Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
It’s good to know she won’t eat him in his sleep, Gale thinks to himself, and smiles at his internal joke that follows her admitting to a dislike of meat. “Erne will be relieved,” he says, deciding to share the joke with her before she admits to never having had fruit before.
“In that case, I know just the thing.” He turns his head, looking back at the feathered wings. Maintaining them is not taxing, but Gale is not yet certain about this ability. He pictures himself without them, and just like that they are gone. “Ha!” He exclaims aloud at his very first successful shifting, and glances up at Mazikeen with a victorious smile. “This way!” The enthusiasm is clear in his voice, and the brindle stallion moves forward, past Mazikeen toward the heart of his tropical island resort.
He could have stepped a bit more to the side, and not brushed against her for a moment. But he didn’t, not until he’s confirmed that along her skin hums a current that causes his own heart to stutter and his blood to quicken. Gale is grateful for the darkness for just a moment, but he soon glances over his shoulder and whistles a challenge to the white mare.
The brindle stallion does not know Mazikeen well enough to gauge what she considers to be entertainment. If it’s not a race through an unfamiliar meadow, then a forest, then another meadow, she’ll be sorely disappointed.
Gale, however, is panting happily as he draws up at the shore of the heart of Islandres, and he turns to face Mazikeen with a broad grin on his face. The adrenaline still courses through his limber body, and as he steps onto the tidal fed riverbed the mud feels cool against his pasterns. As he’d suspected, a few water lilies lie scattered on the earth, anchored in place with their long roots. “Easiest to get when the tide is out,” Gale says as he tosses some in her direction. (he doesn’t notice that his flat teeth turn to something more serrated to better sever the thick roots, and they’ve changed back by the time he rejoins the white mare on the bank.
“Come back in summer and the selection will better. There’s also, ya know, grass.” Gale is not sure if he says this to tender her expectation of the water lilly bulbs or in the hopes that she’ll come back, but it works for both. Very effective, he decides, and takes a mouthful of his own.
@[Mazikeen]
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