People expected Claudia Brown's dæmon to settle as something small and delicate and ladylike, the way she was. They just didn't get her, not really. She wasn't just small and soft and pretty. She was more than that. Larne knew it too, and when people made remarks like that, he liked to change forms to something big and predatory just to throw them off.
Her parents never mistreated her in the slightest way, but they also treated her like she was eternally five years old and a little china-doll princess to be spoilt and petted. Sometimes she was certain she'd go up the wall mad from it. Larne, as was her dæmon's name, always flitted from one form to another, trying out every shape imaginable in hopes of perhaps determining ahead of time what he would settle as. Claudia found it hilarious, to watch him flick from shape to shape, then flop down on her lap or in her hair, grumbling in irritation as he declared he'd made no progress. It was always amusing and never failed to make her smile. Whenever she got particularly frustrated with everyone else speculating on how her dæmon would settle, he would do it on purpose, finding the silliest forms he could to make her giggle and shake off the gloominess, even for a little while.
Her family wasn't particularly wealthy, though they were high-end middle class enough for her to go to a good private school. Claudia was grateful for the opportunity, she truly was, but God, did she ever resent those bloody uniforms. Larne had nearly fallen off her desk laughing the first time she had to put on the pleated skirt and navy blouse with its Peter Pan collar and crest-stitched breast pocket, the chunky black Mary Janes and prerequisite white socks. She'd retaliated by flicking him across the room, seeing as he was in dragonfly shape. Grumbling again, he'd become a gecko and clung to her hair like a clip, pressing tiny feet in her scalp to keep balance as she walked.
In school, she'd seen dæmons of every shape and size and sort, some settled, some still changing. She was younger than most of her peers; even though it was only a few months, it was still long enough for her to be considered a 'baby' by the upperclassmen. One girl in particular was vicious in her harrowing. Claudia still remembered her and still somewhat loathed her, too. Her name was Cecilia Darrowman, and her own dæmon, Liwgar, was a peacock just as flashy and vapid as she was. The large bird liked to shake out his tall, brilliant tail feathers just to show off his colours. Cecilia constantly hounded Claudia because she was younger, because Larne hadn't settled, because her parents weren't rolling in money like the Darrowmans were. Once constant sneer was that when Larne did settle, it'd probably be in a form, "just as stupid and dull as you are, Brown." For such an empty-headed ditz, Cecilia could be vicious.
Cecilia Darrowman and Liwgar aside, she really did like school. It was fun. She made friends with people that were still her friends even when she grew up and got her job in the Home Office. Molly Hooper had become Claudia's steadfast friend from day one, a shy, quiet-natured girl with warm brown eyes and soft brunette hair she liked to keep up in a braid tied at the end with ribbon. Her own dæmon, Laghu, was a bumblebee bat, the smallest sort of bat, only as long as Claudia's little finger, and liked to curl up in the collar of Molly's blouse. Larne liked to take on the same form when the girls were together. They were still friends, too, even though Molly and Laghu now worked in a morgue as a pathologist.
Larne didn't properly settle until she was thirteen. Just as her parents hoped, he was a bird. But unlike what her parents hoped, he was not a small songbird or a sparrow. Claudia's beloved soul took the form of a kestrel. He was a hunting bird with wicked sharp talons and a hooked beak meant to rip and tear. He was small for a hunting bird, though, only about ten inches long, and had blue-tinged wings and head, a rufous-coloured back, and a pale belly speckled with darker spots. She loved it. Larne was just as she was, even though nobody else believed them. Small, perhaps, but not soft and not delicate.
"Just like you, Claudia," Molly would say, "little and colourful but tough all the same."
Larne would often fly around her head, coasting lightly on sleek blue wings, or else be perched firmly on her shoulder, his talons gripping but not puncturing her skin; he was always careful of how much pressure he exerted. From there, he was close enough to her to keep an eye on everything whilst she worked and to whisper in her ear things she might have missed without his sharp eyes. She liked to stroke his feathers with fingertips when she felt particularly tired or frustrated, the electric tingle of connection always lightening her spirits, and he would nip affectionately at her fingers.
When she joined the Home Office, slowly but surely working her way up, Larne kept a perch near the door, a little further away from her than she liked, but that way, he could keep a sharp ear and eye out for anyone approaching, protective of her as he always was. It was around that time that she met Jeremy and his dæmon, a vervet monkey, Jordana. They had dated for nearly two years before getting engaged, though she broke it off soon after that, after finding out that he'd been maintaining an affair for several months. It'd been all she could do to keep Larne from pecking Jordana's eyes right out, her always-protective dæmon.
But, as it turnt out, she actually was grateful that she and Jeremy hadn't worked out. If they had, well, then several months later, after she'd been given her newest task, she'd never have had the chance to walk up and kiss the fair-haired Scotsman with the snow leopard dæmon at the hotel bar.
A/N: on dæmon names. Thalia, in Greek, does mean blooming or rich festivity. Liwgar is Welsh for colourful, and Laghu is Hindi for miniature. Akela is also Hindi for alone or solitary, as well as the name of the alpha wolf in Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book." Just some fun facts.