"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Mazikeen has been restless for the last couple days and she can’t figure out what’s going on. Things have been going good, she thinks. It’s been insanely wonderful having Gale living here, spending as much time with him as she possibly can. Even sleeping next to someone? Incredible, she never knew it could be so comforting. Most of her nightmares leave her alone when he’s there with her.
And sure there’s a not-so-good future looming but she knew this feeling wasn’t anxiety or nerves. She found out what it was like to stress vomit one day while scouting as a wolf during the eclipse and was very sure she’d recognize that feeling if it ever came up again. She knew what the future felt like - that storm of thoughts that consumed her when she wasn’t able to shut out her worries.
This wasn’t that.
Now, it’s late morning on one of the gentler slopes of Hyaline and she’s grazing next to Gale. Next to because she’s already distracted and if he’s any further away she’ll “accidentally” get a good look at him in the sunlight and get more distracted - and while that method of distracting herself from this odd feeling has been very helpful (and very fun), it hasn’t gotten her any closer to figure out what’s changed.
Being close has its own distractions, but at least he's a little out of focus.
Mazikeen gives up on trying to eat after only a few mouthfuls of the autumn grass. When she speaks, her voice is more puzzled than it is concerned. There's simply the need to get the thoughts out from being trapped in her head and see if he has any bright ideas since she has none. “Something feels… off.” Not bad really, just… different enough to notice. She turns her horned head and frowns at her body as if she can see the answer there, but also to demonstrate that she means with herself and not with Gale.
@[Gale] let's just pretend this happens a little later in autumn
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Life in Hyaline is different than Gale had expected, but different in ways that are almost all better than he’d hoped. It is busier here than Islandres, and while the plants are all green and brown, there are many that he has never seen. There so much to see that he has had little time to think - and perhaps that is for the best.
When he is not exploring, he is with Mazikeen, and that part is most definitely better than he’d expected.
Love seems too simple a word to describe the way the world brightens when he sees her, or the warmth in his chest when he wakes curled beside her. Having first met in battle and still considering her at least his equal, Gale delights in their tender moments. He especially enjoys when a wrestling match turns into something more once she’s pinned him - or vice versa - and has been picturing their most recent match as Mazikeen grazes beside him.
When she speaks, he looks up, grass still hanging from his mouth, but he finishes it as he tilts his head in concern. “Did you eat something bad?” Gale asks, remembering her nausea from a few days earlier. Gale’s Healing makes everything palatable, but there are some things that it’s best for him not to eat.
04-22-2021, 01:41 PM (This post was last modified: 04-22-2021, 02:51 PM by Mazikeen.)
Mazikeen
Mazikeen is not an adventurous eater. She eats because she needs to and aside from the plant Gale had shown her on that first trip to Islandres, she has pretty well stuck to what her mom had pointed out was safe to eat when she was a filly and that was that. But she considers the question anyway and in the end, she shakes her head and turns back around to frown at the grass down by her hooves. “No, I haven’t eaten anything different. And it’s… it’s not quite my stomach.” Well it was but it wasn’t? She’d been nauseous but that’s not where it ended.
There’s been a few new sensations introduced to her life lately but the rest had a clear cause, and any discomfort had been fleeting or eclipsed by everything enjoyable. Even though it doesn’t hurt, she wonders if she should go to Selaphiel and see if he can sense death around her.
It’s a morbid thought and one she does not share out loud when it worms into her mind unbidden.
Worried that too much of her concern is showing, she forces a smile when she looks to Gale and tilts her head in an approximation of a shrug. “I’m sure it’s nothing, it’s just been going on for a few days now and I hate not knowing what it is.” Mazikeen had promised herself not to let any discomfort show with Gale, but she’d been thinking emotional discomfort and this was very much physical and it was therefore hopefully safe to talk about.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Gale hasn’t yet sampled everything that grows in Hyaline, but that is only because he’s not found all of the plant life. He’d spent the better part of two years exploring Islandres in a similar way, and the mention of snacks is what had lured him deeper into Taiga, so he’s familiar with stomach pangs.
But it’s not her stomach, Mazikeen says, and Gale frowns.
There are other organs, Gale knows, having Seen them. But he is not Seeing now, lest the Curse learn to See as well, and so all he can do is stare at the white curve of Mazikeen’s barrel. He reaches out slowly, then realizes that might not help her as much as it will reassure him, and stops.
Looking back at her face, he sees the concern for the shortest moment before she brushes it away. He frowns, curious why she might hide it from him, and her casual shrugging away of the issue peaks his curiosity.
“Maybe we could go to Tephra,” he says, “They have a waterfall that fixes everything, and some magicians too.” They could at least confirm that it was nothing, Gale thinks, and perhaps he might see if they can do anything about the Curse. They’ve been asked before, he knows, but time has passed.
“But hey -” he says, bumping against her shoulder playfully. “- at least we know you’re not pregnant!” She’d said winter, Gale remembers this most clearly.
The mention of Tephra, and specifically the waterfall and magicians there, turns Mazikeen’s forced smile into one of curiosity and interest. She’s very glad Gale knows these things - she’d been to Tephra a couple times but her mind had been elsewhere and not on learning about the jungle kingdom. “Oh yeah? That’s a good idea.” Then she’s distracted by what he says next. Pregnant! Wouldn’t that be a trip. At first, she grins back, returning the bump against his navy shoulder with affectionate ease.
But the word sticks in her mind and she stills, replying quietly after a moment in thoughtful silence. “Okay, but… what if… what if I am?” She shifts her stance so she can look at him easier - her orange gaze fixed on him, watching for his reaction. She feels a flutter of anxiety with a dash of excitement at the idea herself… but mostly anxiety because if it’s true they have barely even discussed the idea never mind planned for it to happen. “I was mostly guessing about the whole winter thing - I mean that is when you see pregnant mares, right, and I thought it made sense what with the keeping warm and because pregnancies lasting for more than a few months sounds like some kind of torture but I don’t really know a lot about it…”
Mazikeen tries not to shift where she stands, tries not to give any attention to the new worries that are rising up - like whether Gale will be mad at her for not knowing these things and she had successfully messed up their peace again. Or whether this something that will bring more complications than joy if it’s true. She remains still and feels like she's holding her breath waiting even as she says one more thought out loud. “And I wasn’t always a mare...” She wonders now if it made a difference, the fact that they weren’t always horses. Was timing less important for other species? Did they have different mating seasons and she and Gale had strayed into one? There are absolutely a hundred questions burning in her mind but she stops herself from saying anything more because if she starts talking she’s not entirely sure she’s going to shut up until every single one of them is out.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Mazikeen thinks his idea was a good one, and Gale smiles, pressing his cheek against hers before she pulls away, trying to catch - and missing - a strand of her black-tipped hair between his teeth. He begins to think of the waterfall, and Isilya with her magic birds, and is smiling faintly when his ears flick back to catch the white mare’s next words.
What if?
That’s not a very funny joke, and he frowns and starts to tell her this when he realizes that there’s not any laughter on her face. He’s not sure what is there, and doesn’t have time to parse it out before she’s talking again.
She’d been guessing about the winter thing?
Gale closes his eyes, an attempt to sort through his thoughts without distractions. A great many emotions spin through his head, surrounded by layers of tumultuous possibilities. His face moves occasionally - a frown, a smile, a wince, another smile - but it has been still for some time before Mazikeen breaks the silence and Gale opens his eyes, drawn back to the present.
Gale had thought Mazikeen would know these things, being the one who’d be most responsible at the start of things. He had been clear with her - he’d rather have her to himself in what little time they have. The words that followed hadn’t been ones he can remember saying. He shakes his head slowly, frustration and confusion apparent on his face.
It is a strange combination of sensations, this discomfort with someone he feels so comfortable with. Gale does not like it at all, but he cannot find the words with which to say it, and instead is quiet.
Her interjection - that she hadn’t always been a mare - is something that he’d not considered at all. He flips through the memories (feeling oddly disconnected from the sensual nature of them) and surprises even himself with a snort of laughter at one.
“Can you imagine if you had a human baby?” Gale laughs, shaking his head back and forth. The ridiculousness of it feels almost a relief, but he knows even as he returns his gaze to Mazikeen’s that this is not some outside world thing that can be forgotten as he looks into her orange eyes.
So the laughter slowly fades from his blue face as he meets her gaze, marveling as he always does at the firebright orange, but thinking of less marvelous things. Unaware that the Curse has already begun to affect him, Gale thinks that he has little more than two years left where he can be sure he is himself, not affected by the Others. Two years, that’s enough for a foal to be born, and to grow to what - half the size that Elegance had been? Gale is not sure how fast they grow. Not fast enough.
“Why don’t we ask the magicians?” He finally suggests. His tone is casual, but the faint crease of a frown remains on his brow. “If you’re pregnant, I mean. Not about the timing of things.” Well, he supposes, they could ask the magicians, but that really does seem like something they should have known before risking it, and Gale does have his pride. “Then we can talk about, you know. What if.”
Mazikeen can’t find a smile for the joke because her head is spinning with all the possibilities. A human baby, a lion cub, an osprey egg... How is she going to know what shape she should be in to carry it and what if she chooses wrong? The more she sits with the idea of being pregnant the more sure she is that is what’s happening and the more terrified she grows. The more that anxiety eats away those few changes of excitement.
But she cannot show him her fear so she swallows as much of it down as she can. Only keeping the uncertainty simmering on the surface to see.
He mentions the magicians again and she thinks maybe they’ll be able to tell her what the baby is too. She doesn’t know what he means by they’ll talk afterwards. But she doesn’t want to ask right now - Mazikeen is happy to put off the rising number of questions for that theoretical future.
She wants nothing more than to touch him, to feel some comfort in his presence, but this what if feels like a physical barrier isolating her.
She can't believe she ruined another good day.
“I want to go now.” She says and she hates how small her voice is, hates that she turns her head to the west and away from him because she cannot stand to see that frown or that there’s no comfort to be found in his blue gaze. No scrap of joy at the possibility of a baby. “I need to know.” These words filled with more fire, more certainty. And then, as she grows large, banded wings she adds - still looking to the mountains and not at Gale. “You… you don’t have to come if you don’t want to, though.”You don’t have to be involved. She wants to say this is her fault, even though it isn’t really. Or, at least, it wasn’t only her fault. But if she was pregnant - it was her burden to carry. Literally.
She can’t find her voice to say anything else though so she shuffles her wings and waits to hear his answer.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Gale is upset, and while some small part of him had wanted to blame Mazikeen entirely, he knows that isn’t fair. This is as much his fault - probably more his fault - than hers.
What if there really is a baby? What if he’s really created someone else to hurt?
He remembers watching his father taunt Elio, watching the way his brother’s red blood looked against his red markings through Celina’s eyes. Which would Mazikeen think worse, he wonders: him hurting their child or stealing it away entirely? Those are surely the only options, and he’s frowning as he’s considering them, hardly even paying attention to Mazikeen as he looks right at her.
When she speaks - she wants to find out immediately - Gale thinks he can hear some of his own worry reflected in her voice.
How selfish he’s been, he realizes suddenly, as if she is not the one who will eventually suffer the most. She’s noticed it too, which stings even as she tells him he doesn’t have to go to Tephra. Does she not want him involved at all? Gale would understand entirely, yet how does she think such a thing possible? Will she break her promise to him if there’s a child?
She should, Gale knows; that would be the best choice.
But, the selfish part of him pipes up: what if there is not a child? What if this is just an ache in her belly, something the magicians can heal in an eyeblink?
Perhaps he has not ruined everything yet, so he reaches out to brush his muzzle against hers, and manages to distill all the words in his head to only a handful, and says them with a bittersweet smile.
“I would like to be wherever you are, for as long as you will have me.”
The brush of his muzzle against hers and the words he says dissolves the wall she had been attempting to build which might have shielded her if he hated her for this situation. Mazikeen takes a step to follow his muzzle with hers, prolonging the contact, and then she brushes her red-marked nose against his cheek when she replies with absolute honesty “I always want you with me, Gale. Every moment I can get with you I’ll take.”
She inhales, steeling herself for what’s coming but feeling better now that she knows he’ll be with her. She should have just said that she needed him to come with her, of course - should’ve just said ‘let’s go’ instead of giving him the chance to opt-out. It felt like a kindness to give him the option even though if he had stayed behind she would have been hurt. But that didn’t matter now. He was coming with her.
So she offers him a small smile as she readies to take off. “Maybe it’s just a deeper bruise than I’m used to from our last wrestling match. And if it’s not… we’ll figure it out. It’ll be okay.” Mazikeen is not sure she believes it but they’re the words that she needs to hear and so she thinks maybe he does too.
---
They find Isilya, conscious but still where she’s been for the last few years - part of her body enclosed within a tree in the Tephra jungle. There are two young trees growing from hers which distracts Mazikeen for a moment before they get to the purpose of their visit.
She tells them Mazikeen is indeed pregnant, tells them the babies (twins - the word feels like it drains the blood from Maze’s entire body) were conceived as ospreys (all the laughter they shared that time feels very far away now) but they are going to be shapeshifters too and it won’t matter what shape she’s in when spring comes.
The horned mare doesn’t hear any more of the conversation, doesn’t know if Gale asks anything else from the kind magician that still calls him Blue. There’s a flower-bird given to them at the end, if they need help in the future it will let Isilya know, and Mazikeen needs a nudge to get moving again.
---
It takes half the flight for the white noise in her brain to die down enough for thoughts to leak in again, and in the other half, Mazikeen finds a steely determination to not give in to her fear. It was going to be okay. She is going to be an awful mother and she’ll be so fat this winter she won’t even be able to patrol properly but it’ll be fine. They can come up with a plan.
She knows she should be worried about the Curse, knows she should probably feel more concern about the foals and their safety than she does about Gale. But she doesn’t. She hasn’t even met them yet so how can whatever love she’ll feel for them compare to what surges in her heart when she looks at him now? She feels the same thing she had felt the day she had stood in the black waters off of Islandres and made the promise that helped damn her - she wants to protect him from what he might do. The concern about potential victims is there but it’s that heart of his she really wants to shield, that kindness in him which had inspired her to even want to try to help.
He won't care in the end but even if there will be a fraction of the Gale she fell in love with still in there, she'll do what it takes to not let that piece feel pain or guilt.
“This doesn’t change anything.” Mazikeen finally finds words when they’re back in Hyaline, having landed in a secluded spot in the autumn woods so they could talk freely, golden leaves littering the ground beneath them. Her voice doesn’t waver in its certainty because she does believe what she’s saying when she fixes her fierce gaze on Gale and wants for him to believe it too. “Not about me wanting you with me every second, not about my promise. Okay? It doesn’t change a damn thing.”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
She does not resent him, it seems, and as she returns his touch Gale feels a little like he’s just taken a step back from a ledge he can’t remember climbing toward. Or perhaps around, and he smiles thoughtfully when she proposes the culprit of her illness being a bruise.
Not-stomach pain and nausea aren’t symptoms of any illness Gale knows, but then Gale knows very little about illness. After all, some subjects are a lower priority for a self healing stallion to learn. He nods, and follows her to Tephra, where even a magician within a tree is not enough to distract Gale from the weight of the knowledge she shares.
Twins, she tells them, there will be two of them
Not the Curse that killed his father, she tells him, something different.
He feels as though he’s inside a cloud, and everything around him is faint and muffled and distant. It’s shock, though he doesn’t have a name for it, and he finds that as he lets it overwhelm him, he feels a little farther away from true panic. Eventually Gale closes his eyes somewhere over Taiga, and it is the Curse that is not his father’s Curse who opens them.
His landing is rough, having only partial knowledge of how to do so, but he recovers quickly, shaking his pale mane out before he looks up at the sound of Mazikeen’s voice.
The words she says would have meant much to Gale. They’d have comforted him, reassured him, given hi mthe courage to tell her what Isilya said, that he’s no idea the effects this Curse might have on him, that perhaps he has no time at all, that the best thing he can do for them - all three of them now - is to leave now and never come back.
But the Curse had heard what Isilya had told them, that there were two strong children growing inside Mazikeen. They were Gale’s children, yes, but they might someday be his. Mazikeen is also very pretty, and the Curse has not had fun in such a long time. So he puts on his very best impression of Gale, one that is magically uncanny its its accuracy.
“I bet it’ll change how we wrestle.”
There’s a playful challenge in the way his head tilts after this, contradicting her claim that nothing will change with her pregnancy.
