Her mother was proud of her for what she has learned in the short years of her life—but that doesn’t mean that she is content to let her settle. Sochi has seen what Risk can do with is gift and has seen the true potential in her children. She knows that it takes grit to reach the full potential though. It takes effort and therefore she is quick to criticize and slow to praise. She tells Breach daily to practice—to try new things. To study the wildlife around her and commit them to memory. To practice her abilities in each form.
And, once she sees Mazikeen go through her paces, she tells he daughter to seek her out.
So, both excited and disgruntled at the order, Breach takes off in the morning to find the other girl. She stretches as she wakes, shaking the dust from her pale coat, and glances upward. It would be easy to take to the sky—to use it as a vantage point to try and hunt for Mazikeen—but she doesn’t feel particularly interested in easy today. So instead she shifts into the hare that she had seen during her wanderings.
It’s strange to see the world from this vantage point, but she likes how nimble she feels—likes the way that the earth feels so close and she feels so stable. Feeling the excitement, she shakes out a foot and then takes off, her pace extending as she eats up more and more earth—leaping across it as she goes.
She travels through the cove, down the coastline, before she angles inward. Breach feels more and more exhilarated the longer that she runs and she feels a sharp pang of disappointment when she finally finds the filly of white and black and orange. She considers just racing past her and coming back later, but her mother’s words ring in her ears and so, with a sigh, she slows down—shifting into her equine form.
Stepping forward, body slick with the sweat earned as the hare, she grins.
“Mazikeen, right?”
I want to swim until we both begin to feel the weightlessness sink in