Raum wonders if night is the best time to hunt shadows, after all. They are easier to find, obviously, but he sees now that he's outnumbered by them, and when he looks too closely at any one, it springs to life with strange theater that he doesn't quite understand. Soon, he is surrounded, a thousand possible futures in a whirling dervish around him until he's too dizzy to See. The food in his belly feels too heavy, and the colt swallows thickly, baring pin-sharp baby teeth and biting at his sides as if that will settle the unruly milk and meat.
This was a bad idea. Noon was better, the shadows were fewer, but they were more contained, browbeaten and cowed into submission by the sun. Now, they seem to go where they want and the images flow with them. In the shadowed depths of the lake, a colt trips and lands on his face in the snow and Raum snickers quietly to himself. Not all the Visions are true, although he's learned the simpler ones often are. He hopes that one was true, his favorites are the ones where you can tell nobody's supposed to have seen. There's something more, though, because the feathered boy recognizes that path, and the alignment of stars marks it as not so very long from now. The sharp-pointed tips of his feathered ears nearly touch when he presses them forward, turning his red-eyed gaze to the very path the now-tiger should come down if all goes as Shown.
He runs (and he skids) to the mouth of the snowy pass, arriving out-of-breath and panting with the pale skin under his blazed face flushing red just as the tigercolt creeps down between the rocks. Raum leaps at him with a bright cry.
"I Saw you!" he shouts, laughing, "I saw you fall!"
He is quick-footed, and dances excitedly in place regardless of the ice that sometimes makes his hooves slide unexpectedly. He did not see the way the striped boy looked pensively over his shoulder (or he did not bother to notice,) and lets loose another wild peal of laughter.
"You had snow all over your face!"
-------
363 words
This was a bad idea. Noon was better, the shadows were fewer, but they were more contained, browbeaten and cowed into submission by the sun. Now, they seem to go where they want and the images flow with them. In the shadowed depths of the lake, a colt trips and lands on his face in the snow and Raum snickers quietly to himself. Not all the Visions are true, although he's learned the simpler ones often are. He hopes that one was true, his favorites are the ones where you can tell nobody's supposed to have seen. There's something more, though, because the feathered boy recognizes that path, and the alignment of stars marks it as not so very long from now. The sharp-pointed tips of his feathered ears nearly touch when he presses them forward, turning his red-eyed gaze to the very path the now-tiger should come down if all goes as Shown.
He runs (and he skids) to the mouth of the snowy pass, arriving out-of-breath and panting with the pale skin under his blazed face flushing red just as the tigercolt creeps down between the rocks. Raum leaps at him with a bright cry.
"I Saw you!" he shouts, laughing, "I saw you fall!"
He is quick-footed, and dances excitedly in place regardless of the ice that sometimes makes his hooves slide unexpectedly. He did not see the way the striped boy looked pensively over his shoulder (or he did not bother to notice,) and lets loose another wild peal of laughter.
"You had snow all over your face!"
-------
363 words
Please tag ratty or Raum* (<--with the asterisk) in threads!