She had not expected to find another one this close—certainly not one that looked like him. Her heart slams into her throat in surprise and then thrums with delight as she tries to take all of him in. He is unlike anything that she has ever seen before. He is brilliantly colored and only half-horse in many ways that capture her attention immediately. So she doesn’t mind when she realizes that he is so close to her or that he doesn’t ask to touch her. She snorts a little in surprise at the question and startles back immediately.
“Both,” she chirps as she shifts back into avian form, but this time choosing a small blackbird. Her small cry barely breaks the silence as she flaps around his head, reaching down to playfully peck at the spikes that come along his neck. Not above showing off for the dragon boy made of stars and gold, she shifts again, this time landing on the ground as a young brown bear, rising onto her back paws.
She swipes playfully with her massive paws, an impish smile on her lips.
“Or maybe I’m this actually.”
She rolls onto her back and then rolls up as a young tiger, mimicking her mother’s form. This one feels right in a way that some of the other animals don’t, and she purrs a little as she stretches.
It’s then that she looks at him in the eye.
Then that she freezes, feeling a chill run up her spine as she finds herself in the reflection. Sees a million different futures play out with him in all of them—him, always him. Her heart stutters again and she finds that she can’t hold onto the shift. On a stumbling breath, she shifts back into her normal form, her pale neck slick with sweat and the exhaustion of multiple shifts making her limbs lead.
But nothing that distracts from what she had seen.
For a second, there’s nothing but the sound of her heavy breaths before she finally shatters the silence:
“What are you?”
I want to swim until we both begin to feel the weightlessness sink in
@[yadigar]