Help me out before I drown
Save me now before I give up
The “old bear of Loess” had once been the same way, having no tether to any land in particular and spending most of his life constantly seeking a place where he might become grounded. He had found it, after centuries of searching, in Loess. Everything that he had ever wanted, everything he had always dreamed of when he had been a lost lonely colt hidden away from Magnus by his “mother” in the Falls. A home where he felt wanted, where he belonged. The family that he had always prayed for.
He feels them slipping between his fingers, his anxiety and doubts flaring the longer he stays in Sylva. Which hasn’t been very long at all. What he needs is a distraction and he finds it in her, the young shifter.
Ledger had also been a first-born child, the first and last between Raaquel and Magnus. And that is where his similarities with the young panther-shifter ended. His parents story had been doomed from the start, a mere blip on the radar between Joelle and Librette, and then she had been viciously taken from the both of them (father and son) before it could ever be anything more. He had watched from the sidelines as the sire who didn’t even know he existed entwined himself with the adoptive mother he was forced on, a mother who had known the truth of who Ledger was and kept him secret anyways.
And then there was the bear.
The bear who had been a gift and a curse. The bear he had not been born with but been made into.
There had been so many nights when he had pleaded with the stars above, as if Carnage was listening, to take back the beast he had placed inside of him. Yet Carnage only did anything if it benefitted him, if it suited his whims, and so he had been disjointed with his supernatural other half. A rift between horse and bear. It wasn't untill magic had been wiped from the board, when he had been forced to live without the thing that he had been so sure he hated, that he started to see it less as a curse and began to warily accept it.
There had been many mistakes since then, many times when he lost control, many times when he had nearly given up in all ways. It was the bear that seemed to be the glue keeping him together. And now that he has seen his daughter (she who carries this same affliction) turn out rather normal and happy, his son who lives to shift into his panda self, he doesn’t look at it like a curse at all. Not anymore.
Not that he would ever thank Carnage for what he had done. The brands and scars littered across his skin speaking of a lifetime of torture that the gift of shifting could never make up for.
He had caught her in mid-shift, from tropical cat to antlered equine, and he can’t help but grin at the rather guilty “Nothing” she gives him. He raises the brow of his good eye as she clears her throat and glances over to the small gathering that had gotten nervous in her presence before looking back at her. She is wary of him and he doesn’t begrudge her that but he decides to ease her mind, just a little. “Pink eyes?” He asks her, genuinely curious because he had never heard of this before. And then he shifts into the white bear, his long claws digging into the soil beneath them as his beady predator’s eye turns back to the group which suddenly disperses before them. “There will always be those afraid of things they can’t understand.” He says gruffly, knowing very well he had been one of them once. Shifting back into his equine body, he throws his flaxen forelock from his face, revealing the empty socket beneath and curiosity dancing between russet and gold-flecks of the one that remained. “Now what’s this about shifters and pink eyes?”
Ledger
@Aislyn