Malik
04-22-2022, 08:18 AM
Malik, taught twice over how to read expressions, struggles with the one in front of him now.
Is that recognition? It is certainly not the blazing insanity that he’d expected. There are no oozing shadows, no flickering lightning, no scent of old blood. The face that Malik sees is a familiar one, but he has never seen it wearing the emotions that it does now.
There are lines in the navy stallion’s face that look like sadness, and when he asks Malik what his name is, there is regret in his voice. This is not the man that had raised him in Hyaline, Malik realizes, and that is made even clearer when Gale asks him for his name.
“Malik.” He answers, the word automatic and abrupt.
“You don’t remember?” He says, and though he phrases it as a question, there is doubt in his mismatched gaze, and no small amount of contempt on his dark face. “That seems very…convenient.”
Gale is back on Islandres, the rumors had said, and Malik knows them to be true. There are no residents to torture here like there had been in Tephra, and Malik has often wondered what keeps a bloodthirsty shapeshifting monster from roving beyond the confines of an island.
No longer being a bloodthirsty shapeshifting monster would certainly explain it.
But how? The last time the Curse had been broken, an entire kingdom had gone up in flames. It had killed his grandfather, Malik knows, and yet Gale looks whole and unaffected.
Very unaffected, now that Malik looks closer. There are no golden scars on the stallion’s navy hide, glowing indicators of wounds and battles, no white-feathered forelimbs with their crimson red marking. No curling white horns, no hint of shifting or magic at all.
“Tell me what you do remember.” Malik finally says, and though he means it to sound like a firm demand, he can feel the uncertainty in voice. Perhaps Gale will not. “Everything.”
Is that recognition? It is certainly not the blazing insanity that he’d expected. There are no oozing shadows, no flickering lightning, no scent of old blood. The face that Malik sees is a familiar one, but he has never seen it wearing the emotions that it does now.
There are lines in the navy stallion’s face that look like sadness, and when he asks Malik what his name is, there is regret in his voice. This is not the man that had raised him in Hyaline, Malik realizes, and that is made even clearer when Gale asks him for his name.
“Malik.” He answers, the word automatic and abrupt.
“You don’t remember?” He says, and though he phrases it as a question, there is doubt in his mismatched gaze, and no small amount of contempt on his dark face. “That seems very…convenient.”
Gale is back on Islandres, the rumors had said, and Malik knows them to be true. There are no residents to torture here like there had been in Tephra, and Malik has often wondered what keeps a bloodthirsty shapeshifting monster from roving beyond the confines of an island.
No longer being a bloodthirsty shapeshifting monster would certainly explain it.
But how? The last time the Curse had been broken, an entire kingdom had gone up in flames. It had killed his grandfather, Malik knows, and yet Gale looks whole and unaffected.
Very unaffected, now that Malik looks closer. There are no golden scars on the stallion’s navy hide, glowing indicators of wounds and battles, no white-feathered forelimbs with their crimson red marking. No curling white horns, no hint of shifting or magic at all.
“Tell me what you do remember.” Malik finally says, and though he means it to sound like a firm demand, he can feel the uncertainty in voice. Perhaps Gale will not. “Everything.”