Though the sharp remarks about Hyaline may be cruel, they don’t hook themselves into Mazikeen’s heart. Mostly she is still just confused - her frown deepening a little further. Is this mare talking about the Pack? She doesn’t know the history of this place before she had come to live here with Breach. If Hyaline had once stood for something other than shifters, it’s been lost to time.
And as far as she knows, it’s only been her own blood and Sickle’s that have soaked these hills. She did her best to keep those living here as safe as she could. But like her relationship status, she does not think this stranger deserves that explanation out of her.
Mazikeen’s wariness grows when her question elicits such a strong reaction, but she doesn’t move backwards when the mare roars and rears up. Her heart begins to hammer inside her chest, and maybe she already knows what it is Gale has given this stranger. It certainly feels like she recognizes it when it explodes. That fierce, wild, all-consuming emotion. She feels the control she has on herself slipping when she sees the lightning and the shadows, her breaths becoming ragged as she slips into unwanted memories - only half seeing the way the mare falls to her knees and then gets back up. Mazikeen shifts, becoming a white smilodon - not preparing to attack but ready to defend her home and those within it from whatever bomb Gale has sent her way.
She is breathing just as heavily, their panting breaths filling the silence between questions, between words, and it is with a colossal effort that Mazikeen remains in the present and her orange eyes refocus.
It takes a moment, but she finally finds her voice, barely more than a whisper. “Yes. He took it all from me.” Everything but her anger, filling all the empty places with his own magic, his shadows.
Something clicks then. “You’re Ciri, aren’t you? When he was still… when he was still Gale he mentioned you were friends.” He hadn’t told her about the wings or stars, though, so Maze thinks it’s fair she hadn’t known who this was right away. And reflecting back on that brief summer when they had been happy was almost just as hard as dealing with everything that had happened in the years since. That was another lifetime ago.
And as for why?
“I don’t know for sure but... affection makes him weak. I'd bet it was because he didn’t want any part of me inside him anymore. Maybe it was to torture you for being friends with Gale, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered who he gave it to so long as it was out of him.” The Curse only had selfish motivations so Mazikeen can only imagine that it must have been either for his own entertainment or benefit.
And that doesn’t help the mare standing before her, carrying around a wound that isn’t her own. She feels the way her heart aches for someone she barely knows and has to remind herself that this pain is better than the emptiness. “I’m sorry, Ciri. I don’t know how to help you.”
@Ciri