Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
She looks nearly as dazed as Gale feels, light-headed but also wonderfully happy. He laughs at her whispered suggestion, and though he makes no effort to keep her from moving away he is not shy as they meander through Hyaline.
They climb uphill, and Gale stays near, brushing against her side, her shoulder, her hip. Never unobtrusively, for even as he takes in the land that Mazikeen shows him he never looks away from her for very long. He touches her to be sure she is real, and she always feels so wonderful, so he stumbles quite a bit more than usual as they wind their way up into the foothills.
He likes the forest she shows him, and wanders between trees of a kind he has never seen before as Mazikeen tells him of snow and spring. He pauses to look at a cluster of bluebells, but is distracted by the white mare. He very much likes the forest, and the privacy it gives them.
They’re happy for a while, wandering through the mountains, but there comes a time when she falls quiet, and Gale tilts his head curiously at the careful tone she chooses.
He’d not intended to leave her side for a moment, but he knows immediately what she’s referring to. Islandres. It seems that Gale has driven away most of those residents that had not fled the Monsters, leaving the black-sand island all but empty.
“I always thought someday I’d pass on responsibility for Islandres to a child of mine,” the brindle says, looking toward the mountains, beyond which lie his distant home. It had always been a bit of a silly dream, like resurrecting the old days of blood inheritance. Sillier now, and he shakes his head wryly at the thought as he continues to look at the horizon.
@[Mazikeen]
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Gale