Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
When Mazikeen denies that she’s responsible for the black wings, Gale frowns at her in the darkness. He’d been amused by the thought of them as a joke, some sort of tangible illusion. Mazikeen is smiling, and now Gale is uncertain if it’s at the joke she’s just made or because she is pushing the lie about not having created these wings even farther.
Perhaps both, he is thinking, when she steps a little closer. Gale is unbothered by her nearness (and would have gladly let her have a closer look), but the clear curiosity he can see with these new eyes is worrisome. She promises again that it’s not her, and the worry in the pit of his belly grows tighter still.
If she’s not doing this, that means that he is.
And if he’s shifting…
Gale does not want to think about what that means. Because he does have a bit of shapeshifter in him, and the familial susceptibility to the Curse that comes with it. The Curse should have ended, burned up in the fire with his parents, and yet…
“I hope not,” he replies, and though it is difficult to tell that his smile has fallen away in the darkness, his voice is laden with worry. He doesn’t immediately elaborate, because he is not yet ready to crush the friendship they’re building with the knowledge that with this shifting will eventually come other, far less pleasant things. The Curse takes a long time to sink in, Gale remembers; he has several good years ahead of him yet. But what about when it ends? What then? He can’t be killed; the volcano had proven that. But he can’t be left free, either. Gale mentally shivers at the idea of being locked away for eternity, and when that shiver ends, so do the wings.
“Shifting is not a good thing in my family,” he finally continues, a moment before Mazikeen grows her own pair of angled black wings. They look striking against her pale sides. The weight of his earlier realization still has not quite sunk in, and the uncertainty of it leaves him unsettled, with his heart beating quickly, and his breath tight in his throat. The undercurrent of excitement worries him the most, that brief realization that – at least for a while – he will be incredibly gifted. Worries him because it and yet calls to him most strongly, a glowing beacon in what has just become an unspeakably dark future. There’s a heat too, like lightning in his veins, and it only grows stronger as he mirrors her earlier interest in seeing the other’s wings. Mirrors the step closer too, even if it means their breath now mingles in the cool winter air, and only barely refrains from learning through touch if her black wings are exactly like Erne’s sized up to fit her equine frame.
“They look very nice,” he says instead, and even though worry still darkens his blue eyes, there is honesty in his voice when he speaks.
Inherently curious despite his current inner turmoil, Gale takes a half-step closer, and finds that his heart pounds even louder. It drowns out some of the worry, he finds, and says with a small but real smile: “At this rate, our rematch might not even happen before the next Alliance.” He raises his brows, leans in closer, and says just above a whisper, “You need a bath. I’m not getting risking getting any of that…ew. On me.” Glancing back at the blood and not-blood streaked across what’s visible of her white sides while he spoke was a bit disconcerting, and despite his playful tone suspects she might like a rest of her own as well.
@[Mazikeen]
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