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 Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 10:34 pm
((Continuity note: takes place before Megapi was charmed. Formatting note: changed the font size to 14 because I'm blind and size 12 is too dang small for my ancient eyes.))  She stood on the edge of the cliff, watching the rays of the rising sun stain the sky in shades of deep rose and cornflower blue. Below her, the black treetops stretched across the valley, their crowns lit up in shades of flame as the sun ascended towards the horizon. The last stars were just fading away at the top of the sky, where the edges of night were retreating in the face of the dawn. In a pouch around Metawa’s neck, she carried the stone she got from the Angeni shaman. She could feel the weight of it even when she wasn’t thinking about it. She had made the choice. And while there was still time to go back, she didn’t want to. She couldn’t. This was the moment she had been waiting for not only since she heard it could be possible, but, even if she didn’t know it at the time, since the moment she was old enough to know her own past.
Metawa had been raised by her maternal grandparents—her mother had left not long after she and her sisters were born. And it had been a lonely childhood. Maybe that had been her own fault. Maybe the knowledge of her own breed had been what drove the wedge between herself and her family. Stories told that Kalona were proud, and Metawa was proud. But they also said they were evil and cruel and full of dark magic. Some of that was true. But hearing those stories while being the only pureblooded Kalona in the family had been a hell on its own. So at the earliest opportunity, she had sought out her Kalona parent, in spite of the warnings not to. For while legends of the Kalona were embellishments of a more complex truth, the legends of Shifters were no lie. And, to her rage and disappointment, she had found them to be true. Her father was a feral halfwit, driven only by his hunger and an inchoate rage. And that should have been the end of it, chased off by a mad wolf who didn’t care that she was his own flesh and blood.
And somehow, beyond all sense, that had hurt. It had hurt to know that she had no father as well as no mother. So she had tried, again and again, as if maybe this time, there would be a different result.
Maybe this time there would be a father, under that pelt, waiting for her.
I don’t know why I try. I don’t know why I want so badly for you to be not just my sire, but my father. I don’t know why. But I do. She wanted a family, not just grandparents who tried their best to put up with an immature fiend, riddled with adolescent angst before her time, but a parent who wanted her, and who connected with her. She wanted love, not pity. She was so very, very tired of being pitied.
So when the alligator had told her about the charm, that the light and blood of an Angeni, freely given, could calm the tempestuous heart of a Shifter and allow a Soquili’s mind to be freed at last…she had to take this chance. The only chance she might have, to have a father.
The pieces were set. The trap was in place. Now all she needed was to provide the bait, and the passing encounters she had had with her father over the years, gave her all the knowledge she needed for her plan. So she scented the air one last time, caught the smell of blood, rotting flesh, and fury, and spread her wings. He was here.
It was time.
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Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 10:37 pm
The Shifter shuffled through the woods, his face and chest stained with the blood of last night’s meal. An ordinary creature might have cleaned up afterwards, licking away the dark substance to mask his scent for the next pursuit. But the Shifter was no ordinary beast. His mind echoed with a rage born of a tragedy that his corpse powder-riddled mind could no longer recall. Whoever or whatever he had been before his fateful encounter with Oyahusa was long gone. He was a monster now, feral and ferocious, ruled by his emotions.
He had been like this for years. For years he had wandered this world, empty and untouchable. There was a mind there, and there were thoughts, but they were drowned out and illogical, unreasonable and unreasoning. He walked the world, his tail lashing, his ears laid back, his teeth bared in a near-permanent snarl.
He lifted his nose to the air and a low rumble built in his throat. He recognized the scent on the air. He pawed at the ground with one cloven hoof, then lifted up his head to howl. His prey would know now that he was coming, but he did not care. Too long had he smelled this creature and let it escape. Too long had he tried to sink his teeth into its flesh and failed. Too long had he longed to devour it without fully understanding why. The last strands of an old self that could think in words instead of emotions knew what this creature was to him, or would have been if he was his old self. But that self was dead, and all he knew now was that there was a connection; and to the Shifter, the only connection that could exist was the connection between predator and prey.
If he had any goal in life, it was this: to destroy the world. To devour every creature within it. And then to destroy himself. Only when all life ended could the world be right.
And he would start with the life he had made himself: the creature that should never have been allowed to exist. The one that he should have been able to prevent existing, if he hadn’t let the sky-dancer fool him. He snorted, muscles twitching and bunching but his body standing still. Then, with one frenzied burst of energy, he leapt, his body rocketing forward in the direction of the smell.
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Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 10:39 pm
Almost as soon as Metawa landed on the ground among the trees she heard the howl in the distance. She recognized it in an instant, and knew that so far, her plan was going well. It was not a wolf’s howl, but it was closer to a wolf’s howl than a Soquili’s throat could produce. It was a sound both Soquili and wolf and somehow neither as well. It was her father Megapi’s howl, and she had heard it before, every time they met, when he decided, inevitably, that he must kill her. Why he had such a singular need to kill her, she did not know. And it did not matter, either. Now that Megapi knew she was here, Metawa needed to run. She needed to keep just ahead of him, but not so far ahead that he didn’t think he could catch up.
It wasn’t as difficult as it might sound. Metawa took off at once, at an angle from her father’s pursuit. She was running away from him, but not in the opposite direction. Instead, she took off towards the east, drawing him through the pine trees, her wings stretching out as she leapt over fallen trees and ditches to give her that extra bit of lift. He could run faster than her. Much faster. She didn’t know if it was his superior size (he was bigger than she was) or his superior strength (he was stronger than she was). Or maybe it was a power he had inherited from the creature whose skin he bore.
Someday I’ll ask him why he picked a wolf. Someday I’ll get to actually meet my father. For now, the creature that pursued her wore her father’s pelt as much as it wore the nameless wolf’s.
She was getting close now, and so was he. She could hear him behind her, on her tail. With every swing of their legs and stretch of their ribs, he was getting closer. Already she could hear him panting, could hear the branches break under his hooves and snap against his chest as he ran full-pelt into them. Just ahead she saw her goal and, light as she could, she jumped over the low-lying bush in her path.
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Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 10:42 pm
The Shifter saw the Kalona mare just ahead of him now. With every second he got closer. He was catching up, and he could almost taste her blood on his tongue now. He had been looking forward to this for years. She couldn’t run away from him forever. Now, at last, it would come to an end.
His first mistake. His first monster. His firstborn.
Now at last he would kill her. He had created her, and now he would end her. Oh, she tried fancy tricks, jumps and leaps, tried to throw him off her scent by going off in a funny direction. But she couldn’t hide from him, and she certainly couldn’t run. He was tempted now to take his other form, to take the shape of a wolf. He could run very fast as a wolf, and his stamina was better, too. But his legs were longer in this form, and he could jump better, too—those wings he was born with gave him enough lift to increase the lengths of his jumps.
Now he could see her, her short mane fluttering in the breeze, her belly already red as blood. She jumped over a bush but he, he ran full into it. It wasn’t very tall, and his body was strong. His momentum had already broken dozens of branches on the chase. Besides, it would all be over soon, and he wanted to savor it, the end of a lifetime of chasing. He would catch up to her at last, no more snide comments, no more calling him stupid or bestial or—
Something went twang near his knees and the ground was slamming into his face. A squeal wriggled out of his throat and pains—a hard, broad one in his face, head, and neck, and a sharper, much sharper one, across his knees—shot through his body. Something above him went CRACK and then a heavy weight slammed onto his back, pinning him to the ground. His legs were trapped underneath him, as were his wings, and he struggled to free himself as agony spread over his back as well. His sides heaving for air, the Shifter looked around him, his eyes darting back and forth, before settling on the mare, who had stopped and turned to look at him, a cold and calculating look on her face.
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Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 10:44 pm
The tripwire had worked like a charm, sending her father to the ground with no time to recover before the fallen tree it had been attached to pinned him to the ground. She made a mental note to thank the beavers and raccoons again. They hadn’t been too happy to find out there was a Shifter in the area, and so they had been happy to conspire with her to trap it. She had assured them that she would protect them if the Shifter got out of hand. She remembered what the alligator-shifter had said to her: that some Shifters were evil and some were good, and that it was the charm that gave them the chance to choose that for themselves. This might not work. He might still be evil after this. But at least he’ll have his mind back. At least I’ll be able to talk to him.
This was the plan. Pin him down. Charm him. Free his mind, whatever it was, at last. Talk to him. If he turned out to be evil…well, he was still pinned to the ground. She would do the right thing. She would save the world from a monster. And if he was good, she would unpin him, set him free. Yeah. That was the plan. She just had to do it.
She walked slowly towards him. He was struggling to get his feet out from under him, scrabbling to stand up. But he was well and truly pinned, unable to escape. He looked up at her and snarled, trying to let loose another feral howl, but this time the weight of the dead tree weighted down his body and made it difficult for him to expand his longs enough for such a long and drawn-out sound. So instead he bared his teeth at her and snapped at her hooves. “I’ll kill you,” he growled. “I should’ve—killed you before—should’ve—ended it before it—kill you…”
“You won’t,” she said flatly. “I won’t let you do that. It’s time to end this, Father.” She reached down to the pouch around her neck and pulled out the charm. She put her hoof down on his jaw to hold his head steady. It was the part of him that was closest—she could see his chest from here, but to get close enough to put the charm on his chest would be to get close enough to his jaws to be bitten, and she wasn’t in the mood to get hurt today. So his head would have to do.
He tried to jerk his head away, but she put her weight down on her hoof. His tongue lolled out of his open mouth and his glowing eyes rolled back in his head as she lowered her own head and placed the Angeni charm on her father’s forehead.
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Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 10:45 pm
It was searing agony and blinding light, but that wasn’t the worst part of it.
It was…everything else.
Images. Smells. Sounds. He saw…faces. And places. He heard voices. The sound of laughter and songs. And the smells that went with them all. And while a few seconds ago he would not have understood now, now he remembered the names of each and every one of them.
And the emotions came back with the memories. He knew their names and he knew who they were and what they meant to someone who a few scant moments ago had been long dead. He remembered them all, and he remembered them all in a single burst of painful light. Like a hammer blow to the head, his old world crumbled around him, and a newer—and at once, older—world rushed into its place, as if it had never left. And snuggled in against that world was the world that was when the mare—Metawa, his daughter, his firstborn—had put something on his head.
She wasn’t there anymore. She was a few steps away, and for a second, his mind tried wildly to place another face on top of hers. Daughter, child, firstborn—but no. That mare had died a long time ago (he remembered that now). They had never met, and they were not related, and he felt a sharp agony in his heart that she was gone, gone now, forever—
But Metawa was here, and she was watching him, like her heart was in her throat.
He had been trying to eat her a few seconds ago. A few seconds ago he had hated her.
A few seconds ago he had hated everything.
And he remembered now every awful moment, every unforgivable cruelty that had led to this. All the times he had hunted her, and hunted others, tried to devour everything, tried to sully and destroy this world. He remembered hunting down an innocent wolf so that he could rip its skin off its back, could remember seeking vengeance against the creature that had started this all, and how empty he had felt when the cougar had laid dead at his hooves.
That had been him. The same stallion Aurora had loved and nuzzled in those tender moments, the same one she had sung songs with as the sun rose over a peaceful creekside, had killed and slaughtered and destroyed.
I killed other Soquili. Other Soquili like Aurora.
He looked up at Metawa, saw her open her mouth. But before she could say anything, he spoke.
“Why? Why did you do this to me?”
He remembered the last words he said to Aurora that morning. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears still burned in his eyes and his nose.
He heard his daughter’s voice falter, far away. “I just…I wanted my father…”
He stood up. The tree was heavy, but not heavier than his heart and his soul. He shouldered it aside with ease and spread his wings. He saw the tears gather in her eyes even as his own sight was clouded by them. He didn’t know what to say. He had no words for how he felt in this moment. He tensed his muscles and with a massive burst of energy, he took off from the ground and flew—away. Far away. He needed…he needed to think. It had been so long since he had thought.
It had been so long since he felt...everything.
With tears in his eyes and his heart aching more than it had in many long years, Megapi flew away, leaving his daughter behind.
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Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2023 10:46 pm
So that was it, was it. The whole…thing. It was over now. Her father was charmed.
But she still felt empty.
She was supposed to have a father now, but now she had no one. He was gone. He’d flown away. In spite of her plans to pin him down, to talk to him, he’d flown away. And she was just as fatherless now as she was before.
NO.
Metawa’s tail lashed and she bared her own pointed teeth. This was not the end. She was not giving up now!
I didn’t give up on him when he chased me away, or threatened to eat me, or actually tried to eat me. And I was right! I was right not to give up on him then, and it would be wrong of me to give up on him now!
She would keep following him. He could talk now. He could reason. And that meant that she could have a father, her father. She just had to keep trying to talk to him. He’d flown off, but she saw what direction he was flying off in. And unless he stayed away from other people, he wouldn’t exactly be hard to find. He had a distinct appearance. People remembered Shifters when they saw them, especially big, distinctive-looking ones like him. He wasn’t the only Shifter Kalona, but they still weren’t exactly common. Yeah. She could find him—she’d found him today, hadn’t she? She’d tracked him down! She would track him down again. She would find him, and they would talk, and she would finally get answers to the questions she’d had all her life—about how he came to have children with her mother, or why he picked a wolf’s skin to wear, or why he’d become a Shifter to begin with.
She couldn’t give up on Megapi now. Not before she could apologize for what she’d done to him when she put the charm on his head. And not before she could get to know him.
Metawa took a deep breath. She’d tell the local creatures that the Shifter had been dealt with and left. She’d thank them, again, for helping her set up her trap.
Then she would set out to find her father. Again.
And this time, it wouldn’t be some hollow shell she found in his place. It would be him, the stallion she’d never truly met before, but would meet someday.
She would find him. And she would know her father at last.
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