"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 feels the spring sun warming his back, and for a moment, Bolder forgot what he had been the night before.
Had he been a coyote, making his way through the tall grasses? Had he been an owl, spying on the nocturnal world from the solitary birch towards the back of Meadow? Or had he fallen back into old habits, becoming the russet-colored wolf that liked to prowl the Common Lands?
No, he hadn’t been anything like that. Bolder had just been wandering again, moving through the crowds of horses, aimlessing going from one place to another. Hyaline was waiting for him - his home where the Pack waited - but something in him had been restless of late. Something that had stirred in him since he had climbed the Mountain and had encountered the Dark God. He had wanted to become a better shifter, to become more powerful as Mazikeen and Gale were, and yet, something different had happened to him.
Bolder knew that if he waited too long in the daylight, the change would show itself again.
His Aunt was the only one that knew that his shifting abilities were no longer limited to just animals. He had shown her that he could do more, but it was just in a way that he had never imagined. Bolder had thought that if he petitioned the Mountain, he might be able to shift in more fantastical ways. To become beasts long dead, or perhaps even a dragon like his grandsire.
The daylight on his skin finally stirs him from his sleep, and the young pegasus shifts in plain sight. Where he stands is open, and the horses around him (if they took notice) would see a striped stallion become a silver-eyed stag moving towards the shadows of the treeline.
Lillibet has always been an early riser. She’d always favored the break of dawn, especially on the days that Link had awoken with her and they’d snuck off to cause trouble or see what adventures they could pursue before Oceane and Ledger coaxed them back to Sylva for whatever teachings their parents thought most important. Oceane had usually leaned towards diplomacy ─ peace was her guiding light. Peace, safety, equity. It was interesting enough, but Lillibet had not taken to it the way their mother wanted. She could not see herself creating a safe haven in the midst of Beqanna the way Oceane and Lepis had; she could not fathom subscribing the entirety of her existence to public service.
Ledger’s teachings had always been the more interesting ones, though they had helped to foster a particular bitterness deep inside the young glowing girl. Ledger taught her how to protect herself. But he had also taught Link to do the same ─ and it was when their conversations turned to the mutual magic they shared that Lillibet would slip away and remind herself that it was no one’s fault she hadn’t been born with the same magic Link had.
The silent reassurance usually didn’t help, though. Being able to shift into a bear and roar with all her might would have.
Her thoughts linger on these memories, bittersweet as they are now, as she meanders quietly through the Meadow in the early morning. There are a handful of others, though none who she’d go out of her way to speak to, and once the expansive verdant sea grows livelier, Lillibet makes for the treeline to hide her ethereal glow amidst the trunks and boughs.
Her stride is graceful as she navigates over roots and stumps and foliage, having spent the first years of her life securely in the golden forest of Sylva. It’s only when her honeyed eyes spot the frame of a vaguely familiar man unfurling himself from his nest in the Meadow that she falters, a gold striped hoof catching on a bulbous root just as he moves ─ now a silver-eyed stag ─ into her path at the treeline.
”Oh!” she exclaims just as she catches herself, narrowly avoiding a collision with the shifter stallion. Her thoughts slither momentarily to Herrin, to Link, to Ledger ─ so many in her life had been graced with the magic of transformation and yet here she stands, glowing.
A silver beacon.
”Bolder?” she asks, the uncertainty apparent in her voice. They’d only met once, just after the falling of the South, and she doesn’t trust that she’s remembered his name correctly despite the moments over the past season that the image of his face has risen, unbidden, in her mind.
Her gold-striped face flushes with embarrassment at the memory, and Lillibet can only hope that he takes her abashment at face value instead of reading into whatever else might be playing in her head.
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
01-19-2022, 07:25 AM (This post was last modified: 01-19-2022, 07:35 AM by bolder.)
Bolder had surprised himself with this shift. As he has gotten older, they come quicker and smoother. They became easier, and the boy who could hardly imagine himself being anything other than a horse, the image in his mind grew clearer and stronger over the seasons that he had spent in Hyaline. All it took was a thought now, a strange ripple over his striped hide, and then, almost suddenly, he was something else.
The stag is a new shape for him. He had mimicked it before, but that had been when Gale had still belonged to the pack. This is a form crafted out of his memories, a proud creature that he remembered coming to the lake once for a drink. While the size of the beast hadn’t intimidated Bolder, the set of pointed antlers had given him pause and so he had merely studied the animal from afar.
He’s proud of this latest transformation, and it almost blinds him to the young female ahead. But the striped pegasus had spent far too much time patrolling and scouting, engaging in hunts with Mazikeen and Malik to allow himself to be caught off-guard. His silver eyes are glancing down (only for a minute!) as he moves in this strange shape, and yet when he glances up, they nearly collide.
Coming to a sudden stop, Bolder blinks, surprised to hear the mention of his name.
It takes him a moment to place the voice - even with his stripes, he doubts that he is so easily recognizable (or that he has such renown that strangers know of him) - but the memories of the Ruins and their initial meeting come rushing back like floodwater. The ethereal girl from the floodlands. ”Lillibet,” the shifter says with the beginnings of a grin and tilted his antlered head in greeting. He changes then, and Bolder as she first knew him appears. ”Hope I didn’t startle you,” Bolder offered and then turned to look toward the tree line. "I was just stretching out my legs."
He began to move again, before the morning light could settle against his copper skin, but flashed an inviting smile to his companion from over his winged shoulder.
The families of wild ungulates who had made the golden forest of Sylva their home had always fascinated Lillibet. She’d watched them in her wanderings, though ─ this is another point of bitterness ─ she’d never shared in her mother’s zoolingualism, and so could only gaze upon them as they roamed. The time or two she’d attempted to leap and bound through the forest in their midst had ended with the iridescent girl kicking rocks in solitary on her lonely trek back to civilization.
The antlered stags had been less common than their fairer counterparts, and so catching a glimpse of them had always felt something like a reward. She feels a similar thrill today as she watches Bolder shift. It appears natural, well practiced, and the fact that she’d spotted him just before he’d taken on the antlered form of a regal stag makes her feel as if she’s included in some sort of secret.
Lillibet’s brief moment of embarrassment passes unnoticed while her acquaintance searches his memory for her name, for which she is grateful, and by the time he finds it her abashed flush has made room for an expression more controlled and polite. She flutters a fluted ear and dips her ivory head in a mock curtsy at Bolder’s grin. ”The one and only,” she responds merrily, pleased that she had correctly remembered the name of the young moon-faced man.
His return to equine form is just as fluid as the first shift she’d witnessed and the resulting familiar form that stands before her is no less majestic than the stag. Quiet laughter escapes the ethereal woman as she shakes her gold-striped head ─ ”Not at all. I may be a bit too comfortable around those who can shift.” Her father and brother into bears, Manny into… whatever monster Manny was. Her mother, even, with the magic of a genie could change into whatever it was she desired. Lillibet felt less comfort, perhaps, than silent envy, but that’s something best not shared during the first true dialogue with a new acquaintance.
Bolder begins to move off, gleaming copper and brass beneath the morning sun, and it’s the first time Lillibet truly appreciates her own supernal glow ─ if she could look anything like he did beneath the warmth of the sun, then maybe there could be happiness in being a celestial ivory beacon. The young stallion’s inviting, lopsided smile coaxes a similar expression from the bygone Sylvan Princess and eagerly she moves beside him, intentional and graceful in her polite avoidance of his wings, as they begin to adventure together along the treeline. ”If you don’t mind the company,” she adds, despite having already matched his pace.
Lillibet scours her brain for a swift moment, trying her best to remember where it was Bolder had said he was from when they’d first met among the Ruins. ”Do you often find places to sleep outside of Hyaline?” she asks with a sideways glance of her honeyed eyes when finally she remembers, plucking his voice from her recollection and ignoring the parts that had caused her pain ─ Baltia, Rezza, the golden trees of Sylva beneath the deep, dark sea.
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
01-20-2022, 11:25 AM (This post was last modified: 01-20-2022, 11:26 AM by bolder.)
His grin broadened at her mention of ‘the one and only.’ It had been hard for him to gauge individual personalities when their small group had met at the Ruins. Bolder had met Elliana previously, and knew a little of the chocolate palomino from their earlier conversation. She seemed to enjoy the same light-hearted banter that he did and the pair of them seemed to get along well enough.
Rezza was certainly a curiosity. He had never seen a horse like her before, and the shifter within him marveled at how she differed from their kind. Bolder had wanted to learn more about Baltia for Mazikeen and Hyaline; it wouldn’t harm the Pack to be informed about the changes that had taken storm across Beqanna. To know where exactly Baltia was, and why the new land that had risen after the ground-shakes was called the Ruins.
And then there was Lillibet.
She had come across his mind a few times. When Bolder had patrolled the edges of Hyaline or remained just outside the borders of it - as he did now, lingering in the northern point of the Meadow. There was always the chance that horses headed in this direction might be seeking out the Mountain (and oh, Bolder would have had a few things to share about that place if they had tried asking the striped squirrel that rushed from branch to branch or the silver-eyed falcon that liked to keep watch in the nearby trees) or Pangea; but if something struck him as odd or out of place for anyone who migrated towards his home, Bolder would be there to intercept them.
But the last few interactions had made him think of the ethereal girl with her clenched jaw, the way she asked about her home of golden trees that now rested beneath the waves.
Where had she gone?
Apparently not far, he mused to himself, finding that he was glad they had crossed paths again. She certainly made for better (and prettier) company than the badgers that dwelled in this part of the wood. With the arrival of spring, it meant that the grazing was sweeter but it also probably meant there was more than just the pair; avoiding a new family of anxious badgers and enjoying Lillibet’s company instead sounded like a far better way to spend his morning (even if his stomach grumbled a little).
”There’s such a thing as being too comfortable with shifters?” Bolder teased his companion with a raised brow as if his own father hadn’t been repulsed by his ability to shift, as if he hadn’t been raised in Hyaline because of that. The former Sylvan wastes no time and comes alongside him, and the pegasus draws his copper wings closer to his barrel so that she might have space to do so. "Not often," Bolder revealed to Lillibet while he moved ahead, "but I like to make use of my wings and I don't particularly enjoy long, stagnant winters."
Bolder refrained from opening his wings (though part of him wanted to show them off for the slender female beside him), and asked the glowing girl while they walked instead, "And what has you out-and-about so early?"
The pair, topaz and opal, fall in step easily beside each other. There’s a strange ─ though not unpleasant ─ comfort in Bolder’s company that strikes Lillibet on occasion, reminding her that the only ease she’d ever found in connecting with anyone had been with her family and with Manny. The latter hadn’t been any sort of natural development, instead coaxed by the tug of magical strings. Link had questioned her about it a time or two, about the oddity of the situation, but the girl (she’d been quite young at the time) had opted to believe the memories that had been gifted to her, if only because the chimera had done naught to endanger her. At least that she knew.
Most others had neglected to find charm in Lillibet’s personality. Admittedly, she’d been less tolerable as the self-proclaimed Princess of Sylva and had never truly found issue with the fact that her circle was small. But now, in their absence, her wanderings are marked with the conversations she has.
It’s still odd, though, that she’d felt no hesitation in intercepting Bolder at first sight of him in the Meadow today. Near catatonia had accented their first meeting, Lillibet herself haggard with worry and despair ─ her usual tactic would be to avoid the potential of resurfacing such things, but whatever it was that had drawn her to Bolder had dampened whatever negative association could possibly exist. Her honeyed eyes look to the glow of his moon at his good-natured teasing before she rolls them away in mock affront, and Lillibet decides that she doesn’t care what about him had drawn her in.
”Being too comfortable may not be an issue for you, he-who-can-escape-on-capable-wings, but for someone like little ol’ me…” she smiles vibrantly at him and rolls her lithe shoulders in something akin to a shrug, ”What am I do to if they shift into something that can eat me? Glow at them?”
The gold-flecked woman leans into their playful banter, appreciating the easy way she and Bolder interact. She hadn’t laughed in some time, and now as the grin lingers on her lips, Lillibet remembers what it’s like to find joy in her life. ”Where is your favorite place to fly? Some lands must look more beautiful than others from above.” She’d asked the same of her mother once before, when she’d still been a young filly, but Oceane’s biased answer had always been Loess.
”Ah, well, I’ve always been an early riser ─ and now that I’m…” she looks for the correct word, her golden eyes moving away from Bolder in brief embarrassment before settling on the path before them, ”displaced, I guess, I’ve found that it’s a hobby of mine to explore wherever I can.” when her gaze returns to the moon-faced stallion at her side, the soft and playful grin returns once more. ”I usually do it alone. But I suppose it’s fun with company, too.”
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
01-23-2022, 11:02 AM (This post was last modified: 01-23-2022, 11:03 AM by bolder.)
Bolder peered over at the female beside him, and tried his best to bridle against a widening grin.
Her vibrant smile did nothing to quash it, and instead it drew out his roguish nature. The winged stallion tilted his moon-marked face towards Lillibet and said, ”Oh, I think you’d be terrifying.” He continued, ”Dazzling, but terrifying.” His silver gaze remained searching the planes of her pale face, moving up towards the golden stripes near her forehead before shifting back down to meet her amber eyes.
He smiled, and then looked ahead again, pushing off into a brisk walk. Bolder was still careful to keep his wings against his copper side, but the winged stallion still found himself glancing to the young mare beside him. The warmth in her expression that he found waiting continued to draw him in and the pegasus gave her a look that might have made the pair appear as conspirators to those around them. ”If I tell you, you’ll have to promise to keep this a secret.”
The trees that Bolder had been trying to reach were now only a few paces away, but he slowed again to tell Lillibet: ”Taiga.” His expression turned rueful for a moment, like he assumed she would see the oddity in his answer. Pegasi were creatures of the sky. They could have any view they wished. And yet here was Bolder, saying that his favorite view was of a forest so thick you couldn’t see the ground and was often covered in a deep, murky mist. But Taiga had been home once to Bolder, and though he knew that risked banishment by being there, nobody ever seemed to take notice of a gold-tipped eagle that liked to roost along the granite coast or a tawny slender fox that liked to quietly trek through the overly-large ferns and worn trails. "Mainly because I was born there."
”But, yes, there are many beautiful lands in Beqanna. Ischia is warm and wonderful this time of year.” Bolder took a deliberate step and pushed against remaining fragments of snow and ice that still lingered in the shade during the earliest parts of Spring. It made a cracking sound beneath his hoof, and then he kept moving. ”I keep meaning to try and fly to the top of Tephra’s volcano,” he teases, having no wish to fly into an actual fiery, lava-filled mountain.
Admire from afar, perhaps.
Besides, there were better things to admire up close, like his companion.
”Now, my turn for a question,” Bolder says when they finally reach the shade of the forest. It’s only then that he stops, finally having reached their destination. The sun still broke through the branches where green buds had only begun to sprout, but it was enough shade that Bolder felt protected from direct sunlight. His dark brown ears pricked forward to Lillibet, though his grin tugged to one side of his mouth. ”What’s the most interesting place you’ve explored?”
Lillibet, too, attempts to suppress her smile in hopes that it will help her to appear more casual and less giddy in the presence of this blossoming connection ─ to no avail. Sometimes, there is just no hiding chemistry. The moment Bolder turns his shimmering eyes to her and attaches a word such as terrifying to her existence, the former Sylvan Princess barks out a laugh and a subsequent eye roll. It’s only when her gaze returns to his silvered eyes that he finishes the thought, which prompts an entirely new reaction from the glowing ethereal woman. The heat on her cheeks alerts Lillibet to the reality that, more likely than not, her face has flushed pink at his compliment In an effort not to appear sheepish or embarrassed, she tosses her head and lilac-accented mane before throwing another playful side-eye in Bolder’s direction.
“You think I’m dazzling,” it’s a statement more than a question, meant to redirect the attention to the okapi-striped man while the heat in her face subsides. Thankful when their conversation shifts to talk of his wings, Lillibet leans in to him collusively to share in whatever conspiracy he intends to whisper into her pricked ears. When he speaks the name, it takes a brief moment for the daughter of Oceane and Ledger to remember what, exactly, is contained within Taiga. The oddity that someone else may perceive at his answer does not strike Lillibet, who thinks it must feel powerful to be able to soar above the canopy, unbothered and unworried by the trunks of trees that the wingless are forced to navigate through. She’d never found the opportunity to explore the great forest, but she has heard stories of monsters in its shadows. Beqanna is home to many of them, though, and the myths surrounding Taiga are no different than the monster who hides in the depths of Hyaline’s lake or the great ice entity of Icicle Isle. She wonders which are true, and which have been woven to scare the nearly-traitless such as herself.
“I’ve never visited Taiga before,” she pauses for a moment, pensive, before adding: “What made you decide to leave?” She awaits his answer with a flick of an ear, though her gaze has turned from the attractive Bolder and to their surroundings where the rising morning sun has begun to creep through the budding canopy, speckling the hardened spring ground with its golden rays. She settles herself in one of these sunspots, splashing her own glow into the mix, while her companion tells her of Ischia and treks deliberately over a crunchy patch of remaining snow. The simple act twitches her mouth into a small smile before she registers his next comment. “Perhaps I can hike up and wave to you from the caldera as you fly overhead. Maybe my glow will terrify and dazzle it into not burning me alive.” She flutters her lashes playfully as Bolder chooses a shaded area to rest for their chat, Lillibet surprised to be caught between the desire to sidle close to him or to linger in the sun where she won’t have to fight off shivers every few minutes. She opts for the sun, begrudgingly, and settles her weight with a back hoof cocked against the hard earth before returning her gold-flecked gaze to Bolder.
His question, though expected, finds her without a prepared answer. “I haven’t traveled much outside of the common lands,” she clears her throat at the unspoken and the South before continuing, “but I do believe the Ruins have been the most interesting so far. It’s… strange, to think that it has a history outside of Beqanna. That there is blood in those grounds that belongs to people who never existed here.” She falls silent for a brief moment before shaking the oddity of their reality away and gracing Bolder with another wide, playful smile.
“Tell me. Is it true there’s a monster at the bottom of Hyaline’s lake?”
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
01-25-2022, 09:03 PM (This post was last modified: 01-25-2022, 09:07 PM by bolder.)
That roguish smile stays - and in the presence of Lillibet, it never seems to want to leave. But the truth is that he doesn’t mind, and so he doesn’t fight against it, either. It remains, and the opalescent mare beside him draws a little nearer. She comes close enough that Bolder can feel the head radiating off her skin, a beacon of warmth on an early spring day when the chill of winter can still dwell in the air.
”I also think you owe me a compliment,” Bolder tells his dazzling companion, and lowers his voice so that only Lillibet might hear him. ”I’ll accept ruggedly handsome, and perhaps extremely charming.” He teases her and even when his moon-marked face lifts again, his slate gray eyes go seeking the side glance she gives him. ”You pick.”
This banter between them is easy for Bolder; he could engage her all day in this and not think the day wasted. Not with her shining company.
The only moment of unease (for him) comes when the conversation turns to Taiga, and while Bolder recalls his youth there, Lillibet asks why she had left it behind. His mind turns for a moment, considering telling her the whole story. He could try to explain that Gale and Mazikeen - his Uncle and Aunt - brought him to Hyaline from Taiga. That his father had wanted him to learn to suppress his shifting rather than embrace it. That he is probably aware of less than he actually knows, and perhaps that it should bother him, but it doesn’t.
Instead, Bolder condenses the story and says: ”My Aunt and Uncle are shifters. I was able to learn more from them in Hyaline than if I stayed behind in Taiga.” As if to prove a point of his ability, the young pegasus suddenly stopped. He lifted his wings and began to stretch them out. Both began to flare with one coming close enough to Lillibet that it might graze against her shoulder, until a few heartbeats later, there was nothing there. Open air blew over the top of his wingless back, and Bolder turned to look at the gold-striped girl from over his broad shoulders.
”Oh, I think you’d light it all aflame,” he told her with a conspiratorial smirk. ”Tephra would be nothing but smoldering flames if you wished it so.” And then he stopped himself, remembering the calamity that she had lived through. Bolder didn’t feel much remorse for losing the South - it meant very little to him - but it had been a home to Lillibet, and for her, he wouldn’t make light of such a personal tragedy.
What she speaks of next makes him almost glad for her mention of the Ruins. He studied her carefully, wondering what about she found so interesting. It was different, that much he knew. But there had been very little vegetation, and apart from Rezza, even less signs of the rumored Baltians. There had been very little for him to mimic and even less information to relay back to Mazikeen.
"Have you been back there?" Bolder asked, "You'd probably have a better chance of finding a monster out there rather than in Hyaline. Ours has been missing for some time."
Bolder’s voice, lowered intimately to share only with her, paired with his close proximity is intoxicating. She notices the scent of him for the first time ─ a hint of petrichor, a hint of floral ─ and she can only think to imagine that there is no possible way the rest of Hyaline smells just as good as him. Lillibet raises a brow in mock affront for a brief moment, pinning him with something akin to incredulity. “Oh, I owe you?” Her playfulness turns pensive as she takes a long moment in silence to blatantly inspect her companion. She hmmm’s as her gold-flecked gaze works the length of his neck, the broadness of his chest, his beautifully feathered wings, the golden stripes that cut between the impressive mahogany of his coat. “Ruggedly handsome or extremely charming?” the young woman muses as her face takes on a new seriousness.
After a few moments, her golden gaze flicks to his silver one and hardly a moment passes before the corners of her lips twitch upward in that coquettish smirk once more. “But would you accept brilliantly vain?”
She tucks her chin to her narrow chest for a quick moment, feigning sheepishness at providing the man before her with such a high compliment. When it passes and they’ve shifted their conversation to something with a bit more depth, Lillibet watches Bolder carefully from her sunspot as he explains why he’d left Taiga for Hyaline. She’s just about to ask who his aunt and uncle are when he begins to extend his wings. One of them cuts through the sun and the golden rays gleam against his feathers, most of them flawless. The other remains in the shadow, though is no less majestic than its counterpart. Lillibet’s nostrils flare at the scent of him as his feathered appendages reach out, the one swathed in sun dancing lightly against her pale skin for the quickest of moments before suddenly Bolder is wingless, that playful smirk still present on his handsome face as he turns to her.
“Very impressive,” she tells him flatly, despite the fact that she is, in actuality, impressed. “And what of you, Bolder? Could I turn you to smoldering?” It’s the most upfront she has ever been with such chemistry on the line; this banter with Bolder makes her feel heady. Powerful.
More powerful, even, than the existence of her ethereal aura has ever granted her. Lillibet bats her eyes, their conversation shifting again as she brings up whatever secrets may lay within the confines of Hyaline, and the former Sylvan princess finds she quite enjoys this combination of flirtatious playfulness and serious inquiry. It’s fulfilling in a way she hadn’t ever expected, borne of a simple lingering gaze the first time they’d met.
“I’ve not been back. I’m not sure I plan to return there anytime soon.” She pauses and bites at the inside of her cheek for a brief moment before admitting, “It makes me feel bitter.” She decides to lay the seed then, remembering something about Hyaline that her mother had taught her some time ago. “Pangea is one of Hyaline’s charges, yes? What do you think of it?”
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
![[Image: 37477440_mkk7ul7XODhpdJ7.png]](https://f2.toyhou.se/file/f2-toyhou-se/images/37477440_mkk7ul7XODhpdJ7.png)
