i hear the wicked get no rest, but when you do
---------- i hope you dream of me
The jungle is dark, but it is far from silent. The dawn calls of the monkeys perched above the canopy have not yet begun, but the voices of the night birds grow less numerous as they settle into their nests. The soft click and whirr of insects never ends, nor does the rustle of steam and fog dampened greenery.
This almost-morning the fog is heavy but low - hardly to the knees. The air is thick with the scent of spring flowers, and Gale breathes deeply of the warm and humid air as he floats in the waters of the entity.
The brindle stallion is emerging from the water after an unusual night’s kill. The magician most often feeds on tapirs, monkeys, and birds, but tonight he’d slain a horse. Blood still rests on the back of his tongue, but all signs and even the scent of it have been pulled from his skin by the lava warmed water and the cloying floral scent.
At the sound of movement, someone coming closer, he disappears. The magic of Invisibility is simple, pulled from where it had been hidden within his host’s genetics. Teleportation is harder, but the power of the mare’s recent death has made even the most difficult of magics feel simple.
Gale recalls the portal he had shown the green mare, a flashy display that only hinted at his abilities. Divest had not shared her own with him either, perhaps equally cautious. He’d not had the opportunity to ask her again, and the Gale that Divest had known was not the sort to pry despite his immense curiosity.
A season has already slipped away since her arrival, and Gale knows little more than when she’d arrived. He’s been careful around her, using the caution that has kept him alive for nearly four years. He has always played the Gale she’d known, awkward and occasionally charming, and rather prone to staring and becoming lost in his train of thought, only ever approaching her when he was well fed and unlikely to lose his focus and slip up.
“You’re up rather early,” he says, stepping out from beneath a hanging vine, appearing silently in a way that might have been magical or simply knowing the jungle well. He smiles sleepily, blinking away manufactured sleep in his eyes, and appearing to hide the start of a yawn against his white-stockinged foreleg.
GALE |
