Gale
it's hard to keep a straight face when i just want to smile --
starlight crashing through the room, we'll lose our feathers
When Gale had attempted to steal the sight of the monster, he’d been rebuffed by a burning pressure at the back of his eyes, rebuffed by an alien wall that left him with a throbbing headache. After his rest, that ache is only somewhat less mild. Some healing he has, the brindle stallion thinks; it’s no wonder his family had assumed him dead when he’d failed to regenerate after his Tephran bath.
It is hard to see far away still, Gale finds, but the nearby Maze remains in clear view. Clear enough that he’s already admired the new red V that decorates her black blaze and marveled at how it has settled on such a soft place on an otherwise fearsome creature. Had another opponent struck here there like she’d marked him? He’s wondering this when he realizes that she seems rather pleased by the way she’d marked him, and brave to avoid healing aid for damage that might have eventually become deadly. Gale’s teeth heal as quickly as his bones, he’s found, far faster than minor nicks and shallow scrapes. That might mean something, he has often suspected, but with the growing population of Islandres Gale no longer has long empty hours devoted to doing whatever he wishes and satisfying his curiosity.
With his own frequent social blunders, Gale recognizes the way her voice changes mid-sentence, even if he doesn’t quite cotton on to why. He’s already come to the conclusion that neither of them had been truly trying their hardest during their battle. If they had, he’s almost entirely positive she’d have ripped him to shreds and left him to spend another decade regenerating.
“That one was over the River,” he replies, deciding that it’s not her fault she doesn’t know that they’re facing due east. “I’ll show you the prettier version of it sometime if you remind me.” He’ll darken the sun, remove the danger and leave only the sky and its dozens of mirrored images in the shallow pools below. The assumption that he will see her again comes naturally. This is their second meeting, after all, and he’s no intention of ending this one in a way that precludes a third.
“Did you just come to fight?” Gale asks after a yawn and a shake of his head that banishes the last of the sleep (and a good bit of the weariness) from his mind and face. His blue eyes look back to her curiously and without expectation, as though he will be perfectly satisfied if that is so. And it will, too, though he hopes that a delay will not make her too irritable. Though Gale’s experience with mares is limited, he has found that the more dangerous they are, the more important it is to keep them from being irritated. There’s a reason he brings his sister her favorite fruits, and it is not always motivated by brotherly affection.
“I’ll be good in a few hours, I think, but it’s a much longer walk from the Plains to here than it is by wing.” His blue mouth turns up in amusement at that too-obvious statement. Erne shifts on his back and then takes flight, and Gale ignores the bird’s silent rebuke that at least one of them needs to remain ever-wary in the darkness. “And what about you – still have all the same abilities you had before?”
@[Mazikeen]
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