It was almost disappointing, hownormalit all was: a bunch of older, sleepy-looking horses milling about and chomping down on apples and carrots. They’d obviously been chosen for their calm disposition, given that they’d been part of a parade for children, and their various Christmas decorations had been removed. It was nothing more than a collection of tired old horses that were eating up a hearty meal before taking a well-deserved nap.
Disappointed, Celeste shook her head. But really, what else did she expect? A majestic, magical horse that could see into her soul?
One of the horses wandered up to her, whinnying demandingly, and she noticed an apple that had fallen on the ground by the edge of the fence. She reached down to pick it up and then held it out for the horse, who gobbled it up greedily, juice dripping down its chin.
I need to have a good meal and a good lie down,she thought with a sigh, petting the horse’s neck and watching the other horses amble about without a care in the world.These horses know what’s good.
She almost didn’t notice the brush of magic at the periphery of her consciousness. Or, well, notmagic, per se, but something in the vicinity of magic. It took her a moment to identify it, startled as she was – and then she gasped aloud.
A… a shifter? Here?
She looked about wildly, trying to identify where the feeling was coming from. She was unable to magically identify shifters in general – the only time she could ever sense them was when they were shifting from one form to another, as the action caused a disturbance in the magical fabric of the world around her. Great Aunt Marian had showed her how to hone her skills in this area, but she hadn’t ever had any opportunity to use them in the wild. Life in a secluded lighthouse didn’t exactly lend itself to a regular need to detect shifters, after all.
But now, it felt as if Aunt Marian was here beside her, whispering encouragingly into her ear, and Celeste turned her head, following the trail of magic back to its source.
And –there.
Her breath caught in her throat as she saw it – the horse from earlier. It was half-hidden in a small stand of trees over the other side of the field, but now that she had noticed it, she couldn’t look away.
Especially since it was shimmering in a way that she knew meant a shift was imminent, andespeciallybecause its fake wings were still attached to its back. Except that they were stretching out and quivering in a way that no fake wings ever could – especially fake wings made by a group of schoolchildren.
She felt her mouth drop open.
Whoa. Is that – is that a pegasus?!
The only shifter she had ever met was an anaconda shifter who was a friend of her great aunt’s, and who had happily shifted back and forth so that Celeste could work on her powers of detection. That had been a pretty cool thing to witness at the time, but apegasus– well, that was some next-level shifting! She’d never met someone who could turn into a mythical creature, and, quite frankly, she had sometimes secretly wondered whether mythical shifters were some sort of over-exaggerated fairy tale that had come about from regular shifters with big egos.
But this – this wasdefinitelya pegasus. Even without the shimmer of its impending shift, it had a certain beauty, a certainmagnificencethat a regular horse just couldn’t achieve. No wonder she had been drawn to it! And no wonder it had been staring at her as if it could communicate with her!
Whyhad it been staring at her? Did it know that she was a magic user? Did it have something to do with the tremors? Surely it was too big of a coincidence that it had shown up now, and… taken part in a children’s parade?
She realized that she was climbing the fence without conscious thought, hauling herself up and over the wooden slats, before sprinting across the field toward where the pegasus was now less pegasus-shaped, and more human-shaped. She didn’t know whether it was friend or foe, but she’d be damned if she’d let it escape without answering her questions first!
Gasping as much from anticipation as from exertion, she stumbled to a stop at the stand of trees, seeing the now-fully-human figure amongst them. She opened her mouth to say something – what, she wasn’t sure – but no words came out, and her knees suddenly felt strangely weak.
In front of her, amongst the trees, there was a very familiar flash of red and green. A ridiculous pom-pom. The ugliest, stupidest Christmas sweater she had ever seen in her life.
“Pier… Pierce?”
Pierce whirled around, a look of shock that would almost have been comical in any other situation plastered across his face – his eyes wide, his mouth dropping open.
“Celeste?!”
They stared at each other in mute disbelief. Celesteknewshe should say something,anything, demand answers from him, ask him what he’d been doing in the parade, ask himhow longhe had been a shifter – which would have been a stupid question since she knew full well that the only way of becoming a shifter was to be born one, and Pierce hadn’t been bitten by a were-pegasus on a full moon or anything like that.
But if that’s true – then that means – the entire time we knew each other back then –
“When were you going to tell me you’re a shifter?!”
The words, hot and furious, were out of her mouth before she could stop them, despite the fact she knew full well how utterly ridiculous they were. Pierce wasn’t under any obligation to tell her anything, after all, and back then – back then –
Back then, did I really give him the chance to tell me anything? We knew each other for such a short time… and yet, somehow…
Celeste blinked, her eyes feeling suddenly hot. She bit her lip, wishing she could bite her angry words back from the air, but at the same time, she couldn’t deny that shewasangry. If Pierce had told her everything back then, then maybe they could have been spared all this pain.
It was with a shock that came like a slap across the face that Celeste remembered that Pierce wasn’t exactly the only one who could be accused of keeping secrets.
“Youknowabout us?” Pierce asked, once he’d collected himself and managed to close his mouth from where it had been hanging open. He blinked, then shook his head. “But of course you do – Ididsee the magic that was surrounding you.” His eyes flickered up, his mouth suddenly setting into a thin, hard line that made Celeste gulp. “Just whoareyou, Celeste? What do you have to do with magic? And what’s going on with the earth tremors around here – I assume you have to know about those as well.”
