"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
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
As the summer fades into autumn, the Curse that inhabits Gale grows weary of the cold air and colder snows. It far prefers the tropical climate of its host's previous homes, but Hyaline is where the entities have been gathered, so Hyaline is where he remains.
The ability to foresee the future no longer eludes him, and the alarm that Mazikeen had requested keeps them alert of any dangers. She had wanted it to spend more time with Gale, and the stallion’s navy mouth turns up in a smile at the image of how they’ll be spending time together soon.
Perhaps he’ll tell her to spin in circles till she can’t stand. Perhaps he’ll have her bring him the little squid out of the lake so he can get a better look at it. Perhaps he’ll rip her wings off just to see if they’ll regrow like her eyes.
So many delightful possibilities.
But first, it means to scour the warm jungles of Tephra for the children that Mazikeen had hidden from him. Sabal had been thinking of this place when Mazikeen had intercepted her, and Gale had never gotten a truly satisfactory answer out of Wishbone.
She had left Sickle and Malik here, he is sure of it.
He prowls the warm place as a navy and near-white Leptocyon, his iridescent blue fur accented by a small white tip to his tail and a glowing myriad of scars and brindle stripes of palest gold. It smells of greenery and magic here, and he is careful to avoid crossing paths with anyone.
At least until he finds a young girl who has Seen the same striped boy as in Mazikeen’s memory. His steady pace through the trees slows to a halt, and he tries to locate the one he knows must be Sickle.
The sun is bright and shining overhead, but the canopy of trees obscures much of the world around him. If the girl is a shifter, she could be anywhere. Be anything.
“Sickle?” He calls, “Are you there?” Though Gale is gone, it is sometimes useful to attempt his methods, and so the Curse sounds concerned, and hopeful, and tired - much like a father who is calling for his lost child.
Even if she won’t show herself, at least he’ll be able to enjoy hunting her down. When she screams, will it sound like Mazikeen? He forces away a smile before it reveals the small pointed teeth of his prehistoric shape, and calls softly: “Hello?”
06-19-2021, 08:04 AM (This post was last modified: 06-22-2021, 07:00 PM by Sickle.)
sickle
Sickle views Tephra as safe so she doesn’t feel guilty about slipping off on her own, choosing the smallest form she can to scurry away and discover some new adventures. She likes coming back to Wishbone and Malik with stories to tell, with the new things she has learned. There are friendly faces around this entire kingdom, she knows, and she’s cared for under their gaze - and it’s always in the back of her mind that if she’s caught doing something she shouldn’t, there will likely be a pair of eyes to alert the mare she knows as her mom anyway.
So she’s not really slipping off.
The filly is in the shape of a fox and hiding in the shadows, watching with bright eyes as a phoenix hummingbird flits between a few flowers. Her own phoenix is larger than these ones and she imagines he’d be able to snap them right up for lunch - but he is off sleeping somewhere, having been tired out by her antics earlier.
Her body begins to wiggle with the the pounce she is readying when she hears an unfamiliar voice call out her name.
The blue fox kit sits up, mildly disappointed to see the hummingbirds disappear with her movement, and her ears twitch as she tries to figure out who it might be for a half-second before she’s out of her hiding spot and going to discover for herself. There’s no hesitation - not here in her home, not where she’s used to adults knowing her name even if she can’t quite remember theirs.
She’s expecting to see a horse so when she leaps from around a tree and finds a creature she’s never seen before - she’s wonderfully startled.
“Hi!” Without really meaning to, Sickle shifts to match him - though a younger, smaller version. Her iridescent coat shimmers with the new shift and it flickers for a moment, unstable and there are flashes of other markings, other colours, before it seems to settle. Her mismatched eyes blink up at this stranger that wears the same colour as her - amazed and delighted to meet an older shifter.
“Are you a friend of my mom’s?” He must be, since he knew her name, but if he is - she's wondering why she'd never been introduced to this creature before.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
The little cub is still learning to shift. Colors and patterns flicker across her skin, but she settles into a blue brindle that matches his own. This is, without a doubt, one of the twins that Mazikeen had taken from him.
Delighted at having found her so readily, Gale nods and smiles.
“I am,” he tells her, “I’m visiting from Hyaline.”
The girl seems entirely unafraid, and Gale wonders if she’s been taught to be wary. Perhaps she is just brave, he thinks. With her heritage, what else could she be?
“You must be Sickle.” He continues, lowering his hind end to the ground and curling his tail around his feet in a feline manner. “You’re already quite good at shifting. Can you do other magic too?”
He sounds curious, and complimentary as well, just as Gale might have. If she’s not got anything useful for him to consume, there’s no use wasting a perfectly good child. Eating them does tend to frighten them, and while that’s (usually) effective for adults, eons of existence have taught the Curse a better way to deal with children.
When this stranger confirms that he’s a friend of her mom, what little apprehension Sickle might have felt disappears. And if there had been warnings given to Sickle, and there almost certainly were, they are so easily forgotten. What use is caution to her when it could get in the way of meeting a new friend, or showing off. She’s delighted by his question and another cascade of colours shimmers across her fur in her excitement.
“Can you do other magic too?” She replies back in a flawless mimic of his voice - and then her laughter that follows begins as the bubbling noise of a stream before fading into the bright laughter of a girl.
She likes this game, likes getting to show someone other than her family all her tricks. Sickle tries to think of what else she can show him. But since she does not yet know that she can heal herself, the shifting and her sounds are all she knows how to share. Which does not feel like a bad thing - since these are the two things she enjoys using most of all.
“Yeah, I’m Sickle.” She confirms, belatedly, using her own voice now - her orange and blue gaze taking in this stranger with obvious interest and delight. She sits too, copying his stance unconsciously, and instead of asking his name, she asks what she actually wants to know: “What can you do?”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
The sound of his own voice is disconcerting, but only until he realizes why she’s taken it. She’s mimicking him, showing off an ability, and he smiles.
Delightful, and perhaps useful, but certainly not worth killing her over.
Mazikeen will be glad, he thinks, and then must remind himself that it does not matter what the Alpha thinks. She is obedient, and that is all that matters. He’d promised to leave Hyaline and their families be in exchange for that obedience, and it would have taken some time to convince her that even though he’d eaten her daughter she still wouldn’t be allowed to break her part of the bargain.
And he is done with wasting time.
So when Sickle speaks with her own voice, and looks up at him with eyes that match both his own and Mazikeen’s bright orange, Gale smiles again.
What can he do?
He blinks, and when his eyes reopen, the jungle around them has vanished, and instead they are surrounded by the red canyons of Loess. Another blink, and the image of Taiga’s tall trees surrounds them, and a third releases the visions and leaves them both looking at the unaltered Tephran jungle.
“That was a trick with your eyes,” he tells her, because children are dumb and often miss things like the lack of smells or sounds when shown incredible Sights. He does not let this knowledge show in his voice or manner though, because he suspects that Mazikeen’s offspring will have inherited her pride.
“But if you would like to see them for real though, I could show you.” He pauses, looking for a moment behind her, and then back with a small frown. “I should probably show your brother too, just to be fair.”
He has weighed the possibilities, and knows that even returning with one will be a success. So he takes a gamble, and adds: “Or I could show you quickly, before he even knows you’re gone, and then you can tell him all about it when we get back.”
Sickle is practically radiating with excitement, her small paws dancing in place when this friend smiles after her question - the anticipation causing her coat to flicker with shades and markings of various animals. It snaps back into iridescent blue and black when the jungle around them vanishes and they are in canyons, and then some insanely tall trees. She’s a little disappointed when they’re back in the Tephran jungle again, but only a little.
Those mismatched eyes are bright with amazement. He explains that it had just been a trick of her eyes, but that doesn’t make it any less magnificent to her. “Wow! That’s SO cool!!”
Her ears perk right up at the idea of going to go see those places for real. She’s seen a little bit outside of Tephra - the meadow and the forest, both places were interesting but she knows there’s a great big world out there. And surely, surely if there was ever someone she would be safe with, it would be a friend of the family, right? It'd be just like going with one of her uncles.
The mention of her brother delights Sickle and she’s already up on her four feet again, intending to go rush off and drag Malik from wherever he was currently napping and bring him on this exciting trip. Wouldn’t their mom be so amazed once they got back!
But these thoughts are so easily swayed by the next suggestion - her eyes dancing with a mischievous glee. “Oh, let’s go now! I wanna have some stories to tell Malik when we get back, he’ll be so jealous. And my friend Aeson will be too so let's go quick before they wanna join.” She thinks how fun it will be to find her sun-warm friend and be able to spin him some fascinating tales.
She steps closer, her eagerness putting a bounce in her step that matches her wild grin. “Where are we gonna go first?”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
She mentions a friend, and in her mind Gale sees another child. He had only really needed one, but perhaps later he will return for Malik, and for this Aeson as well. Mazikeen will have her hands full with three children and a pregnancy, and the image of her - weary, exhausted, stressed, and still obedient - is so wonderful that a sudden purr erupts from Gale’s throat.
Sickle prances a little closer, and he must remind himself not to go for her throat, not to rip it out just to see the way the blood would spray across the brilliant greenery. He must protect her, he decides, must be sure that no one hurts her.
Well, no one but himself, he amends, rising to his feet.
He’ll hurt her if he must, if Mazikeen needs a reminder of her promise. How convenient it will be to have her near, a constant liability to the Alpha.
But for now, he simply reaches out with a sheathed-clawed paw, and bumps it against her striped shoulder.
“How would you like to get there?” he asks. There are many options - these Leptcyon shapes, something winged, something hooved - but he’s really only asked to set up his next offer, one that he has only recently obtained.
“Have you ever teleported? We can be there as quick as you blink.” They’ll be away from Tephra just as quickly, he thinks, and without a trail to track. Once she is in Hyaline, she’ll be beyond Wishbone’s protection.
Sickle hasn’t thought to ask the name of this friend yet, but the way he reaches out to bump against her striped shoulder after she comes closer is a familiar gesture - one that makes her grin.
He doesn’t answer her question about where they are going to go first - but his question effectively distracts the young filly from this fact. How would she like to travel? She wasn’t very good at flying yet. Sickle is giving this question some very serious thought when he suggests something else - teleporting. A way to get there as fast as she can blink! Well that would be very handy and a sure-fire way for her to see all the places in the world and still be back before her mom could miss her. And before Malik could get too jealous or before she could miss her plans to meet up with Aeson later today.
And she does blink before she replies, but they’re still in Tephra - so she supposes she’s supposed to actually answer and it won’t just happen automatically.
So she does so with her eyes shining. “OH that sounds fun, let’s do that - the teleporting thing, I've never done it before.” Sickle inherited her curiosity from her father, though she does not know this - and never having done something before is the only reason she really needs to give it a try.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
She blinks, and Gale must fight the urge to roll his eyes. While some part of him is aware that it is not Sickle’s fault that her maturing brain is still so very small, that does nothing to lessen it’s frustration at her stupidity.
He hopes her younger siblings will be more clever. They’ll be his, after all, and not Gale’s, and it is still early in the season that he has plenty of opportunities to ensure that Sickle becomes an elder sister come spring. There are advantages to her youth, the Curse reminds himself; she’s still young enough to be molded.
She confirms that yes, she wants to teleport, and the Curse turns Gale’s sharp-toothed mouth up into an excited smile. “Let’s do it!” He says, perfectly mimicking the enthusiasm that his host would have felt in such a situation. He waits until she closes her eyes again, and then with a blink of his own, they arrive in the heart of Hyaline, with the lake stretching out in front of them reflecting the starry sky overhead like a mirror.
“This is Hyaline.” He tells her. “My home.”
For a while he is quiet, allowing her to take it in, and then Gale answers the question that had occurred to her only briefly, having felt it floating about in the air above her and grabbing it with some bit of magic that he’d consumed.
