[private] i feel a bad moon rising

[Wolfbane]

Something of a year had passed, or what Beqanna would consider nearly a year. Six months or more gone by that Wolfbane can’t exactly account for. He remembers why he left: Eyas went out for a trip North and hadn’t come back after winter. Wolfbane went out to find her, but ended up finding out more about himself and next to nothing about Eyas or her current whereabouts. The harsh season faded, Wolfbane tracked his daughter who was more adept at keeping herself hidden than he’d anticipated, and in the meantime he’d been shifting more and more.

In the process he let Eyas and her disappearance fade away. Lilliana and Lepis, along with his children, faded into a gray sense of memory that felt distant when he was a wolf on the hunt, or a bird traveling north on breezy currents.

And then one morning he opened his eyes to see a pair of horses grazing, talking over their meal about Taiga and he remembered Lepis. The past came back to Bane in a jolt of electricity that sent him - disguised in the body of a wily red squirrel - darting out from the underbrush in a panic towards the redwoods and the family he’d left behind.

Lepis will kill me, he contemplated; the first logical thought he’d had in weeks. His tiny paws spread out and his nails clung to the bark of trees, helping him to scramble through a weave of branches. How could I forget so easily? Bane shamed himself, leaping from one treetop to the next with a robust flick of his twitching, red tail.

He was insanely paranoid about what might’ve gone wrong in his absence. As he worried, passing the river into the misty embrace of Taiga’s shadows, he let thoughts of Eyas, Pteron, his little one Celina and the children who’d slipped away - Marni and Tiercel - he let their faces guide him back to a sense of normalcy, and his body followed suit. The slender animal and busy tail morphed, filling out and changing color while a small pair of wings grew from his shoulders. Wolfbane tossed his head, supported on a thick neck, and breathed deeply through his widened nostrils.

From red squirrel up to a striped, pegasus stallion; the whole exchange was easy and rather quick. A few more months to a year and he’d be able to flick in and out of skins like blinking.

The smile of accomplishment on his lips faded as soon as the familiar scents of his wife and children hit him in the face. “Business before pleasure.” He muttered under his breath, heading off to find her.

@[Lepis] a little time jump for ya