same, nods in accord.
“You were sent on a quest to find deer parts?”
It sounds ridiculous when she says it like that, and Malik is laughing as he answers: “No, no. I have to find things I can’t shift into. Like a silver deer.” That there are other things he can shift into is unspoken, and he is so accustomed to others doing the same that he finds nothing amiss with Iliana’s mention of tracking. Instead, he can feel his heart quicken at this rapid acceleration of his hunt for a deer (antler), and without thinking he leans nearer in anticipation.
The ‘but’ is like a sudden cold swell in the ocean, unexpected and disconcerting, and Malik frowns immediately. Had he been too quick, too eager? Had he somehow upset her or was this sort of exchange typical? His prior quest-driven hunts had been with those as eager as he was, packmates for whom the thrill of the chase was all the recompense necessary.
Uncertain again, Malik is equally unwilling to allow too much silence to build between them even if he’s no idea what to suggest. “My…undying gratitude?” He says with slow caution, and then more hopefully when his eyes light upon his companion now languidly grooming his wings: “Or a griffn?”
His explanation for why he is searching for the silver deer answers her original question, but also raises new ones. A frown crosses her face as she considers the implication that by searching for things he can’t shift into it must mean there are other things he can—the plural being what she is hung up on. “So you can shift into more than one thing?” There is a small flare of jealousy at the thought of this, but it is quickly extinguished when she cannot think of anything else she would rather shift into besides a panther. It is a part of her just as much as her own flesh, blood, and bone, an innate piece that makes it difficult to fathom being anything else.
But in the wake of the jealousy there is a flicker of insecurity, a remnant of the same inadequacy she had felt as a child when she could not keep herself from making comparisons between herself and her angel mother and twin sister. She wonders if he will think less of her knowing she can only shift into one thing, but she is no longer that same little girl that would let something like this gnaw away at her. Living a life of mostly solitude has allowed her to stop caring what others think of her—real or fabricated by her own worries. “I can shift into a panther,” she tells him, before adding with an amused smile, “but it’s the only party trick I have, I’m afraid.”
His own frown almost makes her feel guilty about her earlier teasing, forgetting that not everyone can read the undertones of her dry way of speaking. There is a side of her that is more light-hearted, but the sarcasm always seems to overpower it, especially in the company of strangers. “As much as I’ve always wanted a bird-lion, I think your undying gratitude should be enough,” she says, and then she sheds her equine form for the panther one that had become just as familiar to her. The faint, rose-gold rosettes remain on her black pelt, her feline eyes a matching color—the two indicators that seemed to set her apart from the others in her family. She flexes her claws against the black sand of the beach, her gaze scanning away from the ocean and towards the center of the territory. “The deer are usually in the grasslands, and sometimes at the base of the mountain range that would lead to Hyaline. I suppose we start walking and see what we find.”
She seems surprised that he can take multiple shapes, and Malik begins to learn that shifting is not as common a gift in Beqanna as it is in Hyaline, or at least amongst those living in Silver Cove.
“Into a lot of animals,” he answers, “but some better than others. Not into anything magical though, not like the rest of my family.” He sounds nonchalant, and there is no indication in his smooth tone that suggests he has felt the same jealousy as Iliana. His own time in solitude have not taught him the same lessons, and instead has only sharpened his covetous edges.
But she can shift, Iliana confirms, and the smile that might have fallen away remains instead. A panther, she says, a predator, and he wonders if perhaps she might hunt the deer as well as lead him to them. She’s willing to accept his gratitude at least, and Malik ignores the disappointment of the griffin in the back of his mind as he so often does.
Instead he watches as her golden-spotted figure transforms from mare to panther, and then turns his gaze where she indicates, as though he might see deer from the dark beach.
“That sounds like a good plan to me.” He says. Malik shifts then as well, into one of his more practiced shapes, that of a Siberian Tiger, his thick coat still the same iridescent black he had been as a horse. He keeps pace with Iliana, following her lead as they head toward the meadow. As they go, he keeps his eyes on the ground, scanning the earth in search of anything that might aid his hunt. A hoofprint, perhaps, or even an antler itself.
Malik
