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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


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    light a candle, cast a shadow
    #1
    Night comes early to Icicle Isle, even in the spring, and the thaw comes late. While across the rest of Beqanna a sigh of relief is spreading, birds returning to their roosts with an explosion of song to brighten the grey and mud of early spring, on the frozen island only the snow geese are returning, their plumage stark white against the snow and their calls something less than musical. It is a hopeless place for many, grim and unforgiving, and not, perhaps, the best place to try to raise an orphaned foal. One horse may eke out a bare survival, chewing tough lichen and mosses and the withered dried grasses beneath the ice and snow, but to find enough for two, and one a growing babe, might be considered less than ideal. It is lucky, then, that Leilan does not have to feed himself on roughage, and only needs to feed her, but as for all parents, these things are time consuming. Selfish in her helplessness and need, Beryl does not take much notice of the toll it takes on him, though also she does not blame him for the pang of hunger that cuts through her thin frame as easily as the fanged wind that scrapes over her skin. 

    On this day, with the help of a few rare hours of bright spring sun in the afternoon, he has been more successful than usual. The filly is curled up out of the wind beneath a small embankment, napping off a filling but not terribly satisfying meal of bark and a few early bulbs the stallion had dug up from the mostly still-frozen ground. It was a feat she would never have managed with her thin legs, but he'd made short work of the sun-softened topsoil. Sometimes she tried to help, but she hadn't the physical strength, and even her control of the yellow-eyed Shadows was still too weak to provide much assistance in the matter. 

    The sun is already setting, though, and the cooler air awakens her, long-lashed eyes fluttering open, blinking in the bright flash of sun that cuts through the dimming day and illuminates the rainbow that drips down her shoulder and forearm. The light looks deceptively warm, her coat glowing in it, but the temperature drops significantly with each minute ticking by. She lifts her velveteen muzzle from its place tucked behind her elbow and slowly rises with a stretch and a soft squeal. She arches her neck, leaning forward, and extends her back legs out behind her - first the left, then the right, and when they are planted back on the chilled earth once again, Beryl nickers to herself and gambols in a small circle, waking all her muscles from their slumber. When at last she comes to a halt, rich brown eyes seek out the familiar sturdiness of the scaled Leilan, but he is not immediately visible. A brief moment of fear threatens to overwhelm her - that fear of loss and abandonment that she carries tucked within her since the day she lost her dam - but then the wind bring his scent to her, not far, only hidden by hillocks of snow.

    The golden child leaps forward into the the snow, clambering up the icy side of the bank and only once sliding back down it in a tangle of limbs and laughter. From here she can peek around the hills and valleys of snow to where Leilan is busy trying to find more to offer her when she awakens - he does not seem to notice that she has already awakened. Her laughter is muffled. I will surprise him, she thinks, giddly, eyes shining brightly. From her place behind him, she bows slightly, golden forelegs stretched ahead of her, pink-grey hooves pressing into the snow with a dull crunch, and white tail waving wildly with excitement. 

    And then, she leaps.

    She leaps higher than she had meant to leap, but it still was not quite enough to summit the mountain of him. The child had not intended to leap onto Leilan at all and is bewildered to find herself clinging to his haunch five small claws on each forepaw snagging ineffectually at his scales. Her cry of alarm comes out as a strangled mewl and the lion cub drops away into the snow in a bewildered heap, only the gold-blue-red galaxy stain across her shoulder marking her as the same creature he rescued from freezing.

    "Oh-oh! What? Help!" Her voice, returned but still slightly roughened by the sea, sounds strange and small in her rounded ears, her nose is too short, her whiskers are too long. The too-familiar feeling of panic rolls in like drowning under the waves and Beryl bares her canines at nothing in particular while the Shadows creep in close around her. What has she become?


    Beryl
    Litotes x Mehendi


    @[Leilan] congratulations, you are now a cat-dad lol
    Reply
    #2
    You’re uncontrollable
    and we are unlovable
    There is, of course, no such thing as sneaking up on a half-dragon - not when his cold resistance enables him smell where others find only snow and ice, not when this half-dragon has enhanced vision, and heat vision as well.

    Sometimes he wonders if perhaps he should need better hearing, but then again, he does just fine. It’s not like he doesn’t hear anything or anyone, after all. He knows where to find the filly, knows even when her body temperature drops a little low; better attributes he could not wish for.

    Had he been given the choice, perhaps he would not have kept her here. But she almost sank on that one trip to the forest, and on the way back he had carried her right across his back - had he been capable of trusting anyone still, he might have left her in some place warmer, with a family. As it was now, his year on the Isle meant a year on the Isle for her, as well. Or at least until autumn; when she was big enough, they could leave, just before winter would strike again.

    It meant a lot of effort, mostly to just keep her alive, let alone teach her anything. Sometimes when she slept - and she slept a little more than most foals her age perhaps, due to the lack of warm mother’s milk and the icy circumstances that took most of her energy - he ventured out to the mainland, returning with dried fruits he’d gathered there. Most times he did not go that far, not daring to leave her when snow storms were near. They lessened with time, with spring nearing and entering the mainland, however. That’s when he was abler to find her food, be it sparse still. Tough grass, tree bark and early winter berries were her ration day in, day out - and the sharp-toothed half-dragon resorted to a more meat-based diet as opposed to a more omnivorous one, so that he would not eat anything that could have gone to her. It seemed to work, so far.

    Of course, he did worry. She grew taller, but barely gained any muscle, and still her skinny frame might never reach the height it would had she had continuous access to mother’s milk and fresh spring grass. Her ribs were showing, and the lack of fat and muscle did not help her in terms of keeping warm. Tough times for a growing foal; shadows could not keep her warm, and sometimes the iced-over male wished he knew where his son was staying, the one who had been born with some kind of fire magic, glowing and warm when he needed to be. Alas, Leilan had no such skill, and thus the only thing he could think of was feed her more and have her on the move, the muscle’s friction and energy converted into a little bit of warmth whenever she would be awake.

    Surviving and living were two different things, he concluded.

    The girl could still barely talk; her voice was so hoarse that he simply hadn’t caught her name yet, and he didn’t pry for it, knowing she was trying. She kept a close eye on him though, perhaps too scared to end up alone to wander from his sight. She didn’t know that he saw more than the average horse, and kept him within her sight, but that was quite alright with him as well. Besides that, he was on constant alert for any sounds she did make, and so when she woke and small hooves broke the snow’s surface with a very faint creaking sound, he knew it was her. No-one else was this light-weight, after all.

    His eye colour changed from light blue to molten orange as his vision changed to spot her otherwise hidden body, red-hot against the icy background of the Isle. He switched back, recognizing her crouched position, not bothered by the fact and simply waiting for her surprise.

    An actual surprise was the shape and the sound of small claws on ice and dragon scales, and her different shape when she dropped into a mound of snow he’d just dug up. He’d lifted his head abruptly, his eye colour changed to a certain light yellow-ish colour, mixed from the shock of white and the readiness for battle in bright yellow. Staring at the cub, her pathetic mews were kind of laughable, and his initial shocked look and bared teeth return to normal quickly; a laugh follows as he nudges the lion cub. ”Why, you. I wish you’d shown me that trick earlier,” he tells her, amusement clear in his voice and shining green eyes. The stallion seems not at all bothered by her bodily change, instead looks over the snow-ridden Isle a moment with a now-orange gaze, then returning to the little shifter. ”Who did you say you were again? Your parents?” he wishes to know, perhaps he knows one of them. There used to be a lion-shifter in the lands, a cremello - snowflakes had marked him at the same time the ice was stuck on his own scales.

    It was years ago, though. He wondered if the stallion was still in Pangea.

    and I don’t want you to think that I care
    I never would, I never
    could again
    Leilan
    no. 7 | ice forged in fire


    @[Beryl] lol he only thinks it’s funny ofc.
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |
    Reply
    #3
    In lion cub form, she rolls onto her back, dark eyes wide and worried, unfocused with building panic that shortens each breath until she is close to hyperventilating. There is a sparkling darkness shimmering at the corners of her vision, less like her Shadows and more like the nothing that swallowed her when she was drowning. This line of thought threatens to take her down perilous alleyways of memory, but the sound of Leilan's laugh draws her back, suddenly and with more than a hint of consternation creasing that feline brow. When he presses his muzzle against her, she grabs at it with dappled golden paws and wonders at the feeling of each fat toe as it spreads from its fellows and molds to the shape of him. A simple flex unsheathes her claws again, re-sheathes them. What is she supposed to do with these soft, fleshy feet and their secret hooks? Baffled, she turns her gaze away from them and back to the stallion who looms even larger than before.

    "I-- I don't... trick?" Her voice is stilted and hesitant, unsure what his question means. It's not a trick, though, not something she was hiding, it's a disaster. Will she be this tiny, soft, thing forever? How will her mother ever recognize her now? 

    "Mama... oh." It had never actually occurred to her that her mother had a name, she was a sound, a smell, a feeling of warmth and safety. They had not interacted with other horses in their short time together, none, anyway, that had addressed her dam by name, or that she had felt the need to introduce herself to. Beryl's stomach turns to a knot of ice with the realization of it, her rounded ears falling sideways and long whiskers drooping. Where could the painted mare be, now? Would she have left the mountain's base, would she have gone back to the meadow or into the desert of Pangea? She has rolled up to her feet with an unfamiliar litheness but now sinks back down to her belly, flattening herself at his feet under the weight of her ignorance. "We were going to the desert. She said Papa ruled there-- but oh! No, no, don't take me there!"

    Her voice threatens to crack and fade back to nothing but scratching whispers at the memory. The monsters. Black things, reflecting the sun like insects - the memory calls the Shadows close again and they gather, shaping themselves to it until she has constructed crude mimicries of the Xenomorph pair that hunt the canyons of Pangea. Their bony-plated armor does not shine, but they stalk and slaver, tendrils of shadowy saliva dripping shadows onto the snow. Knife-edged tails slice the air from side-to-side. They move in tandem with the precision of experienced predators, and even though Beryl-the-lion knows that she controls this particular pair, she buries her face in her paws with a shudder until the creatures close their yellow eyes and melt into the dimming twilight.

    "They are there. Please, I don't want to go back.

    Beryl
    Litotes x Mehendi


    @[Leilan]
    Reply
    #4
    You’re uncontrollable
    and we are unlovable
    His amused question - his amusement at all - is lost on the foal-cub, the moment as much a surprise for her as it had been on him. It is not a trick, everything about her body language says, and he then realizes that she probably doesn’t know how to shift back.

    Honestly, he isn’t entirely sure how shifting works either. Though if he were to guess, it must have something to do with wanting or feeling like the other form. When she jumped, she was on the hunt, after all.

    But it sounds like a complicated thing to tell her now, and besides, she’s readily upset with the questions he asks about her parents - the visions she creates in the shadows, then, they are truly terrifying; especially for a child her age. It does confirm his suspicion about her parentage, to know she went to Pangea to find her father, but if truly these beasts live there, he wouldn’t want to risk bringing her either. And there is word of a new ruler - it’s likely that Lie is no longer out there at any rate.

    He reaches out to the cub, pulling her close. ”We’re not going, snowflake. We’re gonna stay right here together, I promise.” And he’ll find a shifter to help her learn control. Perhaps Jesper would be available.

    With the immediate spike of fear being solved, he is quiet for a moment as his nose brushes the top of her feline head, then decides now is a good time to try a different approach to food. ”I’ll find you some help with the shifting. In the meantime, I think we can try new food.” He smiles a little, prodding her side playfully.

    Let’s hunt, he thinks, wondering if she’d guessed yet, what this change could mean for her.

    and I don’t want you to think that I care
    I never would, I never
    could again
    Leilan
    no. 7 | ice forged in fire


    @[Beryl]
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |
    Reply
    #5
    Beryl doesn't know how the thread that binds her to her mother frays with each decision that she makes - she is too young, really, to understand these things at all - but she clings to his promise of security. When she closes her eyes against the shadow-horrors she has molded, there is no comfort in that empty space. It is not like the shadow-realm where the Eyes circle around her endlessly, it is not like the darkness of night when they almost do the same, if she calls them. Beryl has found her peace with the-- Are they creatures? They whisper, sometimes, that voice like smoke, like rust, but Leilan never hears them, and she has never seen one speak, only heard the voice as though in her ear when nothing stands nearby.

    No, when her eyes shut, there is nothingness and she falls into it without the funnel of Eyes to keep her afloat in space. When the darkness shifts behind her eyes, she tumbles until the firm pillar of his leg grounds her. It feels as if the whole world is spinning out of control beneath her, and without knowing it, sheathed claws extend again, curling into whatever lies beneath them, snow, ice, the frosty scales of his leg. Here, in Leilan's element, her kitten's claws do little more than graze the icy armor, only catching here and there in the space between.

    His muzzle pressing into her side makes large brown eyes open wide and as quickly as she was falling, the ground is solid again underfoot, claws like cleats in the ice, her toes spreading across the surface. Leilan promises not to take her back and the golden lion-child finds no joy in the thought, but a thin relief all the same. No Pangea, no mother, no father, but he is here, and though the world she knew is far away, it is not so far gone that he has not heard of it. Perhaps some day, she will return.

    But then, the memory of those hunters, shining in their black and bladed armor, and she shakes her head, small and resolute.

    No. Never.

    The memories of her painted mother flutter across her mind like torn tapestry, the thought of her sire a shining an unreachable promise. Mama would have wanted me to be brave, she thinks, though she is not really sure what it means to be brave, what it takes, and her feline face screws itself into a thoughtful frown before settling back onto the roan stallion, enormous before, but a behemoth beside her cub's body. She presses one paw - no claws - against his still lowered brow.

    "Mama called me Beryl."

    And then, through her fear and grief, her stomach growls softly. The soft rounds of her ears turn forward, tufted tail lashing side to side, and she stands up on her hind paws, balancing against him. His sly manner makes her forget the sadness of just minutes before, swept away on his sharp-toothed grin, and she returns it with her own, excited and completely ignorant of his meaning, ignorant of what is to come. 

    "A new food?"
    Beryl
    Litotes x Mehendi


    @[Leilan]
    Reply
    #6
    You’re uncontrollable
    and we are unlovable
    The little cub is quite adorable, he has to admit. Her soft rounded face and ears, while made for stalking prey, are endearing in one so small. She is still a predator though - which might be what saves her in the coming growth spurts, seeing as that she had a little trouble catching up with foals her age.

    Her fear then, is something he immediately seeks to soothe, whether she might have hurt him or not. Her little claws knead into his leg, however safe for a few thumb nails they do nothing. And even then; the warrior has felt worse cuts than the little needle pricks she gives him.

    There is no true comfort in not going to Pangea, he knows. It means she is still separated from her mother, still separated from her family in every possible way. There may be other lion-shifters among her half-siblings and yet he can claim it’s not selfishness that made him decide to keep the girl as his own, if she doesn’t want to go back to the desert-like crevices.

    ”Beryl it is,” he nods. ”A pale gemstone like you are.” he confirms, ruffling the top of her round, soft head before he retreats.

    Her stomach growl confirms she might just be ready to try something else; however, her face is all question marks when she looks back to him. He nods, more seriously now. ”You’re a predator, Beryl. What does your gut tell you to do now?”

    and I don’t want you to think that I care
    I never would, I never
    could again
    Leilan
    no. 7 | ice forged in fire

    @[Beryl]
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |
    Reply
    #7
    Her frown turns thoughtful at his question, but her dark eyes are confused. Her gut is telling her she is hungry, she is always hungry, eking out a bare survival on the meager subsistence that he finds for her under the snow and ice. A predator. What does it mean to be a predator? She is slow to make the connection, and when she does, she stares glumly at her paws for a time. Her experience is limited to the fear of the deer hunted in the canyons of Pangea, by her own fear. 

    "Will they be afraid of me?"

    There has never been a time that she feared him as others might. There had never been a chance for her to be frightened, when she had finally woken from her icy stupor he had been watching over her for hours, desperately vulnerable. She had been so afraid of many things worse than a scaled stallion that by the time she caught sight of the sharp teeth in his mouth, they were only met with curiousity. Now she feels the same sharp teeth in her own mouth, points scraping across a rough tongue, and the reality of it washes over her. Are others afraid of him? He is asking her kill, kill to eat, to survive, yes, but at the expense of someone else. He is asking her so casually that she knows he has done it before. Could she do it?

    Mama would want me to survive. But could she have known that to do so, her golden child would eat the flesh of another creature? The thread connecting them frays further, this gift of her sire's comes at a high cost. She thinks - and she is likely not incorrect - that her mother would sacrifice a thousand horses to bring back her daughter. Her lovely, bold, mother. She would fight a Fairy to keep Beryl safe and secure. She would forgive a few lost souls. So Beryl stands and winds between the stallion's legs without waiting for his answer, because she knows the answer, even if he hesitates to say it.

    Yes. Yes, they will be afraid of you.

    They will fear her as they fear him.

    There is a new sadness in her heart that joins the myriad small hurts and heartbreaks she has already endured, and she lets the shadows reach out to her in the gloom, to coat her in themselves and shade her golden fur to almost-black. They are weightless and unconstricting, and every minute brings her greater comfort in this strange, long, lithe body. With a high-pitched growl, she leaps at him again, climbing up and up until she is set upon his broad back, and there, though he cannot see it, she grins mirthlessly into the frozen wasteland, tail lashing side to side.

    "Can you show me?"

    Beryl
    Litotes x Mehendi


    @[Leilan] She is riding him into battle lmao
    Reply
    #8
    You’re uncontrollable
    and we are unlovable
    The cub seems to have a hard time processing his statement and subsequent question, but it is a little harder to read her little-lion face than he could a foal’s so he can’t be sure for how long she remains silent - but then she asks a question, and a shadow falls over his face.

    It’s not her fault. In fact, she is quite lucky to inherit her father’s gift, for it will mean survival and perhaps flourishment, even with the rough start. It’s no wonder, he thinks, he could never fully sate her hunger, if there was a lion underneath her skin. Or perhaps that’s just his mind reaching for explanations that aren’t his fault - perhaps he doesn’t want to be at fault any more, for raising her here where logic would have told him to leave his beloved Isle.

    Will they be afraid of me?

    Yes, darling, they will. If they find out about your lion form, they will fear you before you’ve had the chance to show your angelic personality. They will fear you for what they don’t understand, that you’re two shapes, not two faces, with one golden heart. They say it won’t be possible.

    He doesn’t need to tell her out loud. The deep sad-looking blue of his eyes combined with his expression, are enough. A small nod of understanding is barely visible when she clouds herself in dark shadows; sometimes he wished he could disappear too, or shy away from the judging eyes of others. Usually, he doesn’t care - he doesn’t care when it’s about himself.

    He cares a lot when it comes to his daughter, her sad face when she realizes judgement will be unavoidable. That many don’t stop to look beyond a set of claws or teeth.

    And yet she seems to be able to handle it. Maybe she had been broken too many times to notice the difference. He wishes things could be different for her, but they are what they are.

    She climbs his leg and shoulder and he automatically dips that leg a little to make her climb easier. There is a useful part to her being a lion, and ultimately perhaps a fun part as well. He feels her tail swish upon his spine, and grins a little himself. The excitement and silent purr in her voice are all he needs to confirm she will do well, regardless of what others may think. ”Rule number one - no horses or shifters. You’ll recognize the difference soon enough. Rule number two - no predators. They taste awful and usually fight back. Everything else is fair game.” he instructs her almost automatically, and then they move, onward. There is a den of snow hares a little to the south-east; those animals breed like rabbits. Surely they can miss one or two more leverets.

    When they near, he stops. The ground is warmer where the den is, but Beryl might not see as he does. She’ll have to find them on her own, and find a way to reach them as well. ”Rule number three. You don’t always get to rely on me.” He tosses his head back a little, waiting for her to come up with a next move.

    and I don’t want you to think that I care
    I never would, I never
    could again
    Leilan
    no. 7 | ice forged in fire


    @[Beryl]
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |
    Reply
    #9
    She bats at his mane as he trots through the icy twilight, catching her claws in its twisting gold and silver tangles. Around them, everything has taken on a strange luminescence, the moonlight reflecting off the snow makes the night-time glow to these new eyes, and it is only into the blackest of shadows that Beryl cannot see. Nevermind that, she thinks, and a half-smile curls her black-lined lips. She needn't be able to see into the shadows to know what lies within them, only to ask. For now, she lets them be and yellow eyes close sleepily, only the Shades that cling to her fur look out with their odd passive expression. Their edges drip and spill over onto his shoulders and she drops the bits of mane to pat-pat after them with one sheathed paw when they flutter as if in the wind. They are not governed by the gusts, but seem still to shift and phase with the movement of the object that created them.

    When Leilan stops, the young lion is deep in another world, transported away on his words. No horses. No Shifters. How will she know? No predators - small teeth bare themselves in an involuntary snarl. Though he waits, Beryl does not move from her place behind his withers, relishing the height, the view - when did she forget that the world was so big? It all comes back to the day she got lost, things became very myopic, grief and fear crowded her into a tunnel of despair. She still grieves, but fear?

    She is less afraid, now.

    He is waiting, and she does not know why until the scent of something a great deal like rabbits catches her attention, but not sharply. Predatory instincts are muddled and confused, and her interest is purely curiousity, but she slides off him clumsily. This body may leap and twist easily, but it is less adept at climbing down and her landing is rough and leaves her with a small scrap across her nose from the hard crust of ice.

    Her ears turn. In the den the quiet rustling of the hares can be heard, even from where she comes to sit in-between his front legs. The youngest of the kits mewl like kittens but the older animals move in near silence, their hair-covered paws padding softly in the dusty halls of their warren. Something feline within her stirs at the sound of their cries, but her horse's heart shivers at its counter-part within her soul, the idea of hunting, of eating meat distasteful, dreadful. And still, she does not want to scare the beasts. Beryl casts a glance upwards at Leilan's chin, the curve of his jaw and the scale-armored throat latch looming overhead. She turns back to the den.

    It's too small to go in, and the kits that cry in fur-lined nests will not come out. Can they smell her? Does she smell like a horse, or does she smell like... this? Can they smell the ice dragon that brought her here, and will they come out willingly if any of them are so near the burrow's entrance? I wouldn't. I would never come out from the shadows again. Stay inside Little Ones, we're all monsters out here. The thought twists in her stomach, but so does hunger and even as she pleads with the hares to stay deep and safe in their burrows, she is prodding, reaching out. Though the hares have learned to speak in shadows, she speaks with the shadows. They are hers. The dark mahogany of her eyes glitters in the starlight and the seconds tick by, silent and long, and still she sits between his feathered hooves.

    And then, a hare bursts out, its coat mottled white and brown, molting, in between its phases. Yellow eyes lurk at the mouth of the cave.

    one

    It rasps in her head. The shadows in the warren are not happy to force the rabbits out. Oh, they listen because they must, but she feels the reluctance that never shows in expressionless eyes, that does not color the whisper in her ear. She is young and it surprises her, but perhaps it is not so shocking that the Shades grow fond of the creatures that live and grow within them. After all, they saved her, too. The thoughts flicker past as quickly as the darting hare and she, tail in the air, bounds forward, propelled by instincts she didn't know she had, but too slow all the same. Her paw swipes for the back legs and the flecked creature seems to levitate above it. He should not be faster than her. There was a time when even her dam struggled to keep pace with her, but that was before famine and fatigue had dulled her, never mind the reluctance and lack of skill that weighs her down. 

    Beryl
    Litotes x Mehendi
    Reply
    #10
    You’re uncontrollable
    and we are unlovable
    She doesn’t move, and it concerns him.

    For a long time, she doesn’t move a muscle, and in her expression her concentrations and inner battles show. Nevertheless, he doesn’t dare to move either - he wants her to learn, to cope with her ability on her own. To live with the fact that she must sometimes eat meat, and must sometimes kill to survive, she’ll have to do this first step alone.

    But she is not alone. She has shadows to help her, and of course a surrogate father. Although he knows it is conflicting for her to have to hunt, and therefore her shadows don’t really want to hunt (she doesn’t see them as part of herself, but he does), it is not something she has to do alone. In fact, when the hare runs out and she hesitates, for her sake, he does not.

    She runs after the animal weakly, but his breath, being a ‘weapon’ of range as opposed to tooth and claw, reaches it just she gives up. The young animal gets itself frozen, stuck to ice and if Leilan had cared to let it suffer, it would have suffocated in a layer of ice. Mid-jump, it looks encased in an ice statue, but it won’t get the time to feel any of the cold.

    A snap of his teeth kills the animal as quickly as possible. The ice drake cleans his teeth before turning to the lion cub, who no doubt will look at the scene in shock or something close to it, he thinks. ”Rules four and five. No hunting for fun, and if you need to, make it quick.” He lowers his nose to nudge her. It’s more than enough lessons for one day, he knows. If only it hadn’t been vital for her to learn it so quickly, it might have come more gradually and naturally.

    and I don’t want you to think that I care
    I never would, I never
    could again
    Leilan
    no. 7 | ice forged in fire


    @[Beryl]
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |
    Reply




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