[private] instead of nowhere to land | eyas

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Even the small fraction of their mother’s pride that Gale had inherited gave him the fortitude to sulk for the better part of a fortnight before setting out in search of his sister. Horses tend to wander less frequently in the darkness, Gale has noticed, they keep to the beaches and woods they know best, rarely venturing farther than they must. With the shadows that press in on them he understand their wariness, and a thin prickle of anxiety dances along his spine as he walk. It does not show in his expression (hard and blue and focused) though, and he does not shy away from the uneven beat of the waves to his left. Gale is resting his eyes today, using his other senses to guide him to preserve his magical reserves. The sound of the water and the feel of the black sand beneath his hooves keeps him heading in an a relatively straight line. He did run into a bit of driftwood, and the resulting bruise along his left cannon bone smarts sharply, the pain a bright spot in the darkness. It hardly affects his gait, and by the time he’s walked a few more miles and reached the strip of beach he has seen Eyas on most frequently, it twinges as if it were already a week old. Accustomed to his slow and often unimpressive healing, Gale glances down at the injury as he draws to a halt. Had it healed so quickly since he’s had no other damage, he wonders? Does his healing, like his other gifts, have a finite capability? Gale calls out for Eyas, recognizing the potential significance of this discovery, and then returns to his internal philosophizing while he waits for her to answer. It might be only a few minutes, or it might be a few days - the brindle stallion tends to lose track of time when he’s concentrating on a new puzzle. He startles out of a half-planned experiment involving sharpened logs of varying sizes at the sound of hoofsteps nearby. @[Eyas]

[Eyas]

And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

Hoofsteps, yes. The sound of many where usually there was only one.

Gale, who at any moment might turn to look at the approach of his triplet, might be surprised to see that his usually isolated sister wasn’t alone. Small and made up of more feathers than anything else, Eyas was unusually stoic and characteristically stone faced as she made her way towards the chief of this island, little ones in tow. If Gale had wondered at her absence (she doubted it; he wondered about many things but that question was always so easily answered,) well now he knew the proof of it.

Twins. Twin foals, barely the faintest hint of light playing over their skin as they followed their mother across the black sand shores towards their uncle who stood waiting. A filly and a colt, strapping little things despite how malnourished their mother had been before the pregnancy became obvious, one more feral-looking than the other but still no less dangerous than her elder brother.

Their mother adored them, and they clung to her sides before ducking underneath the cover of her white-tipped wings when at last she stopped to address her kin.

“Did you need something?” Eyas asked sharply, implying that her immediate bodily presence was currently tied up elsewhere. Even less than being summoned, she detested the way Gale hadn’t looked for her first. He’d only called and waited, like an engorged boar after the rut.

The filly underneath her right wing shuffled closer, pressing her head into the warm curve of Eyas’ girth with acute shyness. It was unlike their mother to be so… callous. Eyas herself had forgotten, wrapped up as she was in her little bubble of darkness with their draconic sire on standby. Their little unit kept to the swamps and marshy glades, venturing out to sea when Satana’s bestial nature demanded it. For their children’s sake, Eyas went along to see them properly trained for the hunt. Otherwise, she entertained her children with arcane knowledge, hoping that she could pass onto them what she’d failed to encourage in Narcisus.

She sighed, loosening her tight jaw and relaxing for the sake of appearances.

Grey clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above

@[Gale]

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you He’s been trying to give Eyas her space, and as a result is startled by the presence of two children at his sister’s side. He’d not known she was pregnant at their last encounter, but he supposes her dark wings have always been good at concealing most of her body. And twins, which Gale looks over curiously. They’re the children of her dragon, Gale decides, but the girl at least seems shy, pressing up against her mother at the sound of Eyas’ sharp question. Distracted by the children, Gale had briefly forgotten what he was here to talk to Eyas about, but the implication in her tone – that he is a bother – is a reminder that she is likely to soon be far more irritated. The brindle stallion readjusts his shoulders and inhales a reassuring breath, just as his sister exhales her own sigh. Best to just get it out of the way, he supposes, and she can decide what her children are old enough to hear. “How did Dad first realize he was Cursed?” Gale is hopeful that there are indicators beyond the shape shifting. He has released the magic that created white wings at his sides as he made his way up the beach, preferring to not explain their here-and-gone-again presence. They are the most common use of his shapeshifting ability: the return of the snowy white wings he’d worn since birth. It feels strange to be without them again, with the wind blowing against his bare ribs and belly, and Gale shifts his weight before glancing away from the sand and directly at Eyas. @[Eyas]

[Eyas]

And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

Gale.
With him, things had always been different. Eyas never felt like hiding around him, or pretending to be strong when she felt weak and useless. Why should she, when he could always see right through her? Her black eyes searched his face for secrets, finding odd shadows and lines instead, and Eyas marveled at how quickly they’d come undone when it made no sense at all for them to be like this. So… uncomfortable around each other.

The world had not condoned this. They’d been perfectly made for one another, crafted in the same womb. She liked to forget about Tiercel but she couldn’t - he’d been crafted there too, perhaps as penance for what the future would unfold between the three of them - which for a moment upsets her. She’d like to blame this all on him, since it’d cropped up after his impromptu arrival here to Islandres, but Eyas simply couldn’t. Eventually, she would have to face the reality that she was pouring her problems into a vessel unsuited for revenge. Tiercel was her brother, just like Gale. Her twin, even if she felt the opposite. She would have to forgive herself and Tiercel for things spun wildly out of their control.

She would have to, but not tonight.
Not right now.

Right now, she can only try and patch the hole torn between herself and her best friend.

His question surprised her.
Eyas started with a flick of her black-tipped ears and the quick jerk of her chin as it rose in defense. She’d expected that they would be talking about Tiercel’s visit… not about their father, whose very mention rattled something deep and hidden inside of Eyas’ chest. She swallowed, then lifted her wings and tucked her nose underneath them to one side so she could whisper to her children. One after the other, the little twins worked themselves free of their mother’s embrace and trotted off, lingering for a second to look back at their dam with that strange, holographic flash of light playing in their predatory eyes.

When they’d gone off far enough, Eyas turned to look back at her elder brother.
“You think I know the answer because I lived with him and mother in Taiga, when it all started happening, don’t you?” Eyas murmured to Gale, careful of her tone and deliverance. She wondered what he was thinking, asking such a thing. “But he never said anything about it. Not once did he ever say aloud to us: ‘this is happening’. I don’t think he was fully aware of it himself.” She pondered softly, looking out and away toward the sea. Lately, the current began to change and swell at odd times. It had everything and nothing to do with the Eclipse.

“But that’s not true either.” Eyas thought aloud, flipping mentally through all she’d seen and gathered in her time spent trying to find a way to stop the curse. “He must’ve known the moment it happened. The moment he ate Wyrm’s heart…” The little mare’s thoughts drifted off, remembering that scene as it played out through her father’s eyes. Heartfire had been there that day. Her speckled, stormcast coat looked so sharp against the backdrop, standing as it was over the pile of disintegrated ash that had been their great-grandfather Wyrm. And the heart, still-beating, lay atop the remains. Clear as yesterday, more painful than ever before.

Eyas blinked her eyes and clenched her jaw.

Grey clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above

@[Gale]

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you He waits for her to answer, watching curiously as she sends the children off. She hadn’t introduced them, but Gale decides he will find them again. He is not the most adept with children, having rarely interacted with them, but there is something curious about their bright eyes, and Gale is always curious. He is thinking of that, and almost smiles, at least until he meets Eyas’ gaze again. Despite the fact that she’d sent the children away and could speak freely, it somehow feels as though she is not. She asks a question that seems so obvious that Gale only frowns in reply. Wolfbane had changed from their loving father to a violent animal; surely there had been some observable descent? For the briefest moment it occurs to him to blame his family, for not watching everything as carefully as Gale would have, but that moment is subsumed by the dread that her answer confirms. He had known it was progressive, but never the pace of it. That Eyas, living with their parents, would have seen its progression had seemed obvious to him, and he realizes his mistake only now. The brindle stallion follows his sister’s gaze out to sea, lost in the dark miasma of his thoughts. He’s pulled out by her interjection, and at the addition to the story she’d told him. Wolfbabe had eaten Wyrm’s heart? Surely that was an important part of the tale. Eyas' silence suggests her thoughts are drifting, and given the topic Gale is less hesitant to borrow what she is seeing without explicit permission. Heartfire is there, looking just as she had when he’d first met her, and Gale watches his father consume his great-grandfather’s heart in the reflection of her blue eyes. She’d been the killer? Yet Bane had eaten the heart and with it accepted the Curse. Gale is quite sure he had not eaten a heart, and yet his brow furrows. He had flown through the heavy smoke over Loess, thick and well-feuled by the flora and fauna that burned below. His parents had burned, he thinks, and they’d been part of the smoke. The thought of inhaling his parents makes him nauseous, so Gale ventures down an alternate avenue of explanation. “You’ve not noticed anything…different since their deaths, have you? About yourself, I mean. Any new…abilities?” Eyas had flown beside him out of their burning childhood home. She’d cleared the same smoke before they parted ways somewhere over Sylva, him toward the Meadow, her toward….somewhere. She should be experiencing the same thing, the shifting, but she does not seem suspicious as they discuss the curse, as he is sure she would if she were hiding something from him. For all their separation and the distance that has grown between them, Gale is still sure he can read his little sister’s face. @[Eyas]

[Eyas]

And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

Eyas always thinks about this, though she never speaks on it. She always thinks about her parents; about her father, constantly. About Carnage. About how, if she’d been stronger or perhaps more powerful, she might’ve been able to change the outcome of everything.

And wasn’t that the way life was? Fate had given her a third eye, the ability to see and be seen, to alter sight, but Eyas could never go there physically. She couldn’t turn back time, only fabricate it. The failure of a thing like that… it killed her. The weight sometimes felt so unbearable that Eyas wished she could die, but there’s something about the Triplets that ceases to wither with time. A blessing? A curse? Eyas blinked at Gale’s unimpressed frown. Magic, dear brother, always has a price.

What a price they’ve paid.
Now, Eyas had her regrets and Gale had her sight. He would always be welcome to rest behind her gaze, to peer through the window of her life whenever he wished. He is (undoubtedly) the only horse she will ever trust with her many, many secrets. The only horse she will never be able to keep out, but she harbors no ill feelings at this thought. To be connected to Gale in this way had never felt like a trap - he’d always been her perfect counterweight.

If he was surely so curious, why not take a look? Why not see what Eyas won’t say? He could pluck the last time she confronted their father like he could clip a blade of grass with his teeth. See what she’d seen, puzzle out why she’d left. That was when Eyas had noticed a genuine change. I remember the shame, she thought, the shame at having to see her through his eyes. To catch her blue eyes and know the truth inside and out.

“No.” She answered him flatly. “Haven’t you?” Eyas wanted to know. It wasn’t an uncommon sort of thing, to manifest new powers or abilities over time. She’d heard of latent powers suddenly being awoken, she knew what quests were. Plainly, Eyas could see her brother no longer had his wings, but hadn’t he nearly succeeded at winning the alliance? Wasn’t there supposed to be some dangerous magic involved in that kind of stuff? Also… she suspected he was partially to blame for this Eclipse, though she had no proof.

“What’s all this about Wolfbane and changes?” Eyas finally asked. “And what happened to your wings?” She wanted to know, now questioning her earlier assumption. And how are the two related?

Grey clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above

@[Gale]

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you He’d seen the memory, and had skirted around it, recognizing the mare that Celina had shoved into the Pangean river. Nashua’s mother, whose name he does not know and about whom he is infinitely curious. He’d avoided the memory not because he does not want to see it (he will, later, if @[Eyas] allows him a later) but because there are other things that he must force his often-wandering mind to focus on. Gale waits for her answer, unaware that his breathing has grown still. She turns it back on him immediately, which causes Gale to scowl. While he has practiced keeping better control of his facial expression, Gale has never been good at it and never considered trying in front of Eyas. She’d always known Gale’s one lie from the two truths in their childhood games, been able to pinpoint when he’s trying to conceal something. So he doesn’t bother, and even scuffs worriedly at the sand with a hoof. Even though he’d meticulously planned what to say in this moment, it is suddenly very hard to force those well-rehearsed words from his mouth. The silence stretches on until she breaks it with more questions. That last one has an easy answer, so he tells her: “They disappeared after the Alliance, along with my horns.” The brindle shakes his head, which has only recently finally begun to not feel impossibly light. The absence of familiar traits – wings he was born with – had occupied him for some time, after all, one of the many reasons for the distance he worries has come between them. “And I…” He takes a reassuring breath, but it’s a short one, and he continues. “And I’ve started shifting. Shapeshifting into everything, just like he did.” There is much more to say, he knows, but at this he pauses. His blue eyes remain on the ground, but with a moment of concentration his white wings reappear at his sides, looking almost exactly like they always had. Almost, because from the wrist of his right wing now stretches a crimson V, uneven and asymmetrical just like the blood that had dripped from the wound Mazikeen had torn open. Gale feels better with them back, he decides, and rather than add his horns he instead waits for Eyas to respond.

[Eyas]

And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

Oh this chasm. A wide and painful thing between them. Just for a second, Eyas knows what it must feel like to be mother Gaia during the continent’s separation. These secrets. All this time passing between herself and her elder triplet brother… they start to feel like an ocean’s worth of water. An impossible divide between the solid ground she and Gale once stood upon.

“Oh.” The little mare remarked, remembering Gale’s horns. She’d entirely forgotten he had them at all.

Then it struck her: just how much had she missed pretending not to be alive? How much had she let go of? All she’d ever wanted was to be better. To be smarter and stronger than her enemy. She had tried so very, very hard to be the best that she could be and had adored her predecessors for all their accomplishments; the bread and butter of a small horse’s fantasies. When she’d been a filly, Eyas had begged and begged to hear more about the grandmother who she reminded Wolfbane of. The one with eyes like a cold death. She thought that if she could stop a horse in his tracks with one look then maybe she could stop everything bad to come after losing Gale.

She’d genuinely thought she could stop the worst, then had watched as the worst slowly played out in real time, acutely aware of how powerless and weak she was then as she was right now. Painfully, Eyas opened her eyes to the awareness of how disconnected and self-centered her life had become.

“I was always so afraid of this.” Eyas whispered, flattening her ears. Thinking about it was hard enough; speaking about it made her stomach knot. “So afraid that it wouldn’t die with him.” She admitted.

Eyas looked up, hoping to catch her brother’s eyes, and a vision flashed through her endless gaze like a spark of light in the dark.

The strange form of a god-being appeared to her during a dream, or something like a dream. Eyas asked it about Wolfbane’s curse and it mouthed the words that still made her shiver… “Like a cancer inside your line. It’s why it can’t be removed. Except by me, of course.”

Fuck this hurt. It hurt to remember and felt like a knife at her throat, picking at her skin and drawing blood to the surface.

“But why would I want to undo such a delight?” He’d said.

But why would I want to undo such a delight, Eyas had wondered. Why why why why why.
Why.
So it makes sense that Gale would be afraid, and that his fear would snatch her up in its jaws. What doesn’t make sense is the way she feels. Eyas is only barely aware of how she’s reacting, and even then it registers too late that she’s panting through her nose like a feral animal. Why?
Why Gale?

“I thought I knew.” She muttered aloud to herself. It was Narcisus though - it was the bastard child, surely? But then she tried to look at Gale again - perfect Gale, who would’ve been her parent’s pride if they’d lived to witness it. Who reminded her so much of the father she mourned for, a horse who would’ve willingly walk into hellfire for those he loved. Gale… her brother.

“This can’t be.” Eyas said, the world outside fading hazy and dim. Her eyesight titled and she blinked, fighting off the sudden weakness that made her legs buckle. “Not you - not again.” Eyas moaned.

Grey clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above

@[Gale]

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Her expression roils with emotion like a dark cloud, and the vision she shares with him feels like cold lightning. Gale has always avoided looking for the god, knowing that some things are not for mortal eyes, and he does not regret that choice as Eyas shows him her almost dream. It's not quite a real dream, but Gale does not focus on the visual details that might show him why that is so. Instead, his attention is on the shadow-not-shadow, and what it says to Eyas. Lipreading is an imperfect art, but Gale sees each word perfectly (perhaps being ever-intelligible is some godlike ability?). She has told him of the solution that Carnage gave them already, but the realization sinks over him like some great dark suffocation. Something else sinks into him too, when he meets the void-like eyes of the dark god in the almost dream. Something small and sharp, with barbs that sink themselves inside his heart in a way that suggests they will never let go. Gale has often lamented the slow nature of his familial healing, wanting it faster, quicker, less selective. Never before has he wanted it gone entirely. If it were, he wonders, could his death end the Curse? Would the fairies take it from him, if he asked? Were the fairies even here anymore, in the darkness of the eclipse? Questions swirl through his mind until it aches, and he hardly hears Eyas speaking, and not until his sister falls beside him does Gale pull himself from the black spiral of his thoughts. For a long while he is quiet as he slowly strokes the slope of his sister’s shoulder with his neck wrapped around hers in a hug. There aren’t words to say that will change anything, and the world around him seems to grow even dimmer. “I probably have some time, right?” He says, and the words are rough at first, but grow smoother as he speaks. “A few years to put my affairs in order, check things off my bucket list before I have to ask the Fae to take away my healing?” He tries to sound cheerful, even knowing Eyas will see through it. Even knowing he’s talking about his own death. @[Eyas]

[Eyas]

And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

Only the strength of Gale supporting her keeps Eyas from collapsing entirely. Everything in her world that was once important to her now disappears: her children, Santana, their future. There’s only Gale and the impending doom to think about, and it consumes her entirely until Eyas is sobbing at his hooves, broken from the news and what guilt it washes over her. She’d thought she could sink no further, and now this weight he bears will drown them both.

For a long while there’s only the sound of Eyas cracking and Gale trying to piece her back together. He soothes her, comforts her the only way he knows how and because of it, Eyas feels even worse. She should be the strong one now, she should be the one comforting him, not the other way around! The little mare knew it like a shard of pain in her breast and still she wept, in total disbelief of the world and its inhumane cruelty.

After a while the tears were spent. Eyas was dry and numb, completely outside of herself and only briefly glad to have sent her children away when she did. They shouldn’t see her like this; no-one should see her like this, not even Gale. But the years of keeping everything in and holding her anger so close backfired, and the shock of the unthinkable suddenly becoming reality was all it had taken for her to revert back to those months after first losing him.

“What?” She cracked her lips apart and asked, confused. Was he planning for the inevitable then? Just giving up, like that?

“Bucket list? Asking the Fae to take away your healing? That’s your plan?” Eyas said, sarcastically. “No… no. It didn’t work with dad, Gale. Why would death work for you? No—you’re not thinking.” The buckskin mare started in. She shifted away, erratic and desperate for him to hear her out. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, how it might’ve gone differently, and I believe there is another way.” Eyas pleaded with him.

Something she knew the others had ignored or missed. Something that the accursed had always wanted. “It just needs another host, Gale. That’s all!” His triplet laughed, a bit maniacal. She shrugged, as if it were the simplest answer in the universe. He could keep his healing, have another horse eat his heart, and then grow a new one! Gale just needed to find another horse to transfer the curse onto, and then he’d be free. Wolfbane had been trying to do it—she remembered his obsession with creating more offspring at the end—so maybe they could actually make it happen. Hopefully before he turns into a literal horny monster, Eyas thought.

Grey clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above

@[Gale] wow what a roller coaster ride this has been