Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
She does not resent him, it seems, and as she returns his touch Gale feels a little like he’s just taken a step back from a ledge he can’t remember climbing toward. Or perhaps around, and he smiles thoughtfully when she proposes the culprit of her illness being a bruise.
Not-stomach pain and nausea aren’t symptoms of any illness Gale knows, but then Gale knows very little about illness. After all, some subjects are a lower priority for a self healing stallion to learn. He nods, and follows her to Tephra, where even a magician within a tree is not enough to distract Gale from the weight of the knowledge she shares.
Twins, she tells them, there will be two of them
Not the Curse that killed his father, she tells him, something different.
He feels as though he’s inside a cloud, and everything around him is faint and muffled and distant. It’s shock, though he doesn’t have a name for it, and he finds that as he lets it overwhelm him, he feels a little farther away from true panic. Eventually Gale closes his eyes somewhere over Taiga, and it is the Curse that is not his father’s Curse who opens them.
His landing is rough, having only partial knowledge of how to do so, but he recovers quickly, shaking his pale mane out before he looks up at the sound of Mazikeen’s voice.
The words she says would have meant much to Gale. They’d have comforted him, reassured him, given hi mthe courage to tell her what Isilya said, that he’s no idea the effects this Curse might have on him, that perhaps he has no time at all, that the best thing he can do for them - all three of them now - is to leave now and never come back.
But the Curse had heard what Isilya had told them, that there were two strong children growing inside Mazikeen. They were Gale’s children, yes, but they might someday be his. Mazikeen is also very pretty, and the Curse has not had fun in such a long time. So he puts on his very best impression of Gale, one that is magically uncanny its its accuracy.
“I bet it’ll change how we wrestle.”
There’s a playful challenge in the way his head tilts after this, contradicting her claim that nothing will change with her pregnancy.
@[Mazikeen]
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