He peeks around her legs.
For a moment, it scares him. The stillness of it; its features held so queerly inert that it looks almost painful. Almost unreal. And nothing he has ever seen has been made of such dark and smooth stuff. So it mustn't be real at all. Or not real like mother is real, or like he is real. Maybe real like the rocks are real or the trees are real. Breathless, cold things.
He wants to scare it back. To nudge it with the nubs of his incoming horns to test the weird flesh.
He makes to ask mother what it is and if he can touch it, but the quiet and grim way her lips are set straight hushes him.
Thunder cracks and lightning licks the sky.
Bright light glints across that strange thing and he can see the way its face (it has one) and body (one of those, too) are like his and like mother’s. More like mother’s—bigger. Sea spray hisses and bites at him through the air, sending a shiver down his shoulder. He flinches away, backing from the froth of salt and seaweed that coughs up on the smooth and perilously slick rocks.
When mother calls him away, he is glad.
“Okay, mum.”
He wants to be away from that thing and from the edge of the ocean.
(But he glances over his shoulder once, wondering what it might be like to be stuck like that forever.)
He moves slowly. His feet are made for this, split in two and dexterous. But heneeds to be extra careful, he has learned, because things are always trying to trip him. Mischievous things. Things he cannot see or hear, but he will find, one day. And he’ll make them pay. Mother will make them pay. He is better in the air. No way to get caught up in their tricksy snares up there.
He pushes off, flapping hard once or twice to gain altitude against the turbulence of the storm. He follows her, keenly watching the fluid movement of her own flight and mimicking it. She is good at this.
When she angles down his gut clenches and he squints to see if he can see them. Not the gather of things like him and mother (he can see them just fine), but the impish little devils. Behind the rocks, he thinks, part admiration for their game and part irritation. When mother lands gracefully, he lands only slightly less so, splaying his legs out so each two-toed hoof lands as square as they can, pumping his wings so the ground comes up under him slowly.
He sucks in breath, looking for a moment to mother and smiling, but she is talking to the others so he look to them, too.
With a serious face.
—sending sidelong glances at the girl tumbling towards the wash of dark water.
FALK
Pollock x Syntyche
For a moment, it scares him. The stillness of it; its features held so queerly inert that it looks almost painful. Almost unreal. And nothing he has ever seen has been made of such dark and smooth stuff. So it mustn't be real at all. Or not real like mother is real, or like he is real. Maybe real like the rocks are real or the trees are real. Breathless, cold things.
He wants to scare it back. To nudge it with the nubs of his incoming horns to test the weird flesh.
He makes to ask mother what it is and if he can touch it, but the quiet and grim way her lips are set straight hushes him.
Thunder cracks and lightning licks the sky.
Bright light glints across that strange thing and he can see the way its face (it has one) and body (one of those, too) are like his and like mother’s. More like mother’s—bigger. Sea spray hisses and bites at him through the air, sending a shiver down his shoulder. He flinches away, backing from the froth of salt and seaweed that coughs up on the smooth and perilously slick rocks.
When mother calls him away, he is glad.
“Okay, mum.”
He wants to be away from that thing and from the edge of the ocean.
(But he glances over his shoulder once, wondering what it might be like to be stuck like that forever.)
He moves slowly. His feet are made for this, split in two and dexterous. But heneeds to be extra careful, he has learned, because things are always trying to trip him. Mischievous things. Things he cannot see or hear, but he will find, one day. And he’ll make them pay. Mother will make them pay. He is better in the air. No way to get caught up in their tricksy snares up there.
He pushes off, flapping hard once or twice to gain altitude against the turbulence of the storm. He follows her, keenly watching the fluid movement of her own flight and mimicking it. She is good at this.
When she angles down his gut clenches and he squints to see if he can see them. Not the gather of things like him and mother (he can see them just fine), but the impish little devils. Behind the rocks, he thinks, part admiration for their game and part irritation. When mother lands gracefully, he lands only slightly less so, splaying his legs out so each two-toed hoof lands as square as they can, pumping his wings so the ground comes up under him slowly.
He sucks in breath, looking for a moment to mother and smiling, but she is talking to the others so he look to them, too.
With a serious face.
—sending sidelong glances at the girl tumbling towards the wash of dark water.
Pollock x Syntyche
![[Image: HzeOUhk.png]](http://i.imgur.com/HzeOUhk.png)