His mother had told him that the Silver Cove was abandoned, but Malik does not arrive on an empty shore.
He’d come to hunt a silver deer, but the hooved animal that stands beside the lapping waves is no cervid. It’s a stallion, older than the black feathered colt that Malik becomes. He’d travelled as a shark, sleek and dark, and he rises from the salt water soaked to the skin.
Raised to believe that those beyond his kin are inconsequential, Malik must remind himself of his mother’s more recent lessons as he draws closer to the piebald horse. He tries a smile, and it fits his dark face, though some of the freindliness is shadowed by the imposing black horns and the physical discomfort he experiences.
“You’re Chemdog,” he says to the stranger, because his father had once shown him a Vision of the short skirmish between the two men when Malik had asked about the entities. The words are sharp and short, bitten off by the series of shivers that rack his body. The winter wind is cold and he is soaked to the skin, his feathers and mane plastered to his dark skin with salt water.
“I’m Malik,” he says. “Is there somewhere I could dry off?”
@Chemdog
He’d come to hunt a silver deer, but the hooved animal that stands beside the lapping waves is no cervid. It’s a stallion, older than the black feathered colt that Malik becomes. He’d travelled as a shark, sleek and dark, and he rises from the salt water soaked to the skin.
Raised to believe that those beyond his kin are inconsequential, Malik must remind himself of his mother’s more recent lessons as he draws closer to the piebald horse. He tries a smile, and it fits his dark face, though some of the freindliness is shadowed by the imposing black horns and the physical discomfort he experiences.
“You’re Chemdog,” he says to the stranger, because his father had once shown him a Vision of the short skirmish between the two men when Malik had asked about the entities. The words are sharp and short, bitten off by the series of shivers that rack his body. The winter wind is cold and he is soaked to the skin, his feathers and mane plastered to his dark skin with salt water.
“I’m Malik,” he says. “Is there somewhere I could dry off?”
@Chemdog