Sabrael
The belief that he’s on the cusp of reuniting with his family makes him alert and eager as he’s surveying the island.
So when there is movement shaking and parting the trees beyond the beach, Sabrael’s reptilian gaze is quick to notice. His eyes narrow in on the form that approaches him, an equine stark white and glowing. Grandfather? The closer he gets, the more sure Sabrael is that it can be no other than his angelic grandsire. Before Tiphon draws any nearer, the dragon pumps his wings and lifts himself into the tropical air. He closes the little remaining distance between them and comes down again shortly in a spray of sand. He was raised to know it would be rude to make his elder do all the work.
The rust-colored beast snakes his head forward to bump snouts, but stops suddenly when Tiphon introduces himself. He pulls back instinctually, wondering why on earth he is being acquainted with someone he’s known his entire life (someone he’s sat at the knees of and listened to stories of the old days, someone he’s learned from, someone he’s loved)? Perhaps it’s been too long since the stallion has seen him dressed in scales rather than fur? Easily, Sabrael sheds the form. He falls down, down, towards the sand as his body shrinks into its first form. His deadly claws become dull hooves and his wings curl up and meld into his roan sides. He becomes a horse, too, like the porcelain man ahead of him.
But he keeps the fangs – one never knows when they’ll need a weapon.
Maybe his grandsire will recognize him now, Ramiel’s underachieving son who never really left his mother’s side. “It’s me, see? Sabrael?” This time he does reach forward to bump his muzzle against Tiphon’s shoulder in greeting. When he draws back, he looks into gold eyes for any signs of familiarity, the same gold that shows as flecks in his own eyes. Well, maybe his brain is addled with the plague. Or maybe he is just that forgettable, it’s entirely possible. “I’m so glad to see you again, I wasn’t sure anyone would still be around. I went to Ischia first, but nobody was there. Is grandma here, too?” He looks away briefly, afraid to ask. “Or Wallace?”
Hope warms a heart that has long been cold and resigned. Years of solitude have made him wary of any emotion that could leave him vulnerable – he stopped caring after his mother’s murder. Ischia had been so quiet the few times he returned to it. Devoid of the former Daleans and the new faces that helped create the new land, Sabrael couldn’t bring himself to stay on an island of strangers. There had been nothing left for him in Beqanna. Now, he wonders if everything will change. Now, he considers what could be if he stays.
There’s a sound in the forest and he remembers –
“There was a heat signature over there,” he inclines his head towards the spot, remembering what he’d seen before he shifted. “Over here!” Sabrael practically shouts towards the moving stranger. Friend or foe, he cares not – he can most assuredly handle either. He hopes it is the former, though. And there it is again, that damned hope muddling up his once clear-cut mind. Who will it be walking on his grandfather’s island?
@[Tiphon]@[Wallace] <33