"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
Chel wasn’t sure what she would have done without the ability to shift during the eclipse. Beqanna’s whole dark period was not particularly her idea of a good time, but thankfully many of her favorite shifts just so happened to include animals with impeccable night vision.
Chel was largely attracted to tropical animals, but most feline and avian shifts tended to have superior vision in the dark to your normal equine so she felt she was adapting as well as could be expected. She’d also taken the time to work on partial shifts during the darkness – so doing things like using feline vision in her equine body was practical not so creepy when no one could see her feline eyes anyway.
Not that Chel really cared what others thought anyway but. Oh well. Having been raised by two fiercely independent women would do that to a girl.
Chel absentmindedly huffs a breath, disturbing the butterflies swirling around her. They didn’t seem to mind the darkness, but it was certainly an odd sensation in the dark. Today she made her way through the meadow in one of her favored forms, a Jaguar, with her companion Atzi following in the trees above. The darkness hadn’t really phased her companion, already adapted in the dark. Chel knew she was lucky to have Atzi at times like this – when so many found themselves alone in the dark she could sleep well knowing she never ever would be.
The jaguar-girl’s attention is caught by something that is alight in the trees. Something that obviously stands out more now than it would have a few weeks before. Better yet something that is very obviously not a monster.
“Ugh. Look! Why can’t you guys glow!” she says, in mock indignation to her insect attendants, gesturing at the panther surrounded by a glowing halo of fireflies. A much more functional insect nowadays than her far more ornamental butterflies. She immediately makes her way towards the other shifter - calling out as she draws nearer.
“Hey! Can you teach mine to do that!” Chel cheekily asks the stranger, knowing full well it doesn’t work like that, but honestly she’s just thrilled at the prospect to have someone to talk to.
Something moves in the shadows nearby, but Avelina is not worried. She focuses on her fireflies - exhaling out gentle breaths that they exaggerate how far they are tossed by the air she expells. It doesn’t occur to her to be on her guard - none of the shadows have ever bothered her. Though she does long for the sun and stars to return, this endless night has felt like a blessing for this girl and her fireflies - what a special treat to be able to see their blinking lights all the time.
The movement grows closer and the panther-girl turns her attention to it finally. Avelina laughs in delight when the something moving and it ends up being a jaguar surrounded by butterflies - and then she laughs again at the question she’s asked. The noise is kind and bright like the fireflies that rise up around her, a few of the braver ones floating across the space to investigate, and illuminate, the other feline.
“Oh, but your butterflies are so beautiful just as they are!” Her soft green eyes watch with absolute fascination at the flitting movements of those beautiful forms. “I’ve never met anyone else with insect friends.” Never as if she wasn’t just a couple years old and had only made a very small handful of friends in that time. But Never felt real enough.
Her attention moves to the jaguar and Avelina feels double the excitement - a fellow shifter and she’s surrounded by those incredible butterflies. “I’m Avelina.”
The whole situation with the darkness and the monsters completely slips from Chel’s mind as the fireflies lazily flicker towards her face. The respite from the darkness was, quite literally, all it took to chase her troubles away. That and the prospect of not being alone with her own thoughts. Well – hers and Atzi’s. There were some days where she wished she could be alone with her thoughts. But Atzi’s mind had always been a part of her own, and she didn’t want to experiment with life without her. Especially not now. If Chel had learned anything about the darkness, she’d learned that she did not handle isolation well. Especially when it was not isolation of her choosing.
Chel’s butterflies seem to like the fireflies well enough – flitting around the glowing creatures and clearly happy for some time in the light as well.
“My mother has butterflies too – but I’ve never met anyone outside the family with anything like them,” Chel echoes, before a smirk crosses her lips and adding ”And especially not useful ones” She softly blows a pair of butterflies off course, sending them spiraling on the disturbed current her breath creates. But the delicate creatures, unharmed by her antics, quickly returned to her side, taking solace from the chaos that usually surrounds Chel by landing along the feline girl’s spine.
“I’m Chel and my companion Atzi is around here somewhere,” she said, gazing up towards the branches above searching for the Ocelot that she knew wasn’t far. But Atzi knew that making friends perhaps wasn’t amongst Chel’s strengths and made herself scarce during the formalities. Unless Chel was really starting to blow it. Then she’d come running.
Again.
“So. Are you a feline shifter or is this just one of your favorites? Or just something useful in the dark?” Chel asks, shirking all decorum and jumping right to the chase. Clearly the girl was a shifter and Chel wanted to know more. Social graces weren’t really her thing, anyway
Avelina watches with no shortage of delight as the butterflies and fireflies dance and flit around each other, mingling and casting shadows with the fluttering of their wings. There’s a soft thrum of concern for the pair of butterflies that the other feline sends tumbling with a breath - though the panther girl gives herself a quick reminder she has done much the same with the fireflies (and had been doing that very thing just before her new friend had arrived) and they were never worse for wear.
At the mention of a companion, her soft green eyes follow Chel’s gaze to the branches - mildly disappointed that she cannot spot Atzi. She’s never met a companion before! Her twin had been a near-constant presence in her life when she was young, but that has changed - and she wonders what it would be like to have someone other than her fireflies to keep her company.
This mild disappointment is quickly forgotten when Chel asks about shifting - Avelina’s smile dancing at the chance to talk about something she actually knows, her black tail flicking with pleasure behind her. “Something useful and one of my favourites. I’m not stuck to just felines though - I’ve become very fond of birds lately too. Sparrows and swans mostly. And I tried a bat with my sister!” Her enthusiasm checks itself and her smile turns a little embarrassed. Will Chel find this selection of animals boring? None of them, aside from the panther she currently is, are very fearsome or awe-inspiring.
She's not accustomed to hearing herself speak so much - and so easily - and she finds that she's not sure what to do now that she has.
So she redirects the conversation back to Chel - happily focusing on a genuine curiosity rather than the embarrassment that had been beginning to show. “What about you? Can you take other shapes?”
