when i run through the deep dark forest long after this has begun,
The wolf steps closer. There is no ill intent in the way the predator creeps forward, obviously used to being covered in the cloak of darkness and shadow (rarely seen, rarely noticed). Today she has been pulled from that normalcy, something stronger than her own willpower thrumming incessantly against her soul, ringing a bell that she remembers suddenly she had forgotten the sound of. Her mother is a shifter and her father, too (though not anymore, she idly corrects herself), and though Loess is the home of her brother and what she calls her ‘pack’ there is none like her that reside in the hilly landscape.
None like the one before her.
Nutmeg eyes swallow the tiger eagerly, broad ears flipping back into the thickness of her dusty winter’s coat, shaggy and plump and matted. Both, the tigress answers and there is the slightest ripple of Dayé’s lips. Running away and running toward - two steps forward, one step back. It’s familiar and all Dayé knows: balancing a life (can it be called that?) between predator and prey, dancing precariously on the edge of that dangerous precipice, never losing herself completely but finding herself wanting desperately to do so. Instead of replying, the wolf only snorts softly in muted agreeance. Both. For how else would a shifter live? In both worlds.
Dayé’s idle gaze widens quickly at the step of the tiger towards her, expecting both nothing and something from the massive creature before her. She cannot help the way the hair on her neck and upper-back immediately stand on edge, but the wolf does not advance nor shows its teeth. My name is Sochi, the tigress finally offers, a pause stiffening in the air between them before black and orange fall away. Dayé watches curiously at how easily she sheds the tiger (as if taking off a cloak, or peeling off a softened layer of skin), her cream colored fur smoothing itself against her skin. Ebony (dark as pitch) though blazing with the brightest of blue, the mare stands before her in what Dayé would consider to be bare, matching Sochi’s blinking stare with one of her own.
The wolf follows suit, though it is not without clumsiness and snarling lips. Dayé would liken it to stripping off a wet bathing suit - clearly something that did not want to move yet is forced to do so anyway. Her shift is not beautiful as she sheds her thick rose-colored fur for one of honeyed-gold that iridescently shines blue in the winter’s light. The paleness of her forelock and mane frame the wildness of her face with the same brambles and tangles from her wolf, making the young mare seemingly still as wild as the predator that once stood in her place.
She sighs when the shift is complete, wanting to note that shifting to her wolf form is much more beautiful, but remaining silent.
A pause once again trembles between the two, still as palpable as it had been previously.
“Do you hunt?” The question spills from her pale-gold lips before she can remind herself to stay quiet, but the only sign of regret is the way her mouth tightens in to a thin, pressed line.
Dayé
where the sun would set, trees are dead, and the rivers were none.
@[Sochi]