Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free This time, Erne comes along, his bright yellow eyes far sharper than Gale’s blue. The osprey does not like being this far from the open sea, but his companion soothes him through the bond they share. Now and then, as though to remind Gale, he does shriek, a high-pitched call that causes the little prey animals that dwell this high on the mountain to freeze in wide-eyed fear. Gale won’t deny his avian friend this bit of fun, and merely shakes his blue head in amusement as he continues his trek. This is the sixth time he has come to the Mountain, and yet the pilgrimage is not familiar. It should be – rock and stone and lichen shouldn’t change that much in the six months between his visits – yet the brindle stallion is sure that sheer cliff had been much smaller in the fall. Magic, he decides, more than he can understand. The climb to the peak is no easier, despite the pegasus growing strength, but he reaches it just as the sun begins to fall behind the western horizon. “It’s me,” he says again, “It’s Gale.” The first time he had been greeted only by a gust of wind, and the second time by silence. Yet he returned, a purposeful pilgrimage that he will not be dissuaded from. Erne, the only other resident of his island home, spirals overhead for a moment, then comes to land on an outcropping near Gale. Gale is not sure that his presence will help, but perhaps if the fairies know that he, too, wishes for this, they might listen more than they have to Gale alone. (He is a bird though, for all his telepathic bond to Gale, and perhaps that is all they will see).

Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free   Gale half suspects that the fairies are responsible for the growth of his island home, having found Aedan on its black shores not long after leaving the Mountain. To be sure though, he has waited, waited until he saw Vita with a dark foal that looks like the starry stallion and a buckskin that looks like neither of them. When was the last time a child had been born on the island, he wonders? There will be more soon, Gale thinks. His home will continue to grow. First though, he must tell the fairies, or perhaps thank them. With this in mind he ascends the mountain, Erne circling high overhead. @[Wysteria Fairy]