[private] take a bite and let it linger

[Mazikeen]

Unusual, of course, did not even begin to cover Gale but it was still accurate. And then the grin that spreads across Mazikeen’s face at Aela’s question is one she learned from that iridescent stallion. It is a predatory grin, a shark’s grin, laced with a dark humour. “You could say that.” Her relationship with Gale has always been difficult to define. There are words she uses when she thinks of him - mate, king, lover - but even these rarely do her thoughts justice. Friend was feeble, inadequate. The only truly accurate way to describe Gale was that he was hers, and she was his… but these are not the things you say to anyone else. So Mazikeen simply tells the other mare “I am fond of how… unusual he’s become.” And then simply because she can, and because this is an entertaining point in the conversation to do so, the blood-red leeches from her skin until she is her natural self, until those scars have no chance of being even slightly obscured. The greyish scar tissue frames her eyes, mangles the skin on her chest, and streaks of it are scattered all across her body. Pride is not an emotion that survived Gale's tampering but something close to it glints in her eyes. These scars are the perfect map of who she is. She maintains that grin, tilting her head a little to the side when she asks “Have you had a chance to see him recently?” Mazikeen suspects that Aela and her use of unusual know full well what Gale is like now, curse and all, but he had been a different sort of unusual before - kinder, brighter. m a z i k e e n .

 

@Aela