[open] living like we're renegades

[Gale]

Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free   Elio, Nashua says, and Gale thinks of the sun and his brother’s red coloring and a smile as bright as the other’s laughter spreads across his face. It’s their father’s smile, carefree and warm. Then he tells him: Yanhua, and the name fits what he has seen of the boy through Celina and Wolfbane’s eyes.  Though Gale has no connection to the red mare or the earless one (who he thinks of now as Antneve), his empathy runs deep. His face falls with Nashua’s, and it seems impossible that a moment ago he had been eagerly waiting to learn the name of the sibling that Celina could not bring herself to harm. When Nashua asks, Gale pushes aside his doubt and the already present burn of his eyes, and tries his best. Maybe it is that he is already weakened by his surveillance, or maybe his magic is not meant to be wielded this way. Whatever the reason, he winces and shuts his eyes tightly after a long moment of furrowed-brow concentration. Gale’s head shakes in defeat, his forelock acting as a snowy overhang to protect him from even the pale light of the cloud-wrapped sun. “Nothing,” he tells his younger brother, “But that’s normal. I don’t know your mom so I can’t share her eyes.” According to stories, the power he wields had once been enough to subdue empires. Gale worries sometimes that he is an incompetent magician, a poor inheritor of his ancestors’ gift. Eyas tells him that maybe the world is stronger now, or perhaps that the strength has been watered down by dilution of blood, or that Gale is filled with other magics too, and that a body can only hold so much. (Gale likes this last explanation best of all, for he is proud of his wings and his healing and his bond with Erne). At that thought, he glances up at the bird, who is perched in a turquoise palm. “Erne could look for her, if you’d like.” Gale offers. “She was in Pangea when I last saw her, but that was a long time ago.” A crack of thunder follows the lightning, and the sound is far closer than the last peal. “He could go after the storm, I mean.” @[Nashua]