Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Perhaps, she says, and Gale laughs aloud. How quickly he’d pinned his hopes on her reaction, and the relief of not being rebuffed entirely is itself a realization. He wants her to be fond of him, Gale thinks, and he’s already gone and told her as much. That feels less convenient than it should, somehow, and as he takes advantage of the silence to take her in again, he attempts to puzzle out why.
That he is one of a slew of admirers, Gale is quite certain; one does not become a Champion without drawing appreciative eyes. That is for the best, he thinks, following the line of her mane up as it turns from black to white. With what waits for him, dreams of anything beyond friendship are futile, doomed even.
So he smiles, and decides to be grateful for what he does have, and when she asks about a delay, replies:“Well…”And then immediately pauses as if he must decide which of his many objections to voice first. There are many of them, if he is honest. Yet even together they do not overwhelm the desire that her question had stoked. He does want to fight, to test his strength against hers, to pin her down in the sand, to see how close he can get to the soft parts of her throat, and he doesn’t continue that line of thinking but he is very sure it ends in a way that it definitely can’t.
Continue to delay the match it is.
“Last time, we were fighting to win the Alliance,” he finally says, his eyes narrowed pensively as he pointedly looks out to where the waves crash instead of where his mind had so recently wandered. “What’s the prize this time? I don’t want to get dirty just for bragging rights…” Here he glances back, just under his white forelock, and says in what is undoubtedly a playful taunt: “I’ve already got those.”
@[Mazikeen]
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