[open] living like we're renegades

[Gale]

Gale run away with me-- lost souls and reverie running wild and running free   The sound of his memories have not yet returned Gale, and he has long since stopped hoping for it. He has the images, and in the end, that is what really matters. His mind can fill in the rest – the sound of Tiercel’s laughter, the smell of the nest they shared, the feel of his mother’s gentle touch, the taste of the red fruit that his father was so fond of. Eyas’ tale had damaged some of those memories though, made him less certain that what he had seen was true. He thought he had felt safe, tucked between two golden parents, but had he really? He had been sure he remembered the warmth of being loved, but how could that have been real if this is where they are now? Surely if it had been as strong as he remembered, he would have had an intact family to return to – not this broken and shattered thing. These thoughts darken his mind, but Gale does not allow them to linger. The past doesn’t matter. Not anymore. The family he remembers is no more, but the family that he might make of the pieces still remains without reach. “Celina,” he repeats, the name far softer than their pale sister. Lepis and Wolfbane named their children for the heights they would reach, and that is something that Gale is sure he remembers. Nashua finds it odd that Gale had not known her name, and it is odd, and so he laughs with a shake of his head. “I didn’t. I’ve never seen her with my own eyes. Her or the red brother, who lost his feathers. And your womb-brother, and the brother from the earless mother.” He had seen that last but once, a damp bundle of legs on the edge of Loess, but he is certain that it is a brother. He had seen the conception, and cried into Eyas shoulder when he woke, refusing to share the vision that even now sours his stomach. Better to think of happier things, of children who had been wanted. “Pteron, he’s the oldest. He taught us to fly. And Marni, who went Beyond with Mother and Father when they fled Wyrm but stayed when they returned. Eyas and Tiercel, my womb-mates.” He pauses, and his pale eyes become unfocused as he flicks through a mental catalogue. “You have another sibling too, but I don’t know if they are mine.” Or if they are alive, Gale thinks, for the only time he had seen said sibling was as a widening of Lilliana’s sides that Celina had been reluctant to injure in Pangea. He had not thought thinking of family would elicit so many poor memories, and Gale’s blue face wrinkles in a frown as he stares out at the gathering storm. It is an easy thing for him to push away a bad thought or two, but this onslaught was unexpected. @[Nashua]