Candidate at Abstract Destiny

Images contain artistic nudity

Triptych Character

Angel McKracken

Prime One

Mockingbird

Prime Two

Collie

Prime Three

Clydesdale Horse

Abilities

Size and Strength, fluffy, pulling/lifting, loud

Angel had worked at a print shop for a while, before that a fast food outlet, and before that, she'd run away from home. A lot of Triptych apparently ran away from home when they discovered their first Prime, or their second. Thinking that she'd be thought of as a freak or a mutant or something, as most young teens already believe themselves, she bolted - in the shape of a sharp-tongued mockingbird. No clothes in a bag or food from the pantry, just what she'd been wearing when she transformed the first time.

It wasn't really a sense of freedom so much as a sudden disassociation with what she ought to be doing with herself. Keep this information under her wing, so to speak? But she could fly! She returned home after two days of sleeping in tree branches and trying to find whatever it was that mockingbirds ate. Not too many of the local houses had bird feeders, she discovered. Her parents and sister were frantic to find her, at least that was satisfying.

She hardly dared breathe a word of why she'd vanished, but to her father's stern gaze she wilted. In the den of their family's home, she transformed again.

And, grinning, so did he. Her second Prime came on her when she was in high school, a fast footed and oh-so-fluffy collie. That shape she really took to heart, she enjoyed romping around in the nearby canyons and racing with the coyotes. If she concentrated hard enough, she could even change between collie and mockingbird in time to catch herself from a fall over a gorge. Sweeping over the treetops and calling out in that loud flexible voice she had, she returned to her house and was immediately sent to the shower - collecting enough grime for half a family, she had four paws to drag through the mud and not just two feet!?

As Angel got older, she discovered that her sister also had a Prime, some kind of small bird, smaller than hers. But while the discovery was a pleasant one it didn't last. Their mother had a nervous breakdown when she found out: she wasn't one of them. Only their father. Angel's sister Debbie was young enough (younger by far than when Angel had first shapeshifted) that she only wanted her mother to love her again. She swore, promised crossed her heart and on a stack of Bibles that she'd never ever change again.

So she didin't.

Angel was perturbed by this, it was a hard decision that she herself made, when sixteen years old, that she would not make that promise. Her father and mother eventually divorced, splitting the children up - all but voluntarily.

When Angel got her first job, just before her eighteenth birthday, she also figured out what her final Prime was, a huge clydesdale horse. She'd been around them once or twice, impressive beasts at the beer park that her dad liked to visit when it was in town. They were seriously the biggest things she'd ever seen - wouldn't it figure that a girl who'd been trying to keep her weight under control like any normal teenager, would turn out to be one of the largest land mammals available?

She joked about it with her father, whose own third Prime was another breed of horse. Life went on for them, essentially unchanged from what either could expect. Without the anger and enforced embarrassment of her mother, and the pleading insistance of her sister, Angel was an outgoing, sensible, and somewhat commanding young lady.

And food service was so not what she wanted out of life... Her father was an engineer for one of the city departments, fixing buildings that weren't up to code or something. That didn't much interest Angel either, but she knew she had to do something with her time, after graduation. She attended a few college classes, mainly to stay on her dad's insurance. Enjoying the last of her teen years with only a half-assed school attempt and a mix of contempt and thrill at being fired from her hash-slinging job, Angel found that she could do pretty well behind the counter as well as the press. Print shops were becoming a thing of the past, in the modern age of computer printers and laser jets. But a well-done business card or a set of wedding invitations were actually something she discovered she took great pride in.

It was a nice set of skills, she thought, but it wasn't exactly everything in the world to her. She could get a degree in art, or design, and with her experience in the field, she could probably get a better job working for a book publisher or art company. At last, when she was twenty three and had completed a BA in design while working still at the print shop, she set out for her own fortunes.

She knew that her father would miss her, but then again he was busy picking up women at pubs and she didn't really need to be in his way. Now she had to find an apartment and really get going on her own life.

***

Just about the time she was leaving her third job interview for the day, well into her first month without a job, Angel thought she saw something in the corner of her eye. A flicker of red and white, like blood on a pure white bird. Was something hit? Did a car hit one of those heron things that roost out here in the boonies?

She walked down a side street, the rustic neighborhoods in the rural areas of the county held lots of trees and even had horse ranches, something completely different from her very urban upbringing. But the apartments were cheap, here, and there were a lot of smaller start-up companies... None of which were hiring.

In a sense, Angel was seeking something other than just whether there was an injured bird out there... When she came upon a pond that was surrounded by tall willow trees, the street long behind her and ignored, she saw that bird that had flickered in her vision. Pure white, like more than any of the dingy grey-blue birds that would have lived in this area on their migration. But the beak was brilliant red, a blood color without being an injury. It stood near the edge of the water, and then ...

Shapeshifted into a girl.

"Hi," the young woman said. Her pale skin was dappled with large port-wine stain birthmarks, and her hair was silver. Though she looked young, she had an old expression on her face, she was more experienced than Angel was. "My name is Angela," the girl said, and Angel busted up out loud.

"Me too!" She said, laughing. "And..." She took on her own bird form, hovering in the air and then sweeping into the trees. She called down to the girl, who beckoned back to the ground. "I can't believe you're... I've - you've - you're ... another one of us," Angel said.

The other Angela, smiling, said, "well we're looking out for others too. We have ... well, we have paperwork from a place calling itself Polygen, and found out that, I guess it'd be your father, is a Tripper."

".... Tripper?"

"Triptych," Angela said, and then changed into something else entirely. She had a horn, like a unicorn, straight and red against her snowy white and silver-maned and tall-feather crested neck. Elegant heron wings sprouted from her back, while her tail was fluffy and long, she had a springy looking body. Facing the surprised 'other' Angel, Angela nodded. "Triptych. Three forms, all together. Haven't you tried it?" It surprised the redhead that the other woman could speak with a muzzle like that.

Angel shook her head, dumbfounded. Her red curly hair danced around, with a twig or two still caught in it from the trees. "I've never even thought of that. That's ... amazing!"

"Go ahead and try it," Angela urged her. Angel set her briefcase with her art samples and resume down on the slightly wet ground, and shrugged.

It took some work, because it had never occurred to Angel that the animal shapes could be mixed. She took this and that, the heavy shape of the horse dominated the new form. Wings? Check. Fluffy? Check! Her fur was the russet-bay red somewhere between collie and clydesdale, with a big ruff of creamy neck fur, and white feathers around her wrists and big hoof feet. With difficulty, she said, "woah," and gave off a horselike giggle.

Angela stood rather much in awe. She was quite tiny compared to the big red horse-girl. Considerably less than half the size, under two thirds the height. Angela the white clapped her red hooves together. "Nice, now... come along!"

The heron-unicorn-ermine lept into the air, and all but floated into the sky.

Angel stomped her big foot, causing a bit of a mess under it in the marshy pond. "Oh now no way am I gonna be able to fly! Look at me!" She glanced at herself, knowing full well that an eighteen hand high horse was far too chunky to just fly away.

Angela came back, alighting delicately on a log. "Sure you can. Look at the size and shape of your wings. It's no different. I've never met a bird-Primed person whose Triptych couldn't-- oh, wait, there's Vance. But he doesn't count! He's a whale hornbill! You're much smaller than that. Come on and at least give it a try..."

Angel the red ground her jaw around (that was weird, what with the big flat horse-teeth), and looked with determination into the sky. She'd never been told that she couldn't do something, and certainly when encouraged like that, she could hardly fail.

It did however take her a good five minutes to work up the muscle strength... Perhaps a matter of assigning big pulling muscles to the wings, maybe just telling herself - if this little slip of a girl with my same name can do it, so can I.

It was dusk, and out in the boonies no one really noticed the dark shapes soaring over the dotty lakes and marshes. It was a wine valley, out here, more ranches and even an emu-ostrich farm or two. Nothing for miles, that anyone would notice. Smirches in the sky.

***

"So you live out there," Angel the red said, "and everyone's a Triptych? Everyone?!"

Angela the white nodded, "yeah, it's pretty weird really. But a lot of fun. And... Well, then there are the dragons."

Angel the red almost choked on her burger. It was almost two in the morning, Denny's was open and never cared what the conversations ran to. Angela the white had told her of the town of Snow Rising, an Indian reservation in New Mexico, where the Triptych of the south-west were all welcome. But what in the world did that have to do with dragons?

"Rita and a few others have found them, they're from other worlds. It isn't all that hard to believe, is it?" The heron-girl said. "I haven't found mine yet, but I'm looking. We're all always looking. What would be better than a bunch of bizarre shapeshifters living in a commune with dragons to protect them?"

"From Polygen," Angel the red said, and the other nodded again. "This is almost too weird for words."

"Nah," the white said, "Weird for words is Dane when he's down under the lake as a Kraken. That's pretty freaking weird..."

***

As it was, Polygen's records didn't include that Angel's father had children, it was only that Angela knew what to look for. She was warned several times, Angel the red was, that should anyone appear to be following her or asking weird, personal questions without proving that they too were Triptych, that she should simply walk away and call the Reservation. Some of Polygen's employees were Trippers, too, so that complicated matters. However nearly all of those were not sent on collection trips unless the Tripper in question was going to give them a hard time. They'd send out 'the Hounds'.

"Well screw them," Angel the red said, "I've got a hoof bigger than a dinner plat that says otherwise."

"But won't you come if we find a dragonry?" Angel the white asked. It only took a moment of thought before the Red answered.

"Yes of course I will. And then I guess... get a place at the Reservation? What about my dad?"

Angela the white blushed, "well... yeah, if... he stops asking me out?"

"He did not!" Angel the red exclaimed, laughing, "you're like my age!"

"And married," the white replied, "but I guess that doesn't matter much. If he's ever in need, Snow Rising takes all Trippers, as long as they contribute to the community. And I guess he's a pretty good worker, like you."

They parted ways, Angel the red going back to her apartment - after a stop back at that pond to get her stuff - and the white went... well, probably back to New Mexico? Was she able to fly that fast or that far? Or did Trippers just have endless endurance? Maybe she went somewhere else, looking for triptych elsewhere. Angel the red learned how the tripper blood seemed to call to others, they always knew when another was nearby. She'd have to concentrate on that feeling, learn who was around her. They could be anywhere, anyone.

***

It wasn't much time before Angel the red got a call from Snow Rising, they believed a place was sure to have the right dragon for her. How they could know that, it was unclear. But she got her things collected, paid for a month's rent up front, and flew out - the old-fashioned way in a plane - to visit.

The place was more rustic by far than her neighborhood. But then it was also in the middle of a pretty scrubland hillside lake community. A forest or two were around, but it was wide open skies and tan dirt for miles. The community itself was scattered around the big purple lake, with cabins and a few housing strips gathered around a main street.

Aaaannnd then there were the dragons... Silver, red, cream, all manner of colors. A couple of them bigger than Angel could really get her mind around, while others were merely 'large'. How could they be here without being noticed?

Well, maybe they were noticed, after all there was a Polygen facility about a hundred miles from here. Of course they would know.

But would they know where Angel the Red (as she was coming to be known, here in this little community rather rapidly - everyone knew Angela the white, after all - or, as John Tells-the-Winter named her, 'Light as a Feather') would go to find a dragon? Well, only John and his elderly friends in the council really knew that. They put her on the back of Rita Tull's silver dragoness and sent them on their way.

To a space ship. Of all things, just when Angel was getting used to mythological stuff (Rita was a pegasus? and Angela a unicorn? Hydra, kraken, jackalopes...) and the idea of dragonries and dimensional travel here they wound up on a space ship?

Well at least it was more to her upbringing than some. Rita - this one, anyway, as there were supposedly several in different universes... - was from a world that had hardly progressed to advanced boat building, let alone space travel. But Angel recognized computers and televisions, communication devices and robots. It wouldn't be all bad here, would it.

The genetic engineering was a bit weird, when she asked about the 'parents' of the offspring that were going to require her presence. Some mad scientist or other - there were several about - explained or tried to anyway, why they were using who they were, for this particular clutch. Angel blew most of it off. If a creature that needed to pair with another's mind, sometime after hatching or birth or release from the vat (whatever it would be, Angel didn't know) needed her there, and she was the right mind? Well, she wasn't going to miss it for the world!