The raven is not the only shifter in the deep woods.

Knox arrives after leaving the threshold, his shoulders low and slumped, his body a living ache. He keeps Manhattan close, beckoning her with consistent flicks of his his long, thick tail. At my side, the hunter beckons; at my heel.

And of course, Manhattan obeys. She could run wild through these woods if she wanted, time could never erase their map from her memory, but she knows her master needs her now. Together they are to journey to his birthplace, a bloodstained patch in the heart of this dark forest. Together, they are to journey to an unmarked, violent grave.

As they grow closer, Knox's heart quickens. He remembers every inch of this place; he passes the hollow where he first found Manhattan, and sees thick scars on the tree trunks from where his mother once sharpened her claws. It has been so long since he has graced this place--since it has dared to grace him. But now he returns with new knowledge, new sights and memories in his mind.

In his thoughts, Roanne is anxious and impatient. Isn't it true that Roanne will see what no one else has seen? Isn't it true that Roanne will feel the hollows in his own bones, the dry, gentle pits of white and gray, picked apart by carrion creatures of the wood?

No, Knox realizes, as he shifts into his father's form with a flutter of illusion and watches the world fade into darkness. Roanne won't see much of anything, in the end. Perhaps it is better that way.

The bones lie before the shifter and his companion. Manhattan gazes upon them with deserved respect; Knox with the taste of blood in his mouth. He cannot forget how once his mother pushed him face down into that pool of his father's dripping red. He will always remember the scent of suffocation and the first thing to ever touch his tongue.

Suh this is it?

Knox is silent in his own mind. He cannot bear to give his father a reply. Still connected to their bond, he urges Manhattan to lead the Sentinel closer: to touch his own bones.

The hunter knows, as he bends his father's head to the earth and inhales the scent of death, indistinguishable from dirt, that he is alone in this passion. Roanne has long since died. What exists in his mind is a fragmented, broken disease of a memory. And still it knows the ways of the Sentinel. Still, it wants to satisfy a curiosity of seeing what remains of the self after death.

The Sentinel's ghost questions his son once more: Suh here is whurr yuh drunk my blud?

Knox cannot bear to admit the truth; it is Manhattan who delivers the news with a light touch to the form of the Sentinel's muzzle. In Roanne's body, inhabited in part by his mind, Knox exhales.

Archibuld killed me. All yur bruthers, they killed yur fathur.

Knox knows this. He opens his mind, prepares to answer, but Manhattan flashes an image of a marked bird in his thoughts and all moments of introspection are discarded. Another time, Father, he answers hastily, his half-blind eyes lifted towards the sky, seeking out the blurred silhouette of the raven that Manhattan has showed him. Knox covers himself and his companion in shadow, calling to Manhattan's mind and commanding her to lead him forth. No ordinary raven has such pure white stripes along the face; he is thankful for the attentiveness of his huntress companion.

He must be swift; Knox's appearance flutters beneath the shadow and another transformation takes place, seen only by his faithful bonded. As Zekiah he runs swiftly after the shadow of the raven, his muffled hoofbeats the only sign of his existence. They cease altogether when he and Manhattan halt by the pond, his body rearing and turning so his left faces the one descending from the sky, and he watches from one clear, blue eye of the thief with fascination.

That was cruel, Zekiah snorts to the host, as if Roanne is no longer present and contemplating the reality of his own end, as if he has the right to decide what is cruel. Knox grimaces beneath the cloak as the last of the mare's body bursts.
My silence was kinder than speech, Knox insists.
Your silence is nothing. Until you have seen yourself dead, your silence will always be nothing.

And Knox says nothing once more, remembering the day when Zekiah found the the feeble body of his twin brother lying cold in that lonesome wood, and feeling every bit of pain the thief himself once felt. How long has it been since Knox has known such sorrow himself?

It has been a long time.

—
[[When Knox was shapeshifted into the form of Roanne the Sentinel he was not using his cloak, and it is possible that Isopia may have noticed him while flying overhead. He is now, however, cloaked. Full magic permissions have been granted. @[Isopia], what time of day is it in this thread?]]

Time wears slowly and thickly across the wood. The manner of the sun, blotted out but striving fervently to reach the ground, has an effect on the hunter and the body he is in. Knox watches events unfold before him with Zekiah's hooves planting his soul firmly in the earth. There is something inspiring, the hunter thinks, about Zekiah's dedication to life, even in and after so much death.

Is it good to feel the wind on your face, ancestor?

Silence. Does the hunter not deserve an answer? His body fights with himself--Knox stamps an irritated hoof into the earth, its faint thud absorbed by the loamy soil that lines the shore, and Zekiah swiftly overtakes his host, snapping back his neck and nipping at his own chest. He is scolding in his mannerism.

Manhattan starts, her body a figure of rapt attention at her master's side. It is still Knox who she would hurt with a bite, but there are ways she can put Zekiah's mind in place. She fills the body's thoughts with things Knox has shown her before: with terror, and Zsoka's limp form.

But Zekiah is cold, now. He has seen the image too many times, played the scene over in his head too often, to let it shake him. He lashes his tail at Manhattan but gives her no more satisfaction.

It is the raven-shifting mare who he watches. His bold blue eye stares ahead, and Knox reluctantly follows their gaze with his controlling mind. The mare before them is no ordinary creature, and it is apparently not only her ability to shift that makes her unique. The hunter takes note of the way the earth rises to her occasion: the rocks, spinning and shifting, the soil lifting with green around her hocks. What if he were to leave now and return in two years time? Would she be there still, a statue covered in green, creating and being with magic?

Manhattan paces around her master's feet, shoving them rudely as she does. It is Zekiah she rebels against--the thief's disregard that irks her. She cares little for the mare, but when she catches the spinning of the rock out of the corner of her eye her hackles stiffen and raise. Take care, she speaks to her master in his mind.

I will be fine, Hatta, the hunter insists as he watches the rocks spin and form at the mare's will and concentration. He doesn't fear their approach or attack in the slightest. Knox fears nothing, but he finds that with a hollow sort of curiousity that he wants. He wants to know the root of her power, her ability to form.

Maybe, some part of him just wants to use it.
And maybe, too, it is the playful Zsoka in his heart that begs his descendant and brother to stride forth and interrupt the ritual.

But Knox has gained, if nothing else, control. He watches in silence as Manhattan weaves around his legs worriedly. There is nothing to do but wait and see what comes next.

—
[[@[Isopia]]]

It becomes a clear ritual. The mare, the bird, the shifter, has burst her body and stands now a part of the earth. She has shut her eyes and maintained a mystery, moved earth and water, built and contained. And through it all, the hunter has been watching.

He smiles when the lid is lifted and shuts onto its container, but Knox isn't sure the smile is from himself. He looks down at his body, watching as it changes. Too weak to hold your brother at bay, Zekiah?

Silence, silence again. Little Zsoka's form overtakes the firmness of his elder brother and something like grief shuts the one eye into quiet. Zsoka is overjoyed to feel the earth beneath his feet, oblivious to his brother's pain at his every appearance. He jumps, gleeful, and kicks at the earth as he prances around and behind the shifting, building mare at Knox's gentle instruction. Behind and out of sight, the hunter coos to his littlest ancestor. He will let Zsoka have his play, but not at the risk of himself being revealed.

Manhattan follows Zsoka's weak little heels, playfully nipping as he moves quicker and stumbles over himself. Once far enough away, she watches as the hunter releases the last of his grip and lets the cape of shadow fall away from the Young. She remains beneath its shadow, thankful for its ability to hide another, and follows the colt with care.

Perhaps it is Roanne's own shock that exhausts Knox, or Zekiah's endless grief, but he is tired. Let the child have his fun.

Zsoka bounds forth as if appearing just now from the wood and trips, sliding dangerously close to the box just closed. He smiles widely and whinnies, his little tail dancing behind him as he lowers himself before the mare.

"You're a bird!" the young says. His voice carries a slight hint of jest, as if he is mocking another youth for something they bear that is unfamiliar. "You're a big, black, bird!"

His smile turns to a furrow and his head cocks with a wild tilt. His black eyes gleam with a question and his nose presses forward to investigate the mare.

"Didn't nobody ever tell you that eee-quines ain't supposed to be birds?" It is a serious question, for the little buckskin colt. Has anyone ever told this big huge mare with a face like a skull and a body like a vine that she is just plain weird?


[[Isopia SURPRISE YOU GET A LIL BABY THAT DOESN'T KNOW NOTHIN']]

There is a lot for Zsoka to dance around, and a long way for him to stumble and fall if he falters on his weak foreleg. But he is confident, and Knox's tempered age soothes the ancestor to stillness just as he is about to straighten and frolic once more.

Be still, youngest one.

Zsoka snaps his head back as if looking for Knox and searching for the voice. For a moment, he cares nothing for the mare before him. It is only when she begins speaking, her words striking the dark of the early-day air, that her turns back to her. She says a lot of big words and Zsoka is disappointed that they are the first thing he has heard her speak.

When she gonna talk sense? he thinks, not realizing fully how much of an audience that one thought has. He shivers when Manhattan sidles alongside him, her soft coat a warm comfort on his wobbly, awkward right leg. The colt frowns, but not at the touch of the hidden companion. Rather, he is disappointed, still, in the mare.

He ignores all question and spits. The gob lands short of her but right beside the box, perhaps splattering onto it. She didn't answer any of his questions. He kicks dust onto the wet spot of his own creation. She was only asking more, and hard ones that he didn't know how to answer.

"You're weird," the young one says with upset, perhaps stemming from betrayal and a failure for this mare to meet expectations, hanging on the edge of his words. Upset because she is not what he had hoped, not a bird but one third of an equine, whatever that means, as if everyone wasn't an equine.

It is dumb. He feels full, full of air and nothing else but needing, very suddenly, to piss. When had he last had anything to eat or drink? Zsoka frowns again, and his intention becomes very suddenly clear. He steps forward towards the mare and the box, his face braver than it should be.

Zsoka, don't!

It is too late. The little colt has let loose his bowels, producing a hot stream of urine aimed, he hopes, directly at the fruit of the mare's labors. Manhattan side-steps the smell and the sound, shaking her head in an uncontrolled disappointment. But should she have stopped this? Let him have his play. She echoes her master's thoughts in her own again, a reminder.

And for Zsoka, this literal pissing contest, this narrow-eyed stare directly into her eyes, is play. Quietly he whispers, his lips barely moving and the words seeming to come straight from the black of his eyes and the stream of his piss:

"I don't like you."

[[SORRY Isopia AND YOUR BOX. You can play it as having missed or have her move it or whatever, I tried to make that clear. ]]

His bladder is empty and the tension he felt temporarily relieved. Zsoka is, if nothing else, proud of his golden accomplishment. He smiles with a wicked sort of pleasure as the urine soaks the earth and spills between the big mare's hooves. He likes his hooves--they are attached to him, and therefor something he enjoys. Hers look clunky, like paperweights or dull rocks that deceive you when wet under the river's current. He doesn't like her--and he doesn't like her damn hooves, either.

She keeps talking. She keeps saying things. She is a pain in his small rear ass, and Zsoka knows within an instant of her opening her mouth again, of her showing off her magic (magic that some part of him, some Knox in him, does not marvel at in the slightest) and mocking him with that watery dance, that he is through with her.

He has not come to these woods to be lectured or talked down to. He is intelligent. Maybe the mare doesn't know it, but he's been existence for much longer than she. He is ageless in his death, and what is she to him but some stupid tribrid with dumb dots on her face and a weird box full of water?

Zsoka frowns. "Normal horses just drink water. Normal birds just drink water. But you ain't either of them and you just play with it and you just be mean all the time."

The colt was not eloquent, but he was thorough in his distaste. He turned, lifting his tail and starting to trot away. His weak leg trembled and as he moved, humming with his ancestor's instinct to cause Manhattan to follow, he casts her a look of utter disappointment.

"Big bird like you... you shoulda been fun."

And without knowing what impact those words might have, without knowing how inconsequential they might be, he turns and trots into the wood until he is under it shadow and out of her sight. And then he is faster, he is brighter, he is older, and he is Knox, big and strong, and he is running, and he is whooping, and he is laughing with Manhattan at his side and he is free, for a moment, in that childish bliss Zsoka has blessed him with.

Happiness strikes him swift and true, like a bullet from an old, hot gun.

[[@[Isopia]--Sorry... he's impatient and difficult to control.]]
""