Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
He watches curiously as Ciri looks down at the dying mare. In the red light of the moon and her stars, Gale can see the reflection of the lilac creature, and he watches the blood bubble from her nose and mouth until Ciri answers in the affirmative.
She has watched someone die before, she says, and Gale rifles through the memories that come to her as conformation. A shame; he is sure she’d have had a more delicious reaction if this were the first death she’d witnessed. Still, she is soft-hearted and when he feels her struggling again against his magic he releases her just to see what that might make her do.
He is hoping for another attack, and is disappointed.
Will you bring her back, Ciri asks, and Gale looks back down at the dying mare. Extending a foreleg, he kicks at her side, but there is not enough strength in her body even to wince, and he looks up - unamused.
“I hadn’t planned on it,” he replies with a shrug. The magic required to do so isn’t a simple working, though he’s no intention of letting Ciri know as much. He’d had to recover from her resurrection much as she had done, far up in the caves of Hyaline where no light or sound could reach him.
She asks what it will take to do so, and Gale frowns again - had Ciri known the purple mare? And what does she think she has to offer? Gale asks, sounding skeptical but feeling inexplicably curious:
“What could you possibly offer in exchange that I couldn’t just take if I wanted?”
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