Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
His sleep is fitful, plagued with dreams and ending with him waking sweat-soaked and terrified, his jaws clenched shut to keep from screaming.
Over time, his nightmares have grown more specific, his general terrors replaced by the bits of memory from his time Cursed. They are like Visions seen through his manipulation, almost different enough to seem the life of another man. Almost.
But he’d seen his navy claws sink into the Malik’s belly back, seen his face reflected back from Mazikeen’s red orange gaze as she stalked closer, murder in her eyes. He’d watched Ryatah die, and tonight he wakes from dreaming of it again.
Gale gasps, shaking his head and sending his mane flying. It is no longer the head of a monstrous beast, his sharp beak is no longer slick with bile, his throat is parched instead of coated in wet hot blood. Catching his breath is a lengthy process, and each beat of his heart feels like an anvil falling between his ears. The stars overhead are so bright they hurt his eyes, and the low rush of the tide is deafeningly loud.
As the dream fades, so does his sensitivity to his environment. The stars recede to distant pinpricks, and the tide is once more softly hushing as it slides against the black sand. The late autumn breeze lifts Gale’s white mane from his sweating neck and back, but it is too warm to feel refreshing. He sidesteps into the sea, graceful despite his exhaustion, but that, too, is warm. Taking a breath, Gale plunges deeper into the water, hoping that a swim will clear his head and let him get a few more moments of sleep before sunrise.
No luck.
Hours later he is still walking the beach, having been unable to clear the image of the white mare from his mind with any of his usual tactics. Instead, he’d tried thinking of something new, like what to do about Islandres being empty and the Chiefs he’d appointed having vanished. Had he done it? Killed the pair of young women and the rest of the reclusive residents? It was possible, he admits to himself.
There are a great many ways he might find out if that is true, but the easiest is to see if anyone remains on the island. Gale raises his head and calls out. He feels the lightning dancing in his throat as he does, and knows his dreams will be the worse for the use of magic. But it aids his calls, so that anyone on Islandres might hear the summons for what it is.
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