Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Mazikeen thinks his idea was a good one, and Gale smiles, pressing his cheek against hers before she pulls away, trying to catch - and missing - a strand of her black-tipped hair between his teeth. He begins to think of the waterfall, and Isilya with her magic birds, and is smiling faintly when his ears flick back to catch the white mare’s next words.
What if?
That’s not a very funny joke, and he frowns and starts to tell her this when he realizes that there’s not any laughter on her face. He’s not sure what is there, and doesn’t have time to parse it out before she’s talking again.
She’d been guessing about the winter thing?
Gale closes his eyes, an attempt to sort through his thoughts without distractions. A great many emotions spin through his head, surrounded by layers of tumultuous possibilities. His face moves occasionally - a frown, a smile, a wince, another smile - but it has been still for some time before Mazikeen breaks the silence and Gale opens his eyes, drawn back to the present.
Gale had thought Mazikeen would know these things, being the one who’d be most responsible at the start of things. He had been clear with her - he’d rather have her to himself in what little time they have. The words that followed hadn’t been ones he can remember saying. He shakes his head slowly, frustration and confusion apparent on his face.
It is a strange combination of sensations, this discomfort with someone he feels so comfortable with. Gale does not like it at all, but he cannot find the words with which to say it, and instead is quiet.
Her interjection - that she hadn’t always been a mare - is something that he’d not considered at all. He flips through the memories (feeling oddly disconnected from the sensual nature of them) and surprises even himself with a snort of laughter at one.
“Can you imagine if you had a human baby?” Gale laughs, shaking his head back and forth. The ridiculousness of it feels almost a relief, but he knows even as he returns his gaze to Mazikeen’s that this is not some outside world thing that can be forgotten as he looks into her orange eyes.
So the laughter slowly fades from his blue face as he meets her gaze, marveling as he always does at the firebright orange, but thinking of less marvelous things. Unaware that the Curse has already begun to affect him, Gale thinks that he has little more than two years left where he can be sure he is himself, not affected by the Others. Two years, that’s enough for a foal to be born, and to grow to what - half the size that Elegance had been? Gale is not sure how fast they grow. Not fast enough.
“Why don’t we ask the magicians?” He finally suggests. His tone is casual, but the faint crease of a frown remains on his brow. “If you’re pregnant, I mean. Not about the timing of things.” Well, he supposes, they could ask the magicians, but that really does seem like something they should have known before risking it, and Gale does have his pride. “Then we can talk about, you know. What if.”
@[Mazikeen]
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