"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
He remembers his family used to be in the north - he’d spent his first year on Icicle Isle and in Nerine, before finding his way to Taiga - and staying there as a rock.
Having suppressed many of his memories from before being a rock, or how he became said rock in the first place, he’s led a relatively easy, peaceful life. Not that he didn’t know who is family members were - not like his mother, or whoever that imposter Roz had been instead. Just that he hadn’t reached out to them and neither had they to him.
But it occurred to him when meeting Let and Fenwe in the Meadow that they might not have known his whereabouts. And that they, instead, had maybe never moved. It is with that realization that it is his lack of action that kept them from reconnecting, that had spurred this trip to the north.
He wants to impress, however. He takes the form of many animals in one, courtesy to Velkan who’d suggested something out of the box. He now has the head of a dragon, the body of a bird, the legs of a chicken, the tail of a snake, the ears of a canine, red wings, sharp teeth, golden feathers and scaly white-grey skin. A Zilant, though in his own colors; a creature he doesn’t really know, but his shape feels quite stable, so he concludes that somewhere in the world, it probably actually exists.
He doesn’t ponder over this long, however. It’s stable and it flies, and that’s really all he needs in the moment. He sets course to Nerine; he doesn’t know if he’ll find anyone familiar, but he can start there and ask around if someone has seen them.
He lands, a small creature in the moors, and peers around for a while, scurrying this way and that. He already knows how to navigate the world in a smaller form; heck, it’s not as bad as a lizard shape.
He is in luck, it seems - the first horse-legs he finds are white with a distinct light pink color pattern. He quickly forgets his manners, but Eurwen would know him anyway, and grows larger with an ecstatic grin on his maw. ”Wen!” he exclaims as he races towards her -
only to come to a sliding stop before her, when he realizes that it is not his sister, though she looks similar; her mane are green, not golden-pink, and her shape is that of a yearling, if even that.
And he’s some kind of weirdo monster racing towards her.
She stays close to her mother - Eurwen - because sometimes the world (even Nerine itself) feels too big. It is a much easier (and safer) thing to view it from the side of her dam. It had felt much safer when she had been smaller, when she could view from underneath the barrel of her spotted mother. Because Fechin was there, too.
Fechin doesn’t like to stay anymore. As the twins have made the transition into the first year of their life, her older sister seems to drift farther and Brienna tries to stay closer to Eurwen. The tactic doesn’t always work. Days like today, it doesn’t work because Eurwen has been called away on kingdom business (there is always something to do on the behalf of Nerine, it seems) and Brienna hasn’t the slightest idea where her twin has gone.
That’s why she wanders the moors - drifting over them, ambling in her thoughts as she does her steps (nobody will ever accuse Brienna of being a graceful thing) - in search of her sister.
Something comes searching for her, though. She’s been warned about monsters and their mother has told them many times to stay within the safety of Nerine’s borders. Brienna did as she was told and now? Her silver eyes widen at the sight of a monster on their doorstep - not quite a dragon but close enough to make her turn tail and run, her shrieks echoing over the highlands.
'Wen!’ the creature calls and Bri kicks out her back legs as she gallops, "I’m not a Wen!” she yells fearfully into the wind. "I’m a Brienna!”
05-29-2020, 04:22 AM (This post was last modified: 05-29-2020, 04:22 AM by Aodhan.)
Aodhán
His multi-animal shape may be small, but it certainly scares the child - as he knew last minute, it would. The reaction however, is not something he anticipated - galloping away, the pink-spotted girl screams in fear that she is not a Wen - obviously not - and most of her actual name is lost on the wind.
Well, he fucked that up pretty well.
He changes; he's not gonna be able to catch the running yearling otherwise to make up for his mistake. What's faster than a fearful horse? A cheetah - but that'd be a very, very bad idea - and so he takes the shape of the peregrine falcon. He remembers soaring through Taiga's woods with Pteron, and climbs up in the air to not lose sight of the green-haired girl - in a dive, he is the fastest, but she has a head start. He aims to pull up besides or even before her, but he can't be sure it works; the bird is smaller than she, fluttering around her in the beating winds - should have picked something heavier, like an eagle - as his own screams try to reach her. "Wait up! I'm not gonna eat you! Do you know where Wen is?"
He just hopes the wind doesn't blow most of his words away.
The spotted girl is screaming - and huffing - as she runs. Sporadically, she doesn’t stop kicking out her hind legs in case the creature running behind her gets any ideas to nip at her heels or worse. Whatever the creature is, the prey in her knows better than to allow a predator a chance to hop on her back and take her down.
Brienna is running up and down the rolling hills of the moorlands. (Where is everybody?) Her home has been empty of late but surely somebody should have heard her cries by now? The pale girl’s mind starts running faster than her legs can carry her. The filly slows for a few strides to look behind her to see… the creature gone?
Her head spurs forward and she kicks into a faster gallop, fearful that she can no longer see it behind her. The wind screeches in her white ears as one flicks to the direction of the sound - a bird. A falcon that soars besides her, shrieking. It makes her run faster and faster until-
"No?” she briefly dares the (false) avian creature, "why do you need so many forms if you're not going to eat me?!” Her shouts, also, go into the wind and what he hears may be misconstrued.
Whatever he is, she thinks as Brienna continues to run, she is not telling him where her mother is.
He knows for sure now, nothing he does will help - not stopping the chase, not keeping up with her. His many shapes apparently made her think that he wants to eat her, or rather, that anything he claims will be a lie. With an undignified squawk, the falcon changes shape a last time - towards his normal form. The gold-spotted knabstrup hybrid huffs for good measure, following the yearling now in a much smoother gallop - and regretting not having taken this shape before he took the bird-form.
Nevertheless, it's done, and the spotted appaloosa honestly doesn't know what else to do to earn her trust, other than finding Eurwen or perhaps his dad - fairies know what happened to their mother, but she probably hadn't visited Eurwen for chitchat - nor got introduced to any of her grandkids. "I'm your uncle. I think." he tags the filly's pink-spotted hind, then makes a sharp turn for the right, bucking and rearing up a small hill before he comes to a stop, playfully sweeping his white tail towards her; he waits there, because the time for running, in his opinion, is quite over.
06-06-2020, 12:22 PM (This post was last modified: 06-06-2020, 12:24 PM by brienna.)
The falcon squawks and Brienna gives a short, spirited buck just in case it decides to turn into… what? A bigger falcon? A three-headed hippogriff? A dragon with a dozen rows of serrated teeth? (As if one set wasn’t enough.) The yearling decides that she won’t be giving the shape-shifter any chance to assume any of those shapes.
She'll keep running and screaming until somebody comes.
There is a moment where the flapping of his wings ceases and Bri hopes that maybe he’s assumed the form of a walrus. (Did the creatures that gathered on the northern shore of Nerine even eat horses? She didn’t think so but she has seen them waddle from one side of their beaches to another and the filly thinks she could have an advantage over the shape-creator if he took that one.)
A pale ear flicks back and Brienna turns her head to look briefly behind her, feeling … disappointed that he assumes the form of a spotted stallion. She intends to keep running but her chances of losing him or hoping that he’ll tire before her are slim. Those chances decrease with each stride she takes because she can only run for so long. As she starts to tire, he reaches out to touch her hindquarters. Bri uses that as the motivation to spur faster, using the last of her speed for another stride or two as she huffs for air.
Sweat has started to sheen her spotted sides when she finally slows, forced to stop because he cuts her off by drawing up on a small knoll. Her ears are pinned but the word uncle makes her curious. Do uncles eat their nieces? (But then, are uncles supposed to change their shapes?)
The mostly-white male eyes his assumed niece curiously - if she isn’t Wen’s child he’d be really weirded out by the likeness. Before he can continue to question the yearling however, she skeptically continues her own line of questioning, which results in an amused snort, trying not to burst into outright laughter over her fear - honestly he probably failed in giving the impression he takes her seriously, as his emerald green eyes look at her with obvious amusement. ”If I were gonna eat you, I’d picked a different shape and you’d be gone...” he eyes the distance they crossed over the moors, ”At about one-fifth the distance you just ran. Maybe.” He shrugs, though the twinkle in his eye doesn't leave when he eyes the girl. ”You are Eurwen’s, aren’t you?” Had he been her older brother, perhaps he would have known how similar they were - rather timid girls, but not going down without a fight. But Aodhán had been a year her younger, and only looked up to his sister, coming back with those stories about the fae. It had actually encouraged him to seek them out when they called people to the Resort for the shells; his blue marking reminds him of the fact every time he assumed his most-natural shape, of the horse he should be without the shifting trait.
His eyes scan the Nerinian scape, finally noticing a shape in the distance who surely came to see what the spotted girl had been screaming about. ”Ah. Maybe they’re actually willing to talk, instead of run.” he chuckles at the mint-green haired young lady, tail moving leisurely, relaxed - it’s all quite a big joke to him, but he does remember what he came for in the first place- to talk about this Roz figure with his sister, and warn her as well, as the mare might be dangerous in some way. Looking back up as the figure closes in, he sighs. Not Eurwen, still. What is she doing?
She’s just chatting with Ama about freezing rocks and see if they’ll melt; surely certain types of rock might? They’re both shook by Brienna running and yelling - at a falcon. Oh. Wow. Falcon. Of course, her spotted sister doesn’t have Fechín’s defense mechanisms, but now she’s just getting ridiculous. With a quick apology to the gemstone filly, the green-and-pink follows the trail of her screaming pastel coloured sister,
Shocked, she sees that the falcon changes into a horse; a stallion of baroque lines, spotted not unlike Brienna and their mother, but gold. Gold! she’s almost instantaneously jealous, but then she remembers her own mane with their pink-ish gold shine and she supposes she didn’t get bad genes herself, after all.
What they talk about after Brienna finally stops running, she can’t yet tell, but she approaches the two now in a trot, shaking most of the sweat from galloping towards her sister just earlier, from her neck. A whinny escapes the yearling as she homes in on her twin sister, tugging down her baby green mane when she arrives. ”Oy, you having all the fun without me?”
anger’s like a battery that leaks acid right out of me and it starts from the heart, till it reaches my outer me
06-10-2020, 04:47 PM (This post was last modified: 06-10-2020, 04:48 PM by brienna.)
As she is staring suspiciously back at him, Brienna takes a small half-step backwards. He may have forced her to stop but that doesn’t mean she intends to let him get to close. She has the advantage of being atop her small knoll and she means to keep it, just in case he turns into a four-eyed fox or a multiple-headed polar bear.
Her ears are still pinned into the pale green of her mane and her eyes remained narrowed, fixated on him.
The stallion looks … amused? Why? she thinks. Brienna isn’t entirely sure of what is so funny (though if she had known how ridiculous she had looked running from a bird, she would have laughed) "Okay, twinkle hooves,” she sasses under her muttered breath, commenting on his ability to change shape as well as his speed. Faster than her, apparently.
"That depends,” the spotted yearling says. Bri doesn’t take another step back but the longer he stands talking to her, the more obvious it becomes that he isn’t going to eat her. Perhaps she should know better than to keep talking to a stranger but even she can’t doubt that there is something of a familial resemblance between the two of them, spots and all. For as long as he been talking with her, there might be some truth in his statement. Maybe he is her uncle.
At that moment, the saving sound of hoofbeats carries over the Nerinian moorlands and the filly glances back briefly to find her twin approaching. Finally, her expression says. While Brienna has made the assumption that the shape-shifting stallion won’t eat her, she still doesn’t trust him enough to give up her exalted position on her little hill. @[Fechin], thankfully, seems to know this and comes alongside her sister.
Brienna turns her head to briefly regard her sister before candidly saying: "Fun?”
While Fechin might have viewed the whole interaction as somewhat humorous, the tired runner feels fatigued and somewhat exasperated. "He thinks that he’s our uncle,” Brienna explains. Her eyes linger on her sisters asking silently, what do we think?
Her sister might have expected her to be at her side earlier, and honestly perhaps Fechín could have arrived earlier - she hadn’t really given her twin’s terrorized voice all the attention it might have warranted this time, because she knew the overly cautious nature of her easy-to-spook sister long enough by now.
Nevertheless she indulges her in the examination of the stallion. ”Hmm,” she says, looking at the small fetlocks - mother doesn’t have them, but their granddad does - and the metallic gleaming spots - the spots seem similar enough, and the metallic gold is indeed a family trait. ”Could be,” she admits, though she eyes her sister sideways with a shrug saying Can’t be sure until we ask mom. Her ears twitch a little, then she makes a decision and turns to the male. ”Tell me about your mom and dad.” After all, that’s a story Eurwen doesn’t tell, for some reason.
anger’s like a battery that leaks acid right out of me and it starts from the heart, till it reaches my outer me
