#about beck learning to shift into a polar bear

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The evening was quickly becoming unforgivably cold. A merciless, all consuming chill that ate away flesh and sucked the marrow from the bones until there was nothing left. Even the sunlight was frozen, stingily hiding its warmth away as it pulled back the few meager rays of light that remained, and bathing the snow-encrusted earth in shades of gold and burnt orange---a cruel reminder of a fire’s warmth.

But cold had ceased to bite at her years ago. She could remember with striking accuracy the day she had stepped off of solid land out onto the ice flows of the frozen north, walking until her feet were nearly black and her eyes felt like solid spheres of ice imbedded into her skull. She remembered placing her feet in the pawprints of the bear as it lead her further and further away from the world she knew---into a world of salt and ice where tree and rock were such a distant memory, part of her began to doubt they’d ever existed at all. Somewhere in that unforgiving wilderness, she’d found something new within herself. Bathing herself in the steaming wet blood of a seal, burying her fingers into its soft interior until they could move again, enough to pull the knife from her belt and cut away strips of gelatinous blubber. With each piece that melted over her tongue, she felt a little warmer. With each swallow of sweet, liquid iron that painted her face red, her teeth felt a little sharper.

She had laid on the ice that night, a hundred or so paces from her ghostly white guide, as the winter storm gathered in great, hulking clouds that flew silently across the sky like great, malevolent owls. Their feathers blotted out the light of the moon, and eventually even the shimmering dance of the aroura itself. And then they began to descend upon the earth.

Even if she had’ve been sensible enough to hide, there wouldn’t have been anywhere to offer refuge. She listened to the shrieking of the wind as it raced across the vast expanse of frozen plains, and watched, transfixed, as the world began to dissolve around her. But even the hardest gusts of wind barely shivered down her spine. 

Was this what death felt like? She wondered idly. Had she finally met her match? A thousand times she had fallen for the siren’s song of Nature’s call to her, but every time she’d walked away. She had never imagined this would be her end, hadn’t even believed it was truly possible. But never once did she have the urge to fight it.

Somewhere in that long, endless night, her thoughts had become as still and smooth as the world around her. She could not sleep, but at one point she let her eyes fall closed, and all sound faded away. When she felt the first few tentative rays of sunlight on her cheeks, she realized that she wasn’t dead, and she wasn’t cold.

She remained in winter’s frozen heart for the rest of the season, and all of the spring and summer. Instead of cricket songs and the buzz of honey bees, she listened to the lapping of waves and cries of sea birds. Instead of fresh, tart lemonade and sweet berries, she dove deep into the black waters for feasts of seal. She played among the pods of whistling beluga whales and wrestled with the walruses no matter how many times she lost. And when the late fall turned the writhing waters to solid ground, she ran with reckless abandon across the open ice until she could see the frozen outline of a forest on the horizon.

When her paws became feet once more she had no shoes to guard her feet from the snow, nor clothes to cloak her skin from the cold, and yet she hardly felt the chill. Bare and defenseless under the dancing display of the aurora, she walked unafraid for hours, until she cracked open the door to the safe house.

It’d taken time to learn to accept the fire’s warmth, to remember to cup water in her hands and drink, and to wrap herself in soft layers of wool and cotton. It’d taken even more time to convince her to travel south back to the world of men.

Beck pressed the toe of her boot against the opposing heel and stepped out of her boot. The freshly fallen snow quickly melted underfoot and soaked through her sock, but she wasn’t cold. 

She remembered.

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Master doc for Beck’s current abilities/weakness/general info/etc:

Birth Name: Dahlia Adelaida Tandy (Formerly Dahlia Adelaida Beck)

Goes By: Beck

Gender: Cis woman

Height: 5'0

Age: 26 (verse dependent)

FC: Eliza Taylor

Sexuality: Bisexual

Species: Shifting Witch - Fox Clan Sub-type: Feral

Role: Priestess of Song and Story

Tattoos

Family:  Father - Oskar Beck (Finnish /Immigrated to US as an adult /Wolf Clan) Paternal Grandparents - Percy (Finnish/Wolf Clan) and Alma (Icelandic/Elk Clan) Beck Mother - Elea Tandy (Swedish/Immigrated to US as an adult/Fox Clan) Maternal Grandparents - Linnéa and Stefan Tandy (Swedish/Fox Clan) Brother - Fenris Tandy/Beck (American/Wolf Clan) /// Current Leader of the Wolf and Fox Clans

Powers:

Animal forms: Fox, cougar, wolf, hawk, horse, bear (grizzly and polar)

Enhanced senses in animal forms: Both an advantage and a burden at times, Beck, of course gains the abilities of the animals she shifts into and can even enhance them in certain cases by the use of her magic. She cannot retain these abilities in human form.

Elemental resistance in particular to cold temperatures

Animal influence: As a feral witch both magical and non-magical creatures are drawn to Beck. They will naturally protect her without her influence, but her magic can make them understand her more clearly and even directly control them at times. Age plays a big factor in this power, as the older Beck gets, the stronger it will be.

Ability to turn other people into animals: This is very energy exhausting for her. If she can preform a proper ritual it isn’t as bad, but to do it quickly and immediately in order to like save her skin from an enemy is very taxing. Also she doesn’t really know how to change people back. This is an extreme and severe measure she takes against people in kill or be killed situations because Beck doesn’t ever want to kill anyone. It’s best to never push her to this point or you’ll likely be a shrew for the foreseeable future.

Minor hexes and other forms of magic: Beck, like any witch can potentially learn other forms of magic and does know some spells/hexes. Most commonly brought up in threads are unlocking spells, locator spells and the ability to make herself unnoticeable. Any other minor spells she is able to preform are usually to move a plot along or for crack/comedy purposes.

Weaknesses:

Illiteracy: While Beck’s familiar Angrboda can read, Beck herself cannot. Like pretty much at all. She’s gotten very good at pretending to read and lying to people about it, but Beck can’t read or write.

Lack of education: Beck never went to a human school and there’s a lot of things about the human world she has zero clue about. She cannot operate most technological devices such as phones, modern radios, microwaves, electric ovens etc. And what’s worse is that she really doesn’t trust them. She doesn’t trust a lot of human related things because she doesn’t really understand them. This also means she won’t understand pop-cultural references and usually won’t know about the state of the world. (For instance in her Marvel verse she doesn’t learn about the attack on NYC until years later). Beck lives most of her life in the wilderness and away from people.

Physical vulnerability: Beck might be able to make an animal form faster or stronger to a degree, but she cannot increase her durability. Beck is a person, and while she’s not an easy target, if you shoot her in the face she’s gonna die. Furthermore, sustaining major injuries makes it harder and sometimes impossible for her to shift forms. This means if you break her leg in her human form it will be broken in animal form. If you shoot her in the gut in bear form she can’t shift back into human form. Even worse, Beck cannot indefinitely remain in all forms for as long as she pleases and this can cause extreme complications.

Limited time in animal forms: Beck can stay in fox, cougar, or human form as long as she pleases. Other forms, even her other four major forms, have a limited amount of time she can remain in them. I have a hc about it somewhere that I have the times written out that I’ll link when I find it, but basically, if Beck can’t or doesn’t shift back in that amount of time she’ll be stuck in that form until the next new moon. Also the longer she stays in animal form, the less influence she has over animal instinct, which can make her very unpredictable.

Trauma: Beck is deeply traumatized from her childhood and this can lead to emotional instability. It can also be manipulated by people smart enough to learn her triggers and take advantage of them. It also makes it really hard for her to fight people, because she’s immediately triggered by violence and isn’t prone to thinking clearly.

Beck has about zero combat experience in general. She’s not a fighter and was never meant to be one. If backed into a corner she’ll shift and try to fight, but most of Beck’s energy is invested in not having to fight.

Other Magical Factors:

Magical objects: Beck has several magical objects. Some have been personally enchanted by her, others are things she either bought or preformed favors to get/have enchanted. Usually she can pour enough magic into these items in order to keep the enchantments charged, but if they break, malfunction, or degrade too much, Beck will have to find someone to fix them or just deal with it.

Feral witch abilities/restrictions: My whole canon on feral witches is linked in Beck’s bio, but basically Beck can’t dream. Since she’s an incarnation of a spirit, and spirits in my lore live in the dream realm consciously, Beck cannot fall asleep and dream. When Beck sleeps, her spirit materializes in one of her animal forms or it wanders the dream realm, but Beck is fully aware and usually in control of it. Think Wolfwalkers but way more complicated lmao. 

Other feral witches and dream walkers may be more skilled than her, so she has a lot of limitations in the dream/spirit realm, but she’s still mostly in control of herself. This also means knocking Beck unconscious is hard. You have to knock her human form out, and then if her spirit materializes as an animal (which is usually instinctually does unless she forces herself not to) you have to knock out whatever animal form her spirit takes. Doing so is stupidly dangerous and all witches know this. It creates unpredictable and severe magical backlash that Beck is powerless to stop and potentially will never recover from. 

Familiars: Beck has two familiars. Familiars increase a witch’s power and provide her with endless company. They can also sometimes preform their own magical feats. However familiars are just as susceptible to damage as Beck herself, and they are quite literally fragments of her very soul. Losing a familiar is completely debilitating to a witch. The pain is indescribable. Sometimes witches are driven to suicide after their passing. Even if more familiars are made later on, a witch can never get that piece of themselves back. For instance Beck witness her familiar Dawnbreaker be hanged by her own mother, and it nearly killed her. She’s still deeply traumatized by this loss.

Angrboda: Boda is an enormous black cat that Beck acquired as a kitten. Boda was born a Maine Coon, but when she accepted the magic to become a familiar, Angrboda’s body reacted to the magic and she got even larger. She is about the size of a Eurasian lynx, though a bit longer because of her tail (and Maine Coons just being a bit longer). And yet Angrboda spends the vast majority of her time perched on Beck’s shoulder, who doesn’t seem to really notice the enormous feline that is nearly half her weight. 

Boda is extremely ill-tempered and hates most everyone Beck meets. She antagonizes others for fun and has learned that most humans are very easily startled. Boda has her claws and teeth like any other cat, and is quick and agile despite her size if need-be. If she had to, she could probably cause a significant amount of harm

Habrok: Habrok (in some verses called Grani) is a sun spirit incarnation, much as Beck is a nature spirit incarnation. He can take the form of either a red-tailed hawk or a palomino mustang stallion. However shifting for him isn’t as easy as it is for Beck. He can stay in either form as long as he pleases, but there’s a much longer period of time between when he can shift again. 

Habrok/Grani is very distrustful of people, and he’s frequently pushing Beck to forget the human world and any ties she has to it. He pushes her toward freedom, the wilderness, and magic. While he isn’t as openly antagonistic as Boda, he is wary of strangers and has poor opinions of humans in general. It takes a long time to earn his trust, and even longer to earn his favor.

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I’ve made attempts at doing this HC before but they’re older, so I’m going to try and do a rewrite of it:

How Beck Learned Her Major Animal Forms and What They Mean to Her:

The Fox is the symbol of the Fox Clan. Beck was born to a Wolf Clan father and a Fox Clan mother, and her spirit went with the fox. This is the only form she innately understood how to shift into without need for ritual, practice, or major event. She did however make her first shift right after her third birthday, which marks her not only as a feral witch, but also the youngest feral to ever present that is currently on record.

The fox is the adaptive, clever, mischievous part of Beck.

The mountain lion is not chronologically the next form Beck learned, but it is one of the most important. Not long before losing Dawnbreaker, Beck was attacked by a wild mountain lion while wandering alone in the wilderness. She was only around twelve, and the animal had every advantage over her, but as it closed its teeth around her throat, rather than fear, Beck felt a strange understanding spark between the two of them. Rather than fighting it, she leaned into the feeling and discovered she had shifted her form. In that form, the two were evenly matched, and the cougar fled. 

The cougar is the piece of Beck that is never truly tamed and will never truly belong with people. It may coexist with humans on a surface level, perhaps staying for periods of time on the outskirts of civilization, but should always be given space and respect for what it is.

The grizzly bear is one of Beck’s most impressive forms, and it’s also the only one she’s intentionally been taught by other people. Shortly after they returned from Sweden, not two years after the death of her father, the Fox Clan attempted to make peace with the Bear Clan. Over the long months of negotiations and several visits, Beck took a liking to the Bear Queen Yrsa, who she found to be infinitely patient and astoundingly strong. What she did not know was the Yrsa herself had once had a daughter who was a feral witch, whom she had lost when the girl was only about 14. This drew her toward a young Beck, who she knew was being horribly mistreated at home. Yrsa did not intend to teach Beck a bear form, and in all honesty, didn’t know it was possible for a witch barely old enough to shift into their clan symbol to even learn a second form, but one day while they were down at the river, Yrsa shifted to fish, and Beck tried to follow suit. It didn’t work the first several times, but Beck was nothing if not persistent, so Yrsa taught her the best she could, and to her surprise, the child finally succeeded. 

The grizzly is a rather blatant example of Beck’s inner strength, but also a good representation of what she chooses to do with that strength. Most of the time when you find Beck in bear form, it’s not to attack someone or frighten them, it’s simply to experience the world from another perspective or complete a task that isn’t possible for her in her human form due to her small stature. The only time she’s ever used her bear form to harm another person was in the defense of someone else.

The polar bear is one of Beck’s most recent forms she gained, and while it’s not too different from the grizzly physically, the experience of learning it was. 

In order to learn this form, Beck followed a mother bear out onto the sea ice in Alaska and disappeared into the frozen polar north. She walked until she nearly froze to death, and laid beside her guide as a winter blizzard blew in. She was unafraid during the entire process, even though she very vividly felt the pain throughout her body. But if you ask her what she remembers, it won’t be the agony, the way her hands and feet burned as they froze, or the way her eyes felt like little balls of glass imbedded into her skull. She’ll tell you she remembers the wonder of it all and her fascination with it. When she rose the next morning, after the storm had passed, it wasn’t in a human form, but the form of a snow-white bear and she proceeded to live in the Arctic for a year, until the ice was thick enough once more to return back to the world she came from.

The polar bear represents Beck’s infatuation and curiosity with nature, and her absolute trust in her own abilities. She isn’t afraid when she hears the siren’s call of the wild or journeys to new places. She doesn’t hesitate or hang back, she presses forward, and trusts her own strength and Nature’s Spirit to preserve her. It always has before.

The horse is another earlier form, this time gained around the age of around 14. It was after the brutal death of Dawnbreaker and upon accepting Grani as a familiar. Dawnbreaker’s death wounds Beck in an indescribable way, and it almost kills her. Fenris gives Beck over to Cora after having their mother executed, but even Cora couldn’t bring any life back into the young witch. So Cora, assuming Beck is about to go feral, takes her out to the wilderness in hopes she can find peace there. But what she finds is Grani. A mustang with Dawnbreaker’s same golden fur and a tenacity she’s never seen in any other horse. As she accepts him as a familiar, and heals from that horrible loss, she learns to take the form of a horse.

The horse is a representation of Beck’s mistrust and desire for freedom. Grani is very specifically a mustang from the wilderness of Montana, and so Beck gains the form of the mustang (the picture above is for color representation, not type). Learning this form helped to heal her trauma, but she never truly learns to trust humans in this form. As a horse, she is always wild and she is always at the mercy of her instincts. Normally she won’t even take this form around people unless there is no other choice, and she usually loses all control of it if she’s in it around humans. This is a form she takes when she’s alone, usually around Grani or other horses out in the wild.

I’m not sure there’s a nice way to say “she learned this form to fuck around” but she kind of did. Beck has no complicated reason for wanting to learn to become a hawk. She wanted to know what flying was like, so she spent several months following around hawks, drawing them to her, and even exchanging some of her blood with them, until she was brave enough to start trying to make the shift. And she succeeded. This was well into her midteens, around the time she was first dating Harper, who found this process one of the most nerve wracking things to ever have to witness. 

The hawk is another form that represents Beck’s confidence and her trust in her own power. She’s never met another witch that can take the form of a bird unless it was their clan symbol, and she wears that like a badge of honor.

Fenris didn’t necessarily teach Beck to shift into a wolf, but he did inspire her to do so. It was after the incident with the bears and her learning her grizzly form, and before she lost Dawnbreaker. As Beck got into her preteen years, her mother actively tried to drive a wedge between Beck and Fenris, and in desperation to try and remain close as they had when they were children, Beck taught herself to take on a wolf form. Her hope was that he would realize that they weren’t all that different, and to bond through shared experiences in their animal forms.

That... didn’t happen and as such she finds her wolf form to be fairly difficult to stay in. It causes a lot of emotional pain that she’s still working through.

But Beck’s wolf form is a representation of a love for her family, and she does regularly shift into it kind of as a reminder of that. Of her father who was a wolf, of her brother who had--at one time--used his power to protect her, and how those things will always be a part of her, even if they feel ancient and gone.

This is one of Beck’s most dangerous forms. She does NOT tolerate touch or closeness as a wolf. And while a bear or a cougar might be more dangerous if she’s specifically trying to hurt someone, Beck dangerous in this form because of her temperament. As I said this form carries a lot of pain and loss with it, and it can make her feel exposed and raw. She won’t hesitate to bite someone who gets too close in this form.

***It’s worth noting that in some verses Beck’s timeline/history is slightly modified. In those verses, Beck typically still has all the same forms, and gains them through similar though not exact 1 to 1 scenarios. For instance in her Diligence verse, Beck has similar experiences in learning the forms, but different reasons that trigger the desire to learn them, and she has the learning experiences through visions/out of body experiences rather than in person. 

[wxldchxld]

[ What is Beck's worst fear as an adult? Does her magic react to her fears and instincts or is it all purposeful? How does Beck feel about other magic users?

In our verse, where does Beck run off to from time to time when life in the Tower and the city in general gets to be too much? What is Beck's honest opinion of Nat's job? What could Nat do to make her leave, and why does Beck want to stay, aside from them being soulmates (if there is a reason at all)? ]

What is Beck's worst fear as an adult?

I’d say it’s a toss up? Beck has two major driving fears. 

The first is very straight forward and that’s that she is terrified of losing a familiar again. The pain she suffered witnessing Dawnbreaker’s death is the worst she’s ever felt, and she genuinely doesn’t believe she would survive the death of another familiar. 

The second is living her life in a cage or under anyone’s thumb. Beck spent half her life being controlled and locked up, desperately fighting to be herself while being brutally punished for it. So one day she learned to unlock doors and break binding spells, she learned to run, and in running she found freedom. It didn’t matter if that meant an empty stomach or a night out in the rain. And one of her greatest fears is having that taken away from her. 

There’s a very finite amount of time Beck will tolerate people locking her up (like I have verses where she’s been arrested for certain periods of time). But eventually she’ll lose control of herself and find a way to escape. If she can’t escape... things will get bloody. Even toward people she knows and loves.

Does her magic react to her fears and instincts or is it all purposeful?

Her magic is very emotion and intuition based, so yes, it can happen involuntary. In a dangerous situation her effort is spent restraining herself and using her magic strategically, not in mustering up the spells themselves. As a feral witch (aka an incarnation of the Earth/Nature spirit my witches come from) the power will always come, but sometimes the control doesn’t. 

I will say generally Beck is very in control of her magic in her human form. The worst you might get is like, if you startle her she might shift without thinking and then be like “oh shit sorry” or like, if you have animals around, they will naturally listen to her emotions and heed them. So you might have a trusty dog that you’ve kept for years and all the sudden he’s snapping a hand off because he is sensing her fear/anger/etc.

In other forms it is harder for Beck to control herself, therefore it’s harder for her to control her magic. And how in control she is in depends on the form. As a fox or a cougar, she can maintain the same level of control as a human, but as a horse, despite mastering the form as a little girl, she’s still very much at the mercy of her emotions. It’s kind of a running joke that you don’t jump on Beck as a horse because she will take off running, and then her magic will respond naturally, making her run impossibly fast and for way longer than a horse should. So it really depends.

How does Beck feel about other magic users?

Depends on the species and the kind of magic they’re using. Other witches are usually pretty ok with Beck, even if they aren’t the same kind of witch she comes from. From there things can get rocky. She tends to get on well with gnomes and trolls she comes across. Once she had a dalliance with a mermaid. Werewolves it really depends on the kind. Vampires are usually something she stays far away from unless they’re the sort that don’t eat people.

In like Marvel where the MCU is trying to say Wanda is an actual witch I would say Beck would be pretty ok with the premise of a witch being artificially made by an infinity stone, even if she doesn’t know what that is. But in reality she’d probably give a HARD side eye to Wanda because of the choices she’s made with that magic. Whether or not she could get past her own worries and moral qualms with mind control is---questionable.

What I will say is people like Thor or Loki in the MCU that pull that “magic is actually just like science” bullshit are not ok with Beck. Because she practices magic that is not at all like science. It cannot be wielded by anyone who learns spells or comes to an understanding of it. Witches are born or they’re made by other witches, and my magic system is VERY different from Marvel. While I’m happy to allow it to coexist with my lore system, I will not go with Marvel canon when it comes to magic because frankly it’s a mess. So I just have Beck be like “no you’re stupid and you don’t understand actual magic.”

In our verse, where does Beck run off to from time to time when life in the Tower and the city in general gets to be too much?

Ooof Nat might not love this answer. So I imagine at nights since Grani can’t/won’t be dragged into a city with her, Beck travels through the spirit realm and materializes wherever Grani is as a horse and they spend the night running around and being feral horses. It’s probably the only time she gets to really spend with him, which is a major strain on her in general because witches can’t indefinitely be away from their familiars it causes them pain. So it’s a good compromise. 

But especially while they’re living in the tower Beck will probably take long trips. Like if Nat goes somewhere undercover or something and when this happens Beck will go---anywhere? You really can’t know. She disappears into the woods or the canyons or prairies or sometimes even travels north to run along the polar ice of the arctic as a snow white bear. She’ll travel to places on the Earth the non-magical folks aren’t even aware of, places hidden from maps and outside eyes since the dawn of civilization. 

If we’re talking about like short breaks like “Jesus this place is too much and I need to breathe” she’ll probably turn into a hawk and fly out of the city to whatever wide open space and clean air she can find. Once her mother is no longer a threat (Idk if they’ll still be in the tower or not) she may go see her grandmother or Cora or visit one of her friends. Dori and Frankie both live in NYC itself, and so does Harper (they’ll probably be good friends by that time), and Jari lives just outside of NYC so like, visiting them and being with people who are like minded would really help.

What is Beck's honest opinion of Nat's job?

sdfgdsfgsdfg Don’t tell Nat but she thinks it’s dumb. She doesn’t get why anyone wants to risk their lives for mortals that don’t give 2 shits whether they live or die. She doesn’t trust SHIELD, she barely likes any of the Avengers, and she’d be very relieved and happy if Nat all told them to go fuck themselves and moved away with her to a farm in Montana. 

Like, even if someone were to be like “well by helping protect the world she’s also protecting you” Beck would just be like “I don’t think I’d care much about dying because I’d be too dead to be bothered, but I do think being forced to live every day without the woman I loved knowing she died a horrific death of self sacrifice for people I don’t think matter would rot me away on the inside so...”

What could Nat do to make her leave?

Hmmmmm. Beck’s pretty determined to stay... But like, Beck really struggles tbh. Nat isn’t great at giving her the validation she so desperately needs from a partner. And that’s because of her own trauma, so once Beck knows that she tries to be more forgiving. But it is emotionally very hard on her to not feel like Nat is as into her as she is into Nat. I don’t know if that’s enough to make her leave.

Over all I don’t think Nat would ever say something so intentionally cruel to make Beck pack her bags and go for good, but over the years if Nat never starts to open up and reciprocate the kind of affection Beck needs she may eventually leave for someone willing to give her that (which, I’m sorry, it would probably be Harper), or also a little more likely, Beck might just go feral. Which is essentially her death. Because I feel like if she felt like even her soul mate couldn’t love her that she would truly believe she had no place with people and it would be easy just to wander off into the forest and merge with the spirit she came from. Which is, essentially the death of the individual of Beck, even if technically she lives on.

Why does Beck want to stay, aside from them being soulmates (if there is a reason at all)?

But all of that is near impossible based off of what we’ve discussed and how Nat has reacted thus far. 

Nat’s big selling point is that she has no interest of taming Beck or making her behave a certain way. Her whole life has been a series of “no” and “stop” and “why can’t you just be this way.” And I think especially once Nat knows that, she will empathize personally because of all she’s been through. So while she’ll probably be like “please stop chewing up Tony’s stuff and stealing everything that isn’t nailed down” I don’t think she’s going to ever really try to like, seriously try to change Beck. 

Another thing Nat has going for her is that, believe it or not, I actually think they have a lot in common? Maybe not on the face of it, but as far as like, suffering trauma as children and feeling estranged from people/displaced. I feel like they both enjoy nature and (tho Idk for certain about Nat) traveling.

It’s going to take a lot of work and compromise for them to work, and Beck knows that. I feel like the biggest reason she stays is because she believes and wants for it to work between them.

[wxldchxld]

Headcanon: Beck’s Forms

I might break this off and eventually do a hc for every form she can shift into and explain how she got the ability and why she chose to pursue it, but I’m going to start with what I have on my white board rn (bc I need to erase it lmao).

Fox Form:

This is one of Beck’s two main forms that she can take. The fox, along with the cougar, represents core pieces of Beck’s personality and she resonates with them the most.

The Fox was Beck’s clan symbol, so she was born with the ability to shift into it. Unlike most witches, Beck made her first shift very early, earmarking her as a feral witch, which lead to her being ostracized from her community in many ways. Beck is well liked, but people are fearful of feral witches, and are generally happy that she doesn’t want to stick around a long time.

Time Limit: None First shift: 3 Touchable: Yes. Highly encouraged. Does frequently bite. Will claim it’s affection. Shifts: When she’s comfortable/playful/affectionate/curious/neutral

Cougar Form:

The second of Beck’s main forms. Beck gained this form when she was 13 and attacked by a mountain lion. She was at a point in her life where she was feeling a lot of guilt for leaving Fenris, and she often considered going back, and mourned the fact that she had no place in what she saw as regular society. When she was attacked, she saw herself in the animal before her. It too was living on the fringes of society, starving, struggling, trying to stay somewhere it didn’t belong. She took her attack as a sign that she needed to embrace the part of herself that was truly wild, and not to be so guilty about her brother.

Time Limit: None First Shift: 13 Touchable: Yes depending on the mood she’s in. Shifts: Both when she’s comfortable/happy/affectionate and when she’s frightened/threatened

Wolf Form:

If you’re encountering Beck as a wolf, you’re probably either someone she deeply trusts or in a very precarious situation. Beck learned this form as a very young child, at an age when learning a second form was practically unheard of. She wanted to be like her father and her brother, who could both take wolf form. However after her father’s death Beck stopped shifting into this form. So she only really shifts into it in order to serve a specific purpose (be it protection/hunting/etc).

Time Limit: 48 hours First Shift: 5 Touchable: A hard maybe. Read her mood. In general she wants her space in this form. Shifts: When she’s frightened/startled or when she needs to hunt

Horse Form:

Horse form is another form that came to Beck pretty young. She was only around eight when her familiar, a horse named Dawnbreaker, taught her how to take horse form. She was so young that she was still a small filly in horse form for several years. Beck mostly learned this form because she loved Dawnbreaker. Her familiar practically raised her and shaped much of who she became as a person. So much like the wolf with her father, Beck wanted to learn to be a horse to be like Dawn. She also was around horses from the day she was born, and she has a deep love and appreciation for them. 

After Dawnbreaker was murdered, Beck stopped shifting into this form for some time, it was only when Grani joined her as a familiar that she began to return to horse form. Beck will spend days as a horse. She enjoys racing and roughhousing with Grani in this form, but she is extremely skittish as a horse. This is not a form where she has a lot of control over her animal instincts, and she’s prone to spooking.

Beck is NOT RIDEABLE. Even if she starts out calm she will take about .004 seconds to lose her shit and start running with you. She’s got a ton of stamina in this form, which she can bolster either subconsciously or purposefully through her magic, and she is fast as hell, meaning if she takes off with you she will run faster and longer than any horse should.

Time Limit: About two weeks. First Shift: 8 Touchable: Eventually. She will frequently come up to sniff or touch a person in this form, only to spook three seconds later because they sneezed. Shifts: Normally only in the wild, but also on request.

Bear Form:

Beck learned this form specifically as a means to defend herself, but honestly she mostly just uses it to fuck around. She learned the form while spending time roaming in the Canadian/Alaskan wilderness, just sort of following the bears around and forming connections with them. Beck in bear form often calls herself Bearck, and spends the majority of her time trying to give people puppy eyes and cute waves so that they feed her food.

A couple of years after learning to shift into a grizzly, Beck traveled even further north and learned to shift into a polar bear.

However, she is a bear, and she comes with the power of a bear. If you piss her off in this form, she will smack you with her dinnerplate sized paws... or worse. Terrifyingly, bears have one of the best senses of smell out of all terrestrial mammals. This means if Beck needs to sniff someone out it’s not going to be as a fox or a wolf---but as a bear.

Time Limit: 2 days First Shift: Around 20 Touchable: 1000 percent. Will try to sit on your lap. Will crush you. Shifts: when she’s directly threatened or when she’s relaxed. Not a hyper form. Often times she’ll do it as a prank.

Hawk Form:

Hawk form is the final an least frequent form you’ll find Beck in. She can change into a cooper’s hawk in all verses (or at least something akin to it), but in many verses Beck is actively trying to learn how to shift into a Peregrine Falcon just for the sheer joy of it, but the process it taking her a lot of time. She learned this form for the sole purpose that she wanted to know what flying was like and she does not regret it.

Time Limit: 4 hours First Shift: About 18 Touchable: Absolutely not. She will bite the ever living shit out of you. She’s very small and extremely uncomfortable with touch in this form. Shifts: In wide open spaces, when she’s comfortable, or if she needs to spy on someone without being noticed.