Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
He monitors her behavior as he moves nearer, his keen eyes missing no movement. The trouble for Gale is in interpreting them, and what can it possibly mean that she is glowing so brightly that he must shield his eyes with magic? He has been trying to not use his Sight, lest he be Seen, but the other option is being unable to look at Mazikeen with his own eyes. The choice was clear.
Standing beside him, she is tense, so still that he wonders if she might feel like the stones underfoot if he reached out to touch her. He wants to, but then her ear flicks, and she snorts, and it feels suddenly like the tension in the air disappears all at once.
Mazikeen is clearly displeased, but she is definitely no longer vibrating with rage. Gale is very sure this means he’s managed to diffuse the situation, and he feels a little pleased with himself for it, which is soon overshadowed by the fact that he’d caused it at all, and he’s back to frowning as she meets his eyes.
He does nod - he won’t joke about it again - but mostly he looks into her bright orange eyes. Had this been a brief glimpse into her future? A chance to see the hurt and fury as himself, and not as whatever thing Gale will have become by the time he hurts Mazikeen on purpose?
The flood guilt forces him to look away, but the Curse drinks down just enough of it that it does not overwhelm Gale and change his mind.
There is a blank space in his memory, part of their last conversation, and it weighs heavily on him now. The way she uses ‘seconds’ feels like it should be familiar but Gale can’t quite…He'll just look at her, he decides. Look at her and talk and that will make the world feel right again.
“I love you,” he says the moment he meets her gaze. “Right now, I know that as much as I know anything. I know that I’ve thought of you most every moment I’ve been away. I told my brothers about you, and they told me...” well, he pauses, realizing that perhaps not all of what his brothers had told him was entirely true.
“Well...they told me lots of things. Did you know there are things we could do that are even more fun than fighting and kissing?” As he is with all his knowledge, Gale is eager to share, and after asking the question curiously of her, he takes a step away to stretch languidly.
He’s getting ready to shift to something that will take him more quickly to Icicle Isle, having sudden remembered the Midsummer Festival, but Gale very much enjoys the way feline limbs feel in a stretch and does not want to waste the chance, especially when he’s been so recently Healing. Ending his stretch with a shake of his maned head, Gale realizes he’s assumed that Mazikeen is free to leave immediately, and so he asks:
“Are you ready to go now? Or do you have other stuff you have to do first? Before we go to the Festival, I mean.”
@[Mazikeen]
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