[open] you just want to make this worse; any

[bolder]

Bolder should, perhaps, feel a bit of caution where it regards the older pegasus. The dark stallion is much bigger than he his, with wider wings and hard muscles with several scars to match them. Despite his young age, even the adolescent shifter can recognize him as a fighter. But his silver eyes hold a glaring edge as they regard the taller brute, because Bolder is young and this is his home.

This is the only place he has ever felt truly accepted for what he was; he had been born a shifter and his father had tried to restrain him to one shape.

Only Gale and Mazikeen had encouraged him to take more. They had taught and nurtured his gift, allowing him to grow with it instead of fighting against it. They taught him how to seamlessly go from one shape to another, though Bolder uses that craft to only grow slightly taller and broaden his chest. He does this while wishing that he could shift into the creature that Uncle Gale had shown him - the magical liopluerodon - because he doubted that any horse would stay long in Hyaline after seeing that shape.

He keeps coming closer to the winged horse, hoping that the other would move away. That he would leave.

He just has questions, Anath tells him and Bolder's copper ears flick into the fine bristles of his upright mane. It didn't matter. He wasn't supposed to be here.

"Can you drop down as a bird?" the young shifter asks. Gale had told him - cut away the piece of his soul that might have felt some compassion for this stranger - that those who couldn't were considered less powerful, were weaker than the residents of Hyaline (save for those invited here, like Malik's friend), and weren't permitted within their borders. Mazikeen had said much the same as well. His gaze narrows back on the older male, deciding to answer the question.

It might help move the onyx pegasus along.

"It's in my blood," Bolder tells them both, "My grandfather was a great shapeshifter." There is pride in his voice, lifting his head as it regards the two other horses. It's a part of his history that he had never been taught, just one more thing that his Uncle had given him that his father had denied.

The other beast comes from a land where Magic doesn't run rampant. For a moment, Bolder tries to imagine what this looks like. He hadn't known other shifters when he had been small - most likely banished from the North - but he had known the shadow-walkers of Taiga, had played games with his cousins who could feel and see their world in ways that he couldn't. There has always been some aspect of his Magic present in his life, and Bolder finds that any land might lack it odd.

But not odd enough that his eyes don't turn to black, not odd enough that his copper coat slowly turns the crimson shade of blood; the color from the animal he had killed with Mazikeen. Not enough that his teeth don't sharpen, becoming pointed towards the intruder and clack together with a warning.

Of course Anath was important, he thinks instead. She was Malik's pet, like a companion animal. She was to stay, while this stranger his black glare blatantly says, this stranger was to go.

@Anath @Cassiell