Terms of Agreement; Solace/Hestia/Scorch/Sochi/diplomats

[sochi]

Ever since she volunteered herself to go to another Kingdom in a child exchange, Sochi has been both anxious and excited. Anxious because she isn’t quite sure what to expect, knowing nothing of Hyaline, but also excited to see the world again outside of Nerine. She vaguely remembers being in the outside world with her mother before they’d come to Nerine, but she had been so little, and the world for her had consisted mostly of the Forest and the Playground. Now, for almost a year, the world has consisted of Nerine. The salty air, the craggy cliffs, the sand beneath her hooves that turns into sweet salt-grass further inland, the caves and cliffs inaccessible to hooves that she has explored on the padded feet of her tiger-form.

It’s that form she is in now, the rangy skinny body of a tigress that hasn’t reached physical maturity. Some day she will be stocky and powerful in the way of big cats, but her cat is maturing at the same rate as her natural form, and she is still a rangy yearling, her mane mostly upright, her hip awkwardly higher than her shoulder in the way of a youngster yet to finish their next growth spurt. Keep black-tipped ears pick up Scorch approaching and her words to the foreign strangers that Sochi is stalking, concealed by the underbrush and careful to keep downwind.

Scorch identifies the strangely un-salty scent of the strangers as Hyaline, and the girl is poised to emerge when their black Queen joins the party, and she drops back down to rest on the ground again, whiskers twitching in distaste as the scent of the Queen’s strange black foal reaches her. She is sure she will miss the familiar surroundings of Nerine, miss her mother and Mina her playmate who has already departed for her own adventure, but she won’t regret leaving Hestia’s strange creature behind and perhaps finding it happily gone when she returns. She doesn’t like the way the creature makes her cat, in particular, feel.

But Hestia speaks her name, and the time for hiding in the growth has passed. Sochi stands to her full cat-height, which isn’t enough to clear the brush more than just the tips of her ears, and darts forward to perform her newest and most favorite trick – becoming a horse again while she’s running. She shifts just as she reaches the edge of the grasses, orange to black in a heartbeat, so quickly that they might miss the transformation of cat to horse entirely if they’re not watching closely. Then she slows to a trot for the last few steps to join the group, turning her blue-marked face curiously to the strangers as she slips around to stand on the side of Scorch that gets her farthest from Oblivion. “I’m Sochi,” the yearling chirps with the effervescence of youth.