there's fire in your blood
 | Gale says nothing but Mazikeen can feel the familiar touch of her sight being accessed. She does not try to fight it - letting him see what they’ve been to each other would be easier than trying to explain it. Her gaze remains fixed and unblinking on him as she waits for a reaction - and when it is to stagger back a step, a hiss escapes her as her lips curl back in annoyance.
She is again considering chumming the lake with him, seeing if she can find where the Curse is hidden and draw it out, when he glances down at his chest and she falls still once again - waiting.
It is only when her worry leaves her that she accepts she had felt it at all.
Her agreement that it was unpleasant comes out in a small huff of air, her fury cooling as she once more hears the voice she’s come to prefer. The Curse is back in control. It had not been quite fear that had coursed through her at the idea of losing him, she was far too practical for that now and would have tried everything she could think of to fix things, but she had not enjoyed those uncertain moments.
His gaze turns from her and she doesn’t interrupt his thoughts, remaining where she had been with her tail floating gently around her in the current. She waits as he becomes a thing crafted from shadows (instantly feeling a thrill at the sight) and then a shadow-forged kelpie that disappears below the surface with a splash.
Mazikeen becomes a kelpie as well, following him into the lake but does not join. Her own bloodlust had been quenched earlier and there is an enjoyment to be felt observing him. This wild, fierce, dangerous creature that she loves. She watches as he tears apart fish and creatures of the lake as she had torn apart the snow leopards - not eating, just shredding - and once again she feels the sense that they are matched. That it was the Curse, not Gale, who had drawn her in and who she actually understood.
Blood swirls in the water around her but her red-orange gaze remains fixed on him - anticipation curling in her stomach when he drifts towards her, thinking she’s about to feel herself torn apart in one of two ways. Maybe even both.
When he coasts across her back (sending a shiver through her) only to say close to her ear that he needs sleep, it is an effort to clamp down on the flush of disappointment that rises up. Assumed rejection had consumed her once, turned her into a spiteful wounded creature that had literally bitten off his head, and she had no desire to repeat those events. It didn’t have to mean anything at all that he wasn’t pressing into her the same way he had in the cave after that first death. He was still close, he was still here, and after his absence this was enough.
Mazikeen reaches out to brush her muzzle against his shadowy skin as she asks “Is there a way we can be rid of him permanently? So he can’t come back?” She isn’t sure how it works, this possession - but she doesn’t care about saving the original Gale anymore. And if there is a way to remove him as a threat, to allow the Curse to have this body as its own, she will gladly do what she can to help.
Her touch lingers against him before drifting upwards towards the surface with a flick of her white and black tail. They could sleep underwater but if strength is needed to battle with his troublesome host then shedding his shifting might be required to save energy.
Mazikeen doesn’t ask if he wants her with him - if he wants her to leave him alone he can say so. She is not tired but she will take all the opportunities she can to curl around him again, to let the rise and fall of his breath lull her into the only peace she cares for anymore.
m a z i k e e n . |
@ Gale
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