"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
They leave their foe behind them, ready to stink another day, but this day has already done such wonders for Mazikeen’s mood. The bitterness is still there, but it’s shrunk to a pit in her stomach and as she swerves and soars through trees and across the grass to the lake with Barrow following her - she feels so light. The weight of everything falls away a little more with each beat of her wings. He calls up to her as they come to the shore. Without hesitation she angles and dives into the water the same time as he bounds into it - wings flared to catch her and she makes a bigger splash than necessary.
It’s only a heartbeat where she disappears beneath the surface. With her body spread she floats back up as a wet, bedraggled skunk - bright orange eyes laughing out of a dark face before she shifts again and she’s back to being the white dog she had been moments ago.
She splashes around a little before standing where the water comes up to her canine shoulder and she moves slightly with current as it rolls in and out, but she’s not paying attention to that any more than the chill of the water. She’s getting her first good look at Barrow-the-dog and it feels as though she cannot shake the smile on her face for anything. “I think that was the same skunk I pissed off when we first moved here. The stink will wear off soon.” That had been one of her mistakes when she had first explored around, and it was a lesson she occasionally tested - just to see how close she could get and in what form. So far, though, she hadn’t managed to resist the temptation of trying to tug on the skunk’s striped tail and escape without a hint of stink.
“Have you been able to shapeshift this whole time??” She knows that can’t be the case, knows this must be new, and the tone of her voice is teasing.
