Andarin: The Mountains: is this the real life? ; delilah & casper --

Wyvern had never been a good oracle; he was not a good leader, he was not a good seer, he was not a sympathetic, understanding character. He tended to be brisk – even brusque – and he was often meaner than one would expect of a scholar.

But even he could not snap at the mare standing before his eyes; it was obvious that she hurt, and hurt quite a bit, and while Wyvern hardly had sympathy for most of his peers, he could have a modicum of empathy for her. Thus, when he nears the three of them – adopted daughter, mare and colt – it is with a worried frown.

“I’m an oracle,” he declares unnecessarily; a honor he has rejected quite often and could really do without.

The sunlight catches his golden fur – not as palominos are gold, but as burial masks are gold. For a moment he is silent, as if scanning her; and then his lips brush her forehead, green eyes fixed straight into her face – as clairvoyance slices through the thin layers of mind like a knife…

This is my adopted father, Wyvern, she introduces, seeing as he didn’t.

He never did; when he worked, he was always business-like and not given to mindless chatter. Wyvern hated the element, but he would not leave it, and this showed in the way he behaved towards others. As he does, well, whatever he does, she watches, and narrates it for the no doubt anxious colt. He can read minds, and do a series of other things, including healing…

And just like that he feels his body changing; the golden fur becomes dark, soot-black, the limbs thinner and longer, the body slimmer and less muscled. In seconds, without any apparent effort, it is no longer the oracle who stands before them, but he who calls himself a wraith (though Fenris would beg to differ, as she knew the, ah, official Wraith quite… intimately, which in this context means “more than she ever wanted to”).

Having never seen the stallion, it is obvious he cannot mimic his specific behavior and mannerisms, much less the element: he is bound to the earth and it shows in the thorns twining in his mane and the stone at his feet, flashing and catching the light. Nonetheless he could mimic a perfect physical replica of the other stallion.

Damn, he loves Mimicry.

“Delilah?” he calls lightly, but it isn’t Wyvern’s voice; it’s Fantome’s as she remembers it, as he could glean from her memories and delirious thoughts. “Can you tell me what’s wrong? Do you know?”

To the colt, he whispers (in his natural voice), low enough that she could not possibly hear, touching his lips to the young boy’s ear. “Well; I think she just misses her lover. Do you know who he is?”

In a nutshell, Wyvern, in a nutshell.

wyvern; fenrisulfr
grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.