05-09-2021, 02:38 PM
Mazikeen
Mazikeen had been giving Gale space - she’s been giving everyone space. She’s retreated into herself, ever-restless with the growing children, and returned to her habit of wearing herself out until she is forced to sleep.
There's an ache deep inside her when Gale is not beside her when she does sleep, and she wrestles with the selfishness of wanting him when it's her fault he's not there in the first place. When she had bargained for days she had not thought about how he’d be spending them sleeping, nor had she thought that they’d be spending them apart. But she doesn’t know how to ask for his company when he has so little time to himself, doesn’t know how to ask if he wants her with him when he’s standing there, waiting for the night to fall, or to tell him that she still wants every second. So she leaves him alone and spends her days wishing he’d find her because she refuses to make him uncomfortable by openly seeking him out.
Openly, because most of her days and nights are spent following him. Like they’re back on Islandres and she’s a hunter, a spy, and it is beginning to drive her crazy just as it had then.
She had traded her usual large predatory forms for something smaller this morning. As a black pine marten, she had just lept from a tree and landed in the snow when she hears his voice. Mazikeen freezes, uncertain - it’s still early enough in the day that she has no idea who it is that’s speaking.
Does it matter?
She's been heard and she won't retreat. So she shifts, becoming herself - this time with striped hawk wings at her sides. The eight claw marks on her shoulders are pink and healing but she’s still ashamed of them. Ashamed of how weak she had been, how she hadn’t hidden her pain well enough from Gale.
And she also feels like she’s twice her normal size and it’s comforting to have the wings there to conceal what she’s sure are obscenely bloated sides (though really, it is not as bad as she thinks).
Her voice is cautious and concerned when she moves from the shadows of the trees, her curving horns casting a faint orange glow on her features as she replies to his question with her own. “Gale? Are you... How are you?” It's what she's wanted to ask him every single day since autumn and it is, she hopes, a question where if it is the Curse who answers she'll know.
There's an ache deep inside her when Gale is not beside her when she does sleep, and she wrestles with the selfishness of wanting him when it's her fault he's not there in the first place. When she had bargained for days she had not thought about how he’d be spending them sleeping, nor had she thought that they’d be spending them apart. But she doesn’t know how to ask for his company when he has so little time to himself, doesn’t know how to ask if he wants her with him when he’s standing there, waiting for the night to fall, or to tell him that she still wants every second. So she leaves him alone and spends her days wishing he’d find her because she refuses to make him uncomfortable by openly seeking him out.
Openly, because most of her days and nights are spent following him. Like they’re back on Islandres and she’s a hunter, a spy, and it is beginning to drive her crazy just as it had then.
She had traded her usual large predatory forms for something smaller this morning. As a black pine marten, she had just lept from a tree and landed in the snow when she hears his voice. Mazikeen freezes, uncertain - it’s still early enough in the day that she has no idea who it is that’s speaking.
Does it matter?
She's been heard and she won't retreat. So she shifts, becoming herself - this time with striped hawk wings at her sides. The eight claw marks on her shoulders are pink and healing but she’s still ashamed of them. Ashamed of how weak she had been, how she hadn’t hidden her pain well enough from Gale.
And she also feels like she’s twice her normal size and it’s comforting to have the wings there to conceal what she’s sure are obscenely bloated sides (though really, it is not as bad as she thinks).
Her voice is cautious and concerned when she moves from the shadows of the trees, her curving horns casting a faint orange glow on her features as she replies to his question with her own. “Gale? Are you... How are you?” It's what she's wanted to ask him every single day since autumn and it is, she hopes, a question where if it is the Curse who answers she'll know.
