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 Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2019 9:40 pm
 Anand couldn't remember how exactly he had ended up with Loxosceles. So far as he could tell, it had started when he'd been drilling or patrolling or something and Retinadeath's granddaughter had taken a random liking to him. What it was about him she liked he wasn't entirely sure. His plumage? His colors? She called him her "little bird," so probably a combination of looks and attitude (which was funny, because he'd never really considered his personality to be his strongest trait. His paranoia, to be honest, was generally his best trait, his ability to survive without being caught completely offguard every day of his life had served him well as a servant of the Shadow) has attracted the Dark Courtier to him.
Either way, he'd known better than to fight her. He'd let her get close, hoping that she would reveal her plan to him, slip up and show him what this was all about, really. That...hadn't exactly worked out. Unless she was a lot sneakier than she seemed to be, her plan had seemed to be something like:
1. Seduce Anand
2. ...???
3. ...Profit
How that profited her, he had no idea. Honestly, at this point the best explanation was just that she...liked him? That was confusing enough, and baffling and....lots of other things. But not nearly as strange as the fact that he rather liked her, too. A lot, in fact. A-lot-a-lot. Four foals had only reinforced this. He definitely liked Loxosceles.
In fact, he might go so far as to say that he loved her. Maybe even...in love. And the only thing more surprising than even that was that he loved his--their--children as well. He hadn't thought he had that in him, but apparently...apparently he did.
Today he was spending time with the youngest of his children, Nyctyr. He wasn't quite sure what to think of this one, but hey, he wasn't sure what to think of anyone, why should one of his children be different? He'd already done all of the prejudging he needed to with his kids. He loved them. There wasn't anything else he needed to know going in to spending time with them. The rest he'd figure out as he went along, same as everyone else.
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Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2019 9:53 pm
Nyctyr would be the first to admit that he never made anything easy for anyone. Ever. Ever. Even for his mother, even for his siblings and his cousins. Why should he? People had to work hard for the things they wanted, that's how the herd worked unless you were some sort of humongous bigshot. Nyctyr...kinda wasn't. Other than his mother, who was connected to some big people. But Nyctyr wasn't them. He was just a little kid surrounded by much bigger, scarier people.
So he did what Dad did--he fought back. He didn't let them trample him. If they were going to bully him, he was going to fight back. He was going to make it hard for them, and he was going to make them regret it. Just like Dad. He stuck close to his father. Anand had so much to teach him, and Nyctyr very much wanted to learn.
Today Dad had said he wanted to take a walk with him. Alright by him--a chance to spend time with Dad, alone, away from all of his siblings? That suited Anand right down to the bone. He liked this. He was determined to make the most of today--today was going to be the best day ever! That was a guarantee. That was going to happen.
Nyctyr followed his dad along in the woods watching him intently. Okay. He was watching Dad's wings. Dad had wings--big bird wings, like great-grandmother did. Nyctyr didn't have wings--but neither did Mom. Still, it would be neat to have wings like Dad did. Maybe then they could fly together? "What's it like to fly?" he asked. He'd been meaning to ask it for a while. It wasn't very obvious, after all, and Nyctyr very much wanted to know what it was like. It could be important someday. Then again, maybe not. Either way, Dad. That's all that mattered, really. Dad. He was brave, he was tough, he never took anything from anyone. And Dad loved them all. Sometimes Dad seemed surprised by that, but he loved Mom and he loved Nyctyr and he loved all of Nyctyr's siblings. To have all that was a powerful feeling, and Nyctyr felt like basking in it. It felt...safe. Like he had someone to support him no matter what happened. He loved feeling like that. And he loved his family, very much. Just like Dad.
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Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2019 9:57 pm
Enthusiastic, fierce, bold. Those would all be good ways to describe Anand's youngest. Anand smiled at the youngster. He was getting a better grip on the child already. He wondered where Nyctyr had gotten all of that from--his mother, surely, he couldn't imagine any of this behavior being inherited from himself. He certainly wasn't brave like his son was, or self-confident. That had to be a Retinadeath trait coming down through all the years. All of her descendants seemed to have that same surety, like the flames in their mother's pelt bled through to give them inner strength. Nyctyr certainly had those flames, brimstone-yellow and sooty-black. He was a strong one. He was a survivor, that much was certain even if nothing else in this world was.
"Flying," he said with a smile, "is very wonderful. You feel a rush of air like when you run, but you also feel like nothing is holding you down. It also makes the whole world seem so much smaller. You don't have to worry about tripping over tree roots or rocks--there aren't any tree roots or rocks in the air. You can just fly without having to worry about being slowed down. Unless there's a strong headwind," he added. "You must be much more careful about the wind in the air, it's usually much, much stronger than it is on the ground." He hoped that was an adequate answer. He'd hate to disappoint Nyctyr with an inferior answer.
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Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2019 12:48 pm
Nyctyr nodded. Flying sounded very fun. It also sounded a lot like running, mind you, but running was fun too. It was the easiest game, and the one with the most changing rules. What the rules were depended a lot on who organized the game. If it was him or Nile it was okay, but Dahlia sucked at the rules, because she always made it okay to fly...
Maybe it was a little lame that flying was just like running. "So if there's no wind and no rocks, why would you fly instead of walk?". It wasn't that Nyctyr was arguing with his dad, per say, it was more like...he felt like his question hadn't properly. It felt like maybe Dad was dodging the question? He didn't know, but he wanted more details anyway, and he was determined to get those details, even if he had to pester to do it. "And why is wind worse up there? Wind can be pretty bad down on the ground." Something occurred to the youngster and he perked up. "Is that why weather is up in the sky and not on the ground? But if the wind is worse up there, how come there are still clouds up there? Wouldn't the wind blow the clouds apart? Wind blows fog apart, I see it all the time, so how come storm clouds can be up high where the wind is? And what happens if you get struck by lightning when you're flying?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 1:06 pm
Just as Anand had been certain that he had answered all the boy's questions, suddenly a flood of them came out, and now Anand was close to panicking. He didn't know the answers to those questions, and he didn't want to lie to Nyctyr, either--he knew how devastating it could be when you found out someone had lied to you, or just made something up to shut you up. His own father had done that too many times when he was a foal, and it was one of the reasons he had avoided his birth family ever since he'd come of age. He preferred his new one.
So how to answer the questions, without looking like a stupid fool or like a liar? Anand did what he always did when he panicked--he charged in.
"Because flying feels nice. You now when you wake up and your legs are stiff, and you just want to run? My wings get the same way, too, if I don't fly enough. It warms them up nicely, too, on cold mornings. I don't know why wind is stronger up high--I think maybe wind crashes into rocks and trees, too, and that's why it slows down so much. When wind is really bad on the ground, it's too bad up high for flying. I don't know why weather is in the sky instead of on the ground--I think it's because of water, and there is a lot of water up in the sky." Before his son could open his mouth, he added, "Why is there a lot of water in the sky? I don't know, I think rain doesn't all fall when it falls to the ground. I think some of it gets stuck up in the sky, that's why it's damp up high. Clouds on the ground do stay all together, they just stay together somewhere else. Until they get broken up, because some bits of the fog moves away from the rest faster when the wind gets faster, like when you race your cousins." That one Anand knew just by watching fog disperse from up above. "The wind up high doesn't blow faster or slower, so all of the cloud moves together."
He also knew the answer to the last one, and he smiled. "All your hair stands up on end. That's all. Then you usually get so startled you fall out of the sky, and that is much worse. You must always find shelter during thunderstorms, though, because if you are on the ground, it will kill you."
((Don't worry, Anand, I had to look up the answers to most of these questions xP ))
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Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:57 pm
Nyctyr listened to what his father said and he nodded slowly again. Things were starting to come together. He still had questions--why wasn't there weather in water if most of the water is on the ground, why does the wind move all the same up high--but he felt like most of the important ones had been answered. He certainly felt a lot more satisfied about the flying question. "That makes sense," he said. "Sometimes you just gotta get up and go. Makes sense that it would be the same for flying as well as for running and stuff."
He looked up at his father with wide eyes. In spite of his father's warning and hedging, his saying "I don't know," Nyctyr didn't believe him. He did know--at least most things, and what he didn't know, he could figure out enough to explain things to Nyctyr. Nyctyr was impressed. Far from convincing his son that Anand knew nothing, the stallion had managed to convince Nyctyr that he did know things, a lot of things, and that he could answer questions. After this conversation, Nyctyr felt like he could ask his father any question and his father would listen. He saw other parents in the herd get impatient--Gramma Retinadeath was like that, she was never available for questions, and Aunty Tonestue always seemed a little too busy to be answering random questions.
But Dad? Dad knew things, and he was ready to talk to Nyctyr about it. He felt a surge of love and admiration for his father, even stronger than he had felt before, and he leaned against his father's side. "Are you ready for more questions? Because I've got lots more questions."
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Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2020 10:03 pm
Nyctyr fell quiet for a few minutes, and at first Anand was worried that he had failed, and that he had explained nothing, and that his son thought he was a fool and stupid for not knowing any of these answers. In Anand's defense, he wasn't a scholar. He had never been formally educated, he'd never learned the answers to all of these strange questions. He'd been off in the world instead of sitting in front of an older Star learning random facts. He'd been learning how to fly and how to fight and when to trust other people (rarely if ever). He'd always thought that the things he had learned were more important than the things he hadn't learned, that those had been the right things to learn, but now he was starting to worry, starting to have his doubts. He was beginning to wonder if he was a failure precisely because he had been neglecting the intellectual all his life.
But then he looked in to his son's big, green eyes and saw the look of wonder on his face, and he realized that he was wrong--even if he hadn't known the exact answers to all of the questions, it looked as if Nyctyr thought he did. He certainly seemed satisfied with those answers, and that alone to Anand was a relief. But more surprising than that was Nyctyr's questions. He hadn't thought Anand was stupid or a failure...he'd heard everything Anand had to say, and he'd asked for more. He...admired Anand?
Anand nuzzled his son, filled even more with love for his children, and Lox, too. He still didn't know how any of this had happened, but if there was one thing he'd learned today, he didn't have to already know the answer to figure it out on his own. He smiled at the brightly-colored Algiedi. "Of course I am," he said. "Lay it on me." He was ready.
And father and son, two little birds, walked on.
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