I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness,
nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory
He hadn’t meant to change colors, it just sort of happened when he thought about how unique their coats were and got distracted. It was a problem, really, that he had so little control over it; his mother maintained that their only saving grace was that he did have complete control over the other shifting; if he’d been in the habit of suddenly becoming a panther on a frequent basis someone might take a true fright. But her exclamation startles him almost as much as he seems to have startled her and in the blink of an eye, much faster than the gradual slide of before, he is completely a new color, a clear attempt to blend into his surroundings with greens on the bottom and blues on the top and some splotches of mountain-colors on top.
When his immediate shock fades and his heartrate starts to slow, the boy slides back into gold-framed-in-purple with a sheepish huff, a nervous glance from one to the other, as he contemplates her question. “Sorry. I didn’t realize…I’m not totally in control of it yet, and you guys are just so pretty…” Well that wasn’t any less awkward, good going Ryan. He shifts uncomfortably in place. “I was born able to do it. My mom’s normal but my dad has magic of some sort I guess and my grandmother could change color too, so it’s inherited from them. It happens in Beqanna a lot. A lot of people are not what they seem at first, or not entirely.”
He ponders this for a moment, and decides in the interest of full disclosure that he’d rather not startle her on accident later. She seems like she might be the attack-first, ask-questions-later type. “Ah…don’t freak out or anything but I can also…” and gold melts away into black, hooves to paws, long hair into a lithe tail, and an adolescent panther stands where the colt had been, tensed to move quickly if attacked. When he isn’t, Ryan relaxes and then slides back into horse form, giving a quick shake as if to settle all of his hair back into its proper place.
“I would like to stay, if you’ll have me,” he says then, solemnly, hoping that the cat-thing isn’t too weird for them. Sometimes the littlest things seem to push the non-native Beqannians over the edge. “I was born in the Meadow. My mom is from one of the Kingdoms that no longer exists, and she won’t settle into a new one. I think as soon as she thinks I am independent, and after she has a chance to introduce me to my father, she’ll leave. Her parents and her siblings live outside of Beqanna now, and she wants to return to them.” It should be terribly depressing, to hear someone as young as Ryan speak of his only parent planning to leave him, but someone he makes it sound matter-of-fact, the only hint of discomfort in the depths of his green gaze. “Where do you guys come from?”
Ryan
( I love only that which they defend. )