Malik
10-31-2021, 10:18 AM
A chill gust of autumn wind brings with it a flurry of golden leaves, but Malik’s bicolored eyes do not turn to watch them in the near-darkness. Instead, his attention remains on his sister, and the tale she tells of an entire childhood that he does not remember.
How can that be? He remembers his childhood. He had grown up in the mountains of Hyaline, scaling cliffs and keeping clear of his parents, following Bolder and playing with Raum and Anath and Vital and the other foals. The name Wishbone isn’t one he knows, but he knows - just by the way Sickle looks at him - that he should.
He recalls the days that he would wake, expecting to be larger than he found himself. He’s always attributed it to strange dreams. Was it possible it was something more? Something magical?
He wishes he knew.
And then he does, seeing instead of Sickle, an image of the past. A brindle magician stands in the deep snow, a half-buried black leopard beside him. Something is happening, something Powerful, and Malik shivers. Light is pulled from the leopard and tossed into the stars, and into the hollow space that the light left behind flows the black shadows emanating from Gale.
Then the leopard grows smaller, younger, shrinking not much differently than the magic that Malik’s father had used on Ripley. Gale picks the mewling black-striped cub up, carrying it into a cave where Malik somehow knows his mother waits. The image Malik sees does not follow him into the darkness, but instead turns to where the light from Malik’s soul had been tossed.
The light has solidified into a single glowing orb that slowly drifts downward, drawn back toward the earth by the same genie that had granted her descendent’s wish for knowledge. It settles just outside the mouth of the cave, and when it does it has become an oblong black egg, one that cracks open to reveal a mewling iridescent griffin.
The image vanishes.
Malik has always known that his companion had hatched at his birth, and now he looks up to where the griffin had perched in the golden-leafed tree overhead. He has always called the creature Birdbrain, lamenting its refusal to speak to him, and has questioned where he had come from, and where his griffin parents were. That Birdbrain might be the embodied essence of the goodness that Malik’s father had taken from him after also stealing a year of his life had certainly never occurred to Malik as a possible origin for his companion.
He still does not recall that first year, the one that Sickle says that they had spent in Tephra. His father must have taken it from him.
Malik begins to nod.
He is sure she is telling the truth, even if he is not sure why. More than anything, Malik trusts his instincts, and they tell him that this young blue mare that he has no memory of at all, would not lie to him. She is his sister, and he knows that he would not lie to Myrna, and so Sickle would not lie to him.
“Dad’s not there anymore. He left, and Mom is...” Malik pauses, choosing his words carefully, “more laid back than she used to be.”
@Sickle
How can that be? He remembers his childhood. He had grown up in the mountains of Hyaline, scaling cliffs and keeping clear of his parents, following Bolder and playing with Raum and Anath and Vital and the other foals. The name Wishbone isn’t one he knows, but he knows - just by the way Sickle looks at him - that he should.
He recalls the days that he would wake, expecting to be larger than he found himself. He’s always attributed it to strange dreams. Was it possible it was something more? Something magical?
He wishes he knew.
And then he does, seeing instead of Sickle, an image of the past. A brindle magician stands in the deep snow, a half-buried black leopard beside him. Something is happening, something Powerful, and Malik shivers. Light is pulled from the leopard and tossed into the stars, and into the hollow space that the light left behind flows the black shadows emanating from Gale.
Then the leopard grows smaller, younger, shrinking not much differently than the magic that Malik’s father had used on Ripley. Gale picks the mewling black-striped cub up, carrying it into a cave where Malik somehow knows his mother waits. The image Malik sees does not follow him into the darkness, but instead turns to where the light from Malik’s soul had been tossed.
The light has solidified into a single glowing orb that slowly drifts downward, drawn back toward the earth by the same genie that had granted her descendent’s wish for knowledge. It settles just outside the mouth of the cave, and when it does it has become an oblong black egg, one that cracks open to reveal a mewling iridescent griffin.
The image vanishes.
Malik has always known that his companion had hatched at his birth, and now he looks up to where the griffin had perched in the golden-leafed tree overhead. He has always called the creature Birdbrain, lamenting its refusal to speak to him, and has questioned where he had come from, and where his griffin parents were. That Birdbrain might be the embodied essence of the goodness that Malik’s father had taken from him after also stealing a year of his life had certainly never occurred to Malik as a possible origin for his companion.
He still does not recall that first year, the one that Sickle says that they had spent in Tephra. His father must have taken it from him.
Malik begins to nod.
He is sure she is telling the truth, even if he is not sure why. More than anything, Malik trusts his instincts, and they tell him that this young blue mare that he has no memory of at all, would not lie to him. She is his sister, and he knows that he would not lie to Myrna, and so Sickle would not lie to him.
“Dad’s not there anymore. He left, and Mom is...” Malik pauses, choosing his words carefully, “more laid back than she used to be.”
@Sickle