04-05-2021, 02:47 PM
Mazikeen
Mazikeen watches him shift into a pastel osprey and cannot decide if he’s teasing her or not. While she’s trying to figure that out, her eyes catch on the bright red marking on one of his wings and her mind turns to white noise for a moment. She averts her eyes quickly, does her best not to look at it directly, and welcomes the fog in her mind that saves her from thinking about how she’d left such a small mark on him compared to the invisible one he’d left on her.
Good to know her instincts aren’t useless but she would not have necessarily minded if they had been wrong this time.
When he speaks, Mazikeen closes her eyes against the pain that rises up. She doesn’t have to wonder at the cause. It hurts because this is (part of) what she’s missed. Hurts because she knows it isn’t going to last - it can’t - but she also knows immediately that she’s going to answer his question. She’s going to delay watching this tiny sliver of peace burst into flames because she’s weak and selfish and stupid and will take all the good memories she can get. Even if they’re just chatting about shifting.
Sabal has told her that having feelings doesn’t make her weak but this does feel like weakness. Wanting just another minute of this normal conversation before it crumbles again.
Because it will. She doesn’t trust this rather normal conversation - his last visit to Hyaline had started out this way too and then the ground had shifted from underneath her. The talkative, curious Gale that she had gone from wanting to crush to wanting to spend as much time with as she could. The one she thought she could trade questions with all day, the one who made her laugh and who she enjoyed trying to make laugh in return.
When she opens her eyes again, she has a vision of launching off of this pine and gripping Gale in her black talons and giving him a good shake while demanding to know what the hell he’s getting out of this game he’s playing with her. The feeling inside of her reminds her of what she felt with Firion, that there are rules she doesn't understand but everyone else does and she being made a fool of.
In the end, all she does is ruffle her feathers a little - stretching out a large black-tipped wing to look at it before focusing back on the osprey. “I don’t know the name of it, I’ve never seen one in the wild. Something prehistoric, I think. A lot of the new animals I can shift into are… larger than the ones that exist now. Wilder, in a way.” The bizarre versions of lions and bears and birds that were close to the species she knew and had been practicing all her life, but entirely off at the same time.
This is her chance to ask him what he wants, but instead she says something else - again trying for a carefully neutral tone, though a note of praise sneaks in. “You’re getting good.”
Good to know her instincts aren’t useless but she would not have necessarily minded if they had been wrong this time.
When he speaks, Mazikeen closes her eyes against the pain that rises up. She doesn’t have to wonder at the cause. It hurts because this is (part of) what she’s missed. Hurts because she knows it isn’t going to last - it can’t - but she also knows immediately that she’s going to answer his question. She’s going to delay watching this tiny sliver of peace burst into flames because she’s weak and selfish and stupid and will take all the good memories she can get. Even if they’re just chatting about shifting.
Sabal has told her that having feelings doesn’t make her weak but this does feel like weakness. Wanting just another minute of this normal conversation before it crumbles again.
Because it will. She doesn’t trust this rather normal conversation - his last visit to Hyaline had started out this way too and then the ground had shifted from underneath her. The talkative, curious Gale that she had gone from wanting to crush to wanting to spend as much time with as she could. The one she thought she could trade questions with all day, the one who made her laugh and who she enjoyed trying to make laugh in return.
When she opens her eyes again, she has a vision of launching off of this pine and gripping Gale in her black talons and giving him a good shake while demanding to know what the hell he’s getting out of this game he’s playing with her. The feeling inside of her reminds her of what she felt with Firion, that there are rules she doesn't understand but everyone else does and she being made a fool of.
In the end, all she does is ruffle her feathers a little - stretching out a large black-tipped wing to look at it before focusing back on the osprey. “I don’t know the name of it, I’ve never seen one in the wild. Something prehistoric, I think. A lot of the new animals I can shift into are… larger than the ones that exist now. Wilder, in a way.” The bizarre versions of lions and bears and birds that were close to the species she knew and had been practicing all her life, but entirely off at the same time.
This is her chance to ask him what he wants, but instead she says something else - again trying for a carefully neutral tone, though a note of praise sneaks in. “You’re getting good.”
@[Gale]