[open] your string of lights is still bright to me

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you She comes nearer, and the gentle waves of color that emanate from them both reach across the space that remains between. It’s heat, Gale has learned, and it is carried away by the cool air when it gusts around them. Has anyone asked the sun nicely? Gale laughs aloud at the absurdity of the suggestion, but that doesn’t stop him from immediately doing that very thing. He asks very nicely for the sun to come back, but after a few pregnant seconds of darkness, he shrugs his shoulders in a gesture of futility even as he smiles. When she brings up the eclipse again, this time in far less a playful manner, the smile beings to fade. He has a great many thoughts about why the eclipse has lasted this long, but no way of knowing which of them is right – or if any of them are. “Probably the monsters,” he answers with a shrug, which takes with it the last of the humor from his expression. “They appeared right after the Alliance.” Gale continues, thinking of the darkness that rose around the shadow creature and has never released its grip. Would this have happened if he’d won? Gale shakes his head, displacing his long white forelock and along with it the uncomfortable thought. There is no changing the past.  “The darkness hasn’t been entirely bad.” He says instead. “None of the mainlanders have managed to start a war since this all started.” She’s a mainlander, Gale knows, and so he tries to make it clear he’s only joking with a quickly-returning smile. @[Hourglass]