"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
Sickle no longer remembers the day that they arrived here in Tephra. There is a memory of the white mare they had spent that first day with, but it grows hazier and hazier as she devours all the other new information, all the other new experiences, that she can possibly cram into her waking hours. She enjoys learning, this iridescent girl - and is proving to be easily fascinated.
It helps that they are living somewhere that is fascinating - there is so, so much to see in this jungle that is absolutely brimming with life.
Tonight she is sprawled out on the lush jungle soil, fast asleep, when she begins to dream. Her body is consumed with a gentle glow, shifting blue and purple and teal that matches the iridescence of her coat. Beneath her eyelids, her mismatched eyes are the first thing to begin to twitch and then her entire body does.
She’s chasing something, it looks like. Maybe one of those glowing birds that she had actually been chasing earlier in the day.
Then she begins to shift, flickering between different colours and animals, her body can not quite agree on what it wants to be as she remains asleep. Each leg belongs to something else other than this small filly, her tail disagreeing with those legs and her head playing its own games. The deeper she slips into her dream, the faster the shifting rolls through her body in a chaotic way while she remains blissfully unaware - only focused on the snapping of her teeth on the tail of a bird woven from flowers.
The sun is bright on the water of the river that runs through Tephra, shining directly down and making the surface impossible to see through. Malik huffs irritably at this, having wanted to fish, and turns back to the shore. He wanders until he finds Sickle, and his mood improves along the way.
Wearing the shape of a black-on-black striped tiger cub, he catches a large butterfly and a suspicious looking tuft of shed winter-hair on the bark of a tree.
As he walks, he forgets where he is going, and wanders simply to wander. The paths he follows are ones he knows well. Tephra is the only home he remembers, and the memory of a mother other than Wishbone fades quickly from consciousness. He wants for nothing, save perhaps more hours in the day with which to be and do and learn.
The scent of his twin distracts Malik from his stalking of a large capybara, and the boy stands up quickly. His movements do not startle the brown creature, which only eyes him with blank placidity. The animals of this jungle have seen far worse than little shifters who like to play at hunting.
Treading forward quietly, the dark haired boy narrows his bicolored eyes. His sister is just ahead, visible through the trees. She is shifting rapidly, so quickly that he smiles at the realization of what that must mean.
She’s sleeping. He should be quiet, he knows, and let her sleep.
Instead, he gives a most impressive roar, one that he imagines sounds like Malou. In reality, it is much more of a squawk, but surely it will be loud enough to wake his twin, and when it does he can pounce on her. His tail twitches in anticipation, the iridescent black fur of his stripes glittering in the glow of their own internal light.
we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
The twins are busy and inquisitive, and Wishbone is grateful for it. She knows it would be much easier to focus on the apprehension churning in her stomach if Malik and Sickle were quiet and complacent children. Their vibrant personalities, their appetites for exploration, and their unique abilities at changing their bodies keep her entertained. They make it harder to check over her shoulder every few steps for their iridescent-blue father. Wishbone doesn’t appreciate the way she feels hunted in her own home — in her own kingdom — but she can’t help herself. The threat of Gale’s presence, the potential of him finding the twins in Tephra, looms over her head and she can’t deny that this is a time she has felt the most scared.
But she can’t admit her fear to the twins, and she refuses to let it control their childhood. To them, she is their mother, and their father is a hazy image she hasn’t exactly painted yet. Wishbone does her best to be a good mother, and she’s grateful she has a positive model of one from her own childhood. Wound had been patient and loving, even in the face of a rambunctious, reckless child who always found some way to be in the way of danger. Loving the twins, teaching the twins, and protecting the twins feels a little like always being in the way of danger.
Wishbone knows she wouldn’t have it any other way.
She’s been wandering the beach all morning, lost in thought about her childhood and how often Wolfbane had to rescue her from the ocean. It has been the way of her mind lately — thinking about Gale leads to thinking about the Curse, which ultimately drags her back to Wolfbane and their adventures as children. The twins had been eager to leave this morning, practically vibrating with energy as they waited for the sun to clear the horizon. Malou gives a soft growl from where she rests in the cooler waters of the ocean, a reminder that they haven’t seen the twins since they left.
With a gentle hum, Wishbone pulls her dark legs out of the waves and heads inland, following the black jaguar through the jungle until they find Malik and Sickle. Silent from all her years navigating the undergrowth, Wishbone watches as her son approaches the sleeping Sickle, and she bites back a laugh when he roars. She can’t help but feel amused by the twins; it’s impossible to ignore the entertainment that comes with two shifter children.
She considers leaving them, satisfied that they’re safe. Yet despite the hardships Wishbone’s experienced throughout her life, she’s always kept her energetic, reckless spirit. And it encourages her to jump into their antics. The purple mare pulls bones from the soil behind her, and carefully constructs them into a cage. And once Malik pounces on his sister, Wishbone appears from the bushes and drops the cage over the pair.
She laughs teasingly, throwing her head back and cackling into the air. “Ah, my loyal comrade, this pesky pair has been eating from my favorite tree!” she crows to Malou, who pulls herself nimbly from the shadows. “And now we’ve finally caught them!” Wishbone circles around the cage, looking them up and down with one glowing eye. “What do you think we should do with them, Malou?”
Sickle is just about to catch her prey when a squawk has her jolting upright and out of sleep. Her shifting settles into her natural form for a heartbeat until Malik pounces on her and then she is a dark iridescent blue panther that tussles with him with a loud laugh, forgetting her dream instantly in favour of this game.
She is inhaling a deep breath to do a roar of her own in his ear when a bone cage drops around the pair. She shoves at Malik playfully, delighted by this evolving game - wondering if he had been sent in as a spy to distract her. Sickle paces the cage like she thinks a predator might, mock-hissing at their mom when she emerges speaking to Malou about fruit thieves and what should be done about them. It would be easy, she thinks, to shift into something small enough to slip through the bars but that wouldn’t be very good fun.
At least not without her favourite partner in crime.
It is difficult not to giggle when Wishbone lowers her head to the cage and Sickle only mostly succeeds in suppressing the impulse as she snaps her kitten teeth without leaning forward towards the bars at all. Her mismatched eyes dance as they look to Malik. In her excitement, her iridescent coat ripples with the patterns of different animals, her shifting unsettled and eager. She false-whispers the beginning of a plan to him, knowing full well it’ll be overheard. “I bet we can take ‘em. What do you say we bust outta here and fight - then that fruit tree will be all ours.”
As soon as he sees the glow of his sister’s bicolored eyes, Malik pounces. The pair of them roll about on the ground, wrestling and laughing. Malik is just about to suggest they switch to monkeys and have a swinging race through the trees when the cage drops around them.
He crouches, growling up at it, but only until he realizes what it is made of.
Bone.
He stands back up, giggling, and spins around until he spots their mother on the other side of the calcified prison.His laughter intensifies as she speaks to Malou, and he nods enthusiastically to his sister’s suggestion.
Shrinking to fit between the bars of the cage, he grows again and becomes his equine self. Black and horned, he paws at the thick leaf litter with one foot before charging toward Malik. His head is lowered, but only because he knows he’ll pass harmlessly through his mother’s companion in the strange intagibly magical way.
“You get the big one!” He calls gleefully to his sister, “I’ve got this one!”
we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
Their laughter buoys her upward, carrying away her nerves and worry so it can return later in the day. Malou circles the bone-cage alongside her, golden eyes flashing with faux danger. The jaguar has never hurt the twins, nor is she capable of doing so. And Wishbone knows her companion wouldn’t hurt them even if she could.
The purple mare knew the cage wouldn’t hold them long. Her twins can shift so quickly, molding their bodies into different creatures in the blink of an eye. It’s easy for them to escape her trick, shifting into animals small enough to crawl through the openings. Wishbone lets the bones fall apart once they are free, and she stops her pacing to face them directly.
Malik aims for the jaguar, and for a moment Wishbone sees a flash of the great warrior he could be someday. Her heart clenches in that motherly way, suddenly aware of everything that her children will be and how much time has passed already. They are still children, thankfully, and Malou’s presence continues to be nonthreatening, so Malik passes through the black cat despite Malou’s attempts to stop him. She spins and hisses regardless, pretending to claw at the boy’s sides even as he moves through her magic presence.
As Malik suggests his sister attacking Wishbone, the purple mare turns to face her daughter head-on. She smiles tauntingly at Sickle, silently daring the girl to face her. “You better hope that tree is worth it,” she teases with a laugh that sounds like a poor attempt at being evil.
06-30-2021, 06:17 PM (This post was last modified: 06-30-2021, 06:19 PM by Sickle.)
sickle
Malik never disappoints Sickle and she beams as he nods to her plan and she moves through the bars a moment after him as a small green snake. He presents his own plan, pawing at the ground before charging at Malou and the youn filly eyes are bright with enjoyment even when she shouts “Oh sure! You take the easy one.”
She twists back to her mom, giggles interrupting her shape so that she flashes as a few animals (a filly, a rabbit, a wolf, a griffin) before settling as a dark iridescent blue lion cub.
When Wishbone says that she hopes the fruit tree is worth it, Sickle retorts back. “I’m going to eat so much fruit I’ll be peeing fruit juice for a year!” She can barely get the words out through her laughter before she leaps. She’s made the jump from the ground to her dam’s back plenty of times as she and Malik played as various animals. This time she misjudges it, or maybe Wishbone moves, and she has to scramble up.
“Oops! Sorry!!” She cries out when she thinks she caught her mom with her claws before she retracts them and then attempts to splay out on Wishbone’s back as her big attack, thinking heavy thoughts that have her turn into a small baby rhino.
Malou claws and scratches at him, but the cat’s shadowy paws pass through him in the way of magic, and the boy only laughs. Malik’s giggles are light and childlike still, but he too has pictured what he might be like as a warrior. Probably not a very good one, Malik thinks. He does not feel very brave. Not like Sickle is brave, anyway.
But he can act brave with Malou, which is comforting for a little boy who is just starting to realize the world is not always a safe and welcoming place.
Sickle’s accusation - that he’d chosen the easy one is true - is true. Malik doesn’t like hurting anyone, even accidentally, but there had been no sign of that in the reckless abandon with which he turns back around after his leap.
He’s panting, the iridescent glowing sides of his thin ribcage flaring in and out. He sees Sickle land on Wishbone, sees her shift to a rhino, and he giggles. She’s a very good shifter, his sister, but he’s not sure why she’s chosen to become some sort of unicorn hippopotamus.
Malik pauses his attack on Malou to try and figure out what animal his sister is, and in doing so becomes one himself. It isn’t one of his favorites, he decides, so he flicks through several similar options like an elephant, a real hippo, and a tapir, settling finally on an okapi with similar striping (and much more white) than his equine form.
“It’s two against one now!” he shouts boldly. “Surrender, or. Or...” As a child raised by a kind mother, he struggles for just a moment to think of something truly dreadful.
“Or we’ll eat all of them ourselves and we won’t. Even. Share.”
Malik
