[open] the night that i walked

[bolder]

The more time that Bolder spends in Hyaline, the more time he spends giving himself over to instinct.

He spends time as a russet-colored wolf, roaming the woods and practicing his tracking skills. He takes to the sky as a red-tail hawk and learns to see the world through avian eyes. With the warmer weather, he even slips to the lake and practices the shape that his Uncle Gale had shown him, and scours the murky water as an Orca.

Bolder knows that eventually, he should find his mother and siblings.

And he contemplates it as a squirrel, as he leaps from branch to branch through the Hyaline trees.

But then his father's face - full of disgust and Northern distrust - would sear into his memories and Bolder would hesitate. What would the Freyr say if he knew his son could assume not one shape, but multiple ones? That if there was one form that didn't suit him, Bolder would take another one?

As he sheds the shape of a red-tailed squirrel, Bolder becomes a fox and slips into the shadows of the mountains that surrounded Hyaline. He wouldn't go far but the young shapeshifter considered that there might be a chance to see his siblings in the Common Lands. Perhaps if they saw Bolder doing well, they could tell their Mother and nobody (his father) had to come to bring him back to Taiga.

A meeting that he was coming to dread, because Bolder already knew he wouldn't be returning to the Northern Forest. So long as his Aunt and Uncle permitted him, the winged adolescent was determined to make a place for himself in the Pack; a group of horses who could shift. The Mountain looms behind the svelte fox as he crosses into the Meadow and Bolder - feeling the old Northern prejudices pressing against him - shifted behind a copse of trees back into a horse.

When he steps out into the open, he is chestnut and winged. His gold stripes gleamed in the sunlight and the young stallion shook his head, trying to shake away his troubling thoughts. Not today, not when he was being given the chance to spread his proverbial wings.

PSA: this isn't an escape attempt - bolder just wanted to come out and play