"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Having a personal favourite form is something, one of the few things, that the sandy mare understands. She wonders if she had ever experimented, or if the mountain-lion shape that she sees in her mind chose her.
The question that is asked of her this time unlocks her tongue. Well, as much as anything can. Her words are still halting and slow, as though she needs to think about each one before she says it, but the more she talks the easier they begin to come as though she’s loosening them up from where they have been trapped in her mind. “I used to…” Only she doesn’t know the proper word for what it is she and this other mare can do, so she just gestures with her head to fill in the blank. “But as a cougar. Until one day I was this,” Again, a gesture to herself. She’s not sure whether she’s a horse, since she has wings at her side, but that term probably counts close enough. “And I think I was this before my other shapes but I… don’t remember.” It’s such a simple phrase ‘I don’t remember’ and yet it encompasses so much. The words are heavy in her mouth as she says them, her expression much the same as when she told this stranger that she had lost everything.
Including her memories – so, really, she had no idea what she has lost but she has been mourning it all this time all the same. It must be worse not to know than to know the very worse, right?
She feels as though she is getting off-track, and all of these words are making her feel weary, but she nonetheless continues to explain. Circling back to the main point, folding in the reason why she had been annoyed at the display this mare had given – how easily she had changed form one form to another when that’s been what she has been struggling with. “I lived as a cougar for so long and I have been afraid to try since I have been back... in case I get stuck... again.”
Sometimes she thinks it would not be so bad to lose herself in the forest again, but she knows deep in her heart that this strange place is where she's supposed to be. This is where the family she doesn't know was from, where she was born, and anything else won't feel the same.
Her storm coloured eyes watch the other mare, wondering if anything she has just said makes any sort of sense. She hopes it does – it’s always been easier for her to feel a kinship with those with wings and she wonders if that feeling will be enhanced with someone else who can take the forms of other animals.
