"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
04-30-2017, 10:32 PM (This post was last modified: 04-30-2017, 10:36 PM by Azar.)
Azar
She often spent her days close to her father's side, thick and furry and protective. As bears maybe were by nature. It was almost more comfortable than when he was a horse. She had been born in the woods, raised surrounded by the creatures of a forest. The skittish hare trusted her, the flighty birds settled near by. She was accepted as one of them, these wild things. So it was entirely natural and right that the father to adopt her turned out to be another beast of trees and shadow.
Today, though, she wandered. Her little wings were pinned to her roaned-gray sides and she ventured from one forest to another. From the redwoods of home, to the fiery trees of their neighbors. Bright, green eyes never settled on one thing for too long, taking it all in with quiet enthusiasm.
At any unexpected scents or sounds, she would stop and freeze so still like a young doe, ears and eyes alert. Her breath would slow as though she was blended in with her surroundings, a statue of nature to be overlooked, bypassed. She did that now, actually, startled by sharp snap of twigs some ways before her. The deep mahogany of her face might have blended in to the Taiga's forest, but here the trunks where a paler sort of brown. She didn't blend in as she should, as a true woodland creature would have.
Her ear swiveled to another sound, in another direction. And slowly, so slowly, her head turned to follow. Her eyes widened a little and her mouth opened in a silent gasp, surprised to find someone so close without having noticed them before. She immediately wanted to burrow down and hide beneath her wings, disappear until he passed her by. But he had already spotted her, and it would be useless.
Hu-hullo, she offered quietly, barely heard and broken, a soft breath amidst the sounds of tree whispers. Often, she wouldn't even speak. But he was young like her, and somehow that made it easier. She remained frozen in place though, somehow still afraid to move, still under the spell of being startled.
As the days grow shorter, so too does the time that Ivar spends by his mother's side. Her milk has long since dried up, but he finds comfort in her presence and still sleeps beside her at night. Once - only once - he had dozed off at the bottom of his crescent pond, waking to find the water around him black and still rather than filtered through with twilight. Ivar can't name the sensation he had felt; tranquility is a concept he has never learned. But as he swam back to the shore and tucked himself into Djinni's grey side, he kept one watchful brown eye on the water, and wondered what it would be like to stay there forever.
He's just left the water today as well, but it was a brief swim, just long enough to drench his pies coat and catch a smallmouth bass with a crooked fin. The fish in his pool have grown fewer as Ivar grows larger; even the minnows hide when his shadow hits the water. He's equally satisfied with the grass that he's currently grazing, but the thrill of hunting is something else entirely.
The hoofsteps in the woods are nothing new, and the smoky black colt doesn't think to call out a hello to whomever it might be. They'll see him or they won't, but he looks up when they pass by regardless.
It's a filly, one his own age. She is very still, and the expression in her eyes is not so very different from that in the bass' when it realized it was caught. His heartbeat catches for a moment, and he takes a step forward without thinking. It's a little to the left and a little forward, a subconscious motion that limits escape.
When she speaks though, he smiles, and anything predatory vanishes with the appearance of his good-natured grin.
"Hey!" He says, tilting his pale face to the side and glancing curiously at the wings at her sides. They remind him a bit of Bristol's, and he wonders if this bay roan pegasus is related to his friend. "I'm Ivar. Who're you?"
For a moment... She thought he might attack or something. She would normally think that was silly, but she came from a forest not far from here that had it's own sort of dangerous creatures, hidden predators, within it just waiting to strike. A thrill of fear zipped down her spine and she halted, doe-eyes wide. Frozen still.
"Hey!" he said, breaking the spell. She pulled a cautious smile to the corner of her lips, still uncertain about this boy that was both frightful and not at all scary. "I'm Ivar. Who're you?"
Azar, she traded softly. She almost stepped closer to him, only a little step, but she remembered that flash of something else in his eyes. There for hardly a breath and then gone. It was locked in her mind now though. She was raised wild and quiet in the forest, just another woodland critter. She would have to know the look of something dangerous. Maybe he wasn't, maybe she was just overly-cautious. But still.
So she took a silent step backwards instead, willowy limbs deliberate and fluid. I'm from the forest. A different one, she added uselessly. Vibrant green eyes never left him as she allowed her senses to stay aware of their surroundings. All seemed so quiet though. If he really was dangerous somehow, could she get away quick enough on her own? Oh, how she wished she could fly. Daddy wasn't really capable of teaching her though.
My father is a bear, she stated flatly, quiet but firm. A warning maybe, not to harm her. Although, Daddy wasn't here, though, was he. And she'd never had a mother.
She felt uncomfortable, uncertain. She wasn't used to speaking so much. Are you a wolf? she asked to distract him, though she was curious, thinking of the other shifters that lived with them. Sometimes they got a glittery-hard look in their eyes too. Or maybe he was a tiger, like the others.
i know i'm not the center of the universe -but you keep spinning 'round me just the same
It doesn’t ever occur to him that her hesitation might be caused by his slip of instinct; Ivar immediately assumes she is just a little shy. Her step back confirms it, and so he politely mirrors the motion. He steps a bit to the side as well, reversing his previous brief attempt to limit escape. Her path is minutely more clear now, the pied yearling isn’t trying to stop her.
(maybe he wants to chase her for longer)
His smile is warm and genuine, and he listens with interest as she explains she is from a different forest. Yes, he thinks as he takes in another breathe: she is.
“From the Taiga?” He asks, even though he already knows the answer.
When she speaks again, he is not expecting it. Ivar tilts his pale head to the side, his brown eyes shaded with confused. A bear? How can her father be a bear? Then he remembers. He’s sometimes a bear. He has to be a horse at least a few times to have a daughter. Ivar wonders for a moment if that means that Azar, too, is a shifter. He has not met very many of him, and those few interactions have been short.
He’s not quite sure what to say when she speaks again. This time, instead of frown he laughs, because of course he is not that.
“There are no wolves in Sylva.” Says the piebald colt with surety. Mother has told him stories of kingdoms and their novel protections, but Sylva has never had need of such a thing, and nor would Djinni allow true wolves residence where they might endanger the equine residents. Wolves have instincts, Mother has told him, urges to hunt and kill that are not meant to be curbed. Best to keep them at a distance, where at least they are free.
“I’m just me,” he says with a soft smile and a flick of his pale tail. “Maybe a bit of fish.” Fish aren’t scary, after all. Smooth and a bit slippery, perhaps, but not especially threatening.
-------------------i v a r ------------------------------------djinni and stillwater---------------------------------
He stepped back as she did and opened the way for her like a silent peace offering to her instincts. It surprised her, but she tried not to show that she had noticed it. Her head rose just a little, more at ease though still cautious. She would always be cautious, raised as quietly wild as a fawn or hare.
”From the Taiga?” he asked, and she nodded with a carefully soft smile.
He tilted his head when she spoke of Siberian. She wasn’t really sure why. Was there something odd about having a bear for a daddy? She didn’t look anything like him, and certainly wasn’t a bear. Maybe that’s what confused him. It could be a tricky detail, she supposed. She hadn’t really ever thought of it. There were many things that she simply just accepted as normal, content that it always seemed to work out in some way.
She nearly startled when he laughed, but only because she hadn’t been expecting it. It was confident and loud, but happy and beautiful. The sort of laugh that had you smiling along even if you were the butt of the joke. Contagious, infectious. And naturally she was smiling, even as he claimed there were no wolves in this forest, Sylva. Perhaps that was why it was so quiet here.
”It’s just me. Maybe a bit of a fish,” he offered. Her dark nose scrunched up in puzzlement and she looked him over with bright, green eyes. Are you certain? she asked skeptically. He didn’t look much like a fish. She supposed he did smell a bit like water, though, but still not very fishy to her. Maybe he was joking. It would be such a strange jest, though.
I'm just me, she said with a stretch of her wings, as if spreading arms to display her simple figure. It wasn't much, probably. She assumed she wasn't much to look at, anyway. She couldn't be sure, though, as she often felt like a bit of an outcast and kept to the forest. The woodland creatures were the best friends she could ask for, even if they couldn't talk back to her. Just the wings, she added. She thought better of mentioning that she had never learned to use them. Best that he assumes she can escape in case she was wrong about him.
Have you lived here your whole life? This is the first time I've left the Taiga, but I wasn't born there. Daddy found me in a different forest. We lived alone there for a while before he found the Taiga and took me with him. Had she really spoken so many words at once? She was such a quiet, reserved girl by nature. He had a way about him that disarmed her, and she peered at him a little skeptically again.
i know i'm not the center of the universe -but you keep spinning 'round me just the same
She asks if he is sure that he’s part fish, and he shrugs with a grin. “Pretty sure”, his body language says for him, “I can show you, if you want.” He adds verbally. They’re not near water now, but it’s never far away. He lacks scales, true, and anything slightly resembling a tail, but fish is the best explanation that he can come up with. He is whatever his father is, he knows that, but father has always just been Dad – Ivar has never wondered exactly what they are. He doesn’t need to.
The roan girl says that she is just herself, but Ivar looks with clear curiosity at the spread of her feathered wings. He has seen wings on horses before, of course, but he’s never seen one fly. They can, he knows, just like the birds can. He takes a step forward (not too close, he knows to be more cautious now), and tells her that: “I like the wings.”
She speaks more, a stream of words that stand out only because of her previous brief statements. Ivar listens, willing to answer the question she’d posed at the beginning, but waiting for her to finish. Interrupting is rude, he knows, but he is more interested in hearing her story than in cutting her off to talk more about himself. Ivar wonders where this other forest might have been, wonders what kind of parents would leave their child to be found by a bear, but instead he answers that “Yes. I was born here.”
That sounds dull in comparison to her story though, and so the young colt adds “I’ve been lots of other places though. Like Ischia and Tephra and Hyaline. I want to go to Loess next. Have you ever been there?”
-------------------i v a r ------------------------------------djinni and stillwater---------------------------------
