10-05-2021, 07:02 AM
Sure of his own knowledge, Malik does not suspect that the small frown his mother retains is his doing. He’s accustomed to firm corrections when he’s been wrong before, usually verbal. Occasionally less so when his father was in a foul mood. He is not especially concerned by Gale’s absence, and so it is an easy topic to avoid, especially when it distresses his mother, and detains them from a hunt.
So Malik turns himself into an eagle, sanguine and certain that the pair of them will successfully capture a dragon for Hyaline today, even if it requires force.
The young shifter is not as large a bird as his mother, taking the familiar shape of a long-crested eagle rather than match her exactly. His coloring is as dark as hers is pale - iridescent black stripes on black feathers, and when they soar north together he is quite like her shadow in every way.
Malik can feel the excitement growing in his chest. This feels different, somehow, than the other hunts he has taken with Gale and Mazikeen. This time, they are not looking for a meal - rabbits, grouse, rock lambs - or for sport - the wolves, the bears, his other parent. They’re hunting down a dragon, and when they do, perhaps Malik will take some of its magic, and perhaps that is how he will learn to shift better. He knows that his father takes something intangible from his kills, even if Malik was not yet old enough to hunt horses with him, Malik wonders if he has inherited that ability. He hopes he has.
They reach the sea, grey-green and churning, and Malik dives toward the water. The wind rushes through his feathers and the salt stings his bicolored eyes, but he laughs at the surge of adrenaline that comes from pulling up just before he hits the water. The boy is not yet a skilled flyer, but he is rather proud of how quickly he can pull up from a dive in this shape, so he glances sidelong at his mother to be sure she has witnessed his most impressive feat.
The northern cliffs loom over him now, caves and crannies hidden in their dark depths. There is one larger than the others, and that is where he searches first. Something had lived here, he sees, something that had left the old bones of rock sheep and seals littered across the floor of the cave. Very old bones, he thinks; there is no flesh left on them at all. Undiscouraged, he leaps from the cliff edge, and resumes searching.
In the end, it is not a dragon that he finds.
It is a wyvern, its scales so dark a shade of blue-green that they seemed black in the dim light of the cave. Larger than Malik even in horse form, it towers over the young black eagle. It lunges for him, certain he is here to steal its recently caught fish dinner, and Malik lets out a startled cry.
@Mazikeen
So Malik turns himself into an eagle, sanguine and certain that the pair of them will successfully capture a dragon for Hyaline today, even if it requires force.
The young shifter is not as large a bird as his mother, taking the familiar shape of a long-crested eagle rather than match her exactly. His coloring is as dark as hers is pale - iridescent black stripes on black feathers, and when they soar north together he is quite like her shadow in every way.
Malik can feel the excitement growing in his chest. This feels different, somehow, than the other hunts he has taken with Gale and Mazikeen. This time, they are not looking for a meal - rabbits, grouse, rock lambs - or for sport - the wolves, the bears, his other parent. They’re hunting down a dragon, and when they do, perhaps Malik will take some of its magic, and perhaps that is how he will learn to shift better. He knows that his father takes something intangible from his kills, even if Malik was not yet old enough to hunt horses with him, Malik wonders if he has inherited that ability. He hopes he has.
They reach the sea, grey-green and churning, and Malik dives toward the water. The wind rushes through his feathers and the salt stings his bicolored eyes, but he laughs at the surge of adrenaline that comes from pulling up just before he hits the water. The boy is not yet a skilled flyer, but he is rather proud of how quickly he can pull up from a dive in this shape, so he glances sidelong at his mother to be sure she has witnessed his most impressive feat.
The northern cliffs loom over him now, caves and crannies hidden in their dark depths. There is one larger than the others, and that is where he searches first. Something had lived here, he sees, something that had left the old bones of rock sheep and seals littered across the floor of the cave. Very old bones, he thinks; there is no flesh left on them at all. Undiscouraged, he leaps from the cliff edge, and resumes searching.
In the end, it is not a dragon that he finds.
It is a wyvern, its scales so dark a shade of blue-green that they seemed black in the dim light of the cave. Larger than Malik even in horse form, it towers over the young black eagle. It lunges for him, certain he is here to steal its recently caught fish dinner, and Malik lets out a startled cry.
@Mazikeen