This is the first spring in Hyaline she’s been able to really see since before the eclipse - the last had been spent without eyes. A year ago she had been giving birth, a year ago she had been killed by Gale for the first time, but the Mazikeen she had been when those things happened no longer exists so it feels like they were a lifetime ago.
Tonight she has exchanged her usual feline tendencies for a winged elk, her antlers twisted and black with glowing fiery cracks, a mane of black-tipped fur coating her neck. There are sharp teeth in her mouth still, which she had used on the herd of deer she had joined at dusk - unable or unwilling to fully commit to pretending to being herbivorous when she is on her own. Some blood still stains her face from her meal, but she is lost in thought and has forgotten to go to the lake to wash it off.
A ear twitches at the sound of someone approaching and in a way she cannot quite describe, Mazikeen knows it is him even before she feels the gentle touch on her skin. A contented smile brightens her red-orange eyes as Gale joins her, brilliant as a blue elk - likely (hopefully) with sharp teeth of his own.
She’s enjoyed their time together, relishing each addition of blue she’s added to his coat - every inch a different memory and if she lets herself, she could trace them all. She would remember each violent and exciting moment and lose herself in them, let the ocean-deep of his coat and the taste of his blood drown her.
But she also enjoys the gentleness with which he touches her now, leaning into it with that same instinct. Despite the cervid form she wears a soft purr escapes her as he smooths the hair on her neck - there is an ease existing between them. He does not say anything so she does, her eyes drifting from the moonlit scenery to him. “I am glad you’re here, I was feeling restless tonight.” As though this is news, as though she is not almost constantly restless in one form or another. Sleep comes easier to her now, with so little left in her heart to worry about, but she is still a mare meant to be on the move.
There is a question that would be so easy to ask right now, an invitation for him to choose how they spend this night, but she holds it in her mind and does not speak it out loud out of a lingering stubbornness.
She does not want to continue to default to his ideas and preferences but she is lost on what it is she wants that isn’t his dream of chaos with her there at his side. Mazikeen has never had ambitions and had learned to squash everything she might want so thoroughly. And now that she finally is free enough to go after whatever she’d like, she can’t think of a single thing that isn’t the creature by her side that she touches softly. Even the goal of killing him one day is shoved far away, because why would she deny herself even a moment with her king when they are enjoying themselves so much?
So is it enough, to simply want him? To want to aid him in every plan, every hunt, and be there with him while everything else burns? Maybe.
All these questions sit uncomfortably in her mind now but they are easier to ignore as well, especially with Gale so close. So maybe she doesn't outright ask him what they should do tonight but the silence that follows her statement is an invitation anyway.
@Gale