Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Though the eclipse has grown no darker, Gale thoughts have. The island is quiet, its colorful beauty invisible in the darkness, and there is little to see to distract him from his thoughts. He does not try to See either, worried that using his family’s magic might somehow summon them.
Most of his time is spent in shapes other than his own, for Gle has found that his mind seems simpler in them, less complicated. The dark god’s curse is made for equine minds, after all, and so in shifting Gale finds some small and accidental respite.
At low tide he had been a crocodile: short, well-muscled, and quite at home among the wetlands. By the time Eyas finds him, he is a horse again, because he has shifted too much of late and could not hold the reptile for long. A few good nights’ rest and he’ll be good as new. But he’s not slept well in months.
He is tired, and irritable, and in less than the best mood when Eyas finds him on the beach.
“I’m leaving”, she tells him, and if that is not the cherry to top off his delightful afternoon. Gale scowls. ‘My child was attacked’, she continues, so straight-faced that Gale immediately wonders how long ago this must have happened, for Eyas to have schooled her features so well.
She hadn’t come to him before?
He isn’t quite sure how that thought wounds him, but it’s a sharp realization, one that his Healing cannot change. Of course she wouldn’t come to him.
He’s a danger now, not a help.
As it often had, the same thought passes through each of their minds simultaneously. Gale feels useless himself. He’s done nothing but skulk about in the darkness for months - he hadn’t been able to save his niece, protect the island, or anything worth doing at all. Gale sighs, and looks away from his sister’s empty black eyes.
The despair draws in the darkness, as it often does, and the Curse raises its head. Eyas is leaving, and her promise of watchfulness with her. There are a great many things it might do unobserved. Gale, lost somewhere in his mind, would have asked what he might do to fix this, how he might help. His lips however, form a single word.
“Goodbye.”
@[Eyas]
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