Candidates at Nidus Otykaii, Darkling Dawn, and

Images contain artistic nudity

Triptych Character

Ramon Arryanto

Angela Corsair

Tracy Downing

Wade Harton

Wolf in the Moon

Prime One

Horned Owl

White Ermine

Little Black Bat

Anhinga

Grey Squirrel

Prime Two

Jaguar

Great Heron

Ringtail Lemur

Bengal Tiger

White Necked Raven

Prime Three

Quetzel

White Unicorn

Okapi

Black Elk

Grey Wolf

Abilities

Accuracy, eventually teleportation/tk

Healing

Stealth (Hiding), Dexterity

Size and Strength

Nature commune, Stealth

Sad eyes look back at me when I see myself in the mirror. What have I done? It if hadn't been for Rita and Angela I'd be dead now.
I don't know, maybe that's not such a great loss.
Sometimes the pain is so bad I nearly go back to the rocks, but I know which is worse. Madre Dios, how can I live with this pain?
When I am soaring with Rita, sometimes she'll come with me at night because the light's too bright for my owl-eyes, she reminds me how freedom is better than any fucking damn rocks. I know she doesn't love me the way she loves David, she is like the sister I needed so long ago.
Half the time I write -- it turns into a suicide note. I don't want to do that this time.
Downstairs right now the Phoenix boys are messing with Diva and Caroline, I can hear them pretending to shake Diva down for the stuff she steals. I used to steal to buy my crack, but I don't need to any more. She steals 'cause she's a klepto, not because she wants to.
Drake in the next bedroom slithers around like a snake in a pit, I wonder what he's thinking. I know he thinks I'm a stupid mexican halfbreed, but hell, maybe I am. Maybe because I left home when I was 11 I screwed up my whole life, I know it's why I got into the Redsides. Least I didn't get the tattoos when they offered. I get enough strange skin when I shift.
I don't like doing the panther-cat any more. Not since what I did to Rita with it. And the snake is like Satan anyway. So I am left with the owl flying at night, and the monster I become when I change into all three.

Music at night is beating wings
Drowning out my pain
Satin flesh and needle sharp stings
Who needs to cry
Tears fall in rain

Angela is my name, though I have no idea why my parents played such a horrid joke on me. They are not to blame for my original deformity -- they`re perfectly average Port Wine Stain birthmarks.
My parents are however to blame for what they did to try to remove them. When I was little, I remember it quite clearly, my mother and father took me into the basement and told me to get into the big barrel they had set up. They made it seem like I was going to get to swim or something. It was bleach. They made me stand in bleach for an hour or more at a time -- yes, they did this many times -- and I now dread both basements and the scent of bleach. This continued until I was about ten, sporadically after that, and it stopped completely because I got away from them when I was sixteen. Notice that I did not say `ran` away, because I did not run.
My name is Angela. Angela. Angela. I am known as Heron or Unicorn or Silvermink by the others. It took a long time to get used to people again. When I had gotten about thirty miles away from my home, it began to rain, and I was left with the choice to either try to get home, or somehow get farther away. I had no money and no friends, and a horrid feeling that I was going to die. I had developed two out of my three Primes by then, a white mink and a pure white heron -- these things are not affected by my skin somehow so I usually spent more time as one of those than human. A sixteen year old walking the rain slicked dirt road outside of a small town is one of those things that usually winds up on the evening news, after the fact and the hideous murder. Believe me, I was quite aware of the danger I had placed myself in. I was prepared to take the chance.
I kept walking until I reached Bluffside. More than an hour by car away from my home and dead tired, I collapsed and then remained where I had fallen through the next day. Once there, I called my parents and told them I was not returning. I found a job and some clothing and a room to live in. There I stayed for nearly a year before I felt the need to leave. I found my third Prime on the way to meeting Ramon for the first time. A silvermaned unicorn with a red horn, of all things, the most unique thing in the whole world, why did it have to be me?
It was raining again, when I was sitting beneath a bridge in their town. I was hungry and sulking and didn`t have any desire to hunt as a bird. Then I noticed a girl right about my age sitting beside me. How she got there is beyond me, I thought I had been paying attention. She sat there and then smiled, and offered me a piece of raisin bread. I love raisins.
When Ramon came by, he didn`t say anything to me at first. He and Rita sat and watched me, like I was going to run away or something. Then Rita slowly shifted into a cat. I couldn`t believe my eyes. Ramon did the same thing into his wonderful jungle colors. So I didn`t have much choice but to go ahead and change into my mink. We slept curled up in a big furry ball like that with the rain dripping down over the sides of the small bridge. When we woke, Rita had gone for food or something, and Ramon looked at me and told me I was beautiful, that I was the most beautiful woman he`d ever met.
He is the only person who has ever said that. He is the only one I would ever believe. I know he has a drug problem, but that went it`s course and we`ve seen through worse. I`ll love him forever.
When we got to the housing project where we live now, David was already there. The Phoenix brothers came with us when we found them at the lab park. They aren`t nearly as innocent as they claim to be, surely not Andrew. He is going to be formidable in the future if only he`d open up. Drake is civil to me, and no more -- so that is what he gets from me in return. Wade is Wade. Diva and I argue about petty things, it isn`t likely we`ll ever be true friends. Caroline is about the most frightened girl I have ever met, she should listen to people when they tell her to eat, but the way she sees the world I guess is different. She`ll kill herself someday over it. I thought about that for a while, killing myself, but I have a little too much pride, or is it bitterness, in me to do it. I`d rather inflict myself on the world.
What are you staring at?

As if Stripe is a decent name. As if I care. It took me so long to figure out what the hell a lemur was, at least I got the okapi right off.
When the others ask me about where I was from before the labs, I can`t tell them anything. It isn`t that I dont want to, I just don`t know. I can`t tell them that either. Rita knows, she doesn`t try to pry it out of me, like she won`t test David`s patience with questions either. I have the patience. I dont have the memory.
I maybe wanted to be called Black Bat or something, well, that was last week`s stupid name. Stripe fits my looks, not my damn heritage like Drake thinks. (Drake, she shudders, is a bastard and a half}
It`s none of his business if anyone in my family was white or whatever. He isn`t the vision of Aryan godliness he wants to be, after all, he is an Italian of what I consider questionable morals. I really do just want to ignore him -- maybe he`ll go away. Right.
When I woke up in the labs, there were about fifteen people waiting. I freaked and shifted as fast as I could into whatever it was that Stripe is -- odd, isn`t it, that I can`t come up with a decent title for the Triptych even though it looks so good -- and ran smack into a wall. A glass wall. I realised I was on display about a second later, and then I went back to being human. Naked. Thanks, doc. How can they do this, I asked myself. But at least when David left he came back for us later. Me and Dane, that is. And breaking the glass in my enclosure was not hard for him, but for Dane`s, I can`t imagine all that water tumbling over him. Dane must have had to shift pretty quick if he didn`t want to die in the open air. I feel sorry for him. No wonder he smokes. I would.
Anyway, about me -- I`ve been told that I am twenty years old, which I suppose I ought to believe, I`m about as dark as a Hershey`s milk chocolate bar, I like having my hair straight not afro, I do not enjoy hanging upside down as a bat, but I do quite like being able to chirp-locate in the dark. I like my coffee black, like my men (Wade -- yum}, I believe in God and Heaven and hard work, but I don`t know how we got to be the way we are. I don`t believe in miracles, I don`t believe in Deux-Ex, nor in alien visitations.
I took a caligraphy course sometime before the labs, but I don`t remember it. The results are obvious, when I'm writing - better than all the others.
Ramon, bless his soul, writes better poetry when he is depressed than when he isn`t, but I write down all I can when he speaks it aloud. And Alexander fearlessly tells me he`s going to be a politician when he `grows up`. Quaint, that a boy of fifteen who can change into a burning pillar of feathers wants to be in that line of work.
Myself, I`ll settle for secretary or whatever can make me decent money. My monkey fingers (as Rita calls them) work so quickly I don`t see how anyone can resist hiring me. We`ll need the money, once David`s runs out. Others seem to want to become some kind of Superhero, saving the world from what? Us? Heroes? I don`t know. Drake fancies himself one already, and I`ll give him that he looks good and impressive in the heat of battle, but Wade is better, and I`d rather be rescued by a guy with horns than scales any day.
Sometimes, I have dreams about the days before the labs, I suppose that`s what they are. Last time I did, I woke up screaming because I`d just been in a traffic accident. Blood dripping from my hands was my mother`s not mine, but I knew I was injured as well.
Maybe that`s a dream. Maybe it`s a memory. I hold on to those dearly, if only I could tell the difference.

Read the Triptych Prequel for information on Wolf...