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    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


    [private]  and its harder than you think
    #11

    (and it's harder than you think)
    telling dreams from one another

    Nashua still hangs a short distance away from the pair, close enough to interject if needed, but Bolder's father tries to allow him some privacy. It's something that the Hersir had remembered about Leilan - another shifter. His mentor had always preferred to be away from others when he changed and as Nash watches the two shapeshifters before him, he wonders if the same were true for them.

    For Bolder, it didn't appear to be. The pegasus colt has the sense to look a little contrite when his silver eyes go looking for his father. (Though for the boy, it is more that he antagonized his siblings when he knows that he shouldn't than his growing shifting aility.) The glance doesn't last long, because Mazikeen is praising the liver chestnut for his growing control over his coat and he grins so broadly that parts of him start to glow from his light pink socks. He lowers his dark head towards one illuminated limb and then looks to the pastel-colored feline, focusing on studying Mazikeen for other clues and tricks to learn.

    The pink on his legs continues to climb higher and higher, eventually fading away the yellow. Bolder doesn't realize that his distraction has left him as a single shade instead of two. But he's much more fascinated with what Maze is telling him. "There is a Kelpie here?" the pegasus colt blurts out, unable to contain his excitement. "Do they have lots of teeth?" Bolder asks, remembering an argument between himself and Bravely and Saffron. He had imagined that a Kelpie might have a jaw like a shark, rows upon rows of serrated teeth to drag some poor soul to some unfathomable depth.

    His slate grey eyes dart towards the direction of the Lake.

    The kelpie is part of the park, with others. One who could shift into a dog, another a wolf. His pink ears prick in the direction of his father and there is something nervous flickering across Bolder's moon-marked face. Mazikeen wears an easy smile though - as well as a new shape and pattern - one that the young pegasus admires by attempting to replicate and smooths out his troubled expression. It is nowhere near as good as the Alpha's but there is a swirling mixture of tan and black and white on him when Bolder flashes another triumphant grin at his teacher.

    NASHUA



    @Mazikeen someday bolder will have his own account
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
    #12

    Mazikeen doesn’t think it has anything to do with her teaching, such as it is, but she is still proud to see it when Bolder turns a single shade - no swirling colours mixed in, a perfect match for the colour she had picked for her feline form, only interrupted by a glow that starts. She wonders if his glow is like hers - triggered by emotion, though she doesn’t think the colt is angry. Perhaps a happy glow, then - and his ability to keep to one colour seems to be tied to it as well.

    Maybe there was something to that.

    She waits until he tries her new colouring, sitting down as the dog shape, and mirroring his triumphant grin when he manages a swirling combination of all the right colours - none of the pink remaining. He’ll be a pro at this in no time and her tail wags approvingly.

    Mazikeen replies to his question about the kelpie then, lowering her voice to a near whisper like what she’s telling him is a secret. One Sabal wouldn’t be too impressed to hear. “She doesn’t have nearly as many teeth as she pretends.” The kelpie had flashed her teeth to Maze on multiple occasions, and though it had certainly been impressive that was not something she’d admit.

    “Next time you come I’ll introduce you to her, okay?” She glances over towards the lake for a moment, thinking about Sabal and wondering if her pregnancy was going any better. These thoughts are easy to shut out in Bolder, and Nashua’s, company and she looks back to the colt with another mischievous glint in her eye. “She looks like this when she’s on land.” Mazikeen first turns into a squid and flops around mock-angrily on the grass for a few seconds before turning into a horse that is white with teal all down her back and wings that are overgrown versions of those that flying fish have are settled at her side. “I can’t replicate her smell though, which is probably for the best. She always stinks of trout.” A laugh escapes her when she says this, bright and unworried as she glances over to Nashua finally - hoping he won't mind this hazy future plan, hoping she'll get to spend more days like this with his enthusiastic son.

    MAZIKEEN
    mazikeen


    @[Nashua]
    #13
    Everything that Bolder had hoped for this meeting has been better than he could have imagined.

    When his father had found him the night before and said that they would be taking a trip to Hyaline - without Bravely or Saffron - he had been intrigued. He loves his brother and sister - loves that the three form a trio that seems to perfectly round itself (Bravely incites, Saffron suggests and Bolder realizes) but there had been a particular thrill that wherever they were going, it was just going to be just him and his father.

    Bolder has never understood why the way that he can't control his colors has bothered his sire; some part of him had always wondered if it was because there was something wrong with him. But as Mazikeen shifts shapes and sheds her skins, the striped colt can find nothing wrong with her. She became a dog as easily as she could laugh and now turns into a squid - a creature that Bolder has never seen so the boy takes a high step back - but then comes forward again, just as she shifts into the teal-and-white shape before him. The wings are her sides are something else he has never seen before - not like the dragon wings that his grandsire sometimes wears, or the light wings that he has seen on his Uncle Yan and some of his cousins.

    He studies the texture, thinking that he would somehow mimic the colors.

    But his dark feathers shift instead, taking on a new kind of skin. The shades that he had been wearing earlier change as well, taking on his own hue of white and blue. Not an exact copy, but close. He was getting better at this game, realizing that there was more that he could do. His white-nose wrinkles when Maze mentions the stink of trout; he doesn't know what is either but he imagines that it smells like the Stink Snails that he had found with Saffron once. "I can come back?" Bolder asks, looking between the Alpha and his now approaching father. "I've never done this before," the colt exclaims to both and is still beaming with a smile when he looks to Mazikeen. He wonders if he changes his wings competely, if the kelpie might show him if she can fly with them.

    Nashua's mouth has gone dry. It had started with Bolder unable to control his coat. Now, his shape? No, he thinks. No, this can't be happening.

    "Dad?" Bolder prompts his father when he thinks that the chestnut stallion had been silent too long. But Nash is looking at Maze, something clearly troubling him. "Is this something else you can help him with?" The colt looks the oddly-textured wing, still finding its oddness rather amazing. Why didn't his father see it that way? But his father is thinking of his sire, another shifter that once roamed the Taigan woods. Mazikeen is the mate of his half-brother and while he isn't sure what she knows of the family history, Nashua thinks she must know enough that there can't be another unpredictable shapeshifter in Taiga. That was deep in the past, buried further than the roots of the Sequoias and Silverwoods could go.

    @[Mazikeen]
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
    #14

    Mazikeen’s eyes brighten as she watches Bolder’s wings change not only in colour, but texture as well and she is meeting his beaming smile with one of her own. Will it feel like this when she helps teach her own children? Will she and Gale stand by the shore of this lake and share the tricks they’ve learned with their twins on a sunny day as filled with smiles as this one?

    She had never wanted to be a mother, but Mazikeen wants that day. Wants a handful of perfect moments she can hold onto as Gale slips away from her.

    Her gaze shifts to Nashua as he comes closer, her smile falling when she sees the expression on his face. And she thinks again of the Curse, sees some of the concern she remembers Gale having when he had first grown wings during the eclipse. Even knowing what she does, knowing that their concern is incredibly valid considering what happened to their father, it bothers her.

    She reverts back to her natural form and her voice is a little clipped when she replies. “If by help, you mean teach him so he can control it and get better - then yes.” The part she does not say - the part she hopes is implied heavily enough - is that if he meant help as ‘make sure it does not happen anymore’ then the answer is no. “It’s not a bad thing, to be able to shift.” She says this while levelling a fierce glare at Nashua, wishing she had telepathy so she could shout at him to get it together, at least in front of his son. Hoping that the blazing look in her eyes is enough to get that point across.

    Mazikeen doesn’t know for sure that the Curse that’s affected their family can’t exist in two hosts at the same time but she does know it’s already occupying someone else at this moment so it feels unlikely that little Bolder could be in the same situation as Gale.

    She feels protective of him, this young shifter, and does not have any qualms about letting her opinions of Nashua’s parenting techniques known. Whether it’s her business or not - Bolder shouldn’t be made to feel guilty over being able to shift.

    “You can come back any time you want, Bolder. I'd be happy to teach you as much as I can” She doesn’t mean to exclude Nashua from the invitation, not seriously anyway. But she can’t do anything to help the chestnut without betraying the secret she is keeping for his brother, so instead she resolves to be the best teacher she is capable of being. And maybe in that way they can show his father that there is nothing to worry about.

    MAZIKEEN
    mazikeen


    @Nashua
    #15

    (and it's harder than you think)
    telling dreams from one another

    A shadow crosses Nash's blazed face at the clipped tone that the Alpha uses. While watching his son shift might have been enough for his worry to show in the presence of the two shifters, the striped pegasus doesn't pin ears or show any other sign of the Hersir's rising temper. His green eyes glance at his youngest son whose wings still show the faint tracing of scales and the blue-and-white design of another horse.

    And then his emerald gaze snaps back to Mazikeen, hearing her unspoken implication. The ability that Bolder has shown is one greater than Nash's; there is only one horse in Taiga that knows what he can do and the light-and-shadow mare had never told him her name. He's been fortunate that out of his five children, only Luminesce and Bolder inherited it. His daughter seemed to understand that her ability was something that made her father uneasy and hadn't done it often in his presence. His son had been the opposite of his older sister, taking the chance to shift and change every chance he could get.

    It worries him. If what Bolder can do is greater than his shifting, what about Bolder's son? And if that descendant should have a child?

    Maybe unlike his twin brother's madness - which had come on so suddenly - the children and grandchildren of Nashua would fall slowly into some kind of insanity.

    "No," says the Northern horse, though his reply is just as terse as Mazikeen's had been, and Bolder - by now realizing the rising tension in the air - had returned into his chestnut self, innocently hoping that it might relieve it. "But for him, it could be." The older stallion warns and by now, the striped pegasus thinks that Mazikeen will understand him. The Curse and the destruction it wrought in the North is not something often spoke of (if at all) and the almost yearling certainly doesn't know the full story. Bolder has no idea why his father seems so upset.

    But then Nash checks his anger.

    They will need Mazikeen's help, if Bolder is ever going to control his shifting. Perhaps even Gale could assist in teaching the young pegasus. And then Nashua could explain that it would be best if he picked one shape, if he just stayed in one form.

    "Soon," is what Bolder's father tells him as the boy drops his head slightly. The striped stallion glances back to the Alpha and nods, grateful for her help today even if they had disagreed on this final point. "Thank you, Mazikeen." Nashua tells the pale mare and opens his speckled wings, waiting a moment for Bolder to follow his example. The adolescent does and then turns his attention back to the Alpha, already eager. "Thank you," Bolder chimes after his father and smiles at Maze with a boyish grin. It's bright with enthusiasm because the okapi-striped colt is starting to realize that there is so much more to learn and with her help, he can't wait to see what that is.

    NASHUA



    @Mazikeen
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]




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