08-30-2021, 09:15 AM
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
The scowl on his lips brings a dark wave of pleasure and she thinks maybe… just maybe… she might win this. She’s not sure she can read whatever emotion is lurking behind his electric eyes but she is so close to finding out. Just a little further, she thinks. Just a little more and maybe she can walk away with her dignity intact even if it means dragging her broken wings behind her.
Then a voice cuts through her hard earned advantage as sunlight pierces through his shadows and the sound that erupts from her is a roar of fury as well as a warning. It’s too late, she barely gets a chance to turn her head to see the lilac mare and her silvery antlers before her bones are no longer her own again and the mare is swiftly consumed by shadows. She hadn’t struggled beneath his grip before but she does this time, trying to find a break in his magic, trying to find any part of her that can move as the other mare begins to cry out in pain and fear.
It is brutal to see her chest rip open with less decorum then she had remembered during her own death by his hands. She struggles harder, groaning against the pressure that holds her in place, as Gale begins to change and the stranger’s breathing becomes more ragged. The scent of blood and death swirls around them and she almost chokes on it as she catches splashes of crimson against the grass, as she remembers what that pain had felt like.
The mare drops and Gale looks back at her, no longer scowling.
“Where were we.” He asks so nonchalantly and she could howl with the rage that makes her stars flicker despite the vice grip wrapped around her bones. She had been so close, so close, and then this foolish creature had ruined it and gotten herself killed as well. For a moment she hates the stranger almost as much as she hates the Curse. He moves her like a marionette, forcing her to move closer to the dying mare while at the same time cracking a few of her tailbones. She is gasping by the time her body comes to a halt but the pain has cleared some of her anger, enough to realize that this black fury needs to be directed at the Curse and only the Curse.
Had she watched someone die before? Her blinding silver eyes stare at the blood bubbles gathering at the corner of the lilac mare’s mouth and she can feel dread settling just beneath her unstoppable fury. “Yes.” She responds truthfully because she had killed creatures before like the siren in the lake, because there were times when she hadn’t always been able to save the ones she had sworn to protect. Like Thistle, the mare she had cared for in another world far from this one.
She was no stranger to death even before she had experienced her own. Yet as she hears the gurgling noises in the back of the mare’s throat (as her gaze sweeps over the familiar sparkles of stars and light that call to her in a silent plea for help) she knows that she doesn’t want to watch this one die too.
Not this one who, despite charging in so recklessly, had done so to help her.
Perhaps his grip had loosened enough or maybe she had finally found a small hole in his magic but she manages to slowly turn her head so that her brilliant gaze is on him instead of the mare. “Will you bring her back like you did to me?” She asks him as if they were still the two friends that had climbed the rocky hills of Hyaline looking at rock sheep together. She thinks she already knows the answer. Thinks she knows what she needs to do but that inferno of hatred balks at doing so willingly. “What would it take to spare her life?”
Then a voice cuts through her hard earned advantage as sunlight pierces through his shadows and the sound that erupts from her is a roar of fury as well as a warning. It’s too late, she barely gets a chance to turn her head to see the lilac mare and her silvery antlers before her bones are no longer her own again and the mare is swiftly consumed by shadows. She hadn’t struggled beneath his grip before but she does this time, trying to find a break in his magic, trying to find any part of her that can move as the other mare begins to cry out in pain and fear.
It is brutal to see her chest rip open with less decorum then she had remembered during her own death by his hands. She struggles harder, groaning against the pressure that holds her in place, as Gale begins to change and the stranger’s breathing becomes more ragged. The scent of blood and death swirls around them and she almost chokes on it as she catches splashes of crimson against the grass, as she remembers what that pain had felt like.
The mare drops and Gale looks back at her, no longer scowling.
“Where were we.” He asks so nonchalantly and she could howl with the rage that makes her stars flicker despite the vice grip wrapped around her bones. She had been so close, so close, and then this foolish creature had ruined it and gotten herself killed as well. For a moment she hates the stranger almost as much as she hates the Curse. He moves her like a marionette, forcing her to move closer to the dying mare while at the same time cracking a few of her tailbones. She is gasping by the time her body comes to a halt but the pain has cleared some of her anger, enough to realize that this black fury needs to be directed at the Curse and only the Curse.
Had she watched someone die before? Her blinding silver eyes stare at the blood bubbles gathering at the corner of the lilac mare’s mouth and she can feel dread settling just beneath her unstoppable fury. “Yes.” She responds truthfully because she had killed creatures before like the siren in the lake, because there were times when she hadn’t always been able to save the ones she had sworn to protect. Like Thistle, the mare she had cared for in another world far from this one.
She was no stranger to death even before she had experienced her own. Yet as she hears the gurgling noises in the back of the mare’s throat (as her gaze sweeps over the familiar sparkles of stars and light that call to her in a silent plea for help) she knows that she doesn’t want to watch this one die too.
Not this one who, despite charging in so recklessly, had done so to help her.
Perhaps his grip had loosened enough or maybe she had finally found a small hole in his magic but she manages to slowly turn her head so that her brilliant gaze is on him instead of the mare. “Will you bring her back like you did to me?” She asks him as if they were still the two friends that had climbed the rocky hills of Hyaline looking at rock sheep together. She thinks she already knows the answer. Thinks she knows what she needs to do but that inferno of hatred balks at doing so willingly. “What would it take to spare her life?”
-- Ciri
@Gale