everything looks worse at night, i think i'm overthinking

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Spring had been slow to come to Islandres this year, but there is no sign of that as Gale makes his way through the colorful paradise of his homeland. He can hear the soft croak of frogs as they sing from the damp hollows of the trees, and the whir of insects as they move from one impossibly colorful flower to the next. A jewel-bright butterfly floats across the thin deer-trail that Gale follows, flapping lavender-and-blue wings before disappearing into the shadow of the trees. The wind that carried the butterfly is thick with the scent of salt, and it tugs at Gale’s white mane with sea-damp fingers. Should he head down to the beach for a swim? Or continue on this path, which he is mostly sure leads to a grapple grove? The navy blue stallion pauses, considering. He stays there for several weeks. Long enough that the lightning-that-is-his-magic was forced to act for itself, to restore his drought-dry body. The lightning flickers across his skin, slowly at first, emanating from his closed eyes. Just enough to keep his heart pumping, his lungs rising, his blood flowing. Just enough to keep him alive. But the lightning does not come alone. (If it had, perhaps Gale might have remained there - frozen for centuries in eternal indecision) With it comes the black memories of the creature that had once worn his skin, inextricably linked to the magic of the lightning that had only intended to heal him. When Gale comes back to himself he is screaming. Opening his eyes to an empty path and not the broken blue-and-black body of a child cuts the sound off in his throat, but he gasps for breath in the silent morning sunshine. Who had the girl been, and why had Mazikeen killed her? No. No, he doesn’t want to think about it. Thinking about it will mean more memories, and he can already feel the bile writhing in his stomach, can still smell the blood pouring from the girl’s slit throat and see the afterglow of Mazikeen’s orange eyes. A long bird begins to sing. After a time, others join, and the frogs take up their chorus. Gale turns and begins to walk toward the beach for a swim.

[Malik]

Malik is perched in a palm tree, the shape of the iridescent black-on-black magpie he wears in striking contrast to the pale lilac and mint green leaves of the foliage. He watches the navy stallion step onto the beach, then turns his blue-and-orange gaze to up the osprey that has begun to circle far overhead. Malik recognizes the osprey as his father’s companion Erne, and breathes a quiet sigh of relief as the bird rises higher, catching the winds that would carry him to his nest on Islandres’ northern shore.

He’s been watching the bird for weeks now, having been unable to find his father (and being unwilling to venture farther into the jungle than he can see from the beach). The bird had returned to this same part of the island too many time to be coincidence, so Malik had been certain that his father was nearby.

His suspicions are confirmed, and some of the adrenaline that courses through his veins is the thrill of that small victory. Most though, is fear and anticipation. He takes a deep breath, resettles his iridescent wings, and soars to the ground, shifting to his equine shape just as his hooves land on the damp sand.

It’s an impressive move, one that requires impeccable timing, and Malik manages it with near perfection. He’s carefully watching Gale, hoping that the older stallion had seen it and realized that Malik is no longer a defenseless child, but a grown man ready to face his fears.

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you He turns toward the flicker of motion, thinking for just a moment that Erne had returned. But the black winged shape becomes a black horse instead of his osprey companion, executing a neat landing and finishing with a bicolored glare that Gale imagines might turn water to ice if properly focused. Grateful that he is not aquatic, but sure he deserves whatever menace drives this unknown stranger, Gale does not try to lighten the mood. Instead he turns so that he can properly face the black horse, and inspects him with a sharp blue gaze. Two sharp horns, the left cracked open to reveal a glowing core. Black hide and black hair, with glowing markings and feathers along his forehand. It is the eyes that worry him most, eyes that are simultaneously familiar but inexplicable. Gale’s eyes trace the lines of the stallion’s face, attempting to age him. Not a child, but not old enough that immortality has begun to still him. He knows who this is but… “What is…” His voice catches, the question feeling an impossible one to ask his son: “What is your name?”

[Malik]

Malik, taught twice over how to read expressions, struggles with the one in front of him now.

Is that recognition? It is certainly not the blazing insanity that he’d expected. There are no oozing shadows, no flickering lightning, no scent of old blood. The face that Malik sees is a familiar one, but he has never seen it wearing the emotions that it does now.

There are lines in the navy stallion’s face that look like sadness, and when he asks Malik what his name is, there is regret in his voice. This is not the man that had raised him in Hyaline, Malik realizes, and that is made even clearer when Gale asks him for his name.

“Malik.” He answers, the word automatic and abrupt.

“You don’t remember?” He says, and though he phrases it as a question, there is doubt in his mismatched gaze, and no small amount of contempt on his dark face. “That seems very…convenient.”

Gale is back on Islandres, the rumors had said, and Malik knows them to be true. There are no residents to torture here like there had been in Tephra, and Malik has often wondered what keeps a bloodthirsty shapeshifting monster from roving beyond the confines of an island.

No longer being a bloodthirsty shapeshifting monster would certainly explain it.

But how? The last time the Curse had been broken, an entire kingdom had gone up in flames. It had killed his grandfather, Malik knows, and yet Gale looks whole and unaffected.

Very unaffected, now that Malik looks closer. There are no golden scars on the stallion’s navy hide, glowing indicators of wounds and battles, no white-feathered forelimbs with their crimson red marking. No curling white horns, no hint of shifting or magic at all.

“Tell me what you do remember.” Malik finally says, and though he means it to sound like a firm demand, he can feel the uncertainty in voice. Perhaps Gale will not. “Everything.”

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you The desire to shrink away, to become something small and incapable of judgment. He feels that, the compulsion to prioritize himself, and once he is able to name it, he finds that it is easier to do away with it. Gale meant what he had said to Casimira: he wants to make things right. Perhaps this is his first chance to do so, though he had not expected it to come so quickly. He is wondering how to begin when Malik accuses him of convenient amnesia, and Gale’s eyes widen in surprise. Well, not a ridiculous assumption, he realizes; it does sound like something a monster might have done. His son - Malik - is right to be wary. What else has Gale done to make him so? The guilt sits uncomfortably in his chest, but he knows better than to linger too long on the question, lest he summon the lightning and the memories. Instead, he focuses on doing his best to answer Malik’s question, telling him what he does remember. Mazikeen was pregnant with twins, the magician had told them, and they were due in late spring. He’d been in the forest, and then Tephra, and there had been a kelpie in Hyaline’s lake. The order of the memories is scrambled, but he details them all save one. Some things are not for children, even children that are fully grown. “You were supposed to go to my brothers,” he finishes, and though he knows there is little hope that the man in front of him had a happy childhood raised in the brotherly Isle or bustling Taiga. Surely no child raised by Yanhua or Nashua would have such jagged edges to their eyes.