"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 grows restless searching for it, that feeling Gale had poured into him.
Power, his Uncle explained it as. It had allowed Bolder to shift into something that he never would have imagined. The animal had been one buried deep below the earth - dead for millennia - and yet with Gale's help, he had helped Bolder resurrect the shape. He had taken it, became something might, and lurked the depths of Hyaline's lake as that creature.
Something that he couldn't do on his own, but his Uncle was growing harder to find.
Bolder had been searching for him as the lanky wolf again - a usual shape for the young shifter - and plodded through the Hyaline's forest with no success at finding the elder skinwalker. His irritation fuels him to change into something faster - a kind of cat with long legs that lets him sprint after the winter hares. But even that feels unfulfilling, as well as the increasing drive to actually hunt the creatures leaves him hungering.
Frustrated, he changes back into himself.
A young horse with stripes and wings, a silver moon glowing near his crescent marking.
Making his way through the forest he stops, sensing another horse nearby. It isn't like before - when the winged stranger had come and Craft and Anatomy had seeped into his young mind. This is another Hyalinean, (another shifter, he wonders?) and turns his two-toned face towards the sound, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever might be nearby.
And he wanders freely now because winter keeps the clouds low and fat-bellied and the sun cannot penetrate them. The cold seeps into the meat of his lungs and makes them ache and this is a familiar thing, the pain of it, and he is grateful for it. If only because it gives him something to focus on, something that is not his last interaction with Mazikeen.
(He is desperate for anything else to think about.)
He wanders because the slate gray hue of winter suits him just fine, this angel carved from ice, even if the cold is bitter. He wanders and he wonders where Este is, if she has chased the sun to someplace else and he hopes that she has found warmth, wherever she is.
He is in the middle of remembering the stench of death that had covered her like a shroud in the darkness when he happens upon someone. He half-thinks he might have divined his twin just by thinking of her, but this is someone else entirely. Someone unfamiliar and he knows that the only reason they are strangers is because he still makes himself scarce.
(Or perhaps he has made himself scarce again. He had been comfortable here once, when Mazikeen had told him he could stay. But then she had changed and he had begun to wonder again when he might be cast out.)
He tilts his head, studying the crescent moon. “Hello,” he says, aware that he has been seen, “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Selaphiel.”
There are a few faces that Bolder has come to recognize in Hyaline.
There is Mazikeen, the Alpha. And to Bolder, she is an aunt as well as his mentor. Because of her, he has been allowed to grow and thrive in a way that he never would have in the North. Where he still in Taiga, he would be struggling to control the colors of his coat and if he wished to be something other than he was, it would have to be done quietly and in the shadows.
Here in Hyaline, Bolder can whoever or whatever he wishes.
He doesn't mind the cold, because he can become something that endures it better. Bolder is most often seen roaming through these woods as a striped wolf, with the gold on his pelt gleaming in the muted winter sunshine. It didn't take much to imagine a thicker coat, and for most of the freezing season, he stays warm. (Bolder still practices other shapes: an eagle so that he can observe the happenings around him, an alligator that ferociously guards a corner of the lake, a bear for when the nights are bitterly cold.
"No, I don't think so," he says, studying the other horse in equal measure, noting that he had a halo as well. He knew there were others. Others like Anath, but who was a companion to young Malik. A few other shifters that he hadn't met yet. Angels. (And there had been one in particular who had been surprised to see again: his grandmother.) "I'm Bolder." The adolescent shapeshifter introduces himself, wondering if Selaphiel had been saved and brought to Hyaline as he had been, or if someone had found him and brought him back as Malik had done.
Perhaps this was someone Uncle Gale or Aunt Mazikeen deemed powerful enough to stay.
"Do you know Ryatah?" the striped pegasus asks instead, because staring up into the pale face before Bolder made him think of another. The face of his mother, Noel, and it forces him to push down the rising guilt in his stormy chest.
He wonders what this young pegasus’s connection is to the rest of Hyaline—he seems too young to have wandered here on his own—but he doesn’t ask. Because to ask the question would risk having it turned on him and how would he answer?
His mother had been the only exception once and then his friend—Mazikeen—had taken mercy on him. Or pity, perhaps. Either way, she had allowed him to stay, though he was not like the rest of them. She had carved out a place for him amongst the shifters and let him live there in peace.
But he cannot bring himself to think of Mazikeen now.
Because to think of her would surely only call to mind their last interaction.
To think of her would only make the chest ache and the eyes burn with the memory of a death that did not belong to him. A death he had tried and failed to stop.
“Bolder,” he repeats instead and he smiles, though there is something in the smile that does not quite reach the eyes, “it’s nice to meet you.”
And it is.
Though it is difficult to meet the shifters, to know that he is not like them, to know that they belong here and he does not. He does not hold it against this boy with the moon on his face, how could he? It’s not something that can be helped.
His expression softens at the mention of his mother’s name and he nods. “I am her son,” he says, offering the answer freely, proudly, fondly. His lineage is the only reason he has been allowed to live amongst them, he knows, though he loves her for more than this alone.
“How do you know my mother?” he asks, pale blue eyes bright with curiosity.
The story of how Bolder came to be in Hyaline is complicated, but the older that the young pegasus gets, the more he realizes that it was necessary. Had he stayed in Taiga, he might not have discovered his shifting. According to his Uncle Gale, if he had stayed in Taiga any longer, he might not ever have discovered it.
(It's just one more thing to be grateful to his Aunt and Uncle for.)
But since coming to Hyaline, the earlier lessons of his youth grow hazy. The boy who had raced beneath the mighty Taigan trees is different from the one who roams the shores of Hyaline's lake. He blinks, and lifts his head, trying to recall some of the manners that his parents had attempted to instill in him. "And you as well," Bolder says, continuing to study the unfamiliar face of the other horse.
Could he split himself apart between the icy cracks?
Did he shift into seasons, change like the weather?
He keeps studying Selaphiel's face for some type of hint to his power, and finds traces of his mother staring at him instead. A sense of longing surprises him, as thinks of her last visit and the way she had wrapped him tight within her embrace. Bolder loves the adventures and the new things he has learned here under the Alpha, but the feeling that his mother invokes is powerful. He misses her, but the knowledge that this is another relation is comforting.
"She's my grandmother," Bolder says, "My mother used to live here with her." Noel had eventually left Hyaline, though. She had come to Nerine, and the rest is a history that resulted in the young crescent-marked colt. He glanced around them, before his silver eyes rested on Selaphiel again.
"Like you do now," he adds, putting all the pieces together. "So you're my Uncle, like Gale."
Perhaps it had been foolish to think that he and Este existed as something separate from everything else.
(Of course he knows that there are other children, there are a pair of them just now, and that more will likely come later.)
But he had always felt as if they were insulated from the rest of it. He has not even made the effort to meet his newest siblings, if only because he wanted to uphold the illusion that there was anything at all special or sacred about he and Este. (Selfish, really.)
He knows that there have been others but it does not stop his blood from turning to ice when he mentions another sister, the young pegasus’s mother. A sister who had lived here once but no longer does. And perhaps meeting the son of a sister is just as strange as meeting the sister herself.
He swallows thickly and nods his understanding but can think of nothing to say. He does not ask for the sister’s name because it doesn’t matter, not really, not when the chances of their ever meeting seem impossibly slim.
He shifts his weight, all that cold in him promptly turning to stone when Bolder mentions Gale. And he thinks of his conversation—or, rather, his confrontation—with Mazikeen, when she had told him that her motives were whatever Gale told her they should be.
He shakes his head and finally tears the pale blue gaze from the boy’s face.
“Probably the only thing Gale and I have in common,” he says and fights hard to keep the bitter edge from his tone. It is not the boy’s fault. The boy. His nephew. His blood.
“Well, Bolder,” he says, trying to shift gears, redirect his focus away from the stone settled in the pit of his gut, “it’s even nicer to meet you, knowing that you’re my nephew.” And he tries for a smile.
It had been such an odd thing to Bolder, to try and understand his family. As a young colt, it hadn't been overly complicated. There had been his parents who were almost always together, except for those times that duty had called his father to the Isle. But then there had been his siblings, two older sisters, and the pair that he had been born alongside that made them three. Luminesce and Elegance had been the ones to tell the triplets stories, but it was Saffron and Bravely with who he had made adventures.
There had been Uncle Yanhua and two Aunts that had resulted in more cousins than he could recall. There had been his grandfather - a Dragon - and another Aunt, and more Uncles. A grandmother he had come across in passing. So meeting Gale and Mazikeen hadn't been such a shock to the boy; there were already so many that he wasn't bothered by the notion of more.
Bolder knows very little of the things that Gale had told Mazikeen. He only knows that they had been accepting of him where his father had not been. (Something about a Curse and mistaking it for power is all he knows about the shadows that taints his lineage.)
"Gale is teaching me how to shapeshift," says the boy, letting his gold stripes turn to white as the chestnut color of his pelt turns to white. Bolder narrows his silver eyes (the only thing that he can never change) and small cracks begin to criss-cross across his skin, as ice often does. Even the gilded edges of his wings begin to fade to white, and while he doesn't mimic Selaphiel exactly, there are strong similarities in the shape he wears and the patterns across his hide. "But it's been Mazikeen who has been showing me how to control it."
Selaphiel smiles, and Bolder who has never had to mimic one before, doesn't know what a false one looks like on another.
This is not his first taste of bitterness.
No, he had felt it when Mazikeen had told him that her hunger for power had oriented itself around Gale.
But it becomes something else, listening to his nephew tell him that Gale has been teaching him to shapeshift, that Mazikeen has been teaching him how to perfect it. His breath goes thin but he tries to keep his expression passive.
(And this is easy to do because the boy begins to shift before his eyes—not into another animal, as Mazikeen had done, but into him—and this arrests his attention so completely that he cannot do anything but look on in wonder.)
This is what he looks like, all tinged in ice. He swallows and wonders if he should consider this a gift, a glimpse of himself the way that others see him. He cannot know that the reflection is imperfect because he has never seen himself through anyone else’s eyes.
It occurs to him that he should say something encouraging or congratulatory about Bolder’s work with Gale and Mazikeen, but the words turn to dust on his tongue. His loyalty lies with Mazikeen, even now, but he can’t force himself to say anything other than: “That’s wonderful.” Though he cannot help but suspect that their intentions are not altogether pure. He cannot help but wonder how they plan to use his nephew for something dark.
His question smarts but he only shakes his head. “No,” he says. It’s easier to admit now than it had been in the earliest days of his youth, when he had hugged the border of Hyaline, ready to flee should anyone remember that he was there and cast him out altogether. It’s easier to admit, even if it’s heavy with what Mazikeen had said to him, how Gale has made her suffer in exchange for the angels.
“I have been allowed to stay in Hyaline simply because I am Ryatah’s son.”
Bolder considers this - impersonating Selaphiel - one of his best accomplishments thus far. He's attempted animals, many of them, and while both his teachers had encouraged the young shapeshifter to succumb to instinct, neither of them had offered any instruction on what it was to impersonate another horse.
He's only ever worn his equine skin, and though he shivers in this borrowed one (though his hide is not cold to the touch), this is new territory for Bolder. This isn't like becoming the wolf, and succumbing to the hunt. This isn't like becoming a bird, and losing himself to the breeze. This is something new, and so Bolder quietly studies the snow-white form of this Uncle. Are his eyes blue enough, he wonders? The halo he won't be able to replicate until after sundown (and he will certainly try once darkness comes creeping across Hyaline), but his silver-gray eyes flick up once to commit it to memory.
The young pegasus doesn't intend to do this often - if at all or ever again - but he wants to make sure that he does this well. Gale and Mazikeen are excellent teachers, but his lessons with them have also taught Bolder that they expect an excellent pupil. Most of his time has been spent copying the animals that stalk these woods; he'd never thought to assume the shape of an Angel. But if they had been allowed to exist on the outskirts of the Pack, there must be a reason.
They must be Powerful.
"Surely it is more than that," Bolder states, still offering Selaphiel a mirror of himself. "Malik was allowed to keep Anath here, even though she wasn't a Shifter." It had been explained to him that she was like a bonded to his cousin, in the way that Oceanus was to Sickle. (There is a twinge of pride in chest - perhaps twisted by the Curse - that is glad his grandmother had been allowed to stay. That his Uncle had been as well. It meant they were worthy.)
"Isn't there Power in being an Angel? Surely you could cast out any weakness."
He tires of his reflection, Selaphiel.
(How could someone who loathes themself so desperately bear to look themself in the face?)
But he says nothing, only diverts his gaze so that he will not have to go on looking at himself. Because the boy’s countenance is smoothed, unmarred by the things he has and has not done. (How could his nephew know all of the ways he has failed himself and everyone else? How could he replicate the far-away look in his eye when he does not know the cause of it?)
There is a beat of silence and then the boy speaks again.
And such a tremendous weight settles in the cavern of his chest, crowding itself against his heart, which struggles to beat against it. He does not return his focus to the boy’s face (his own face) and instead goes on studying the horizon, as if he might find the answers there.
(Is there power in being an angel? He had seen power in his mother but he has never once felt it himself. No, it has always been more curse than blessing.)
But he smiles something distant, lopsided, and shakes his head just barely. He draws in a shuddering breath and tells his nephew candidly, “if there is any power in it, I have yet to find it.”
(Could he be powerful, Selaphiel? If he tried, if he learned to want it for himself?
No.
No, certainly not.)
He and Mazikeen had been friends once and he had promised her something that he had not been able to deliver and she had made his failure abundantly clear.
“I served a purpose once,” he says, “or, at least, I tried to.”
The smile returns, edged in a kind of sorrow, “but I’m afraid my weaknesses have always been insurmountable.”
![[Image: 37477440_mkk7ul7XODhpdJ7.png]](https://f2.toyhou.se/file/f2-toyhou-se/images/37477440_mkk7ul7XODhpdJ7.png)
