Mazikeen notices Gale’s dazed expression, she feels the way noticing it spreads warmth across her skin, but she doesn’t actually understand why he looked so dazed. Had he swapped out his view for something else? Or could it be, she wonders as she replays that brief contact, when his muzzle had lingered on hers and stretched out the moment they touched, she’s affecting him the same way he’s affecting her? That would be comforting. If there are words to ask such a thing, none of them come to her. Not when she’s close enough to see the faintest hint of the iridesence in his coat, to admire the strength she knows exists in those muscles (though she does note the difference in their height a bit of annoyance). Not when she feels caught by the colour of eyes she doubts these tropical waters can rival even under the sunlight.
This uncomfortably poetic thought returns Maze a little more to her senses, thankfully. Her head clears enough for rational thought to resume and, though she isn’t aware of it, her cat-eyes no longer look as though she’s been huffing catnip.
When Gale answers her question, commenting on how it depends on what she finds edible, she also finds herself thinking of the wolf - and a dozen other predatory shapes she’s taken. Even the osprey that she favours so much for flight. “I like to wear the shapes of predators, but I don’t actually enjoy the taste of meat.” She admits this casually with a tilt of her head that mimics a shrug even though it’s part of a truth she had been worried about admitting to the rest of the pack. She has wondered if it made her lesser because the thrill of the hunt came with the chase for her, the challenges it presented, and then whatever critter ended up in her claws would be set free - bruised, perhaps, but mostly unharmed.
Mazikeen enjoyed fighting much the way she enjoyed the hunt, and her fierce nature would inspire her to do anything to defend her family and friends, but she found no joy in killing. Except in the case of the shadowy monsters. That was different.
She worries that this compassion is a weakness much the way that she worries about what it means for her to be so acutely aware of Gale’s body as it stands close to hers. Or for her to realize she's glad he had been the one to tell her where her marking was, that it was him who she first touched with it.
Food, she chides herself - think about food. Mazikeen is truly hungry - even if hunger isn’t the only thing causing her stomach to flutter.
“I’d like to try fruit, though. I’ve never had it.”
@[Gale]