Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Much of Gale’s memory is hazy these days. His nights are black, and his mornings scattered with dreams. Every now and again he wakes - like this - in the dawn light with no clear recollection of how he had come to be there when he’d fallen asleep days ago and miles away.
He has lost track of the days, and knows that time passes only because Mazikeen grows ever more like the full moon each time he catches a glimpse of her. Those days are rare, and growing ever fewer. He does not know what the Curse does with its nights, but Gale grows more exhausted with every dawn. His self-healing has grown stronger as the winter passes, but he knows the Curse must use it frequently during the dark hours, because the fire of the magic feels barely more than a flicker in his chest during the day.
The stallion does not grow thin or waste away with this illness, and that feels the strangest on afternoons like these, when he wakes without an ache in his head or weariness in his bones. Gale feels like his old self. Better than his old self, even, for his nights have left him fit and well-muscled, and littered his sleek navy hide with ever more streaks of pale cream of perfectly and immediately healed wounds.
Recalling previous attempts to use his gifts on such pleasant afternoons, Gale does not wear his shapeshifted wings and makes no effort to dim the bright glow of his markings. They stand out on this overcast afternoon, and Gale looks up at the spring clouds that promise a grey and rainy evening.
He smiles, having been instilled with an eternal love for rain by his childhood in the desert, and that smiles grows when he sees Mazikeen. She is coming toward him through the birch trees, a vision in white and black and glowing orange, visible only in stripes and lines in a way that delights visual Gale.
Most days she is little more than a pale spot in his blurred vision, but today she is clear and bright. Today she looks determined, and almost pleased with herself in a way that he finds bewitching, and he marvels once more at how kindly Fate had favored him. He marvels only briefly, because then she’s in front of him, and Gale is looking into her orange eyes.
“It’s a good day,” he tells her with an easy smile, reaching out to press his blue lips against her cheek. “Like the waterfall day.”
@[Mazikeen]
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Gale
