Fish stepped out of her eagle form, alarmed. She knew exactly what would happen if that boundary was crossed. “No. That’s… look, kid, I get that you want to push yourself. But there’s… what you’re doing now makes sense. But you don’t need that. You don’t need to feel talons on your back. You don’t need to feel the weight of something trying to carry you. I can tell you right now, you do that and you’ll be right back to square one, only this time the thing that haunts you won’t be a spectral eagle, it’ll be a solid one. It’s like throwing a lamb back in the water after he almost drowns. That’s not what he needs. I get where you’re coming from, I really do. But I can’t do that to you.” She thought about how lambs were raised back in the mountains. How you didn’t always get a second chance to prove yourself, how you never got time to work on yourself. “Maybe someday you’ll be ready for that. But- look. Let me tell you a little bit about some of the stupid things Totoma do. When we’re little, a lot of clans line their lambs up as soon as storm seasons’s over. One big bruiser goes out, cracks the ice, and the kids run in. Or they’re tossed in. It’s sink or swim, and every year we lose lambs to this, not because they’re weak, not because they’re cowardly, but because they were never given a chance to learn. Some of them struggle to shore, and then they get tossed out again.

I’m not doing that to you. You’ve struggled to shore. Now you get to sit here for a bit, dry off, watch the others. You get to grow. I saw what happened to you. I grew up in the mountains. That kind of harshness- that’s my blood. It’s not yours.” She shook her head, flicking away a few errant tears she hadn’t realized had welled up. “ Strange Creature tried to interrupt, but she gently put a hoof down.

“No, no. Don’t say it. I know. I know you want to get back to normal. But you know something? I’m not a bird. I’m not going to shove you out of the nest and say ok, we’re done here, you’re on your own now. I know what’s going on in your head, because I was one of the lucky ones who made it back to shore. I’ve been where you are now, long ago. It was different, but… some things were similar.”

Eyes hot, Strange Creature felt a mixture of embarrassment, shame, and just a tiny bit of indignation that quickly faded to a dull ache in the pit of her stomach. The mare was right. Probably. She was being reckless again, not tempering her enthusiasm with caution. She didn’t want to undo the hard work she’d done, and maybe she really had believed she’d been ready. She looked away, not meeting Fish’s glowing gaze. “I’m tired of just… sitting here, though. On the metaphorical shore. I want to metaphorically swim again. I used to like it.” Her voice was small.

“You will. I’m sure of it. You will one day, and when that day comes, you’ll be different. You’ll have the old you back, but tempered with the lessons the new one’s learned.”

She didn’t respond, but pawed the ground again.

“Do… do you want me to go?”

Strange Creature shook her head. She didn’t know what she wanted. She wanted a good cry. She wanted to scurry off into the underbrush. She wanted to be unafraid and carefree again. She felt like she’d lost something, but she wasn’t sure what. “I just thought that I could do it.”

Fish nudged her gently, pressing her unarmored muzzle to the Kimeti’s shoulder. “Hey. Listen to me. Everybody gets ahead of themselves sometimes. You have nothing to be embarrassed of. You had your face in an eagle’s belly today! That’s…”

Fish had to pause to think.

“That’s. uh. That might be something… nobody has ever done before. An actual eagle wouldn’t put up with it, and I’m the only eagle-shape around. And nobody’s ever done that to me before, so, uh. Yeah. Even if you didn’t get as far as you thought today, you broke new ground with eagle… sniffing.”

Strange Creature had to laugh at that, just a little bit. The corners of her mouth perked up, and Fish’s eyes twinkled. “I think you’ve had enough eagles for today, friend. One day, you’re going to do something so brave and so bold, you’ll hardly believe it. You’ve already done so much.”

“I suppose I have. It’s… my head’s a puzzle, and I thought that maybe an eagle on my back would help solve it. But I think I get what you were saying. I think… this helped. No, I know it did. It got messy, but I think it worked. Thank you.”

“No worries! Now, come on, it’s not going to be dark for a while yet and if your friend in the bushes hasn’t eaten all my bait, we’ve got trout to catch.”

“We do?”
(SC: 1632 wc)

“We sure do.”

(RBF: 1270 wc)