[private] just deliver me truth; gale

[breach]

for so long had my teeth held my tongue from a venomous voice
but the poison has passed from my lips to my hands, an incendiary point

She relaxes further, the rest of the world going pleasantly hazy as she sinks further into the fantasy that this world is the only one. That she’s just this carefree girl who gets to roam around the islands with him, who gets to discover wooden signs and shift without having to think about the dynamics of that shift. Is this the best shape for a predator? It is the fastest method of travel? Instead, it’s just discovering what shift will help her get a better vantage point for looking at the curious sights, and she prefers that, she finds.

Her dual-colored eyes study him and her smile brightens, pulling at the corner.

“Oh, I don’t know if I can say that,” she says with a light laugh, her voice a little breathy. The kind of laugh she gave a lot as a child and a lot less as an adult—as she grew more serious, more severe. Her edges growing sharper and sharper until she so rarely kept anyone close. “To be honest, Hyaline has always been a means to an end. I have never loved it the way that so many people love their lands.” It felt treacherous to admit, and she isn’t certain why she opens up to him about it, but the words don’t stop.

“Everything in my life has felt like I’ve been working for something that isn’t mine.”

She frowns before shaking her head, trying to rid herself of the seriousness of the admission and trying to grasp once more for the ease of the moment. “I don’t,” she says, her expression softening with the clear nod to Mazikeen. “I’m not like Maze in that matter. I haven’t tried before though.” She frowns and then shifts again, this time into her own favored form, the hawk. To her delight, she manages to hold onto her original coloring—the bird pale with the marbling coming underneath its wings and the blue sheen covering it. Even her avian eyes remain the same, one silver and the other blue.

She shifts back, shaking her mane into tangled knots down both sides of her strong neck.

Her eyes catch his as he looks back at her, and she isn’t sure why she can't say anything further.

though ritual pyre sending smoke to the sky as the building continues to burn
though rapt in the ruin, the pain in the grave, is lies you leave tied to the earth

@[Gale]