"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 can make no sense of what his mother tries to teach him. He feels very confused, even days later.
Malik is unaccustomed to lessons of any sort, having been left to his own devices for most of his childhood in Hyaline. While most of what Mazikeen has taught him recently has been welcome (how to shift more quickly, how to modify his coloring for camoflauge) the unexpected emphasis on tolerance and self-restraint during their recent wyvern hunt has left him feeling rather shaken.
Rather than dwell on it any longer, the young colt has chosen to pursue something more physical, something that would take up too much of his attention to allow him to focus on anything else.
He’s going to go hunting.
---
The branches of the leaves overhead are the same shade as the western clouds, brilliant orange slashed here and there with red and gold. Malik, standing in the shade of a thick elm, is difficult to see. He is watching the passing horses, quiet and still, waiting for one worth following.
Nothing.
The sky is growing dim by the time he turns away, scowling in disappointment. He’d wanted one shifter, that was all. Just one, to see if he was right. To see if he could gain their powers by killing them the way his father does. IF he can, Malik knows, he will prove his mother wrong.
The stallion shakes his horned head, the antlers grown to an impressive length as fall had drawn nearer. The motion does nothing to dispel the thoughts, but the sound of movement nearby has a far better effect. Malik freezes, and in an instant he becomes a dark furred jumping spider. All but invisible in the leaf-litter, but with eyes good enough to watch for any further movement, he waits to see what had spooked him.
Sickle has been spending most of her time in this forest - in a very particular part of the forest - but today had been a day she had ventured somewhere else and now she returns with a mouthful of flowers. It had taken some care and a lot of trial and error but eventually she had managed to uproot a flower and had left a trail of dirt behind her as she trotted proudly from the Pampas. If she could plant a flower or a hundred around Asterope’s pond instead of just picking them - then her friend would always have colour around her.
Oceanus flies beside her as she moves down the now-familiar trails. Feeling, for this fleeting moment, alright.
Because it’s easier to focus on the plant she has in her mouth than it is anything else.
Because she’s not letting her mind stray any further.
Everything else is off-limits and so the young mare is able to keep herself held together.
There’s a shadow above, beneath an elm tree, and for a moment she thinks nothing of it until the shadow seems to move. Or, rather, disappear. As she approaches the tree, she frowns - almost certain that there had been someone there a moment ago.
Very carefully, she places her plant on the ground and then decides to investigate. Strange occurrences should be on the Do Not Interact list after everything but Sickle is still a curious girl at heart.
“Where did you go?” Sickle adopts the shape of a blue panther, blinking her mismatched eyes as she peers into the shadows - trying to see who it has been and where they’d gone.
Of all the skills most necessary for a successful hunt, Malik has struggled most with patience. Even now, as he stands half-hidden beneath the red leaf of an elm, one of his eight feet is tapping softly. It keeps the local insects at bay - they know a predator when they see one - but does risk attracting the notice of a hungry bird. Remembering this, Malik stills his wayward toes just as the blue leopard appears.
Of course, to Malik it is only a large blue shape, but he knows that it is the source of the noise that had startled him. He cannot make out what it is from this distance and with these eyes, so the black spider becomes instead a black leopard, the shape one of his favorites.
With his slit-pupiled blue-and-orange eyes, Malik can see that the other creature is a leopard as well. A strange coincidence, even in their world of magic, so he frowns a little, the expression made more stern by the wicked curve of his glowing horns.
Something about her feels almost familiar.
Malik is not sure how he knows it is a her even before a puff of wind brings that, along with the smells of wood and earth and something vaguely floral. He knows it the same way he knows she is a shifter and not a true leopard. Even in Hyaline the colorful animals don’t ever wear such deep shades of blue, he reminds himself, while simultaneously being sure that it is something more than suspicion
Malik tilts his black head, and can feel that he sports some of the feathers of his equine shape. They meld with his dark fur, ending just before the glowing stripes along his sides and back begin. He cannot find a face like the leopard’s in his memories, but he scrutinizes it nonetheless. Perhaps if she were a horse? Or even another shape?
He doesn’t say anything, just stares and tries to puzzle her out, an instinctive habit he’d inherited from the father they’ve never known.
She’s expecting another shifter, how else could they have disappeared so fast, but she still jumps a little when, seemingly out of nowhere, there is a leopard standing before her. And not just any leopard. The exciting thrill of curiosity carries Sickle through the initial shock. She stumbles back a step, making room for the not-small-at-all creature that is suddenly there.
And then her orange and blue eyes widen as she takes in the horns, the familiar black coat and the feathers. And those eyes. Deeper versions of her own, and a set she’s known since the very beginning.
Her heart races so loudly but she knows she squeaks out a gentle “Malik?” as her shape and colour flickers and flashes through a dozen shades and shapes with her excitement and distress.
She lands in the shape she is most often, that of a young mare, and this snaps her out of her shock enough for words to begin to pour out of her. “Oh my god MALIK! You’re okay?!” Her gaze moves over his coat, checking for signs of scars that their parents could have been leaving this whole time - and lingers on the horns that had only been just peeking out of his mane the last time she saw him.
A wide, frantic smile clashes with the tears that are making her vision blurry as she focuses on his face once more. “I’ve missed you so much.” And then without a single other thought - so easily assuming he had not greeted her by name as some sort of joke - she flings herself towards her brother, intending to wrap him in a hug.
Malik might have stared at the almost-familiar leopard for a much longer time, attempting to decide if they know each other out without saying a word. That possibility ends, of course, when she says his name.
More than that, she loses her shape entirely, shifting through a myriad of sizes and colors. It is both an impressive and puzzling display, for some of those shapes were far beyond his skill, and some of them he is sure he has seen her wear before.
But who is she?!
A young mare, near his own age, with the same sleek blue fur and black stripes that she had worn as a leopard. She has a mane that runs the length of her mane like his father and Myrna, and eyes that are a mirror image of his own. They search his skin as she asks if he is okay, and confusion deepens as the unanswered questions pile up.
Why wouldn’t he be okay? Why is she so surprised to see him?
Surprised, and excited, and she comes toward him quickly.
Malik, accustomed to dodging blows, sidesteps her hug at the last moment. He loses the last of his grip on the leopard shape when he does, because the uncertainty of this meeting has begun to increase the rate of his heart, and the feathers along his crest fluff out in an unconscious attempt to make the boy look less vulnerable.
“We know each other?” He asks, but despite the question, it is clear he is asking her for confirmation. He had known her, but he does not know her anymore. Are there others that he has forgotten, Malik wonders? His memories have been often touched with magic, and gaps are not uncommon. But forgetting someone entirely is different that forgetting an afternoon or a few days. Especially someone who seems to know him, and be so excited to see him.
In all of her daydreaming of the day she would be reunited with Malik, she had not expected to not be remembered. There had been some dark and scary thoughts, but they all ended the same wonderful way - with a hug and with an escape from their parents. They could hide in the forest where she had been staying with Asterope and together they could help her friend find her sisters.
And everything would be just fine.
Instead, Sickle stumbles when Malik sidesteps her to get away from the hug and she turns to see him in his horse form. It’s a kick to the heart to see him older than he is in her memories, though of course that makes sense.
She is frowning in confusion, wondering if this was a game too, but the next question is a worse blow. A small, distressed noise escapes her before she clamps down on her mouth. Her pulse roars in her ears but even that is not enough to protect her from the second question he asks her.
Who are you.
This has to be some sort of horrible dream, right? When they were small they would play games and tricks with each other but nothing like this. She tries to reject the reality, tries to find some way to explain it, but she comes up empty.
“I’m Sickle.” Her voice is so faint, croaked out as she stares at him through eyes filling with tears. “I’m your sister.” She hates so much that she has to say that, that she isn’t just known but someone who means so much to her, someone she has spent so long looking for and trying to be brave and strong enough to rescue from Hyaline.
Her next question is another whisper, filled with her horror and pain. “What did they do to you?” Because this had to be their parents’ fault. She knew of no one else who could be this cruel.
Her wide smile vanishes and Malik feels inexplicably distressed. He has developed little empathy, raised by a cursed father and an unpredictable mother, and thinking only of himself is how he has survived to his present age. What little affection he does feel is toward those same parents, by merit of blood and their constant presence in his childhood, as well as toward the only sister he knows.
Myrna looks little like this young horse who calls herself Sickle. Yet as Malik allows his blue and orange eyes to travel once more across the mare, he sees what he had missed before. She looks like horses who are familiar to him, like his mother and father and sister and even himself.
Sickle’s voice is small and weak, and the glittering tears that pool in her eyes make him uncomfortable. He caves easily to Myrna’s tears, but tells himself that this is different. She’s a stranger to him, and surely if their parents had thought her worth keeping around she would have been living in Hyaline.
But she had shown such a skill at shifting, and Malik cannot fathom that such an ability was not worth keeping within the pack. Shifters get a choice, his mother had said. Had she chosen to leave, maybe? But when? She looks only a little older than Malik, and surely he’d have been told if he had a twin who was sent away. His father might have kept that from him, but never his mother. Even at the worst of her cruelty, she was honest with him. Viciously so at times, and so he is quite aware of how much better Sickle’s shifting abilities are than his own.
He sees the horror in her eyes, and hears the inexplicable pain in her voice as she asks ‘What did they do to you?’ Does she mean their parents? Had they been cruel to her as well? Myrna has known only their mother’s sorrowful tenderness, leaving Malik often wondering if his memories had perhaps over-exaggerated the fears of his childhood. Sickle’s expression suggests that he has not, and it causes something uncomfortable and sharp to tighten in his belly.
“I’m fine.” He says. He has no more scars than a young warrior-in-training might, scuffs from mock battle and sparring matches with the other young colts in the pack. He’s still frowning, but as he sees the shimmer of unshed tears in Sickle’s eyes, he experiences once again the concern he is accustomed to feeling only for his family.
“Why don’t you live in Hyaline?” He asks. “Did you leave? Or did you get kicked out?” If he knows why his parents had not kept her close, perhaps then he will understand better how to feel about her.
Malik says he’s fine, but it is a difficult thing to believe while he still doesn’t recognize her. He doesn’t contest what she’s said - it would be pretty silly to if he tried. Their relation to each other is obvious - and seeing him, seeing the pieces she now knows belongs to their parents, she now understands how Obscene and Aela had known exactly who her father was.
And her mother. She had once thought their blue coats were from Wishbone, the orange a variation of her amber eyes. But when she looks at Malik there isn’t a single scrap of the mare who had raised her and it hurts to think that means there is nothing in her face of that same beloved mare either.
Her ears twitch backwards for a brief moment at his questions, lips curling a little in distaste even as the tears continue to brim and make her vision watery. “Neither. I wouldn’t want to live there. Not with them.” Some venom works its way into her voice until that final word is practically spat out. Anger is a new emotion for her, one she does not wear or carry well, so it does not linger. It is not a poison for her and she deflates a moment later as she continues to speak. “We were raised in Tephra by Wishbone.” There’s a pleading note to her voice but she doesn’t care. She wants her words to give her back her brother, maybe his memories will return with the right nudge. “When I was little, Gale took me to Hyaline. But he and… and…” Calling them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ is next to impossible for her to get out. Even though she’s spoken to others of Gale being her father, replacing the kind and strong Wishbone with the unravelled and frightening Mazikeen was an entirely different matter. “Mazikeen fought and then I was brought back to the jungle.”
She still doesn’t know why. What flaw had been discovered in her that had encouraged them to send her back. That entire night is fuzzy now - because she remembers with clarity the pain in the white mare’s orange eyes but that is in such contrast with the vicious, anger-fuelled beast that had grabbed her in the Pampas.
Now she barely wants to blink, though she must. The ache of these confusing memories and the guilt of how it had all ended - “And then they took you away instead.”
A chill gust of autumn wind brings with it a flurry of golden leaves, but Malik’s bicolored eyes do not turn to watch them in the near-darkness. Instead, his attention remains on his sister, and the tale she tells of an entire childhood that he does not remember.
How can that be? He remembers his childhood. He had grown up in the mountains of Hyaline, scaling cliffs and keeping clear of his parents, following Bolder and playing with Raum and Anath and Vital and the other foals. The name Wishbone isn’t one he knows, but he knows - just by the way Sickle looks at him - that he should.
He recalls the days that he would wake, expecting to be larger than he found himself. He’s always attributed it to strange dreams. Was it possible it was something more? Something magical?
He wishes he knew.
And then he does, seeing instead of Sickle, an image of the past. A brindle magician stands in the deep snow, a half-buried black leopard beside him. Something is happening, something Powerful, and Malik shivers. Light is pulled from the leopard and tossed into the stars, and into the hollow space that the light left behind flows the black shadows emanating from Gale.
Then the leopard grows smaller, younger, shrinking not much differently than the magic that Malik’s father had used on Ripley. Gale picks the mewling black-striped cub up, carrying it into a cave where Malik somehow knows his mother waits. The image Malik sees does not follow him into the darkness, but instead turns to where the light from Malik’s soul had been tossed.
The light has solidified into a single glowing orb that slowly drifts downward, drawn back toward the earth by the same genie that had granted her descendent’s wish for knowledge. It settles just outside the mouth of the cave, and when it does it has become an oblong black egg, one that cracks open to reveal a mewling iridescent griffin.
The image vanishes.
Malik has always known that his companion had hatched at his birth, and now he looks up to where the griffin had perched in the golden-leafed tree overhead. He has always called the creature Birdbrain, lamenting its refusal to speak to him, and has questioned where he had come from, and where his griffin parents were. That Birdbrain might be the embodied essence of the goodness that Malik’s father had taken from him after also stealing a year of his life had certainly never occurred to Malik as a possible origin for his companion.
He still does not recall that first year, the one that Sickle says that they had spent in Tephra. His father must have taken it from him.
Malik begins to nod.
He is sure she is telling the truth, even if he is not sure why. More than anything, Malik trusts his instincts, and they tell him that this young blue mare that he has no memory of at all, would not lie to him. She is his sister, and he knows that he would not lie to Myrna, and so Sickle would not lie to him.
“Dad’s not there anymore. He left, and Mom is...” Malik pauses, choosing his words carefully, “more laid back than she used to be.”
There’s some relief in the fact that Malik doesn’t argue with her, he doesn’t deny anything that she’s saying. He accepts the fact that she’s his sister - but that’s it. All the emotion in this reunion appears to be contained inside of her, the eyes that match his are still bright with tears but her confusion keeps them from falling.
Should she just be grateful that he is not chasing her away?
What is she supposed to do now?
Sickle releases a snort of disbelief when he mentions that their mother is more laid back than she had been before. She isn’t sure she’s curious enough to ask just what that means. It would not take much to be a step down from the frightening vision that she had seen, more a beast than a mare who’s claws had pierced her iridescent sides when she had carried Sickle from the Pampas.
“It doesn’t matter.” She mutters, unsure of how to navigate this path the conversation has led them. “She’s not really my mom. Not in the way that matters.”
There's a small pause and she refocuses her attention on who is in front of her, rather than the parents she wishes weren't related to her by blood. With the shift, her voice becomes small again. “Did they hurt you at all? Have you... have you been okay?”
