"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
Gale started under neon lights, then it all got dark i only know how to go too far
The disgust on her face is not unfamiliar, but it does not occur to awkward Gale for a moment that the source is something as simple as having spoken in circles and not answering her question. He has always been a bumbling socialite, being prone to getting lost in his own thoughts, and he had just been trying to scare her off, so some amount of disdain is to be expected. But he is not without shame entirely, and he looks away, cheeks flushing invisibly below his navy hide.
She proposes drowning him, and though Gale does not look back at her, the words are met with narrowed eyes and a long moment of silence. He’s not immediately verbally responding this time either, but at least he is giving an indicator that he had heard her. His expression remains pensive, and just before it becomes uncomfortably stagnant, he nods decisively
“You could try,” he says, and there is something encouraging in the way he now lifts his brows and nods, as though he would not contest her efforts to pull him into the sea. Gale does not think that he has drowned before, but he chooses not to share this as he meets Adria’s gaze again.
There is no one here, she confirms, but his plans for deep jungles have been subsumed by her earlier offer. Surely the Curse’s return will be slowed by a drowned host. Will he keep drowning, he wonders? Or will it be like the lava, and he will only remember waking? He shivers at the thought, and then does his best to shake it off.
She suggests that he grow gills or swim away, neither choice the one she’d dangled earlier. Gale frowns, and asks with concern: “What happened to being sucked into the abyss?”
Adria’s expression was a storm of emotion, flickering through her yellow-gold eyes the longer she pinned Gale to one spot. He was maddening.
Then again, she only had herself to blame for letting him get under scales. Tsking aloud, Adria finally tossed her head aside at his question. She wasn’t out to necessarily kill him, truly… mostly she was threatening to push him down to the bottom. That was all.
Whatever happened afterwards was left to the will of Lanmè A, or the Heart of the Sea. Adria had been taught the ocean was like a magic fate: it could swallow a creature whole then spit it out safely, or drag it down and smother the life out of it. Could she kill? No. Could Lanmè A? Savagely.
Adria absolved herself of guilt if something violent happened here, between herself and the strange brindled stallion.
“Do you really desire to invoke the wrath of my powers?” She folded her ears, pausing to float among the waves.
Her cheek tilted - just enough that the slender, graceful lines of her profile would catch the sun’s light perfectly, studying him across the pool of seawater. He’d told her to leave, but she refused. She suggested he go as well, yet here the blue horse stood, defiant. Maybe even hopeful, she considered as her lips pursed into a frown.
“Will you fight me?” The Nereid asked him quietly, hovering on the edge of a decision.
Oh my love, don't forsake me; Take what the water gave me
Gale started under neon lights, then it all got dark i only know how to go too far
He is frustrating her. Gale has realized this, but even his corrective efforts appear a failure as she scoffs and turns away. This is the longest conversation with someone else that he has had in years, and he thinks that there are few ways that it could be going any worse. She’s no longer looking at him, but instead out at the place where Loess had been. She has scales now, he realizes. Perhaps they’d appeared as progressively as the water that now laps at his chest?
He hastily tries to recall exactly what he had said, but is distracted by stray thoughts about better avenues to get her to leave, and ways he might get her to leave him alone so he could figure out a plan. He gets lost in those thoughts and is pulled out only when she turns back to him and speaks, the movement one that he sees from the corner of his eye. Shoving away the rest of his thoughts, Gale reassures himself that at least they aren’t fighting.
And then she mentions the wrath of her powers.
Gale resigns himself to the consequences of his actions, and turns his blue gaze back to hers. It is then that she baits him, tilting her head so that the dawn light catches the edge of her face and turns her eye to molten gold. The sea mare knows what she is doing, which fascinates Gale. Is this a tactic, he wonders? An attempt to disarm him before even allowing him to answer her question?
Now that she’s drawn his attention, Gale finds it hard to look away. He inspects each opalescent scale of Adria’s face, traces the slope of her straight nose, then allows his electric gaze to wander further along what parts of her back remain above the water, and he idly wonders if she can feel the lightning that follows his gaze. Is this the wrath of her powers, he wonders? Is this how the seahorses catch the eye of their prey before dragging them down? He’s never been the target of such a drowning before - too easily distracted, even from a pretty face.
Should he focus now, he wonders? Should he concentrate on not allowing himself to be distracted so that she can drown him? But what if she’s not about to drown him? The confusion darkens his face but he does not turn away. He Looks elsewhere instead, to where the oil-black darkness stirs at the internal discord, his eyes never moving from her face. Gale does not understand why he has been granted such a long reprieve from his darkness, but the reminder of it is sudden and sobering.
Will you fight me, the nereid asks? “Non, bèl.” Gale answers, his voice equally soft.
It has been some time since he attempted the nereid’s speech, but nearly a decade of living beside them had made picking up a few words inevitable. Enough words, he hopes, to assure Adria that he is appreciative of her beauty, and that he knows what he is asking for when he speaks again.
“But the abyss, I would like that.” There is the shortest of pauses, and then he adds, with a gentle dip of his head so that his lips touch the salt water: “Please.”
Adria almost did, actually. When the islander’s language switched from common and he told her "no", Adria considered letting go of the waves and swimming away, because then she would’ve not only been unfair but a traitor to her kind.
No one spoke the language by chance. He was as much her friend as he was an enemy to Adria, at that moment. A complete mystery save for the little hint of something sinister now and then, when his skin sparkled with those dangerous bolts of lightning.
She quickly considered their brief interaction, then shrugged.
“So be it.” The Nereid studied him.
He looked crestfallen. The deep blue of his skin cast a dark shadow over the risen waves, and Adria noted how the white slashes of his bright markings reminded her of the sharks. She forced herself to remember the ridge of bristling hair down his neck, even as she rose above the quick-churning waves. It would not help her to sleep if she forgot the face of a victim.
Perhaps the grace of the sea would help him forget what happened next, Adria hoped. It’d been some time since the Nereid had earnestly called on her powers, (the last being her encounter with another perceived threat to Ischia’s shores) but the currents of her magical source flowed steady as ever. A twist of water bending was all it took.
The last thing she remembered seeing was the white-brindled stallion disappearing into a swirling maw, and then the world was silent - all but for the sound of churning waves, slowly returning to their place.
Oh my love, don't forsake me; Take what the water gave me
