[private] but your savage love

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Even Gale, far from socially observant, can see the way the name of their shared ancestor affects the golden girl. Did she think she was an only child, he wonders? His attention wanders until he’s drawn back by the name of the redwood forest. Gale has never been to Taiga. He has flown over it and along its coasts, but he has never set his hooves on the thick carpet of pine and misty ferns or stood beneath the enormous trees. He’s considered it since learning Yanhua lives there, but the brindle stallion is reluctant to leave his home in the darkness even for the chance to meet his brother. She’s seen him, his sister offers, and Gale tilts his head. He is curious, but also apprehensive. He has pieced together a rough timeline of the Curse’s affect on Wolfbane, and is sure that by the time this younger sister had been conceived, his father would have been well in the throes of it. What sort of ill memory might she have? IN the end, it is not something that startles Gale; their father has always been a mighty warrior, and that his strength and fury might so mark the earth itself fills his chest with the same warm pride that suffuses Aela’s (if for a different reason entirely). “Wolfbane.” Gale replies. His own memories of the striped stallion are fragmented, as are all memories of his life before this one. They consist only of sight and emotion – he cannot recall a single sound, scent, or taste of his childhood. But he has seen Wolfbane, seen him most every day of his young life, for the handsome young general always made time for his children even amidst his other duties. Those memories are full of love and warmth and belonging, and he is smiling as he recalls them: his first flight, looking up at the stars, racing through the narrow red rock canyons, playing hide-and-peek around the cacti with his many siblings. “It is good to meet you, Aela.” He tells her, his smile softening on his lips, though remaining in his eyes. “He was a good father when…when he was himself.” He thinks it important that she know this because it is also important to Gale, a reminder that he was not the child of the Curse that ruined his father. Soon, of course, he will feel quite differently.  @[Aela]