The most laid-out plans were the ones that took months to perfect. There was an art to mimicry, a need for attention to detail and plenty of patience. It was easy to assume another form; just like snapping one’s fingers, you could trade a color or a marking in the blink of an eye. Shape was a little harder; three-dimensionally one must be familiar with the subject. Do the bones curve just so? Is this muscle more developed here, less developed there? Mannerisms came next; how do they walk, talk, eat? Do they sleep a certain way, own a certain smile or a hold fast to a permanent frown? Then acting - you must become the other individual so completely that you forget yourself.
And lastly, smoothing out the rough edges. Scars, a cow lick, the color of each hair in the mane and tail, the different layers of color that made the eye, how the teeth looked when exposed … you get the gist.
Wyrm’s rubbing down the last few edges now. “Solace …” He tries, peering at himself in the reflection of a stagnant pool. He clears his throat, adjusts the length and width of his vocals chords, tries again. “Solace …”
That one was perfect.
For a minute longer he considers the image peering back at him. Its likeness is of the Queen’s trusted childhood friend - a stallion by the name of ‘Smoak’ - and Wyrm is rather pleased with the result. He’s been watching them for a long time, after all. A very long time. He remembers how the two had gone to wait out a buffeting storm in one of Tephra’s caves, (how fortuitous that he’d come to look for Longclaw, and found those two instead) and how, after a spell of time thereafter, he’d heard of her coronation.
In his mind, that was opportunity.
It was almost impossible; Smoak’s discerning feature was his amor, cast of bone and unique in every way - except for the fact that this method of defense had been cultivated thousands of years before mammals ruled the earth. Heartfire’s visions, given to him as a boy and proved useful ever since, had revealed an extinct creature squat and thick, and most importantly, covered in bone armor.
They are not exactly the same, (only Smoaks could be deemed the original) but for looks and touch they do the job nearly as well as the real ones. “Hmmm.” He ponders aloud, lightening them by a shade or two until he feels they’re identical and then, he exhales before turning away.
In the solitude of his walk from the Riverlands to Hyaline, he forgets everything that he used to be. Wyrm washes away, taking with it all sense of tension or unease, and Smoak takes center stage, complete with a smile Wyrm knows that Smoak reserves for his favorite tri-colored girl.
Wyrm
Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things?
@[Solace] Let the games begin
