"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
As the days pass, it grows easy to forget that there had ever been a time before this. A time before the dragon that had tried to carry them away (presumably for a small snack). A time before they had been sequestered here, with each other and the lake for company. And as the days pass, Vital too grows forgetful of the danger that had once lurked. Of the fear that had filled his first days in this new place.
On this particular day, it is early yet, the dew only just beginning to cling to the trees and grass, the heat of the day still distant. Zephys sleeps curled beside him, but Vital cannot seem to find slumber again. The time that passed has allowed his terror to fade. And that in turn has allowed him to think. To remember and reflect. To feel anger at himself for freezing - for doing so little against the threat.
With a faintly worried look at his twin, Vital slowly untangles himself before rising, attempting to make as little noise as possible. He would let him sleep as long as he needed, but for Vital? For himself? He had determined in these last few days that he must make himself strong. Had determined he would not be a victim again.
In those first days of terror, he had abandoned his former attempts at bringing the bird he had mostly accidentally transformed into to the surface. But now? Maybe if he could call it at will, he wouldn’t feel so defenseless.
He doesn’t go far - only far enough that the fire occasionally licking his skin would not be visible to his twin through the trees. And there he concentrates. He calls and strains and paces and hisses in frustration. He does this until sweat begins to darken the ember-hue of his skin. Until he grows weary enough that his mind begins to still even as his body does. Then, just as he had nearly given up, the bird rises through the stillness of his thoughts. Feather and flame sprout across his youthful form until the fire dies and in his place stands an equally youthful Pheonix with sprouting plumage the color of the morning sky. From his avian throat, a lilting shriek of excitement rises, piercing the early morning air as he hops excitedly (and clumsily) on two legs.
She was mostly oblivious to the kind of darkness that twisted itself into Hyaline.
Sheltered was not the right word. Given her parents, she was certainly never sheltered from anything. They both knew that hiding the realities of life from their children would only serve to hinder them, but, her mother was also not too quick to darken their sunshine quite yet. She knew the world would do that for them. She didn’t think her youngest daughters needed to know just exactly how careful in Hyaline they needed to be — a simple warning to leave the king and queen alone (because they are busy, her mother had said — they have things to do, so if you see them, make sure you stay out of their way) is all Iliana and her twin had ever been told, but whether or not they would heed that remained to be seen.
She preferred solitude anyway.
She liked the quiet of her own thoughts, the predictable rhythm of them. She liked when she was alone in the mountains, with only the rustle of the wind and the distant call of a hawk to interrupt them. In her panther form she could cover far more ground, slipping easily over rock and fallen trees with feline ease. Her black pelt—covered with dark, nearly invisible rosettes as a panther—complemented the similarly neutral colors around her. The pallid-gray of the sky, the rough stones that littered the rocky terrain, and the pine-green of the trees. She all but blended in, just as she wanted to.
She makes her way to one of the forested areas, seeking more privacy, and perhaps the opportunity to practice tracking deer the way her father had told her to.
It wasn’t a deer that she had in her sights right now (she was still too young to hunt them on her own), but rather a small hare. She had no intention of actually killing it, she just wanted to see if, hypothetically speaking, she could have.
And she is certain she could have if not for a strange, almost song-like cry that pierces the air, startling herself and her target. Her rose-gold eyes flit away from the hare just long enough for it to make its escape, and she heaves a somewhat irritated sigh, straightening as she does so. She looks again in the direction of the sound, and her curiosity gets the better of her.
She follows the sound with mostly silent footsteps, sticking to the low-light areas, stopping occasionally to listen, and then readjust her path.
Eventually, she is rewarded with finding a most peculiar bird, and for a moment her steps falter. “What are you?” She asks him, shifting into her equine form as she does so. She is young, less than a year old, and the shift is perhaps a little clumsy considering her age, though it was evidently something she had been doing since she was born. She is still black as a horse, with the same rose gold eyes, but now with rose gold on each of her legs as well. When she steps into the sunlight those same rosettes that she had in her panther form remain scattered across her neck and back, though there seemed to be a rose-gold tint to them—and the older she gets the more prominent they become.
Belatedly, she realizes she had assumed this creature could understand her. This makes her cheeks flush warm, though she isn’t sure how to rectify the situation. Instead she only stands, staring and waiting to see if he will say something back.
He is so focused on his victory that he doesn’t notice the panther approaching. A foolish thing for a young colt who had so recently been the near-victim of another predator. Instead he is too busy lifting his wings and peering at the feathers sprouting in a wash of vibrant colors. Like her, his eyes remain the same fire-bright hue of his equine form. Unlike her, he doesn’t have nearly as much control over his shifting.
When she speaks from behind him, a loud, startled squawk erupts from his throat as he whips around to face her. His wings flap frantically at his sides, though he is still too young for flight. In his alarm, he loses his hold on the shape, and with a crack of bones, he is facing her as a black and red colt with patches the color of embers dotting his skin.
When he finally truly sees her again however, he is relieved to find himself staring at a young filly that appears to be roughly his age. For a moment, he wonders if he had imagined the cat.
Realizing belatedly that she had asked him a question, he clears his throat and replies quickly, “A bird.” He offers her a small smile then, eyeing her with uncertainty. “I’m… not certain what kind.” He pauses, then adds with a stir of excitement, “But it makes fire!”
He frowns then, peering at her as he recalls the brief glimpse he’d gotten of the panther. Still not sure if he had imagined it or not, he asks, “I thought I saw…” His frown deepens. “Were you… a big cat?”
Apart from her sister, she has not had much interaction with the other children of Hyaline. She has seen some of them, stealing quick glances at them before she slipped off in a different direction. Something about the idea of having to make conversation with strangers made her stomach knot with anxiety, and so she avoided it as much as possible.
It’s why when the bird startles at her voice and shifts into a colt — even though deep down she had suspected it, since she has never seen a bird quite like this and magic was the only logical explanation — that she feels her muscles grow taut with a sudden urge to leave. Her rose-gold eyes widen a little in alarm, and she freezes, watching him just as uncertain as he watches her. “Fire?” she repeats after a moment's hesitation, her curiosity overpowering her nerves. “I’ve never seen a bird that can make fire before,” she continues with a quiet kind of wonder, taking in his own fiery coloring.
The frown on his face makes her suddenly self-conscious, and she takes a step back, a brief moment of worry clouding her young face. “I can shift into a panther,” she confirms for him, and then tacking on in a nervous rush, “just like my dad,” as if that might mean anything to him at all.
There is something almost like relief in watching the way she seems to shrink away, the same kind of uncertainty coloring her features as had fluttered through him. A relief, because it means she had not come here intent to leap on him and turn him into breakfast. Truthfully, he was rather tired of being mistaken for something edible.
First the monster, then the boy a few days ago. He had hoped that maybe, if he could control his ability to change, he could become something fiercer. Something other creatures would never mistake for prey.
When he announces his bird can make fire, her curiosity appears to overcome her caution. He nods enthusiastically in response to her question, a shy smile blooming on his lips. He is a little disappointed that she hasn’t heard of a bird that can make fire, but he had expected it. Though he hasn’t revealed his ability to very many, he hadn’t needed to in order to know that whatever bird he could become is not a common one. Certainly it’s never something he’s seen flitting about anywhere he’s been despite the other strange creatures he’s seen.
“I don’t think they’re very common,” he agrees, though his shoulders slump just the tiniest bit. “I haven’t seen any either, except…”Except my brother, he’d been about to say, but he quickly clamps his lips shut. He doesn’t think she’s very dangerous, but he wouldn’t risk his brother like that.
Then she claims she can shift like her dad, and Vital’s curiosity is piqued. He doesn’t know her dad of course, but if there are others like her, maybe it means there are others like him. “Is that… something that a lot of horses can do?” he asks cautiously, looking at her with poorly concealed hope.
She can feel some of her apprehension beginning to ease away when she notices the colt seems a little unsure of this, like her. She did not consider herself particularly shy or meek but she was in unfamiliar territory. All her short life she has been surrounded by those that already knew her inside and out—her mother and father, and of course her twin sister.
Now, she is faced with the task of trying to decide what this stranger needs to know, and she wavers between thinking she has to tell him everything, to second-guessing that idea and not wanting to tell him anything at all.
“I’m not sure,” she tells him with a thoughtful frown, trying to think if she has ever seen anyone outside of her own family that shifts into a panther. “My dad, and some of my brothers and sisters are the only ones I know.” She knows too that there are shapeshifters that can turn into anything, but there was something to be said for the connection that came from only being able to shift into one thing. Her panther form was simply her, and she could not imagine ever being anything else.
“And maybe some of my dad’s other kids too, but I’ve never met them. My mom says he used to be a casanova and that there’s a lot of them,” she repeats the word she had heard Ryatah teasingly use, even though she doesn’t know what it means. She assumes it wasn’t anything too awful because all her father had done was roll his eyes. She knows between her two parents she has a lot of half siblings, but other than the ones that live in Hyaline—the quiet dragon shifter, and the ice angel and his rose and gray twin sister—Iliana didn’t give any of them much thought.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asks him with a tentative smile and another cautious step forward. “I have a twin sister, her name is Baptiste.” Saying her sister’s name suddenly makes her realize she had never introduced herself and she can feel her face flush hot with embarrassment, her rose-gold eyes widening a little as she adds in a rush, “And my name is Iliana.”
There is something about the quiet moments they spend assessing one another, trying to determine if danger lurks in their individual and youthful ways, that allows Vital to relax. To grow into the bolder, more confident colt he’d been before he and his twin had been set upon by a feral dragon. He had always been the more confident of the two. The one willing to take risks. He’d felt guilty because he is the reason they’d been in the meadow that day. He is the reason they’d been attacked.
But now, with Zephys safe and the possibility of new friendships, Vital allows a little more of that guilt to slip away.
He watches her with avid curiosity as she tells him of all her relations that can shift like her. Vital’s brows furrow as he considers this. As far as he knows, only he and Zephys could shift into the birds. But he also doesn’t really know any of his relatives.
Maybe his dad is also a casanova - whatever that is - and he has lots of unknown siblings who could do what he can. With a sigh, Vital slumps briefly in disappointment before straightening. It isn’t his new friends fault he doesn’t know of anyone else like him. Offering her a small smile, he says, “You’re so lucky. You must’ve had lots of horses teaching you how to shift.”
Maybe he could shift as easily as her if he could find someone to teach him. Something to think about, he supposes.
Then she asks if he has any siblings and he stills. He should have expected it of course, given her talk of them. But then she tells him of her own twin and something inside him relaxes. Maybe he could tell her. She would understand. He considers her thoughtfully for a long moment until she gives her own name in a rush. He blinks, realizing they hadn’t actually introduced themselves yet, and grins.
“I’m Vital,” he replies quickly. He stares for another moment before adding. “And I… have a twin too. I don’t know if I have any other siblings though.”
He tells her that she is lucky, and while she understands that to an extent, she is still too young to fully grasp the weight of such a statement.
She is too young to understand just exactly how lucky she is; to have two parents that love not only her, but also each other. To be surrounded by siblings that were either born from that same love or were at least adopted into it. To have been born into a family that would love and protect her at all cost when so many in this land could not say the same. The simple fact that her father was even here to teach her how to shift said more than she could comprehend at this age—so he tells her that she is lucky and while she nods, she does not fully understand why.
“It’s mostly just been my dad,” she answers him with a slight shrug. “Most of my older brothers and sisters don’t live here anymore. Except my sister Casimira, but she shifts into a dragon and doesn’t really like doing it.” That was a difficult thing for Iliana to grasp—she could not imagine hating her panther form the way Casimira seems to resent her dragon, but when asked about it her sister had visibly shut down, and Iliana had learned to not ask again.
“Maybe someday I can meet your twin, and you can meet mine?” she offers with a carefully concealed enthusiasm. He seemed hesitant to reveal anything to her, and she couldn’t figure out if it was because he was still leery of her and her predator form, or if it was something unrelated to her and she was overthinking it all. She wanted to be his friend, since other than her sister she didn’t have any, but maybe the feeling wasn’t quite mutual. After a beat of silence as she tries to figure out how to steer the conversation she finally settles on small talk that she hopes might allow him to relax a little. “Were you born here? I feel like I would have seen you sooner if you were, but Hyaline is a pretty big place.”
