[mature] once upon a time, when the sun still used to shine

[Mazikeen]

As annoyed and angry as Mazikeen is, Wishbone’s words dull those feelings and replace them with more confusion. “Kelpie?” It’s a relatively new word to her but she has heard it before and she repeats it carefully, picturing Sabal when she does. What does that smug little eel have to do with any of this? Barrow wasn’t anything like that self-important water slug (and how odd would it be to learn that Barrow was Sabal’s sibling - and they were both the children of the spectre haunting Wishbone). The other mare takes a few steps back, which enables Mazikeen to relax by a small fraction. She’s still tense, still unable to turn her orange burning gaze from Wishbone as her mind whirls and tries to make sense with what she knows - that it’s Barrow standing behind her bear-form - and the words she is hearing. She does not doubt that Barrow is incapable of drowning anyone (unless it is accidentally in dog slobber) but neither is she immune to the pleading in Wishbone’s voice when she speaks again. There's something so earnest about it. Mazikeen eyes the bone warily, even though it is not pointed in a threatening manner, and her fire aura flickers again a little as her hold on it loosens in her uncertainty. She resolves to figure this out before she moves an inch. “What do you -” And then her neck blossoms in pain as the thing-that-looks-like-Barrow bites her from behind, through the thick fur there as if it’s nothing and deep into the flesh. The young bear cries out in surprise and pain. There is one consuming moment where she feels betrayal like a boulder in her stomach weighing her down. Her eyes shine with pure horror as they're locked on Wishbone before she twists out of the grip, tearing the wound more. She doesn’t strike - because her mind cannot reconcile her memories of Barrow with what has just happened. Even as she bleeds, Mazikeen cannot imagine hurting him. She just moves so all three of them are facing each other now, her voice thick and quiet. “Barrow?” He smiles at her - a sunny expression except for the mouth drenched in her blood - and then her eyes widen when his body seems to shimmer, falling apart into shadow only to reform exactly the same a heartbeat later.

image by Reitro

@[Wishbone]

[Wishbone]

it's a mystery to me

we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.

The confusion in her stomach chills into horror when Ivar’s mouth unhinges (and she is reminded of witnessing a snake bite an animal much too large for its jaws) and his gold eyes roll to reveal white disrupted by bright red blood vessels. Wishbone doesn’t have time to warn the pale-colored mare, but her mind instinctively shifts the mammoth tusk to point it at the thing when it sinks its teeth into Mazikeen’s neck.

It is definitely not Ivar.

“Holy fucking shit.” Wishbone is grateful the thing lets go of Mazikeen, and she steps closer to Ivar-creature with one strong, purposeful movement. Her horror has melted into the familiar blaze of anger and bravery. These emotions and the presence of danger (she might deny fear, but she cannot ignore danger) coax adrenaline from its hiding place and let it flow into the marrow of her bones. “I don’t know who Barrow is, but that is not your friend. Or anyone’s friend.” Her voice is firm, unwavering. Wishbone isn’t sure exactly what this creature is, but she does know it’s not Ivar or Barrow, and she knows it is dangerous.

Though she has not fought in this shape yet, Wishbone is tall, and she uses this to make herself look larger than the creature. Her ears pin even further into the tangle of her mane, and her eyes flash with a danger that seems to ignite flames within her amber eyes. “Touch her again, and I’ll fucking kill you,” she snarls at the creature. Wishbone pushes closer, feeling her skin grow hot under the strangely-familiar gold eyes, and presses the tusk directly into its chest.

Perhaps she will never figure out how to avoid the temptations of Death and Danger. Perhaps it will always be a fault of hers — to walk the line between living and not-living, to dance herself into the hands of the Grim Reaper, to snarl and fight with such recklessness the world schemes on ways to remove her from it.

Fed up with the game, the Ivar-Barrow-creature shatters into an oily-black shadow. It levitates into the air above their heads and, with a wide-gaping mouth full of rows of shark-like teeth, wraps its mouth across the slope of Wishbone’s obsidian back.

credit to eliza of adoxography.

@[Mazikeen]

[Mazikeen]

Mazikeen hears Wishbone telling her that this isn’t her friend, and she hears and understands the words but it’s as if they are obscured by a fog. Her shock hasn’t retreated yet, the visual of Barrow drenched in her blood is something that she thinks will haunt her for a long time. She begins to come back to herself and find focus again as Wishbone threatens the creature on her behalf. She’d smile, if she currently possessed the capability to do so. As it is, though there is some relief that this is not Barrow, she feels very far away from being able to smile. While Wishbone steps towards not-Barrow, Mazikeen takes a few haggard breaths to steady herself, orange eyes not even daring to blink. And then all pretense of wearing her friend’s face is dropped and she finally sees the creature for what it is. Her eyes widen and track it as it rises into the air above them before sinking down to wrap an impossibly wide mouth right over Wishbone's back. Like it could swallow her whole. Only it’s not impossible because she’s watching it happen. She’s bleeding, confused, horrified, and now absolutely pissed off. Her fire aura seems to glow brighter with the growing rage and Mazikeen does not hesitate to let herself burn. She explodes into action, first shifting into an osprey and launching herself right at the face of the creature. A shrill screech escapes her that turns into a feral scream when she connects with its slick shadowy body, talons scraping at its eyes. She changes again, now a bristling white gorilla whose hind legs wrap around the beast's neck, and long forelimbs reach out to pry the upper jaw off of Wishbone’s body. She screams again from the effort, squeezing her legs to choke the beast and at the same time using as much of her strength as she can to free the other mare. Something bulbous and slick slides down the creature's face and she can feel it touch her legs - the remains of a shredded eye. Damn that’s disgusting and it almost distracts her but she feels the jaw shift and loosen and refocuses her effort, pulling until she hears something snap and her eyes open (shit, when had she closed them?) and look desperately down to see if Wishbone is okay.

image by Reitro

@[Wishbone]

[Wishbone]

it's a mystery to me

we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.

The snarl that rips from Wishbone’s mouth is feral. White-hot pain blossoms where the monster’s teeth sink into her skin. This bite is nothing like Ivar’s mouth marking her skin, or the sting of Tephra’s lava on her heels, or the rhythmic discomfort of childbirth. The monster’s mouth is searing as acid seems to drip from its rows of shark-teeth to burn away her skin and what lies beneath.

She doesn’t see Mazikeen melt into the osprey or the gorilla because her eyes are closed tightly while her face twists into an expression of pain. It is all she can think — all she can feel — and even the desire to scramble away is drowned beneath the powerful force of agony. Wishbone catches her breath enough to think past the acidic burn, yet she finds that she can’t even escape the jaws of the monster. It holds her in a strong, tight grip that makes her feel lightheaded.

The monster’s upper jaw shifts slightly, loosened by Mazikeen’s efforts, and Wishbone groans as the pressure eases. Yet she is still burning up from the inside, the monster’s acid eating away the soft tissue that lies within her ribcage. Blood gushes from her sides and paints her dark body in deep red. The liters that leave her body make her feel sick and weak. “Oh no,” she whispers, but the sound is a droplet in the sea of screaming, snarling, and blood splattering the ground. Wishbone has felt like this before — the way her body suddenly feels heavy and tingling, the way her head swims, the way she struggles to drag air into her lungs — and her heart beats even faster.

She isn’t ready to die again.

And as Mazikeen pulls with renewed strength, the obsidian mare hears a sharp, bony crack and eerily feels nothing.

Nothing becomes a shattered feeling, as if she has splintered apart like a frozen lake on a warm day. When she opens her eyes (though really they are not eyes — not yet), she can see a million different ways. Wishbone is in the grass, on the puddle of her blood, high in the sky, nestled among the trees, atop Mazikeen’s silvery head, inside the writhing mouth of the monster. She is everywhere and nowhere, and Mazikeen might see only a faint, ethereal glow where Wishbone’s body should have been.

It lasts only long enough for Wishbone to wonder if this is what it means to die while conscious. A fierce warmth spreads through the shattering sensation, pulling her together like she is waking from a deep dream. She reforms just past the monster’s reach (whose mouth now remains empty and gaping), and Wishbone’s head swims when her vision pulls back to normal.

She knows something is different; her legs and head tingle with a childlike newness that she has felt before. “Oh no,” she says again, this time louder, and she is at least thankful that her voice sounds the same — even when she knows her body looks different. Though she cannot see herself just yet, the lanky obsidian is now a purple pangare, with a build that speaks more of war-like tendencies than speed. But Wishbone can’t dwell on her changed appearance now, not when Mazikeen is straddling an angry, levitating shadow.

So Wishbone drags bones from the soil — dinosaur-like ribs, jawbones from a family of bears, the femur of a moose — and slingshots them toward the monster. She wields them in an attempt at caging the shadow-monster, bringing it closer to the ground and pinning it with no room to escape. She grits her teeth (a mouth set into a nearly-black muzzle that quickly melts into soft purple followed by a deeper, eggplant purple) and channels the renewed energy that comes with a new body.

credit to eliza of adoxography.

@[Mazikeen]

[Mazikeen]

Her fire aura winks out as Mazikeen screams Wishbone’s name, orange eyes wide with horror and despair as she realizes she’s failed to keep the other mare safe - as she watches Wishbone fall into the blood-soaked grass. So much blood. And then the white-hot anger that Mazikeen had felt with Firion takes over. This time, she’s not silent. This time, she screams with feral rage and the twisting pain of failure. Little flicks through her mind in the way of coherent thought, she’s blinded by the emotions boiling within her. She doesn’t notice the light, the disappearance of Wishbone’s body, or the reappearance. The upper jaw of the creature eventually breaks in her iron grip, but she knows it’s too late. Too late to save the new friend she's made in the shadows. The creature in her grip bucks her off, wild with pain and its own anger as its remaining eye focuses on Wishbone's new form. Mazikeen-the-gorilla is sent flying but she’s able to grip the branches of a tree in her strong arms and swing back down to the ground. She sees someone pull bones from the earth and send them flying towards the beast. Confusion eddies into the rage but it’s not enough to stop her. She doesn’t currently have the ability to puzzle out what has just happened and the rational part of her mind that knows this purple mare is Wishbone is not loud enough to be heard. The monster trapped, Mazikeen attacks without hesitation. Her shapeshifting flicking her through a dozen shapes as she snaps and tears and screams. The thick blood of the beast coats her, mixing with her own, mixing with what she splashes and steps in from Wishbone. Each heartbeat she is something new, all vicious shapes, all with the same burning orange eyes. She’s tried to shift like this when she’s been calm, and she is fairly quick, but it is so slow compared to when there’s nothing inside of her but fire, rage, and pain. The body stops moving at some point but she doesn’t notice - she wants to see it pulverized, wants all traces of it wiped from this earth. She’s forgotten Wishbone is there, standing and alive, she just sees the blood of the monster mixing in the dark with that of her friend and loses herself to the frenzy.

image by Reitro

@[Wishbone]

[Wishbone]

it's a mystery to me

we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.

Things had happened too fast for Wishbone to consider what her new friend’s reaction would be. She can hardly untangle the knot of emotions and thoughts that settle inside her at the experience, let alone consider Mazikeen’s. The threat of the monster is more pressing than puzzling out what, exactly, has happened. But Wishbone does know she hadn’t been expecting Mazikeen to react as she does.

With the monster trapped, the gorilla transforms into nothing but snapshots of angry creatures with blindingly-angry orange eyes. Wishbone continues to use her bones to keep the monster pinned to the blood-stained ground, parting them where necessary to give Mazikeen room for her ruthless attacks. The purple mare nimbly adds the long, sharp tooth of a cougar to the mixture, using this weapon to penetrate the creature’s shadowy flesh.

It writhes and thrashes and finally gives up, and Wishbone lets the bones fall. While this new body has replenished energy, her magic from within is drained. The danger has been destroyed, and Wishbone can feel exhaustion replace the adrenaline that fades away. Yet Mazikeen continues to beat the monster’s dead body, and it isn’t long before its shadow-tissue makes a slurping sound and seems to absorb into the blood-soaked ground, disappearing beyond their view.

How does she explain what happened? How do they begin to unpack what has happened, with the Ivar-Barrow-monster, and her unexplainable death-turned-transformation, and the way the ground soaked in the creature’s remains?

Wishbone drags in a long, deep breath. She speaks within seconds after the monster’s disappearance, worried Mazikeen will think she is another shadow looking for prey. “Mazikeen, before you attack, it’s me. Wishbone. I still can’t explain what happened, but it really is me.” Her characteristic amber eyes peer out from her deep purple face, authentic and soft. She hadn’t realized her newfound friend could shift so quickly, so ruthlessly. Wishbone certainly isn’t prepared to meet that viciousness herself.

Though, if she does… She wonders, for a flickering moment, what sort of color she might be that time.

credit to eliza of adoxography.

@[Mazikeen]

[Mazikeen]

Mazikeen only stops when there is nothing left, when the tissue fades from right underneath her claws and disappears into the ground. She is shaking as she stands at the ground where the body had been, the frenzy fading and leaving her as a lioness that is inhaling deep, ragged breaths. Her claws dig into the ground that is muddy with so much blood as if she can hold herself together, hold herself upright, by physically clinging to the earth. Her head snaps towards maybe-Wishbone at the sound of the voice and it takes a great effort to make her frenzied mind focus on the words. To climb out of the white noise of the wrath and actually exist in her body again. When Mazikeen replies, her voice is strained and quiet - little more than a breath in the dark. “I believe you.” She thinks that she does, at least, or maybe she’s too exhausted to consider the alternative. If this is another trick, she’s not sure she has the strength left to fight. An abundance of caution has her staying as the lioness, though, just in case. Each breath brings her back from the frenzy, back into her own mind, and there’s a ghost of a smile when she speaks again - her voice steadier. “I think... considering the circumstances, you can just call me Maze.” The humour that sparks in her eyes for a brief moment fades quickly into concern, however, as she looks over the purple mare standing before her - checking for any signs of injury. “Are you… okay?”

image by Reitro

@[Wishbone]

[Wishbone]

it's a mystery to me

we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.

Their world brims with magic. It penetrates each of them, leaving them gifted or cursed, and they have learned that its power is volatile. It will give and it will take. The magic of Beqanna seems to be a sort of christening; when they reach a certain age, they begin to understand the power that writhes within each cell of the land. They begin to realize how simple they are and how their bodies are mere vessels filled with whatever Beqanna will pour into them. And they know that things can change and that some things are unexplainable.

Perhaps these are mere musings from Wishbone alone. Her philosophy on Beqanna’s magic has changed with time, but regardless of her thoughts, she is grateful Mazikeen seems to accept her transformation. They can shift from one form to the next (from black to purple, from horse to lioness) just as their world tends to shift beneath their feet. Just as the day bleeds into the night and the darkness overcomes them. And Wishbone feels good, knowing that her friend accepts her strange change even if neither of them entirely understand it yet.

Wishbone’s amber eyes remain tied to Mazikeen’s, and she watches as the blinding anger fades. Ivar’s face had triggered the same reaction in her — a desire to beat something into the ground until it shattered and bled and disappeared — and Wishbone wonders if she would feel satisfied if she had accomplished it.

The dark edges of her mouth move into a half-smile at Mazikeen’s remark. And yet a sharp pain hits her chest, so sudden she almost loses her breath. Wishbone has her nicknames as well, but the one who often created them died in the Loessian fire. The purple mare had hoped she had left her grief at the top of Tephra’s volcano, but Wolfbane continues to haunt her at the worst times. She isn’t sure if she can handle thinking about his death on top of the fight’s exhaustion.

Thankfully, Mazikeen’s next question pulls Wishbone from the darkness of her sorrow. She forces her mind to consider her new form and any damages it might have taken. But this purple figure is flawless, a body reborn from the magic she still cannot understand. Wishbone shakes her head while saying, “Aside from exhaustion, I feel okay.” It is strange to feel everything so painfully and then nothing at all. It leaves her feeling dizzy, uprooted, floating.

She moves closer to the lioness now, pleased to find that this body fits closer in height with her original frame. It is easy to move when she is closer to the ground, and Wishbone feels less like a high, narrow walking tree. Her own eyes search out Mazikeen’s feline body, searching for any injuries. “And you? Are you okay?”

credit to eliza of adoxography.

@[Mazikeen]

[Mazikeen]

The relief Mazikeen feels when Wishbone confirms that she’s okay - just exhausted - is real and palpable. She always was quicker at attachments than she actually realized, though this time she at least recognized that she had no issues at all considering this now-purple mare a friend. Even if their acquaintanceship had gone through a bit of a rough patch right there in the middle. Mazikeen rolls her shoulders a bit, doing her own assessment of her injuries, and ends up wincing as the skin tugs around where she had been bitten on her neck. “I think my neck’s going to hurt for a bit and a few new scratches but… mostly okay. Just yeah, exhausted.” The last time she had slipped into a frenzy she had flown immediately back to Hyaline before passing out in the safety of her home. But this time, she wasn’t also looking to put as much space between herself and her companion as quickly as possible. Each breath continues to bring calm back into her body, and though she’s positively burning with questions about how Wishbone had just died and regenerated in a whole new body - sleep feels more important. “What do you say we get out of these woods and find somewhere safe to get some rest?” Mazikeen would understand if the other mare would prefer to go her own way - but she knows she’d personally feel a little better if they separated once she knew for sure neither of them were going to collapse. It was good to make a friend she could count on in a fight.

image by Reitro

@[Wishbone]

[Wishbone]

it's a mystery to me

we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.

In all the friendships Wishbone has made in her life so far, the strongest have been found amid chaos. Running away from a cursed, raging father with Wolfbane; sweating through endless sparring sessions with Scorch; sharing the experience of Death and subsequent Life after with Svedka; climbing Tephra’s volcano with Lilliana while the pain of grief fuels them. It seems that the iron and fire of life (and death, in some cases) has a way of knitting souls together.

Though she has only known Mazikeen for a few hours, Wishbone senses that they will see each other again. Something about the shapeshifter calls to the purple mare, something that reminds her of her blue-eyed brother and their wild spirits. A desire to remain unafraid of the world, perhaps. Or maybe the ferocity of a flame that wishes to burn bright and hard and long.

Regardless, Wishbone can feel the heat of exhaustion creep behind her head. Mazikeen suggests security and sleep as if she had read the purple mare’s mind, and it brings a smile to Wishbone’s mouth. “That sounds perfect.” She is too tired to wonder if Mazikeen has questions about what has happened (and she is undoubtedly too exhausted to answer them honestly). Still, she does touch her dark nose to her newfound friend’s shoulder in silent camaraderie. “I’m too tired even to think right now.”

With an easy smile, Wishbone heads in the direction of the Meadow, where the trees will be thinner, and they can sleep knowing that they have each other to rely on until it comes time to part ways.

credit to eliza of adoxography.

@[Mazikeen]