04-21-2018, 08:22 AM
Glim knows that she has her mother’s brand of curious wanderlust at this age. Knows too, that she probably has the oily black mare’s sense of reckless abandon that actually masked careful thought and cunning. Father had told her the stories of how she gathered foals to her side for some cause long since forgotten and how they’d stormed kingdoms in a rush of eager little bodies. He’d made mention of breathless giggles and endless devotion to their fearless leader.
It was hard to imagine father laughing let alone giggling with a measure of unrestrained glee. He was such a somber fellow. More so since mother continued to wander and did so more without him. Glim understood that they cared greatly for one another because that’s how she came to be but also realized that they were two cast individuals that seemed not to require the consistency of the other being around to keep them going.
He gave her smiles, sometimes. Grave manipulations of the mouth that sometimes failed to reach his eyes. Not because he didn’t adore her - she took after him with her spotty skin! But because he saw her mother in her and there was a story covered in sorrow there that she never once asked about and he never volunteered. So Glim did what Glim does best in the vein of her family, she wandered off and was thankfully smart enough to survive.
(Dim most likely played a great part in that!)
It is no surprise either that she decides to go. She might not be surging ahead into the kingdom at the forefront of a wild herd of stick-legged children but she is certain of her decision, standing firm in the face of the hurricane winds of political upheaval that blow and whip all around them in passing. What else is to come is not something she is given to know beyond the fact that she trusts Kagerus of the dream-fangs and honest eyes.
Glim believes that she trusts her implicitly in such a small amount of time. There has been nothing but truth and respect between them and she trusts the breathy reach of intuition that rises up from her gut when it comes to trusting the blood-and-bone mare. It is also that sense of kinship that has her quick to follow since no one in her immediate and known family is like her. Dream and shadow are so alike and she is even quicker to recognize this.
But the longer she looks up the mare’s face, the more familiar she becomes with it and can start to read the nuances of every muscle-tick and brain-impulse. It is most noticeable when the eyes are averted away from her that she understands a tiny measure of the enormity of the guilt and pain that chase one another across a face she is no longer looking at out of respect for privacy. She stares down at the ground in front of her little hooves for the space of a few breaths. Just long enough to feel the weight of that aching gaze resettle on her and cause her to raise her head back up to meet it.
Oh her heart!
Her little heart! The imagined squeeze of it as something other than blind muscle is what compels her to step forth and bury her face in the mare’s chest. She rubs a cheek and the tip of her nose over that dark skin before saying, “No but we can try. Sometimes that’s the best we can do.” Glim understands. She is a child with light and innocence in her heart despite a strange upbringing and being no stranger to the perils and pitfalls of life that her parents have made her aware of.
It helps too that she has her own brand of darkness. Perhaps that is part of her own dangerous charm. She only keeps Dim’s company to be safe from the allure of robing herself in a writhing mass of shadow and wreaking havoc with an army of such at her command. Power like this can corrupt and every day is a constant battle against that. So she understands, she really does for all that she is a third of the size that Kagerus is.
Then it is time to go. The moments of introspection and revelation are over. Night comes far too swiftly to their corner of the field. Which means it will dog their heels for much of the trip throughout the lands until last they make it to the kingdom stronghold that Kagerus had spoken of. Glim feels Dim lift off her back and take to the oncoming night with the same sort of thrill that she always feels when night is closing in on them. The long dark arms of shadows threaten to swoop in and gather them up for a hug that Glim would gladly stand there for if it was not for Kagerus urging them to go.
So they go and with only two opportunities to take a short breather before they were off again. Glim kept up as if her feet had little wings attached to them. Or as if the shadows gave her sustenance enough to renew her strength as they continued to fall all about the lands they passed through. Soon she is lifting her nose like a stallion to the air and pulling a whole bunch of new and exciting scents into her lungs. Her nostrils continuously quiver like independent hearts and every so often, an excited snort leaves her.
Kagerus slows; whinnies an announcement of her presence for all to hear and Glim remains close to her. The spotty filly is dancing around on her toes as the mare snorts and grabs a bite of grass. Here the air is cool and clean - mountain fresh! It is invigorating enough to keep Glim wide-eyed and awake, and even laughing as Kagerus asks if she is tired. “Not at all!” she crows happily, still prancing around. The fangs are gone but she doesn’t mourn their absence, darting in close to nuzzle the red-brown shoulder with a quick gesture of affection before spinning off just as fast and chanting, “The lake! The lake! The lake”
Dim is still a bat. He swoops in and out over Glim’s head. Her enthusiasm is infectious and he cannot manage to settle his tiny bat-body to offer an apology to Kagerus for Glim’s behavior. It was rare for him to see her like this as if she was drunk on the very air they breathed. Yet it was somehow refreshing to see that she was at times a simple, easily excitable child too.
Before they can go there is an answering call that seems to come from up above. Glim whirls fast on her feet to meet the incoming creature - fast enough that neither of them should notice the glimmer of hope in her eyes that it was her mother. Neither the call nor the shape are draconic in any way and she smoothly covers up the crush of disappointment with a glib quirk if her lips that could only be considered a smile.
Glim is not surprised that she is not the source of the flying mare’s excitement initially. Kagerus is. The filly gives them room to touch and reconnect before squeezing her way back in to Kagerus’s side. If she didn’t know any better, she’d mistake them for sisters or something equally close.
There is a bond there that Glim can feel is sweet and deep - she is a highly perceptive child but does not mention that sense of sisterhood or other that she feels she has perhaps intruded upon it. It’s too sacred to speak of but she hopes that she has a taste of it one day from the looks of the sweetly given touch to the cheek by one mare to the other. Now that nose is offered to her and she sticks her own to the point that they could touch but don’t. She breathes Solace’s scent in deep before letting the long breath she held back out. Then she boops the tip of Solace’s nose with her own, not bothering to stifle the giggle that followed.
Above them hovers the yellow-eyed bat that is her most faithful companion. Glim looks up and rewards him with a nod and a new shape. He is forced to land as she exercises her power over him and shapes him into a flop-eared rabbit that hops over to her and plants himself staunchly between her two front feet. So much for something terrifying, he thinks to her to which Glim giggles some more. “Glim and this is Dim,” she says with a fond touch to the shadow-rabbit’s head.
@[Kagerus] @[Solace] <333