"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
Tickaani. An old-tongue word for Wolf, typically masculine. However, she figured it suited her fine. Her frame was sturdy, yet full of self assured grace. Her locks flowed to middle length, black as a moonless night. The rest of her faded to blue ash, dappled generously with dark anti-stars. A playful comet streaked from star to nose, as brilliantly white as you could wish. Yes, Wolf suited her fine. She raised her nose to the sweet air of the meadow she had come upon. No tragedy dogged her steps. Indeed, she had traveled these last six summers in relative comfort. Born in the bright heat of summer, she was first raised by a small band comprising of her Dam and two aunts.
She smiled softly at the recollection. Tick missed them yet, but she knew her life would not end in that grassy haven they presided over. She had roamed for cycles, dipping down here and there as opportunity offered warm shelter, food and conversation. There was a stag she may have loved, once, but the Fates saw fit to draw him away. She was jealous then, of the pretty brown lass who caught his eye. Now though, she was thankful. Her days of wandering had only just began then. Now as her stony hooves vanished in deep clover, she knew even more thankfulness. What a sacrifice would that have been? To trade a life of wondrous freedom and venture for one male, and a likely litter of offspring. No, she knew better than to spend life as a contented broodmare. There was sweet water to drink still. Great races to run. Lovers to engage. She was by no means ready to rest.
As a clear, cool breeze brought the rich scent of autumn to her, she inhaled. This was a place Tickaani might find adventure. She sighed a heavy breath, heady with anticipation. There were others here. Her tail thrashed languidly, strands weaving subtle patterns as they fell.
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory
Something always draws them home.
He crosses the mountains in panther form, wide paws and lithe tail making the cliffs more manageable than slippery hooves on rock. But he sheds the short tawny coat of his big cat form as he enters the Field, because it wouldn’t do to get attacked here by some newcomer that has no idea of the true nature of so many of Beqanna’s residents. Not that his natural form is any better – tawny fur becomes a dappled buckskin which is fine enough, but the young stallion’s points are purple, and his eyes a shade of green uncommon in the natural equine.
Still, less startling to the restless natives than a mountain lion.
Ryan doesn’t return to Hyaline, the Kingdom he had once chosen for himself as a foal. Perhaps he would, eventually, but he has no real desire to face down any familiar – and potentially disappointed – faces right away. Who knows if Hyaline even exists in the form it did when he left?
The Kingdom his mother talks about all the time is gone forever, after all, the whims of their strange deities sweeping it away, and perhaps the Kingdoms of his childhood are gone in the same fashion as what should have been his birthright. Life would have been so easy, the boy is quite sure, if he had been born a prince of the Dazzling Waterfalls as Nairne so often insisted he would have been.
But he doesn’t even have the memories of the place she always longed for – only his own imaginings from her many stories. He’s returned her to her own mother outworld, where she and grandmother can reminisce about their lost home until they pass on, and then probably even in the next world knowing his matriarchal relatives. Nothing will ever be as important to them as their lost home – not even Ryan. But the outworld is not his home, and so to home he has returned.
The buckskin-and-purple stallion nearly walks into the mare, because he isn’t paying attention. Stuttering to a halt he plants all four feet, blinking a moment, and then clears his throat and tries to sound apologetic. Whatever that is supposed to sound like. “Uh…sorry. Wasn’t watching where I was going.” A strained smile, one that doesn’t yet reach his eyes. “I’m Ryan. Are you here looking for a home, or offering one?” He knows the Field, the place people go to find homes, but it never even occurs to him that she might be new to Beqanna entirely.
She heard him coming. More suddenly than expected, but perhaps it was a trick of the meadow's acoustics. Soft steps, unhurried. No lumbering gait here. She did not know what to expect in this newcomer. A faint scent of cat on the breeze caught her off guard, setting her on edge. That was never a good sign.
Tickaani lifted her head, and scanned the tree line. There was no glint of reflective eyes, no low creeping sinuous body. Of course, that was no proof of safety with a cat. They were the silent killers, the evening stalkers. She did not worry so much for herself. She was healthy and hearty and could put up a fight. It was the young and the frail old who were most at risk.
Still. The evening was quiet, and the only motion she could see was the breeze-rippled grass and the line figure of a horse, walking in her general direction. The late light seemed to be playing tricks on her eyes. Or perhaps he'd wandered through a late-season blackberry patch. His buckskin pelt was richly tinted by evening light, and the dark points of his muzzle and legs gleamed with an almost violet tint. How strange.
The cat scent hadn't dissipated, yet she moved her worry to the back of her mind. Clearly, he was deep in thought, moving as if she wasn't there. It would be a color of funny if he really did run into her. She held her ground, and waited to see just how long it would take for him to see her, because his trajectory had not shifted.
He was practically on top of her when he finally did stop, looking baffled to see her standing there. She looked him over as he apologized for the near-impact. To her surprise, he really was tan and purple. She wasn't sure if that was his birth-given color, or something he had done to himself, but it was an unusual sight either way. And then there were his eyes. An unearthly shade of green, they completed the effect of what seemed to be an only somewhat natural being.
He introduced himself as Ryan, and asked her purpose in being there. She dipped her head, accepting his apology. In answer to him, she replied.
"Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ryan. My name is Tickaani. As to my purpose here..." She gazed around her, appraising the area. "I haven't really decided yet. It seems to be a lovely area. Do you live here?" She asked, her tone light. There were about twenty other things she was wondering, but there'd be time enough to sort those out.
Keeper cannot shake the itch beneath her skin that makes her cross two rivers and walk long miles to come back to a place she’s only been to once. Once, when she met someone of great importance to her despite the fact that they’ve known each other for a few short months. That itch though, might be nothing more than restlessness that drives her forth or it could be the pursuit of purpose… usually Keeper goes off in search of things like mushrooms, moonlight, and secrets.
She looks for neither at the moment, her nose to the leaves in rich burnt colors as she sniffs out a plethora of scents and ew, mice droppings. Keeper jerks her head up with a snort, glad she hadn’t quite inhaled a rodent pellet though she came close to it. Mice were adorable little creatures when not scampering around underfoot in little micely terror, but she also wasn’t keen on smelling their excrement either but it seemed the wee things had been playing in the leaves as of late.
It just so happens that in the aftermath of her blowing hard air out of her nostrils, she happens to look about the field with her glossy black eyes and notice a stallion nearly walk right into a mare. Keeper watches as they begin to engage one another in conversation and she slides a step further towards them, before dropping her nose to the leaves again. The rich reds and oranges began to fly upwards and drift out as she blew into the dry musty piles of them to amuse herself. But the scent of cat caught her attention, she hadn’t noticed it before.
She flings her head up and scouts the field for a moment more than is necessary. Her nostrils flutter and flare, and her head eventually swings back in the stallion and mare’s direction - it’s coming from there, faint and even tolerable enough, she supposes, but one of them has either had a tussle with a cat or… is a shifter. Keeper has heard tell of them but never laid her own eyes upon one. Now her curiosity is sufficiently roused as the dunskin ambles over to the pair of them, buckskin and blue roan.
(His points are a gentler shade of purple than her friend’s rich deep eyes; Magnificent is never far from her thoughts. Keeper might have a girl crush on her.)
“Hello, sorry to interrupt but I smelled a cat and couldn’t help but overhear that you’re both new or newly returned here?” She blathers on with a smile on her face until realizing that she hasn’t introduced herself. Keeper was never the best at manners - she could discern a birch from an aspen or coax a mouse from a hole, but half the time, she just never concerned herself with well, herself. “I’m Keeper,” she murmurs, by way of introduction.
Her nose offers itself to each of them as she blows out breath after breath and breathes them in, instinct knows better than Keeper’s own brain does. In doing so, she can isolate the cat-smell to the stallion and she pins her black gaze on him. “You smell like cat.” It’s not an accusation - just a statement. She doesn’t forget the blue roan though and looks back at her, smiling - just smiling.
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory
The young stallion doesn’t realize he smells like his feline alter-ego, mostly because he has always smelled like that. You don’t really smell yourself, after all, and mother never said anything. Mothers, after all, tend to overlook minor flaws in their offspring. He nods at her name, considers her words before shaping his own response carefully, since he doesn’t really know what he wants either. “I was born here. Well, around here,” he gestures vaguely towards the Forest with his purple-tipped muzzle, because that was really where Nairne and her son had spent most of their time, in the shadows, looking for his father. “I briefly took up residence in a Kingdom here but I’ve been traveling for a while, just came back into the area.”
A while is so generous for a boy still not yet three, but he doesn’t want to appear like a child so he keeps his tone moderated and his words chosen carefully. He is paying more attention to their surroundings now and offers the gold-and-dark mare who approaches a nod as well, and then politely exchanges scents, the briefest of touches nose-to-nose, because Nairne raised him to be polite if nothing else. He adds her name to his mental roster and notes that she smells like the place he had once thought to live. Perhaps he will return their after all. Fate does have a way of being circular.
He is lost in his thoughts a little again, thinking she will offers some invitation or marketing spiel so he is quite startled when she turns back to him and mentions that he smells like a cat. For a moment the boy only blinks back at her, uncertain what to say, but then he takes a careful step back from them, out of range, because in times of uncertainty caution prevails. She doesn’t sound threatening but he doesn’t really want to risk anything. “I guess I should,” Ryan offers after a long, terse silence, forming each word very slowly. “I’m a shapeshifter, and I was travelling in my other form.”
Tickaani noted the dunskin mare's abstract approach as she conversed with Ryan. Their speech paused as the newcomer meandered towards them, a dreamy look on her visage. At last, she seemed to come to earth and addressed the purple-tinted lad and herself.
"Hello Keeper. My name is Tickaani, and this is Ryan. We were just getting acquainted. These lands are new to me, but familiar to him." She replied, glancing to confirm her statement with Ryan.
Her ears flickered as the subject of the strange cat scent came up. She had been subconsciously aware that the odor was emanating from the young male, but had not given it much thought since they'd been talking. She was just opening her mouth to add her observances to the conversation when Ryan made his declaration. She couldn't help herself. Instead of words, a barking laugh echoed from her chest.
"A shape-shifter?! You're having us on." She insisted "You're a horse, anyone can see that. Maybe a little oddly colored, but if I'm a bit blue, I don't see why you couldn't be as purple as summer berries. I'll bet you can also fly, right? Or breathe under the sea!" She dissolved into a fit of giggles at the ridiculous thought. Just her luck the first horse she'd meet in this land would be off his head.
10-20-2017, 10:49 AM (This post was last modified: 10-20-2017, 10:50 AM by keeper.)
Keeper-
Keeper meant no offense to him!
He takes a careful cautious step back from both of them and her heart goes out to him, rising up in the black shine of her eyes as she stretches her nose out to him and blows out a calming breath. “I have a cousin that can turn into a coyote, so I’m used to it. Just took me by surprise is all.” She doesn’t admit that she had been sniffing through leaves and mice droppings when she happened upon the cat-scent. It had been faint and sort of whispery, raising all sorts of instinctual alarms but she knew better than to freak out in this land - many of them wore other skins and shapes beside their own horse-ones.
“Bet it was quicker traveling that way…” she muses, imagining how it might be to wear the skin of a deer and go leaping through the woods. Deer were her favorite creature, but she was an unkempt clumsy little mare. Tickaani identifies herself as the blue roan and Ryan as the purple-pointed buckskin stallion, and tells Keeper that she is new and he is not so new. Then the blue roan barks out a laugh of disbelief and the dunskin tilts her head to the side, her smile is gentle as she schools the mare on this place. “He might be able to fly or breathe underwater and he might not, but there are others here who can and do just that!”
Tickaani’s giggles are pleasant to her ear but still full of disbelief and she gives Ryan a sympathetic look. “You might have to show her to make her understand better.” Keeper is intrigued enough to want to see him shift to but then her brain gets the better of her. “Then again, that might scare the life right out of her.” She chuckles just a little, moving closer between the two of them until her shoulder brushes Ryan’s companionably and her nose drifts across the blue slope of Tickaani’s neck. Keeper is a creature of touch and it says more than most words ever can, both are tender assurances that she is there and staunch in her support.
It doesn’t occur to her to mention Hyaline at the moment.
Ryan is the center of attention now.
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory
He is expecting a hostile response, or at least a nervous one, but what he absolutely isn’t expecting is for Tickaani to start giggling like he isn’t deadly serious. Keeper’s response is more reassuring, as she reaches out to touch him again, her voice calming and still friendly. The touch she offers is soothing as well; he has lived many months amongst horses outside of Beqanna, and their focus on more touch and body language is second nature to him now, while the often hands-off approach of his native people is somewhat off-putting. He hesitantly offers her a smile, and then turns questioning green eyes towards Tickaani.
Whatever he sees there, it isn’t a threat. With Keeper so close to him anyway, her presence soothing and easy, he can’t see the blue roan mare attacking him; it’s not like she started spewing hateful or angry words when he made his admission, just disbelief. And he doesn't blame her; if he had not grown up here, this might be baffling to him as well. It is perhaps the hardest thing for newcomers to grasp, this menagerie of powers that the natives display.
He doesn’t want to be the center of their attention, but he senses that they won’t make any progress until this gets cleared up. Thankfully, he has something less scary that he can do instead. Something…fun. “I can show you something else,” Ryan offers quietly, leaning into Keeper’s offered shoulder for a bit of reassurance. “Less…practical, I guess, but it’s typical of folks around here.” And then he takes a breath, looks at Tickaani again for a moment of more intense observation, and then he simply matches her. The blue roan ripples across his gold and purple from ear tips to tail tip, his coat becoming a perfect mimicry of hers - only the green eyes remain to tell them apart.
“I could show you my panther, too, if you’d like.” He offers it slowly, head tilted, hesitant.
Tick's gale of laughter fades as she sees that not only is Ryan standing by his admission, but that Keeper also seems to be in on it. The gentle mare's breath on her shoulder is somewhat reassuring. In all her solitary travels, the herd-creature part of her never died. She still took solace from the nearness of others. Regardless, what they were talking about was a thing she knew to be patently impossible. Her ears tipped backwards as the other two briefly discussed how best to convince her of their truthfulness. At last, Ryan mentions a less practical demonstration? Oh, what in four hells could that possibly mean... She wondered, a bit nervously.
Before she could think of some polite excuse to leave and take her chances elsewhere, Ryan's intense gaze kept her silent. However, she couldn't hold back a startled snort at his quiet transformation. Deep purple and tan exchanged themselves for her own speckled roan. Now wearing a coat identical to her own, down to the last dapple, Tick had to focus on her breathing for a moment. She considered herself to be fairly strong-minded. Seeing herself mirrored so perfectly, with so little effort, though, that was testing her. A ringing had started in her ears, and truly, she was concerned with staying on her feet. Through the brain-clouding fuzziness, she heard him mention his panther form again.
"Oh. Oh no, I believe you. Please turn back, this really is unnerving..." She requested weakly. She heaved a few deep breaths, forcefully clearing the fog from her vision. Her brown eyes met his, which despite the transformation had held their eerie green hue. This was undoubtedly a new chapter in her roaming. A strange and slightly uncomfortable one, so far. She turned her attention to Keeper.
"Well then. So if a young buck like him can change his pelt and change his form, what can you do?" She asked, recovering from her shock. At this point she was more honestly curious, and dealing with a sinking realization. If even the youngest among these new horses could perform such unnatural feats, and was considered commonplace, she herself was at a serious disadvantage.
ooc: no html right now, wanted to get this up before work! <3
Keeper remains a bastion of calm between the two.
Ryan gives her a somewhat hesitant smile then leans into her offered shoulder as he mentions that he can do something less sensational than shifting into a cat. She’s all ears now, they’re pricked and forward in their attention as her eyes slide between the blue roan mare and him. Then he’s not buckskin and purple, but as blue a roan as Tickaani is and Keeper’s mouth gapes open for a moment before she remembers to shut it before any flies get in or something ridiculous falls out. She has a half-sister with green fur and black points but this is another thing entirely - he can change his color, how amazing is that? He gets another smile from her, one full of that same amazement that clouds her brain.
Tickaani’s snort of startlement clears the fog from her head and she looks at her, just as sympathetic as she had looked at Ryan moments earlier. It is never easy to learn that the inhabitants of this land seemed to have more to them than meets the eye. She’d not have believed it had her own father not had addax horns atop his head or brother the wings of a great snowy owl, or a sister that is green in color. These things seem to fantastical to believe but Keeper is quite familiar with them - too familiar, for all that she is every bit as ordinary as a blade of grass. But the blue roan seems to be having a mite more trouble with even this small demonstration and Keeper instinctively moves closer to her.
Her pale gold shoulder touches the speckled blue and her nose meanders up the mare’s neck even as Tickaani turns her attention to Keeper now. But the little mare just laughs and gives a sad shake of her head, “Absolutely nothing. I might even have believed I was a bit of a disappointment to my family if I did not know how much they loved me regardless of that fact.” Keeper laughs just a little to lighten the mood, she didn’t mind her ordinariness so much - there were other pursuits in this lifetime that kept her quite occupied with no time to mourn the fact that she had nothing half as grand as Ryan did, or her family.
“Not all of us here are like him. More than most are these days but there are still a good number of us that are just horses.” She huffs a few breaths into the dark mane tumbling down Tickaani’s neck until the hairs tickle her nose and she pulls back, stifling a sneeze that has been building after a few seconds of brief nuzzling. “Besides, he still has to eat grass just like us and drink water just like us. He’s just a bit more unique is all.” She flashes a smile at Ryan, still reassuring though she keeps closer to the blue roan whom she thinks needs just a bit more support at the moment since this is such a shock to her.
