04-06-2020, 09:11 AM
His own eyes are bright with emotion, though the tears he sheds are lost in the thick bristles of his sister’s mane when pulls back. The scratch of it beneath his chin is a sensation he didn’t realize he’d forgotten, and he repeats it just for the sensation alone, which elicits an unconscious smile. This is something else the two of them share. This, and the way she beats him to the first tug, taking advantage of his distraction. Gale snorts sharply, but he is still grinning even as he reaches for her dark hair in response, stopping his attempt only when she begins to speak.
She can’t predict the future, Eyas says, but the answer that she gives is firm enough. Gale nods, because that is a good answer, though his dark head tilts inquisitively as she continues.
He has imagined that his family has remained exactly how they are in his dreams. They are together. They are in the red land. There have been some visions - recent visions – that contradict this belief, but they have never been enough to shake his faith. Surely the image of Mom in a redwood forest, Dad in a desert, and Wingless Brother in the common lands had just been one-offs. Surely they hadn’t left the first home that Gale remembers? Or maybe they have, he thinks, as Eyas tells him that things are complicated.
“Complicated?” he repeats as Eyas begins to smooth the white feathers at the base of his wing. Why does everything have to be complicated? For years he has held on to the wan hope that once he knows where his family is that everything else will settle into place again. There will be a Gale shaped hole, and he will fill it, and everything will go on as it always had. He realizes, though, as his sibling grooms him, that he is not the same Gale that he had been when he had left them. How could he expect them to not have changed when he most certainly has?
“Yes!” he answers, enthusiasm at the idea melding with a shiver as she tugs at one wayward feather. “Yes, I do. I want to see them.” And then, more hesitantly: “They’ll want to see me too, right? I didn’t…I didn’t mean to leave.”
@[Eyas]
She can’t predict the future, Eyas says, but the answer that she gives is firm enough. Gale nods, because that is a good answer, though his dark head tilts inquisitively as she continues.
He has imagined that his family has remained exactly how they are in his dreams. They are together. They are in the red land. There have been some visions - recent visions – that contradict this belief, but they have never been enough to shake his faith. Surely the image of Mom in a redwood forest, Dad in a desert, and Wingless Brother in the common lands had just been one-offs. Surely they hadn’t left the first home that Gale remembers? Or maybe they have, he thinks, as Eyas tells him that things are complicated.
“Complicated?” he repeats as Eyas begins to smooth the white feathers at the base of his wing. Why does everything have to be complicated? For years he has held on to the wan hope that once he knows where his family is that everything else will settle into place again. There will be a Gale shaped hole, and he will fill it, and everything will go on as it always had. He realizes, though, as his sibling grooms him, that he is not the same Gale that he had been when he had left them. How could he expect them to not have changed when he most certainly has?
“Yes!” he answers, enthusiasm at the idea melding with a shiver as she tugs at one wayward feather. “Yes, I do. I want to see them.” And then, more hesitantly: “They’ll want to see me too, right? I didn’t…I didn’t mean to leave.”
@[Eyas]