"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
Life changes you. Things that once hurt so deeply eventually do not, at least not more than an old phantom pain in sour weather. On the other side of the acrid clouds of suffering, when one sails far enough from them, a long look back can offer glimpses of beautiful and wondrous things. Cherished memories that can be recognized only after the passage of time and through the lens of the pain that followed them. There are some things that will never heal, and some old grudges that will not be set aside but usually the latter are the kinds of things that do not require forgiveness by another as well as of oneself. Some grudges are almost a pleasure to keep. The trouble is, far more things do in fact require forgiveness and must endure going without it.
She hopes that she has gotten better at recognizing her own guilt, and shame does not easily make her into a stranger to herself anymore. At least not for long. She may be too deficient of dignity to ever earn it back but she does her best impression of someone redeemed. Only when someone can see, for when she is alone there is a beautiful melancholy in her carriage, loneliness so long-lived that there is no more feeling it. Kensa only wears its weight and does so beautifully because it is physically impossible for her to do otherwise.
There are no more affairs, and many seasons have passed since she last felt a quickening, but a God will have who he might and she makes no objection. So a babe grows and makes her fat and splendid as the spring ages away.
Kensa has not always been a good mother. She will not seem like a very good mother this time, but she cannot raise this child. One day she may live again and raise her beautiful babes in sunlit pastures, but this will not be the summer. She will abandon the girl knowing it will leave a bruise on the child. Like the damage done to Brunhilde and Kelynen and Aloy, it is something she cannot help but will always carry the shame of.
None of her children have ever been so dark, even Valek had clearly been a rich bay at birth and still very obviously her child. Anath-- she repeats the name over and over that the girl might learn it-- is black and gold and touched with just a little white. Flashy enough to be one of Kensa’s daughters and still very different from the others. Do they know how loved they are? Will she?
07-22-2021, 09:47 PM (This post was last modified: 07-23-2021, 08:31 PM by Anath.)
all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down
It is a messy business, being born. A bit like breaking the surface after being almost drowned, or so she will think one day when able to make the comparison. Arriving into the open air is disorienting, too bright for bleary eyes, and loud with the sound of one's own breathing.
Light weaves around the mare who speaks to her in words she can little understand. Those fingers of light catch on rivers of gold and highlight a sweat-soaked chestnut skin. The infant will remember this only vaguely, for her green and gold eyes track the dapples of sunlight alone. She hardly pays any mind to the sturdy chestnut sabino.
Is this why she leaves? The woman insists that the filly look into her still blurry face and repeat some sounds until they sound correct enough. "Anath." Repeats Anath, and then she stumbles into a patch of sunlight only remembering to look for the mare once she is already gone. Confused, and only knowing she should not be alone Anath calls out fretfully. Her child's voice is too small to carry very far, and what is she meant to call out with beyond a meaningless and lonely whinny?
Turning in a circle, her dark and fuzzy pelt collects a halo of light on the ends of every wooly strand of hair. Anath does not notice this. She turns again, and the sunlight twists with her pulling around her in glowing gossamer threads. In another turn, she wraps herself in light, not a spiderweb tangle but something soft and warm. The filly's legs fold beneath her and she settles into a swaddling nest of sunlight. Gazing across the meadow she imagines the mare returning to her over and over until she begins to doze.
While Malik has nearly everything a boy could need - a full belly, a safe home, parents who find him tolerable - he does not have everything he wants.
There is something missing in his life, but he cannot say what it is. Had it been inside him? Beside him? He does not know, and is only sure that he misses whatever it had been. There is a hollow now, the memories that his father had carved out leaving emptiness inside him.
He does not know that he had a sister, but he misses her.
But his father recognizes it, sees it but cannot mend it with his still-young abilities, and has chosen a simpler path. Gale cannot stop Malik from missing his sister, from picking at the fresh wound until the memories return. But he can find something to cover the hole, something to distract the boy until wound has scabbed enough to resist him.
Gale has promised Malik he can have a friend, and Malik is excited to pick one out.
Today is the day, and he’d woken with the dawn, pouncing on the blue and white and gold shape that was his parents, bouncing off shoulder and belly and hip until they’d woken and Gale had (not incredibly) gently batted him away with one heavy paw and told him to wait outside.
So Malik had waited, and now they are on their way to the common grounds.
Gale is hopeful that the boy will spot a child with their family, because Gale is hungry and it would be convenient. But instead the black striped colt finds a filly all alone, asleep and bundled in an interesting assortment of light. Gale hangs back, and Malik approaches her slowly, shifting to a young tiger that might more easily creep closer.
“Hello?” He calls, sitting up as he stops. “Wake up! I want you to be my friend!” Malik doesn’t glance back to the shadows where his father watches, because this is to be his task. He is responsible for bringing his friend back to Hyaline, and Gale has promised not to intervene.
all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down
Anath does not sleep deeply or long, even in the comfortable warmth of her nest. Her green eyes flutter open and like a fawn, ignorant of any danger she merely blinks and makes a soft startled sound at the sight of a tiger cub seated just before her. “My friend?” Repeats the girl, the cords of sunlight loosening, drifting away from her limbs and sides, fading and fraying. Manipulating the light comes easily, effortless and instinctual. Other than this, she understands only that mimicry might be desired.
Sitting up, her pale forehooves planted and her weight resting on her hip Anath tilts her head to study the cub. Bands of light reach across her little body, flattening, enveloping, casting prisms around them. Anath cloaks herself in a tiger’s skin made of light, its stripes drift and shimmer as she tries to capture the exceptional glitter of the cub’s stripes. She flicks an ear, and a tiger’s ear woven over her own moves with it. It’s an exceptional illusion, but she cannot hold it long and the moment her mind drifts toward another means of connection it comes away, falling down her body like molten honey.
“Anath.” Language is complicated. “Hello.” She tries, because she is concerned about being alone again and she must not have paid enough attention before. So she pays all her attention to the cub, trying to remember the color and shape of his stripes, to understand the expression in his eyes, her own gaze earnest and hopeful.
Malik’s father had originally asked the boy if he wanted a new pet. But Malik had reasoned that he would prefer a friend, and Gale - recognizing the hunger for socialization in a boy his age - has been easily swayed. The girl takes on the shape of a tiger, but it is only an illusion.
Gale wonders briefly if Mazikeen will let the girl stay, and decides that he’ll just tell her that the girl is not much different from the canis aranaea pups or the coral deer fawn he’d brought Malik to play with.
Malik is delighted with the illusion, and the way the yellow beams of light glow around her like a warm blanket. “I like that,” he tells her honestly, and does his best to become a similar glowing golden tiger cub.
He succeeds, but it is short lived, and Malik returns to his own natural shape: a black colt with black stripes and bi-colored eyes. When she introduces herself (he assumes her name is Anath, anyway) he offers his own name in return.
“I’m Malik.” He waits for a long time, at least two full breaths in and out, and then asks again with a hopeful smile: “So? Do you want to be my friend?!”
all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down
The boy praises her illusion and mimics her in turn and Anath is overjoyed. When his shape changes and he becomes a colt (for the first time before her eyes) the filly gets to her feet and takes a couple steps closer to sniff him.
She is frustrated that she doesn’t entirely understand what he is asking. Why isn’t she more clever? ”Malik. My friend.” She repeats, a desperate thread sneaking into her childish voice. Just take me with you, wherever you’re going. I’ll learn, I’ll understand. She wants to say this but doesn’t quite have the words. Her mother cannot be entirely blamed for this, Anath thinks more easily in the shifts and shapes of light than words. A tendril of sunlight snakes over her withers, zips between them, behind Malik’s own neck and back again, a bright and brief figure eight looping around them and disappearing again
“Your friend.” She says softly, thinking she might just know what he means after all.
The girl stands up, and Malik is surprised to see how small she is. The striped colt has always been the youngest horse, and to see her very small is a bit disconcerting. He’ll be able to win in races, he realizes, and that is enough to settle his short-lived worry about no longer being the youngest in Hyaline.
After all, it’s not like his mom and dad could ever love any other kid the way they loved him. It’s why he doesn’t have any siblings. Because he’s the best and they don’t need any more. Or so he assumes, having never asked and only pieced together bits and pieces of what he has heard in the six months since his second birth.
“Oh, oh! Let me try.” He’s enthusiastic, clearly delighted by her display and eager to reciprocate. He’d made a circle once. Can he make a whole loop?
He frowns, and the glowing forehead between his two short horns wrinkles in concentration. It takes a moment, but a thin bit of black light begins to pulse in the air around him. It solidifies to a single solid line, and then travels toward Anath in a similar shape to the one she’d made.
Malik’s infinity loop is smaller, a showy display of his Light Aura that has set the feathers on his neck and chest a bit on edge, making him seem a little larger than the six months he really is.
“You wanna come live with me in Hyaline? My dad can take us. My mom’s the alpha and I bet she’ll let you stay if I say you’re my friend.” Or she might eat her, but Gale has promised to intercede, so Malik is fairly confident of Anath’s survival long term.
“Unless...You don’t happen to be a shapeshifter, do you?” His eyes - one blue, one orange - are bright and eager. “Not that you have to be, but it’d be cool to have a shifter friend too.” He chatters, much like a younger Gale had, and considers the possibility of getting two friends today. It wouldn’t be hard to convince his father.
all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down
Anath gasps in delighted surprise when Malik calls forth a thin strand of light to mimic her gesture. It is not perfectly easy for him, she watches the boy concentrate and carefully create the light and it inspires unexpected confidence in her. Some things are not going to be easy.
Like figuring out how and what words to use in response to Malik’s easy chatter. The moments of standing there together move past in heartbeat increments and Anath feels like she is becoming ever more awake. “Yes. I… want to come with. With you!” Malik talks a lot, and Anath listens and tries to make sense of all of it but she knows that above all she wants to be where he is going. Her mother’s quick exit has left a ragged reaching part of her looking for someone to bond with before the vacancy breaks something in her.
“What’s a shifter?” She asks, perhaps a little too slowly but quickly follows up. “A shapeshifter?” Anath does not believe that she is one, even without having a definition. It sounds like it might be okay that she isn’t one, but it seems very important to know what it is.
Malik prances in place a bit, feeling both excited and proud. For the briefest moment - so quick that he thinks it was a trick of his eyes - a pair of wings stretch out from his sides, the same intangible blacklight glow that emanates from his horns and stripes. And then they are gone and he is just an excited young boy who has made his first friend.
Considering what to show her first, Malik whistles a summons to Gale.
(His father hears the boy calling, but he doesn’t break off the hunt to answer. He’ll survive alone a while longer, and there hadn’t been any urgency in Malik’s voice.)
The griffon answers instead, Malik’s nameless - and thus far mostly voiceless - companion. He lands just behind Malik, wearing iridescent black feathers that match the young prince, who greets him with a smile before answering Anath.
“Yep, a shapeshifter! Like me!” He’s already shown her the tiger, which is his best one. He is not so great at the others yet, but he reminds himself that she’s probably not good at any shapes, especially if she doesn’t know what a shifter is.
“Maybe I can teach you how,” he muses aloud. His parents are teaching him how to be a better shifter, just as they’re teaching Bolder. Who is to say he can’t teach Anath how to shift?
Realizing his father hasn’t answer, Malik whickers again.
all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down
She spots the wings, though they are just a flicker she is drawn to light, notices changes in it, differentiates between sunlight and the intriguing blacklight that Malik manipulates. Anath’s green-gold eyes flick to the wings and back to the older boy’s face quickly, but his excitement is too contagious and she tosses her head happily all but forgetting having seen the wings.
The griffon lands, dark and quiet behind Malik and Anath stares at him, eyes wide. She has seen a tiger and the boy that was inside thus far and so is not thrown too much by this new presence. Still, she has some trouble focusing on what Malik is saying. “Oh… okay. Wha--who that? Who is that?” She forgets the business about shifters (as though she will long be able to) and moves up next to Malik to look at the griffon a little closer. ” Hi! I’m Anath. ”
Malik is calling someone. She mimics this as well, her whicker following his in her young high voice. It is likely her mother hears it, but Anath does not think of her, that gilded memory, brief and sunsoaked, quickly fading into the recesses of her mind.
A single step is taken closer to the griffon. Why does it have two kinds of feet? “Do you shapeshift?” She asks him, but glances back at Malik just in case the loquacious colt decides to answer instead.
