[private] but your savage love

[Aela]

So he is recruiting through all this mess.

Interesting, Aela thinks. Her brow arches slightly but the palomino decides against questioning the brindled stallion further. He is frowning at her - either for lack of offering of a name or of her implication about the sensibility of recruiting to during an apocalypse - and the flaxen mare gives a shake to her flaxen head. She had hoped for something more from him, from this @[Gale] who would play hero for some wandering nomad from foreign shores. The striped girl had flashed images as she had with Skandar and where that shifter could become anything that Aela's memories could remember, this one simply shrugs them off.

Worse, he seems to get lost in his thoughts.

She had teased him and Aela had been waiting for him to reply. The young mare had assumed he would either tease her back and that good-nature she presumed was there would win out or his frown would deepen to a scowl and Aela would continue to be disappointed. She contemplates skimming across his memories, to attempt to see what it is that consumes his focus so wholly. Her head tilts and she watches, debating with herself if she could scour his memories undetected.

It's certainly an interesting prospect (Aela is always looking for ways to test her abilities) and she considers it for a moment longer.

Gale's question startles her and away from her attempt to peer into whatever was distracting him. "This?" she asks, tilting her blazed head prettily from to one side and shares a glimpse of the granite kingdom her grandmother once ruled, of the proud peaks of Nerine. "A familial trait," she tells Gale easily. "I've always assumed it was something from my father," she says with another roll of her gold shoulders (and this is the truth; Kota had been gifted with healing and glowing but there had been nothing of the Echoes within her foster mother so it must have come from the sire that Heartfire spoke so vaguely of).

It's the smile she gives him - a haunting one - that faintly resembles a man long gone to his grave.

image credit to footybandit

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you ‘This?’ she asks, the image of granite cliffs flashing in front of his eyes. Gale grumbles low in his throat, displeased at the way her magic so readily bypasses his own control. This time, when it vanishes he follows, and from Aela takes what she’d last seen of a black mare (her mother) and faint shape that he thinks must be her father. That vision is blurred in a way that Gale recognizes – this is the vision of her father she holds in her mind, built of words and stories rather than by light entering the eyes as she viewed his true form. He has guessed at her identity before she smiles, and when she does it provides the final evidence. “Perhaps it is something from Heartfire.” He replies. Gale knows that his father – their father – had no such ability. The emotions in his family were his mother’s domain, and of her children who inherited the ability, none were as different from Lepis’ projection as this stranger’s magic. Or it could have come from her mother, the pied stranger whose face he had not truly seen long enough to remember. Gale knew that Wolfbane had run rampant the last years, driven like a puppet by the curse that lived within him. That he had sired more children was not something that Gale had known, but in truth he is not surprised. He’d thought Nashua and Yanhua his youngest siblings, unaware of his father’s exploits in Nerine and Taiga or the way he’d worn Castile’s shape in Loess.  “You are from Nerine?” He asks, wondering if perhaps her mother was one of the few who still clung to granite cliffs. There is someone there (someone is tending that massive fire) but he’d been sure that when the wind had been in his favor that her skin had carried the smell of Pangea. For all that he has realized this stranger is his sibling, he still knows remarkably little about her. He’s also not told her what he has realized, though decides that he will show her. Gale shifts, losing the heavier build of his mother’s kin, and darkening the gold of his coat and then rearranging the pattern it makes with the blue on his skin until he is a palomino with iridescent stripes, with his own white wings and upright mane trailing from ears to tail. His face remains much the same, though the blue recedes to a mask over olive eyes, and two sharp fangs emerge from below his upper lip. This is the Wolfbane that Gale had known, the young General of Loess with his fire-breathing and his fangs. The fire-breathing had not lasted long, but Gale still manages to manipulate the vision of flames fluttering at his nostrils. He thinks that she will be appreciative of this demonstration of their father, and when Gale returns to his usual form (sans wings, because he’d forgotten to keep them and would feel silly re-summoning them) he is smiling expectantly. @[aela]

[Aela]

He knows the name of her grandmother. (Heartfire is technically her great-grandmother but Aela has always known that Heartfire is great.) Her teasing stills and she regards the brindled pegasus, with something akin to curiosity sparking behind her blue eyes. What the striped girl knows of the paternal (and maternal) side of her family is very vague. It would have been revealed to her in time, she had always assumed.

(It didn't mean that Aela didn't ask. She had pieced together whoever her sire was, he wasn't related through the skeletal Dovev that Heartfire had gone searching for.)

"No," she says carefully. Nerine, what little respect she held for the granite kingdom, was solely for their mutual ancestor. A winged boy, a rather insufferable pegasus, had stained what little appreciation she had for that place. "I was born on the outskirts of Taiga," she explains to this stranger that she is coming to realize is a relation. Even more than that, he was a... a sibling?

There is more that she meant to say. She meant to ask him where he has come from. Why hadn't Heartfire mentioned him? All those questions are furrowing a line on her palomino brow but she asks none because the pegasus shifts and Aela watches him, studying the way that his shape falls away to a more slender one. His blue coat lightens and then turns to gold. The brindled stripes become more pronounced and jagged while the hue of them resembles the iridescent navy that he had just rid himself of. Her blue eyes trace over him to the mask that covers his face and the fangs that protrude just slightly from his mouth. The flames that emerge from his nostrils are even more impressive and when Aela realizes what he is showing her - their father - there is a small surge of pride in her chest.

Growing up, she had always hoped that she was a daughter of Carnage (because what else could she have been besides the child of a God?). There had been nothing of a father for her to see glimmering in Kota's memories but she has seen him before, shining through Heartfire's mind and once after.

"I've seen him," Aela says thoughtfully. "A piece of him anyway," she explains. There had been a corner of Pangea that she had come across, where the stone had been ravaged. More than that, there had been a rather powerful memory beneath the rune-stone-like markings. It had been a red, seething fury that seeped from beneath the sandstone. Coming across the devastated area had been an accident (though Aela could certainly admire the power behind the strokes that took to create the damage) but the anger had taken a shape at the very end. The shape that Gale now wears (apart from the fangs and fire).

"You know him?" she asks suddenly because she had never found the ravager. Aela hadn't sought him out either but that was before she realized who he was.

Before she realized who she was.

Gale is smiling and one curves along the edges of Aela's lips. "I'm Aela," she tells him and tilts her head up towards him, offering to share the only memory she has of striped man that @[Gale] resembles.

image credit to footybandit

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Even Gale, far from socially observant, can see the way the name of their shared ancestor affects the golden girl. Did she think she was an only child, he wonders? His attention wanders until he’s drawn back by the name of the redwood forest. Gale has never been to Taiga. He has flown over it and along its coasts, but he has never set his hooves on the thick carpet of pine and misty ferns or stood beneath the enormous trees. He’s considered it since learning Yanhua lives there, but the brindle stallion is reluctant to leave his home in the darkness even for the chance to meet his brother. She’s seen him, his sister offers, and Gale tilts his head. He is curious, but also apprehensive. He has pieced together a rough timeline of the Curse’s affect on Wolfbane, and is sure that by the time this younger sister had been conceived, his father would have been well in the throes of it. What sort of ill memory might she have? IN the end, it is not something that startles Gale; their father has always been a mighty warrior, and that his strength and fury might so mark the earth itself fills his chest with the same warm pride that suffuses Aela’s (if for a different reason entirely). “Wolfbane.” Gale replies. His own memories of the striped stallion are fragmented, as are all memories of his life before this one. They consist only of sight and emotion – he cannot recall a single sound, scent, or taste of his childhood. But he has seen Wolfbane, seen him most every day of his young life, for the handsome young general always made time for his children even amidst his other duties. Those memories are full of love and warmth and belonging, and he is smiling as he recalls them: his first flight, looking up at the stars, racing through the narrow red rock canyons, playing hide-and-peek around the cacti with his many siblings. “It is good to meet you, Aela.” He tells her, his smile softening on his lips, though remaining in his eyes. “He was a good father when…when he was himself.” He thinks it important that she know this because it is also important to Gale, a reminder that he was not the child of the Curse that ruined his father. Soon, of course, he will feel quite differently.  @[Aela]

[Aela]

It is an odd thing to listen to @[Gale] talk about Wolfbane.

She had tried a few times prodding Heartfire and Kota for some explanation of who her father might be. Might have been (it never occurred to her that he would have been deceased until now). For a time, she had suspected that perhaps Carnage might have been sire. She was Gifted and what else could explain her abilities than a God-like father? It was only when her grandmother had seemed so repelled by the idea that fractured glimpses started to come together of who her father actually was.

Aela doesn't know about his Curse. She knows nothing about his struggles or his history. Everything she knows is coming now, from Gale. From her brother. He does something more than often the name of the former Commandant and there are glimpses of the man that Gale had brought to life. There are memories - a kind of warm, contented glow - that flicker across his mind, and Aela sees pieces of Gale's first life.  She might normally refrain from prying too deeply (and thus becoming too consumed by them) but these don't feel private: she feels as if Gale is sharing them with her and so she sees fractures images of starlight and Loessian foothills and too many faces to truly glean just one.

The palomino watches, partially fascinated because it is so different from her upbringing with Kota (it had just been the pair of them and Heartfire, when the Visionary felt like revealing herself, tucked away in the Taigan fog) and because there are no sounds, no smells, nothing to that brings the memories truly to life. They are like Heartfire's, she realizes as she steadies her blue eyes on the brindled pegasus.

He was a good father, Gale says, when he was himself.

She starts with, "It's... nice to meet you as well." And it is, she thinks. Aela normally refrains from the pleasantries and idle conversation has never been her strong suit. She never settles long enough. The striped filly manages a small smile for Gale, trying to understand the meaning beneath his cryptic words. "Well, now you sound like Grandmother." Aela says. She doesn't make a further joke about the statement and asks quietly instead, "what happened to him?"

image credit to footybandit

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you He does mean to share them with her, the memories of his father being everbright, and knows that he’s been successful by the fascination with which she Sees them. When she smiles, and continues with pleasantries to match his own, Gale decides that this change in her demeanor is a good sign. He is a trusting creature, after all, and while Aela had been guarded at first, it only makes sense to be more comfortable with one’s family. Even if they are new family. Her question isn’t one he’d expected, but it is one that he has answered before, and so the words don’t feel quite as stiff on his tongue as when he had said them the times before. “He was killed,” Gale replies, “by the Curse. And by the fires in Loess when it was burned by the Pangeans.” Four winters ago, he realizes. Time has passed so very quickly. He does not have to tell her what he’d told Pteron, that their mother had perished as well. A small blessing, he decides, as he watches Aela’s face for her reaction. “I only met her once,” he adds, referring to their father’s grandmother, the mare from whom Gale has inherited his abilities. “Is she always so...” Gale struggles to find the right word, and settles with a few instead. “She seems quite formidable.” @[Aela]