Яikyn

I look over at the boy as the odd humming rises from his chest, a single ear flicking back and my heart skip, skipping a bit faster at the notice that the dark pelted adolescent is, perhaps, not entirely sane, a sensible preparation of defenses that are always necessary when around things that snap, flail, cackle for no reason other than the compulsion of their broken minds.

Maybe he’s not that crazy, but he is after all letting a dragon drip rodent blood down his back.

It seems the crimson beast approves little of my disdain for his bonded’s poor mastery over his pet as I indulge the moon faced stag with an answer as to what I’d found.

With a crack of leathery wings the spine tipped reptile is air born, my tail swaying behind me as I slowly pivot in place to keep one golden eye trained on the thing; I don’t really care for dragons. Every story I’ve ever heard of them has colored their race in a dark, smutty light, and this encounter with the tall, dark pelted boy’s creature only adds to the stains.

Raining from above is a cascade of squirrel bits and fluids, the shadowy shape of the dragon in the dark wood above the offensive deluge; though I dodge to the side to try and avoid the disgusting mess, some of the warm, sticky liquid lands on my dark pelt regardless. My ears slam down hard on top of my head, golden eyes lacing nearly shut in utter disgust as a shiver of such runs down the length of my figure.

Anger crackles in my head, like the film of power crushing your lungs just before the storm begins, something that makes your flesh tingle, your whole body alive with the knowledge that, soon, thunder will break the uneasy silence with a boom that makes babes shiver against their dams. I take a step nearer to him as the dragon alights again upon his haunches, letting that silver skyline bloom like wildfire in the depths of a narrowed aureate gaze, dark ears knitted among the tangled locks of my mane.

I’ve heard killing one destroys the other. I had almost seen it happen, after the battle with the Bear.

”How pretty,” he says. The slow contortion of my friendly smile bends the handsome shape into one that is asinine and hateful, mocking as his words are.

The patience I offered him, the test of his subservience, they have all worn thin and failed. I am not as cold as many wolves of the north, but I am certainly not deluded to the notion of equality like the idiot Haruspex, either.

"Prettier than you’ll be if you don’t tighten the leash on your beast," I answer, pausing, no hesitation or fear lining my figure – but rather a cool assurance, a faith that, should the evening require it, blood will color the red pool beneath us.

I’d rather not, of course; he is only a child, and that he is hornless (and possibly mad) contributes to my general notion that he is a particularly talented dullard, owed pity more than retribution. The true being to blame is whatever whore spawned him – same as the case with the pale child who had dared insult Lothiriel.

At least, I think (as the colt refuses to share his name as I had, instead insulting me again), she had wings – and any good unicorn knew that having wings automatically made you a little bit insane. Even Aithniel wasn’t right in the head, as much as I cared for her.

"Your ignorance is showing," I remark, not bothering to acknowledge that I’m pretty sure he just tried to call me a pussy of some sort (go find Cathun if you want to toss that word around, he ran where I stayed), letting my tail lazily sway behind me in a visual display with how very much his arrogance is getting on my nerves, the added roll of an eye and sway of my muzzle discarding his trash talking as just that – trash, "the Basin has no walls."

And truly, it doesn’t. My thoughts are trailing of into how others build walls to try and mimic the natural ones a God gave my people when he asks a question that draws almost all my dislike of him to the back of my mind, and returns my focus more fully upon him. Though it is followed almost immediately by another insult (and not a single sight smarter than one, retorts a waspish voice in my head), I try to remain on the positive aspect of it all – he’d offered himself as a pawn to my magic, and soon I find myself so drawn to the idea that the agitation fades out of my figure to the degree that my next step is eager, my golden eyes almost sparkling with delight at the idea of getting to try it on something as large as a horse.

That it’s this guy will just have to do, I guess.

"Hold still," I bossily remark, feeling my nerves flutter momentarily that it won’t work and I’ll make an ass out of myself. I have only just now recovered from retracting my will from the squirrel, and the unknown of what it will feel like this time is exciting in a slightly terrifying way.

I gather my thoughts, feeling my will rise within me, a sensation that I have come to associate with magic; as I did with the squirrel, I focus most intently on the black equine in the shadowy depths of the forest, trying to outrank his consciousness with my own.

His mind is like a solid wall in comparison the soft grass cover of the squirrels, and I feel my mouth widen slightly in surprise at the vastness of the difference. After a second or so (which feels like eternity to me) I feel that wall bend and warp, however, and I am filled with the odd sensation of being myself and looking at myself at the same time, of being both Rikyn and whoever this guy is.

With an audible grunt I bid my will to make his right hind leg kick out, seeing a sparkling electrical light within my mind that races along nerves and synapses, down from his brain and along the length of his spine, down further still along the length of his leg until there is a hoof, and I am flying back towards his mind and jettisoned back into myself, as if propelled from the place between his eyes where a horn should be.

If the heaviness of being that hit me after the squirrel was bad, this is a whole new level. The shadow of the forest deepens and their depths broaden, weariness filling every inch of my brain so that a slow, dull ache is born right behind my golden eyes.

My head lowers, giving in to the fuzzy tiredness of my head, an ear slipping back.

"Did it work?" I ask with some measure of enthusiasm – because it truly felt like it did.

in every heart a hole