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Mazikeen prepares herself for what it’s going to be like to watch someone else shift - to watch Gale shift into one of her favourite animals. She thinks she prepares herself, anyway. She tries focusing on the anger instead of the waves of sadness, tries to make herself angry that he had come all this way to Hyaline and he wouldn’t even come close to her. Layers of anger build up around her heart and she thinks she’s ready when she’s thinking about saying something to him about it and tell him off.
And then he shifts. And even in the darkness, even with her equine eyes, she can tell he kept his colouring. She doesn’t know whether it’s intentional or not but it’s the same way she shifts - her white coat prevailing over everything else. Even as an osprey she was more white than they normally were, with just a dash of black and red above her beak.
She is happy for him. She is. She is! She totally is. Absolutely thrilled.
And yet she watches through watery eyes as he raises his wings. The anger crumbles away and much to Mazikeen’s absolute horror, the tears come in earnest now. She’s not a gentle crier, Mazikeen. If there’s something worth her crying over it’s never just a few tears.
First when she had died, second just after she had left the mountain, and now. And she is mad about how this moment is now on that list but no amount of anger is getting her ragged breathing under control.
She stubbornly tries to talk over them though, as though nothing whatsoever is happening in her heart, which results in a rather loud and near-hiccuping “Th...at’s... a… m… azing!” followed by a very quiet but very angry “Fuck.” as she shakes her head and turns it away, muttering to herself to get it together.
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