[mature] as out of my control as anything has ever been

[Gale]

thread mature for violence/blood/death

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you He wakes to the distant rumble of thunder, or perhaps the trilling song of a lark that still rings through the bare-branched trees. The eastern sky, where the sun should be rising, is veiled instead by clouds through which a red sun appears only the palest of pink orbs. Autumn is a season of intermittent storms on Islandres, but this storm is different. This is the third storm since Malik had come. This is the storm after which he’d promised - aloud, to a grown son that he doesn’t know, as if that might bind him to it more firmly - to begin his amends. There are many places he might go, but the first is the most obvious. It takes some time for him to make it to Hyaline, long enough that the morning storm has surely passed and been dried by the balmy afternoon sun. Long enough that he can feel the soft crackle of lightning dancing along his skin, because his muscles grow weary from the walking. Gale pauses, one hoof still raised, and the lightning fades, and as it goes he breathes a soft sigh of relief. Never before has he been so careful of his every action, so diligent to avoid the use of magic. It is why he comes on foot, crossing the strange bridge of land that now links the realms, wading the River, and now climbing the rocky mountains. It would be easier with other feet, but Gale continues ever onward with the equine hooves he’d been born to even as they begin to ache. He’s grown soft-footed, Gale thinks, smiling for a moment before remembering his purpose and growing somber once more. He wills the Self Healing away easily, as familiar with the ability as with the white tail that flicks behind him. It’s the other abilities that are harder, the ones that he doesn’t mean to use, the ones he doesn’t even realize he has until he accidentally uses them. The Curse had eaten a great many hearts, those abilities tell him, had slain a seemingly impossible number. (Or killed a Magician, a hopeful part of him once attempted to posit, perhaps just one magician. Gale knows that unlikely, and dismisses the hope) Gale crosses the border of Hyaline, and though he tries not to, he feels the way the entity ripples at his intrusion. Lightning follows it, tracing an arc into the sky before fading away, and for just a moment Gale appreciates how fascinating the display had been. But then the shadows rush in to replace the missing bit of lightning, and with them a memory. It is always a strange experience, to See through his own eyes into a past he does not recall. It is often a terrifying experience as well, insight into exactly what his body had been doing in his absence. And it would be nice to complete the set of the entities’ Mazikeen is saying, but maybe it is not Mazikeen, because her eyes are the wrong shade of orange and she is standing much too close. The Gale-that-he-is-not uses magic fueled by his own pain to find that maybe-not-Mazikeen is with child, and then the memory is gone and he is once more standing knee deep snow, alone on the mountainside. Malik had not spoken of his mother, and that had been the final piece in the puzzle. If he does not blame Gale for her death, she is not dead. The Curse hadn't killed her, and that can mean only one thing. It had done something even worse. What that might have been, he knows he will soon discover. Until then, he seeks lower altitudes and shallower snow, and a place out of the wind enough that he would not freeze. @Mazikeen