ORIGIN

Slowly but surely, Delphine had come to realize that she was a creature of intuition. Though her intentions had been good, the owl still froze with fear when she aimed to demonstrate what little harm she could inflict — perhaps she had been too brazen in her attempts, perhaps she could have been even gentler. Internally she chastised herself for her faults but allowed no such thoughts to bleed through her features, not that Dark could see even if it had. Regardless, her own qualms were forgotten when the owl's tendency toward the esoteric eclipsed her concerns. "Ah... You..." She was at a loss for words, unable to juggle the between the juxtaposition of what the owl was admitting to and the voice in which he orated the process.

Then he was off, demonstrating the process of hunting which in the eyes of Delphine seemed more feline than avian. "That's... Interesting." She mused, her head nodding slowly but uncertainly. "Do you truly catch your prey in such a manner? How do you know where they are?" Although she did consider informing him that what he hunted was very much real and constituted murdering other creatures, she thought better of it given the owl's rather delicate nature. The young mare had no desire to ruin his sentimentality with the base truth of his nature and so it would remain as thus, shrouded in mystery for all but the unseeing.

The owl stared unseeing, ruffling his feathers yet again.

"I hear!" he hooted gently. He wondered if it was difficult, for those who could see, this whole "hearing" thing. He knew that he "saw" his way through soundscapes, not as a bat could but simply navigating by how close or how far away a thing might seem by the noise it made.

But others--they saw with their eyes, or with other things entirely. It never occurred to him that sight was the "normal" way to see. Tal'at had shown him how he saw: shades of color, the beat of a heart. Yet he was able, too, to find his way, and Dark had a sharp image of him nestled in the ferns of Eridanus, face buried in a mango.

"I'll try to show you," he explained at length, and his eyes shimmered green again. He wanted to call his magic, to project a sound-image into Delphine's mind.

Instead, though, he managed to fill his own mind with a cacophony of sound, essentially deafening himself as well as being blind. With a squawk of alarm, and no indication to the poor horse of what might have befallen the apparently eccentric owl, Dark turned and began to half-flutter, half-hop away through the swamp like a bird with two broken wings. Everything was noise, dark and clanging and he couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't navigate. What had he done?!

Whether Delphine would follow was up to her, but it was probably quite clear by now that this bird was weird.

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She was eager to see what Dark intended to show her or better yet, how he intended to go about doing so. After all, there were only so many ways they could lend perspective to one another, the foremost being the use of words to describe what it was they perceived of this world yet it seemed he had a different plan in mind. She felt it before it happened, a shift in the energy around them as the owl called upon his magic. Her breath caught in her throat as she awaited what would come next except, it was nothing like what she'd expected. She thought that perhaps he would illustrate for her in some way what he saw with his unseeing eyes but instead, he began to prance away in a half-hop, half-flight. There were no words of warning, just a turn-around and silent abandonment that left the horse feeling far more baffled than anything that had transpired thus far.

Her brows knitted together curiously and she frowned. The sensible thing would have been to follow the owl to ensure that he was right of mind but a smaller part of her questioned whether this was an association she wished to continue, particularly in a place as haunted as this. Her emerald gaze peered into the mist where the avian creature disappeared and she sighed heavily, shuddering into her mind's eye where the world became a place of energy and life force that flickered in and out. In the distance, she spotted Dark and not soon after, she galloped after him. Her wide-steps easily closed the distance between them as she pitched herself forward, hurtling over and past the owl so that she was situated in front of him for when her head bowed to forcibly press her nose against his feathered frame. "Calm down, Dark. It's me. Are you okay? What's wrong?"

It occurred to Dark that he wasn't exactly sure why he'd run away. Surely he should have realized earlier that the sounds were only his magic, backfiring? Before he could stop himself from just flailing off through the swamp, though, a vibration approached--something large, something tramping the earth down. A moment later he impacted (rather gently) a warm, hard something.

He paused, unable to move on, and after a moment the misfire cleared away and he could hear again. It was Delphine, the Horse-Thing, asking him what was wrong--it was her face, apparently, that he was smacked into. Ruffling his feathers, he sat back in the mud, wobbling a little. His voice came shaken but relatively calm.

"Oh. ...My magic went wrong. It does that, sometimes, it's... it's scary," he admitted softly, looking around, though he could not see.

Then he peered up, toward the horse.

"I find things with sound. I can hear very well. But I can also find things with magic--show things, see things... when it works, at least. What do you look like?" he asked, clicking his beak curiously.

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Her eyes narrowed considerably, scrutinizing the owl to ensure that he had not harmed himself during his episode of lapsed judgment. When she finally deemed him well and good, only then did she step back to afford him space where she'd been brazen in impinging on it not moments ago. A sad smile found its way unto her black lips upon hearing his confession and she hummed her affirmation. "Yes, yes it is. I've broken my leg, twice, when my own magic backfired on me." She admitted with a short laugh. It was comical whenever she thought back on it but at that time it'd been unimaginably painful and mortifying.

Her gaze dropped to meet that of the owl's though surely he could not actually see her thoughts and expressions. "Really? I wish my powers could do that, mine are more physical, grounded with the rock and dirt beneath our feet." She scuffed her hooves against the damp floors and winced, preferring dry ground to its wetter counterpart. "Ah, well... Hm, I'm black all around. I walk on four legs, I've hooves for feet. My eyes are green and so is my gem which is still growing but right now it's like a spike coming out from just in front of my ears. It's jade. Oh and I have a scar along my back!" Delphine paused wondering if her description really did any justice to how she was, for all she knew, Dark was already imagining an amorphous shadowed blob. "If you want, you could try again with your powers? I'm sure it'll work this time around."

The owl let out a soft and gentle hoot, trying to picture what Delphine might look like. For some reason, his mind started by imagining the lioness Makyna--the only other big, warm female creature he knew. Makyna had sent him a mental image of herself through similar magic, and he could still visualize her easily. He knew what black was, but not jade; he knew green, but not hooves.

As a result he ended up picturing something like a large, black lioness with round, toe-less soft feet and green eyes, only her face had been long and bony, so in his mind's eye he saw something like a feline head with a very, very long nose-bridge.

The owl hooted again at the offer of trying his magic once more, and perhaps surprisingly given his recent failure, hopped right up to give it another shot. Trying to gently place his taloned foot on the "hoof" of Delphine, he summoned his magic once more, feeling the arcane well up in him rather powerfully this time.

Unfortunately what flooded his mind wasn't a clear image of Delphine--he got a glimpse of her, sure. But what he actually saw, and heard, was a massive white blood-stained thing towering over and lunging, filling his mind with terror. There was a scream, a deafening beating of wings, the velvet black on the horse's back and shoulders drenching with blood.

The owl reeled back as the hot metallic odor of blood filled his mind, tumbling onto his back and letting out a hoarse, shrill shriek of fear.

Then he simply lay there, heart racing, staring blankly upward into the mist as his mind tried--and failed--to recover.

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Happy to indulge the owl's attempts to call forth his magic, Delphine extended her hoof and awaited the surge of power that coursed between them. Unlike how it was when she was summoning her own energy, she could feel something lighter, a source far less grounded than her own but wrought with an uncontrollability in its temperament. Her heart raced with anticipation, praying that this time around he would be able to see who she was and how she looked. If he could accomplish this much, she wondered if Magdalena could do the same. How thrilling it would have been to give perspective to her dear friend in ways she had never seen before.

But things went wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

Delphine reeled when the owl shrieked, fighting back her own whinny of terror before surging forth again. It was impossible to quell the guilt that rose in her throat. This would never have happened if she hadn't suggested that he try again, she should have known better. Too many times had her own magic backfired on her and too many times had she tasted the repercussion. To force such burdens unto another being... How foolish she'd been. Her heart dropped and her face lowered so that her lips grazed the soft-feathered surface of Dark's chest. She preened and prodded him, biting back her self-directed anger. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Please tell me you're alright, Dark." She pressed her one cheek to his smaller form before returning to the gentle ministrations. When even that wasn't enough, the young mare lowered on to the ground altogether, curling her larger body around that of the small owl. "Forgive me."

The owl lay trembling on his back for a time, talons loosely in the air and wings spread in the grass. As his mind returned to him, he slowly became aware of the large creature (black black with hooves) curled around him, warm and quiet.

He twitched, one foot grasping at thin air, then gave a soft and pathetic hoot. It took a long moment before he was finally able to upright himself, curling up against the horse, still trembling in fear. He spoke, then, his voice soft and frightened, cracking with emotion.

"I--... I s-saw... horrible. There was blood and-and--... A big... white thing with wings and fangs and you were bleeding, what happened?!" He nuzzled against the horse again and it would quickly become clear that now he was concerned for Delphine, and not himself.

Just what was it that had attacked her so? And why? And what had happened then...?

It didn't occur to the owl, who wasn't the most socially graceful of creatures, that it might not be best to dredge up some things--that it might not be polite to ask. Though perhaps he was so frightened that it wouldn't have mattered, anyway.

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For some time the owl trembled and shook, unspeaking and unmoving in spite of her ministrations and apologies. She feared the repercussion of what she'd encouraged, quailed at the thought that he would be afflicted of the mind. Only briefly did she wonder what it was that he saw for surely there was none so traumatic an event that could have incurred such a reaction, except there was. As Dark hooted softly but weakly from where he lay, Delphine craned her neck and rested her nose against the top of his head, helping to right him as he spoke.

He recollected a time not so long ago when she'd been attacked. It felt like an eternity had passed since but it did not stop her heart from catching in her throat when she thought back on a time when she knew of nothing more than terror and loneliness. Pain. So much pain. Her head dropped and her eyes grew half-mast. If the owl could see, he would know how much that moment haunted her still even after she'd come to befriend her assaulter. "I was young then, newly born. I had just walked into Eridanus when he attacked me, the dragon." She paused, her gaze drifting to recollect a time that had slowly but surely disappeared from her thoughts only now to resurface in another. "I almost died but there were many who came to my rescue and believe it or not, that same dragon is my friend now." Delphine added with a small, humorless laugh. "He has a sickness of the mind that makes him act on pure instincts and bloodlust alone. It was not his fault." Shaking her head sadly, the young mare cast her attention to Dark and her brows furrowed.

"More importantly though, are you alright? I am sorry for pushing you to use your magic. I only hoped that you could see me, not something so frightening as that moment."

Dark remained quiet, half-nestled against the much larger equine. For awhile he thought about it, then he clicked his beak, speaking again.

"What is a... 'dragon?' Is it the same as the thing that ate the Monoceros? The thing Maji Walezi wants to kill? It's in Polaris? How did you make friends with a dragon?"

The owl sounded surprised, and curious, tilting his head to blink unseeing up at Delphine.

"And--I am all right. I just wish I knew how to do my magic right. It always shows me terrible things, instead."

Dark hooted dolefully, heart still beating a little too fast as he lay cradled by horse. He didn't seem to mind; he hadn't minded, either, when Delphine had helped set him upright. He wasn't afraid of her, just what he'd seen--and he didn't blame her, and his idle tone thankfully made that clear. It was his own magic--magic he simply didn't know how to properly control.

But to him, far more interesting was the idea of this new friend having befriended a dragon. How? If it was bloodthirsty, as she said, how could it be friendly, too? Curious and alert, he waited.

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