[private] i've always had too much pride

[bolder]

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.

"Can you shift, too?"

@Selaphiel