[private] heaven help me for the way I am

[Gale]

Gale it's hard to keep a straight face when i just want to smile -- starlight crashing through the room, we'll lose our feathers He sees the moment she relaxes (watching as carefully as he is with those brilliantly blue eyes) and wonders again if there is something about the place itself that causes such a reaction in visitors. Was it magic, he’d often wondered, something soaked deeper even than the seawater into the shores of Islandres? He sometimes thinks it might be the weather, balmy days and breezy nights. Tonight (perhaps today?) is cool for the start of winter, and once more Gale laments the loss of his wings. The dramatization of her rolled eyes steadies the existence of his tired smile, even when she asks – ever so lightly – if he is the cause of the darkness. At that his brows raise, though that is the only sign of surprise in his face, which otherwise retains its sleep soft good humor. That he suspects that it is somehow his fault does not for a moment pass across his blazed face. He had failed to defeat the shadow creature, the one from Pangea that he had let Midsommar convince him was not entirely bad. Yet how else can he explain the darkness that had come, and the monsters that came with it, with their bright eyes and surely too strong to be mere coincidence resemblance to Jamie? Jamie had broken the sun, Gale is fairly sure, but he cannot prove it, and so he only says: “Not one of my many talents, I’m afraid. I prefer to leave celestial meddling to those more well-equipped.” Not until the words come out does he realize the analogy to his own missing accoutrements. Their absence is a sharp thing in his chest, and while his words twist at it, the concern in her voice and the way she’d immediately noticed their absence drive it deeper still. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he replies, rolling his shoulders in a shrug only to feel their absence. “You’d left a mark before they went though,” the stallion adds, tilting his navy head to the side where his red-marked wing had been. “That last bite you got in, even the damaged feathers grew out red. My Alliance V.” He smiles at that, and wonders only for a moment what it might be to battle without his wings. The thought is depressing, and he shakes it away, causing a ripple down the length of his spinal mane that causes Erne to shift. The osprey finally turns his gaze away from Mazikeen, and resumes his silent staring at the black water and only slightly less black sky above. @[Mazikeen]