[open] i could open the door and breathe in the dust

[Gale]

Gale started under neon lights, then it all got dark i only know how to go too far He’d seen her skin catch the light in an unnatural manner, but hadn’t looked closely. To look too long is to risk remembering. It is easier to never look at anyone for too long, to keep the bright blue of his sharp gaze away from everyone he comes across. But she does ask him to, and he reasons that it is best to understand all the variables in the experiment. He glances up at the sun for a quick moment, to see where it shines, then back at the red glass mare. His vision slides across her - the hairline fractures, the chip, the scratches. She’d shatter into something deadly. “I was going to…” there is the barest moment of hesitation, as though he reconsiders honesty, then plunges ahead: “throw you over. But that seems less wise now, considering, well…” this time he trails off to gesture toward the fragile expanse of her red chestnut figure. Exhaling a sharp snort, he turns back to the Nothing. When he crosses the river, he can walk for hours. Yet no matter how long he walks, the moment he turns around he is once more standing on this side of the river. He’s walked for months. Throwing himself at this insurmountable mystery, of a magic far beyond his abilities, has consumed him, and the possibility that he’s found a loophole has driven him to distraction. It is at that very moment that a small brown sparrow flies out of the mist, scolding him with a series of short sharp chirps as it swoops off toward the distant Forest. Gale sighs. The hare and badger will likely return soon as well. A failed experiment. He turns to walk away, only to find the chestnut mare standing in front of him. She’d not moved, but Gale had forgotten she was there entirely, and blinks in bewilderment for a few heartbeats, just as she asks him what she’s to do. Right. The glass mare he remembers but refuses to allow himself to linger on why. That is harder to do now, with her right in front of him and a temporary hiatus on his fixation on the Nothingness. It takes only a moment, a too long glance into her lilac eyes and then the swirl of the star on her chest. “Hourglass.” He says, and its not a question because he does not - cannot - forget a thing. But the memory of their last meeting is not a bad one. She is not a memory he wants to forget, and there are so few of those that he cannot add the possibility of her shattering to his list of crimes. So rather than instruct her, he continues, rather awkwardly, “So you made it through the Eclipse.” @Hourglass