07-24-2016, 01:25 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-24-2016, 01:25 AM by RAENE.)
It is darker here than she’d anticipated; the sun struggles through the thick canopy of branches. Though the same trees have kept the snow from the ground, a bitter wind whips between the shadowy trunks and chills the tall young filly. Raene’s winter coat is moderately thick (appropriate for the climate of her homeland of the Falls), and despite its gaudy appearance does manage to shield her from the worst of the icy bite.
As she picks her way between the trees, her sunset orange coat begins to fade, darkening until it it is a dusky grey blue somehow remission of snow in shadow. For a moment, something almost like scales appears on her back leg, but it is gone between one step and the next, and Raene seems unaware of anything at all. sHe does feel armer though, and attributes it to a particularly large oak she’s passed by.
Choosing to pause beneath it, the leggy young horse takes a moment to look around. There are a few horses scattered here and there in the woods, but not so many as she had seen in the Meadow. She does hope someone will want to talk though. She wants - or perhaps needs - to learn more about what the world outside her sheltered home has to offer.
Bones pop, crunch and contort; his face is a mask of pain.
They never told him how much the shifting could hurt but it doesn’t stop him - - he loves his other shape too much to not spend most of his time in it.
His muzzle has thinned out and grown more toothy, especially when he grins which is often in this shape. Humor becomes him as hooves shift to paws and they scrabble at the soft dirt with ease, as he moves off in a lope. His ears have grown longer, his senses keener and more alert as he listens to the forest around him. Frankly, he prefers hills, tall grasses even, but lopes easily through the trees as if on a mission - he is not, he filled his belly the last time he shifted shape (can still taste the rabbit on his lips, licking the memory of blood and guts from the corners of his grinning mouth) and has managed to make his shapes and their needs coincide as best as he can - as a horse, he eats grass; as a coyote, he eats whatever small prey he can bring down or leftover carrion from another’s kill.
The coyote is oblivious to the cold that sings it way down between the trees in small flurries of snow and wind; his pelt is thick and fulvous and affords him enough camouflage within the shadows that he slips in and out of. His long ears detect the noise of another and it sounds equine in nature, the thud of hoof against needle-quieted soil and he slinks furtively after the horse, curious - only curious. His amber eyes pick out the sunset-orange and he is drawn to the anomaly of color that blazes through the forest only to darken to shadow-touched snow; she (her scent gives her away as much as her burgeoning shape does) is a color-changer like he is a shape-changer and his curiosity mounts as he continues to stalk her until she pauses beneath a large oak tree.
Woodrow emerges from the forest and circles round the oak and the blue-gray mare before settling down before her in his coyote-shape. He sits back on his haunches and slants his head to one side, eyes amber and sly, his grin toothsome and mischievous. “Hello,” he says in a tone that has a low frequency whine to it as if he still hasn’t quite mastered speech in this shape.
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Raene has seen his kind lurking at the edges of the wood, but they have never been bold enough to try their glittering teeth against a member of the Falls. They prefer easier prey, small animals with small minds that fall easily into their clever traps.
So wen the coyote comes in front of her, Raene is wary but not frightened. He does not pass by, as she expects, but rather sits down and offers what she has no choice but to call a grin. Can coyotes grin?
A better question - can they talk?
“Hello,” she replies hesitantly, trusting her ears if not her memory of how wildlife communicates. She knows he had said hello, and nothing in the way he sprawls or the mischievous smile makes her feel threatened.
“How are you talking?” She asks, unable to keep her curiosity at bay. “Can all coyotes talk?"
He’s not sure if he can fully claim them as his kind - the coyotes, just as he’s not sure if he can fully claim horses as his kind either.
It is a duality that permits him to live as one or the other but he has no true place amongst either of them - something still sets him apart, a scent or a look maybe that is not entirely coyote or horse.
Nor does it occur to him that coyotes do not talk to horses. He has spent too much time in this form and his grandmother accepted him this way over his first shape. Scalped was used to the coyote pup scampering after her through the sands rather than a colt and had not minded the absurdity of his life as one, either or, or both.
(Had she foreseen the hardships he would later endure being more coyote than horse?)
His keen eyes take note of her natural wariness just as his keen ears catch the hesitation in her voice. It is then that he realizes she’s probably not used to animals talking back to her but he’s no ordinary animal and a barking laugh spills from his mouth. “Sorry,” he barks out around his lolling tongue and sharp teeth. The apology is all he can manage momentarily as she plows on ahead with her curiosity and questions.
Woodrow swallows another chortle of mirth and shakes himself briefly, squaring his shoulders and tipping his head back to better see her. “Probably not? They can talk to me and I can talk to them but they probably don’t have much to say to you on an average day.” There is a mischievous glint in the amber of his eyes as he stares at her, too frank to look away for all that he is coyote at heart and horse by birth. He doesn’t want to spoil the surprise just yet by shifting back into his young stallion’s shape so he holds off and begins to pace in front of her, “It is a mystery isn’t it? How I can talk to you and you can talk back to me… curious thing, that.” he muses aloud, never taking his eyes off of her all the while.
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08-06-2016, 01:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-06-2016, 01:49 PM by RAENE.)
For all the sharpness in his eyes, the coyote’s apology sounds genuine. Raene nods, a mute acceptance of it, but she is more interested in his answer to her questions.
He does respond, but it is only with more riddles, and Raene’s warm yellow eyes darken for a moment to stormy grey. It is only puzzlement though, and not anger, and she muses over the meaning behind his words as he paces in front of her.
The coyote doesn’t know if all coyotes can talk. But surely he should know? Why would a mother not teach her pups all there is to know about their kind? Unless…
“Have you always been a coyote?”
Perhaps he is like her Father – a shifter. Raene has always pined for such a gift, but her talents lie in altering hues rather than in molding shapes. Perhaps she could try though, once more. With a forrow of her brow, the young mare holds the shape of a coyote in her mind. Their yellow eyes and pointed teeth, and the lolling smile on the one before her.
A few seconds tick by and her shape remains the same. Only her color has changed, from dusky grey to sandy brown with a mantle of ticked grey across her back. They match in color now, if not at all in appearance.
He promptly sits and curls his tail around his lean haunch; she is a rather curious sort, picking at him bit by bit and puzzling over everything he says. The coyote can spot the puzzlement darkening her eyes, making them go all stormy and pretty, and he bites back his bark of laughter. She is rather cute when she is all bedeviled…
Woodrow grins; she hits the nail right on the head! But should he admit that he is more than just a coyote? He hangs his head and studies his paws, first the left one then the right as he presses them into the dirt and regards the resulting paw-prints with more interest than usual. Was he more coyote than horse, or more horse than coyote? He cannot hardly remember the last time he saw his other shape reflected in a puddle or a river, and maybe he’s been coyote for far too long.
He lifts his head back up to her, still grinning, though it starts to fade as he studies her - she’s deep in concentration, her brow furrowed mightily as if she was trying to do something but he doesn’t know what until all of a sudden she’s not dusky grey but coyote-colored like him. His laughter tumbles out of his mouth as he suddenly leaps to his paws and dances around her, tail wagging, amber eyes alight with mischief. “What a neat trick!” he exclaims, thoroughly entertained by it.
“Can you do it again, change your color just like that?” He throws her a saucy wink and saunters around her one more time in a slinking silly circle before darting behind the tree. If he thinks on it, he could will himself back to his original shape but it is going to hurt and he grits his teeth, feeling his bones crunch and pop as they reassemble themselves into the shape of a horse. Where there was a coyote behind the tree, there is now a bay dun roan stallion that scoots out from behind it. He is flexing his jaw as if it smarts still from the sudden change and he slides his amber eyes her way, “Damn that hurts.”
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For a while they are both silent, and Raene looks more closely at the myriad of colors that make up both her own new coat as well as the one of the coyote in front of her. They are more than sandy brown and grey, she finds, and yet despite all her effort, the feet at the end of her legs have remained determinedly hooves instead of paws. Curiously, she watches the canid press his paws into the ground and study the paw-prints he leaves behind. What is he doing?
She doesn’t have time to ask before he’s noticed her shift in color, and she grins back quite easily. (Though it is a bit hard to tell the difference between his mischeif smile and his real one – perhaps they are one in the same.)
”I can,” she answers, and in a furrow of her brow she is as bright a green as the emerald leaves overhead. That color fades quickly – green is not her most flattering shade – until she has returned to the color she was born. Blue-black, with her fathers spots on a white blanket that wraps around her hips, spotted here and there with Mother’s salmon pink, the ends of her mane and tail a matching unnatural hue. He’s been circling as she’s been changing shades, so when he darts behind a tree she is not startled. The exclamation of pain is though ,and she cranes her neck curiously without moving from her spot in the woods.
”Are you alright?”
Her concern is genuine and deep; Raene’s innate sense of compassion has only been fostered by her loving parents and a childhood spent beside a magical entity whose greatest strength was the soothing of hurt. There is no denying that a bit of the Falls magic has seeped into them all – whether consciously or not – and in Raene it manifests in the careful way she watches for the coyote.
But he is no longer a coyote!
The brown animal that emerges from behind the tree is no more a canine than Raene is, and she watches in fascination as he comes closer. He is horse from his hooves to his tail, and she knows this having looked over every inch. It is only after that she realizes he is a fine looking horse in his own right, but she does not have time to blush, instead she stares in open fascination. ”That was so neat! Can you do that all the time too?”
Backtracking to the paw-prints, he had been toying with the idea of revealing himself as a horse to her. She has asked if he was more than coyote, and he had to think for a good long moment because he had spent more time as a coyote that he had almost forgotten how to be a horse. Even thought that maybe he couldn’t change back, though he does from time to time just to see if it still works. He believes that one day he’ll just be stuck in one form, unable to change back and if so, he hopes he is stuck as a coyote because he knows their ways better than he does a horse’s. So he pressed his paws into the dirt, thinking a hoofprint might appear instead. That was, until she answers him and changes her color again.
She became the most beautiful green he had ever seen, even if it mimicked the leaves above. He was completely in awe of her ability to draw any color into her skin, that seemed way more awesome than his ability to change into a coyote. Except, he thought it might be far more interesting to be both a coyote-shifter and a color-changer - can you imagine an emerald green coyote grinning up at you? He also thinks she looks rather fetching in green, and in her not quite normal appaloosa and salmon-pink coloring. The ends of her mane and tail look like they’ve been dipped in a bowl of belly-scales from salmon caught and slaughtered, even some of her spots are that hue and it fascinates him. But he’s gone ‘round the tree and changed his shape, and that’s where the story picks back up - with her asking if he’s alright.
He is, of course, but it hurts damnably much considering that the entire construction of his being is altered and not slowly. Thank gods, not slowly! Of course, it probably shouldn’t hurt either but let’s be a tad bit realistic - it’s going to. Her concern is touching though, as he replies around a grin that is most certainly more coyote than horse, “I am, thanks. It always hurts a little when doing that.” He frowns momentarily, unwilling to lie about the pain associated with being a shifter. Maybe it wasn’t like that for all of them, he couldn’t say since he’s never met another shifter - just immortals since his family was overrun with them, discounting the levitating half-sister he had but that just freaked him out for some reason.
Woodrow meets her fascinated stare and laughs, “Yeah I suppose so, I just don’t. I tend to stick to being a coyote for longer than is necessary I guess.” Really, he wants to say that he just doesn’t have much purpose in sticking to his original shape as a horse. His family was used to talking to a coyote, so it never bothered them that they saw him as anything but a coyote. She’s actually the first (besides a rabbit-shifter he met as a pup-foal-pup-thing) that’s managed to get him to think about and then be a horse again. And to be honest, she smells way better in this form - even looks cuter too.
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