"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
Beneath the deep green of the forest canopy, the darkly patterned stallion lay dreaming. He kicked in his sleep, legs pumping like a dogs when the sleep-driven rabbit is just out of reach. The muscles of his face twitched and spasmed in a snarl that did not quite translate to equine features.
He was hunting with his father. Silent, one carefully placed foot in front of the other, then pause. Step, then pause. The dance played out as his sire took point, the muscular puma fixated on an unwitting half-grown bighorn sheep. Mikael followed his father's lead, angling behind the grazing creature while Ryan flanked it. The sheep's head bolted upright as the wind shifted, nostrils quivering.
The puma broke cover with an all-mighty leap, powerful limbs pistoning as the startled lamb stumbled to escape. The chase was on, the quarry spinning on its heels to evade the oncoming cat. Mikael waited a half second before joining the chase, as awed of his sire's strength as he had been the first time he'd witnessed it.
The lamb bleated, horrified, when the escape route was cut off by a second predator. A short, lightning quick chase, neck in neck with the puma. All ended in a blur of flashing teeth and grasping claws, a splash of brilliant red on the stones of the mountain. An offering to those who'd seen the hunt completed. Mikael grinned at his father over the still twitching corpse, the thrill of the hunt still singing in his blood.
It had been a good dream. The kind that left him tired as if his muscles really had been stretched with exertion, his belly aching with hunger for a taste he didn't know. The kind of dream that left him happy and sad and longing for impossible things.
With the deepest of sighs he rose to his feet, shaking debris from his coat as he did. There was a groan as the world spun around him, the earth tilting beneath his feet. Wonderful, maybe he was coming down with something... The euphoria of his dream trickled away as the unease in his body took over, legs heavy, head light. Everything felt out of proportion, or focus. He shut his eyes, a headache blooming at the back of his skull. Maybe a drink would help...
The panther lumbered through the woods until they thinned, allowing a creek to pass alongside a fairly well traveled path. Sunlight hit his black coat, dappling blackberry juice colored spots from the dark fur.
Mazikeen is still bristling with anger after Breach was stolen - even though she was not gone for long. The time hadn’t been the point, it was the fact that she was stolen at all. That Maze had been there and been unsuccessful in stopping it. A complete failure of a champion, that was for sure.
She had been switching shapes for the last couple days, remaining on the move in her agitation and unable to settle happily into one form or another.
When she prowls through the forest, the sunlight that reaches her though the trees alights on the sleek fur of a leopard - but white instead of golden, though the black spots remain. She doesn't return to these woods as anything small anymore. No quick white fox darts through the underbrush. Too easy to be snatched by something larger that way. Too many memories.
Her orange eyes are bright and she’s thinking she might start a fight with someone, anyone, since she can’t pick a fight with the ghost that stole Breach away. Nothing as terrifying as the creature that attacked her in these woods - a fight she has a reasonable chance of winning. A black feline near the creek ahead catches her attention and she thinks for a moment it is the cranky old panther that lives in Hyaline - and she readies herself to pounce and ruin his day. But as she lowers her body into a crouch the sun catches on the deep blackberry markings and she straightens up again.
Not the same one, then. Someone new?
Some of her anger bleeds out of her as the curiosity takes over and the white leopard moves through the trees until she emerges just ahead of him so that they are facing. It has been too long since she has met a new shifter (and she very easily assumes this is a shifter and not a real panther). “I like your purple spots.” She remarks without any insecurities about whether this was a dumb or childish thing to say. She did like them - and she wonders if he is a shifter like her who keeps her colour no matter what she changes into.
It was not elegant, the way he leapt into the air, stumbling back to earth with wild eyes and an unexpected yelp. He had been transfixed by the face looking back at him from the uneven surface of the water. It was his face. He knew that, though he had never seen it quite like this before.
Feline, and blunt-nosed. Slit eyes, shearing teeth, and a bewilderment that he would know in any form. It was an exact match for what he was feeling, and no thoughts of how impossible this was could alter that fact. Mikael stared at her as he had been staring at himself. As though this white and black patterned creature was something thoroughly alien to his world.
She wasn't, though. Not really. And he found himself smiling almost frantically at her subtle comment. She liked his spots. So calm. So demure. As though wearing a spotted fur coat was the most natural thing in the world. Not a dream. Not the impossibility he'd been yearning for since he was a foal and his half sister and his cousins and his father and aunt had all been able to shed one skin for another, and he'd been left behind. Shaking his head, he couldn't wipe the smile from his lips, so he figured he'd better say something before she took him for a loon instead of a leopard.
Looking over his shoulder, he admired his own cloak of fur. "Thanks," he replied, still dazed but coming to grips. "They're new." Curious, he paused. Could he push this new body the same way he did as a horse? For a moment his mind went blank. Too many possibilities fought for attention, and he found himself searching for something simpler. Ah. There it was.
Black bled away, deep purple intensified, until...
He breathed a contended breath, eyes half-shut in pleasure. He was white now, with his own unique pattern of spots now jet black against the snowy background. It had worked, he had worried it wouldn't, but it did. Now two monochrome cats stood on the edge of the river, and he felt his heart swell with the knowledge.
"You caught me out at a weird time," he admitted, tongue rasping unfamiliar against the roof of his mouth. A very weird time. If this was more dreaming, it was thoroughly convincing. "I'm Mikael," he offered, arranging his new limbs with care beneath his body as he spoke. Every joint felt liquid. Bizarrely stretchy. He picked up a paw, marveled when he could twist the wrist and see the underside with no effort to speak of.
Mazikeen tries not to laugh at the yelp or the way he leapt into the air like someone had stepped on his tail (a rather horrid feeling, she had discovered one day while napping as a lioness). A little bit of a chuckle escapes out but mostly it just brightens her features. She’s not Mazikeen-the-worst-Champion-in-the-world right now, she’s just Maze the shifter, curious and delighted to be meeting someone new.
He falls quiet for a moment and Maze isn’t sure what’s going on but then her orange eyes widen with surprise and delight as she watches the colours shift and change on his coat. He matches her now, a white coat with black spots. When he says that she caught him at a weird time, she doesn’t hold in the laugh and it rolls out of her in bright but rough notes. She sits then, feeling at ease, her tail moving lazily behind her.
“I’m Mazikeen - or Maze, if you want.” Although Mazikeen is not particularly picky about which name she is being called, she is freer with her nickname around fellow shifters.
She’s quiet only for a short moment and that’s only because she’s trying to decide between which question she wants to ask first. The ability to colour change is something Mazikeen is incredibly curious about - she’s seen her friends be able to take on the coat colours of other animals but the way the purple intensified there for a second… there are sure to be animals she has never seen before and maybe some of them are purple like that but she feels like that is a separate gift.
But, her eyes catch on the way he moves his paw as though it is the first time and they spark with a genuine smile - that is (unless she’s mistaken) a gesture she remembers from not very long ago. When she had first turned into a snow leopard and discovered this new world and new possibilities. “Is this your first time shifting?”
The startlement at having been interrupted during a moment of pretty significant self discovery faded at the amusement in his newly met companion's expression. He'd engineered (and been the butt of) plenty enough pranks to know a good jump scare when he was in the middle of one. It was enough to roll his eyes good-naturedly before moving on.
He could feel the different shape of his jaw when he smiled, when he spoke. Words seemed to fit strangely between sharp teeth. "Mazikeen or Maze." He tried the sounds out. It was a name meant for sharp teeth, he decided, and rumbled in a satisfied way over the discovery.
Her question took him off guard, though it shouldn't have. Anyone with eyes to see would be able to figure out this was not the skin he was used to. Setting the inspected paw down deliberately, he nodded distractedly. "Looks that way."
A cat then, like his father. He looked over himself again, marveling at the change. Impulsive, he pushed his now-blunt muzzle into his chest, felt the plush fur that tickled his nose. He took an experimental lick with his prickly tongue, only to spit when he came away with a mouthful of strands.
Lips curled at the oddness of it, the feline shook his head. This just kept getting weirder. "How d'you change back, then?" Which seemed to be a pretty important question at this point. There was no way he'd survive long in this skin without the reprieve of a familiar body to retreat into. His hazelnut brown eyes settled on hers, eager for whatever tips she might provide.
Mazikeen watches patiently, sitting and her leopard tail curls around her feet. Mikael is far more interested in his new shape than he is her - a sentiment which she understands perfectly well. She’s not even sure she really needs to be here to witness this, he seems to be doing just fine on his own. Exploring this new shape and answering her question with distraction.
She waits though, entertained by watching someone else go through something she experienced as a foal, her tail twitching against the ground. Eventually, after spitting out some of his own fur, he asks a question - an important one. “Changing back is the part that I found hardest.” Mazikeen doesn’t feel like fully admitting she had gotten stuck a few times - once for as long as half a day. “What helped me was thinking about myself. Remembering how a wind felt going through your mane or the sound of your hooves on the earth as you gallop. But you can’t concentrate too hard or it’ll slip right through your grasp”
It’s a source of pride that she’s practiced enough that she doesn’t, typically, lose control of her shifts anymore and can flicker back and forth between forms with ease. “Eventually, all it will take is a thought - if you practice.” Just like everything, she supposed.
He had never been the bashful sort. It wouldn't have gotten him far with his family, and besides, curiosity almost always won out when put next to fear. In that way, it was certainly fitting that his new shape was a feline one. The need to know how and why and who and all the rest had summed up his life, and it very well may be what had planted him here today.
He chuckled at her description of the process it took to return to his equine shape. "Practice, practice, practice, does nothing come without it? At least thinking about myself should be easy enough." He remarked with a touch of sarcasm. Nothing worth having came without effort, he knew, but a guy could dream. A thought dawned on him, made the hair on his neck rise briefly as it passed through his mind.
With a grin more puppyish than panther, he looked at the she-cat dolefully. "My mother would take my hide if she saw me being so rude, going on about myself." He admitted on a laughing note. And very pleased too would Tickaani be with a leopardskin rug. "What brings you to this neck of the woods? Surely watching a new shifter get his feet under him wasn't on the plan of the day." He rose demonstratively to his feet, testing the weight on each one.
He shrugged one shoulder, then the other, feeling his skin prickle uncomfortably. It was too much, holding a new shape and a color as well. With a sigh he let it go. His natural darker colors returned, and his skin quit its itching. Better. He looked back at Maze, eyes hooded in the dappled light. He'd been loitering in the common lands long enough to have a feel for the regulars that frequented these areas. Knew enough to know that for lack of better words, she wasn't one. Which meant she belonged somewhere else. He figured any land that could produce such a beautiful creature was alright by him.
There’s a ghost of a smile and a roll of those bright orange eyes at his sarcastic response. It was true though - how else would you get better? For Mazikeen it had never felt like work, though, when she practiced her shifting. It was her life, it was fun and thrilling. She preferred trying on new shapes over being her normal self most days.
It helped that in a shape such as the one she wore now, with claws and sharp teeth part of the package, she could be ready for anything. Even in the peaceful woods.
Truthfully, she hadn’t thought him rude at all - it seemed natural that they should talk about him. He was the one going through an interesting change, wasn’t he? She doesn’t immediately answer his question - distracted by the curious change of colour that he pulls again, returning to the darker colours he had worn before.
“Could you always change colours or is that new too?” She asks first, before responding to his question. “And no, not part of the plan, but it’s always nice to meet a new shifter.” Mazikeen didn’t mind those that couldn’t shift - her dad couldn’t and he was alright. It just so happened that almost everyone she’s ever met has been a shifter. It was really luck - though it did skew her view of the world slightly. She thought that shifters made up a larger proportion of the population than they really did.
“I’ve just come from Hyaline, where I’m part of a shifter pack calling the mountains home.” She turns her head in the direction she knows home to be and nods.
