[private] i've always had too much pride

[bolder]

Bolder is still young.

He is still learning. And he is still growing.

When Selaphiel looks away, Bolder looks within. The cracks on his skin breakthrough, and the pale color bleeds to his familiar copper tone. The glacial blue melts away, and the gold emerges again, striping his forelegs and hind ones. The white wings against his sides regain their speckling and their red henna hue. It takes a few moments of remembering who he is, but Bolder regains himself again.

That was his power, his craft. It had taken hours of lessons with Mazikeen and Gale, and the result had been Bolder's ability to shift with ease and confidence. And more than that, it came with the ability to be something more than just his equine shape.

"Have you gone to the Mountain yet?" he asks, aware that though his Uncle as well, he doesn't know that Carnage's blood runs in Selaphiel's veins. He doesn't know what an Archangel and Dark God might create. "Power can be found there. Mazikeen went herself," Bolder continues, reciting family history for this family member. Someday, when he is older and he is prepared, he will go himself.

When he is ready, when the sign that he is diligently waiting for finally comes.

The young shifter keeps talking, keeps speaking with the confidence that comes from knowing none of the sorrows that comes from living. He certainly doesn't understand it when he sees it on Selaphiel's face, though his upbringing in Taiga makes him want to ease it. "Perhaps you could cast it out there," he says, an attempt to turn the sadness in his Uncle's smile into something else. "Or maybe you could find it here."

Uncertainty begins to cloud his moon-marked face.

"Couldn't that be a purpose? To try again?"

@Selaphiel