"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
However embarrassed and confused Mazikeen was about the last conversation they had - she believed this visit was inevitable. Nothing about her promise changed just because he didn’t want to be friends. About that one thing, at least, she felt absolutely certain. She already worried she had left it too long, and she should’ve thought to ask for some sort of timeline to keep in mind.
But since she didn’t know - this was surely just a quick trip to see how he was doing, assess the level of mischief, and then she could be on her way. She had a whole list of rationalizations for this visit that ran through her mind as she took off from the western coast of the continent - the shadow wings she was still getting accustomed to nearly blending into the darkness so it looked like she was floating through the air as she moved low across the ocean.
At least she wasn’t likely to cry again this time. The warmer months had been spent working to accept the fact that she has emotions and sometimes they’ll be messy (and that’s not the end of the world) - and coming to the slow but sure realization that she was still strong, still capable, still Mazikeen without her shifting. She hadn’t lost anything.
Except for him. Her friend that hadn’t felt like a friend.
She still can’t put a name to what it all means. Why it matters to her or what the undercurrent of nerves that thrums in her heart even now is a symptom of. Even as she hates herself for this truth - that it does feel like a loss.
Islandres draws closer and as soon as she focuses on the vague shape of the beach and the trees, a prickle courses down her spine and with it, the shadow wings at her side disappear. An angry, surprised yell escapes Mazikeen and she falls unceremoniously right into the ocean. Her legs sting with pain from the impact as the water swallows her for a mildly terrifying second before she meets the bottom and then pushes upwards until she finds the air again.
She walks carefully onto the beach now, more worried about her pride than the bruises on her legs and belly as her orange eyes scan the area. There’s no point in giving herself a moment to try to calm down, she’s sure her heart would be beating this fast no matter how smooth her landing had been. She is, after all, not exactly welcome - right? But she was Mazikeen - Champion of Hyaline, someone who has now survived death twice, and battled with as many monsters as she could find (and even had a collection of nice new scars as a result). She could handle a conversation with Gale. However long she needs to camp out here for him to come over to her.
If no one approaches, drawn by her shout or splashing, she'll move along the beach - keeping to where the water brushes against her dark hooves and trying very hard not to prowl and instead look at ease. As if she's someone who's here to see the (nearly invisible) sights and not step on any toes.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Rising quickly to his feet, the brindle stallion shakes off the black sand that has settled on his legs and belly as he rested. He’d fallen asleep in this position – on his side, legs curled up close, one a pillow for his tucked head – but it had felt far more comfortable in that shape than it does in this equine one. A bit of sand remains in his left eye, and as he attempts to blink it out, he also focuses on what had roused him.
He sees nothing out of the ordinary (Mazikeen has plunged beneath the surface of the sea) but knows better than to trust sight alone. Gale stretches out his magic, searching for nearby eyes that have seen places other than the black sands and rainbow fauna of Islandres. He finds them in the water, taking her sight for moments no longer than a blink. It’s unobtrusive enough that most horses don’t even notice. Yet as Gale finds an image of himself in those eyes, he wonders if @[Mazikeen] is familiar enough with his ability to recognize it.
Back on the beach, his heart beats loudly in his striped chest.
Why is she here?
His thoughts are a chaotic jumble, and he flips through the reasons she might have for being here. None of them make sense, especially not with the way she’d chosen to manifest in Islandres. She wants to be found. But why, when he had made so clear his desire to remain separate at their last meeting? Gale scowls at the distant figure. She is as clear to his altered vision as though the sun were unobstructed, and there are scars he had not seen before across her pale hide. Gale does his best to ignore the twinge of empathy at the sight of them.
Mazikeen turns toward him, and even though Gale knows he is far enough away that she cannot see him, he still takes a step back. He considers disappearing entirely, shifting to something small and vanishing into the knee-high purple grass that covers the dunes behind him. That possibility is dwarfed by the need to know why she is here. He had failed the first time in imparting the seriousness of the Curse, and by rebuffing her had hoped to make sure she’d avoid him entirely. It seems his efforts are in vain, for she continues to move closer to him, keeping close to the surf.
She’ll see him eventually, and when she does Gale’s stoic expression does not change. He means to stop her with words when she is close enough to hear him, but underestimates his proximity to the waves. By the time he speaks, she’s closer than he’d wanted and he pointedly fixes his eyes at a point just over her shoulder.
“I’d hoped our last meeting would prevent another.” He says quietly, and there is regret in the words. Regret that he’d not been successful? That she has put herself in possible danger despite his warnings? He’s not quite sure, and he dislikes the uncertainty, so Gale asks: “Why are you here?”
Gale had been quick in taking her vision but the feeling of it was familiar now, both from him and from another. Mazikeen recognized what that blink-that-wasn’t-a-blink meant. She grabs onto the annoyance that rises up at this intrusion like a lifeline and is prepared to delay her rehearsed greeting just to tell him off over it.
She’s so busy focusing on this annoyance when she finally spots him, hears him, and stops. They are much too close but she - of course - won’t back away. Though she does not really want to make him uncomfortable, the vision intrusion followed by this incredibly warm welcome is enough to convince her that if he doesn’t like the distance between them, he can damn well be the one to change it.
Mazikeen laughs, but it is not a happy sound. She’d been expecting a greeting like this and she’s prepared for the pain that it brings so she buries it deep. Buries it with the nerves and everything else that was soft in her mind just moments ago. Her harsh laughter hasn’t quite faded when she bites back with no shortage of sarcasm “Ah, it’s so great to see you too.”
No point in dodging his question. Mazikeen doesn’t miss how he still can’t look at her, which needles her enough to keep fire in her voice and gaze as she stares fixedly at him. “I’m here to check up on you. See if you’re feeling… mischevious.” Her eyes flick over him, what she can see in the dim light anyway, as though she can see a sign of the Curse or not. His frosty demeanour, so at odds with how he had been the first time they spoke here, might be a sign but… maybe he is just that annoyed with her for showing up in his life again.
The confusion is still there, the memories of the kinder words that had preceded the desire to go separate ways, but this too is pushed aside.
She continues - voice set and determined - orange gaze back on his face. “After all, I made a promise on these sands. Your lack of…” Mazikeen had prepared this speech before but she always stumbled here. Feelings? Interest? Whatever word she uses sounds ridiculous even in her head. “The fact that you don’t care about me only makes things easier - you’ll hurt the ones you’re close to, right? And thanks to our last meeting we both know that’s not me.” Her voice wavers just slightly on those last two words but whatever emotion is causing it Mazikeen refuses to give it so much as a single thought.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Gale’s carefully maintained stoicism wavers at the sharp bark of Mazikeen’s laughter, but he doesn’t react to the sarcasm in her greeting with anything more than a flicking ear. He can tell that she is watching him even as he focuses on the horizon behind her, and her orange gaze has never reminded him more of fire as he feels it flicking across him.
This assessment feels different than the others. Perhaps it is because he still does not understand why she is here. When he had been considering reasons earlier, few of them had included her both looking for him and being angry with him. None of them had been the possibility that she intended to keep the promise she had made him.
“Check up on me?” He repeats slowly, struggling to process what she’s said as his eyes narrow in confusion and finally meet hers.
The clarity of them shocks him, and Gale forgets what he’d been thinking about entirely.
She can still do that, even after he’s spent months telling himself she couldn’t. She’s talking too, but Gale is missing what she says until the pause finally draws his attention and he hears ‘the fact you don’t care about me’.
Gale shakes his head before he realizes it, grasping for his earlier stoicism but coming up short. Instead he takes a breath to calm himself, and finds that it smells of Mazikeen and her mountains. When he releases the breath, it is with a long sigh, and another shake of his head that is more self-directed than the last.
“I shouldn’t have let you think that.” He finally says when he meets her eyes again. “I thought it would make things easier, but I don’t think it has.” It certainly hadn’t made her stay away. He shakes his head a bit, buffeting away imaginary arguments before he continues speaking.
This time his voice is more measured, slower as he thinks carefully over each word rather than spill them out in his customary babble. “I won’t hold you to that promise, Mazikeen. I accepted before I truly understood what the future holds for me, and that was a mistake.” It’s not quite an apology, but his lack of omniscience is also not his own fault, so it felt appropriate. Gale thought he would feel better after that admission, better after relieving Mazikeen of what must surely be her final reason to come to Islandres.
When Gale meets her gaze, surprise quenches the fire there enough to reveal a hint of the pain Mazikeen is very much focused on Not Feeling. And then that too is overshadowed by confusion as he speaks, a faint scowl appearing as she tries to understand what he’s saying. Had he cared, then? Did he still? Did it matter? She thinks instead about another part of what he says, unwilling to give any attention to that foolish hope in her chest.
“Easier.” She repeats the word under her breath, talking more to herself as she shakes her head in incredulity. “Making me live through one of my worst fears…” But she cuts off this quiet thought and closes her eyes, focusing on shutting it out entirely as though that will erase the words from being spoken. That is too big of a piece of herself to just give away so casually and she knows it’s not fair to hold him accountable for it. He couldn’t have known how deep his rejection would cut that day, how it had echoed some of her worst thoughts about herself and made them true.
Mazikeen inhales deeply and forces those thoughts away - off to join everything else she refuses to deal with, like what scents she breathes in when she inhales, and what exactly will happen when these emotions bubble to the surface anyway. When her eyes open again, when they settle on Gale, they are no less determined than before though the fire in them has lost some of its intensity. “Well, I won’t just stay away and be left to wonder. Not when there’s even the slightest chance of me stopping you from hurting someone else. I might not know exactly what I've gotten into but I do know it does not matter what happens to me if it means protecting others.” This is a fact she believes with her whole being and it shows when she speaks of it. Whether it is a stranger or someone she loves, Mazikeen knows she’d do anything to protect - to save - them. Her new scars are a testament to that - and to the fact that she is far better at attacking than she is at defending herself.
Her still-soaked tail makes a smacking noise when she flicks it. Some of the strands collide with those new scars and she thinks with certainty there is nothing worse she could face with him than what she has already survived.
She should ask for details, ask what it is exactly Gale had come to understand, but instead she continues in that same sure voice as if she could pass on some of her certainty to him. “Mistake or not, whatever it is your future holds, I won’t be taking back my promise.”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
The look in her orange eyes doesn’t quite match the hard sarcasm of earlier, and as Gale traces the familiar lines of her white face with his roving eyes, he tries to find one furrow that might suggest she means something different than what she’d said. Gale, who before had rarely attempted to hide his emotions, is predictably rather inept at reading them in others.
She’s definitely angry, he decides, using her muttering as an indicator. Angry, but not enough to lash out at him, though the way she slowly closes her eyes makes him wonder how near a retort had to the edge of her tongue. He knows that trick – closing his eyes to avoid looking at something to give him time to think – and he gives her time to do it. He is grateful too, and as his mind turns to new tactics to convince her to leave, his eyes wander.
Mazikeen is somehow more lovely than he’d remembered. She seems more at ease in this shape than she ever had been before, and he recalls the way she had prowled (despite her best efforts) down the beach toward him. Gale stops thinking of tactics sometime after he admires the strong arch of her neck, and realizes it only when he feels her eyes on him once more.
He blinks, startled, and take a step back, and then another just for good measure when she begins to speak. It had become difficult to breathe for a moment there, and it takes him some time to orient to the conversation. He hears the words well enough, even over the rapid pace of his heart. For one brief moment, he’d forgotten the Curse, forgotten the danger, forgotten everything. Mazikeen’s words are a bitter reminder, and he swallows hard.
“You will take it back.” Gale’s voice is terse. He manages to steady his breathing, but it remains only slightly less rapid than his heart. Gale is trying to be careful with his words, but he’s talking too quickly to be sure that he succeeds, the words tumbling over themselves as he tries to say many things at once. “I don’t want you to keep it. I want you to go back to Hyaline, far away from me, where you are safe. Eyas will tell you when it is over, I’m sure she will.” He is trying his best to be convincing, though he has failed at this effort enough that he suspects that the Fates have intervened. He stills his head from its nodding emphasis on the fact that his sister will inform Mazikeen of his demise, and exhales in a long sigh.
She’d accused him of making her live through one of her worst fears with his rejection. That still stings, made all the worse because he’d done it to save her pain. It occurs to Gale for the first time that perhaps if Mazikeen knew how he actually felt, she might better understand why he does not want to see her.
So he tries once more, one final time.
“Seeing you reminds me of the future that I want but cannot have.” He admits, the soft shake of his navy head doing nothing to disguise the sadness in his brilliantly blue eyes. “I am already Cursed, Mazikeen. Please do not also make me suffer.”
The frown that begins with Gale stepping away from her deepens when he speaks. His terse words cause her ears to flatten against her head in annoyance - making her all the more determined to keep her promise just out of spite for him having the gall to tell her what to do. It's an effort not to stick out her tongue or stomp a dark hoof into the sand. Mazikeen once again holds onto annoyance as though it could keep her from feeling anything else - though her ears do flick back upwards as he continues. She had asked him what he wanted once but now she’s not sure if she gives a damn anymore, not when this is what his answer is.
And then Gale continues and Mazikeen takes a single step, driven by the sadness in his gaze an insane instinct to comfort him, before she remembers herself and stops, shaking her head as if it can clear away all these troublesome feelings.
Still, her expression softens just for a moment when she loses her grasp on the protective barrier of annoyance and anger. “I wish I could believe that.” It seemed too convenient, though. His attempt at rejecting her hadn’t kept her away so of course he was trying something else. She would not admit how close it was to working, how the idea of him wanting a future with her affected her, so she convinces herself it’s just a lie meant to get under her skin, to push her away.
She doesn’t allow herself to think too much about why he’s pushing her away, because then she might have to admit it’s not a lie. That it would answer pretty much every question she’s had about the confusing highs and lows. How it make sense for him to want to keep her safe and that he’d try whatever way to make it happen.
Mazikeen finds her steel again, her voice even but passionate - unwilling as ever to back down. “How can you possibly think I would just go back to Hyaline? That I could just stay away and wait for news of when it’s over?” Pretending she didn’t care clearly hadn’t worked this time, she doubted it would in the future. “Of course I don’t want you to suffer but… I’m not built for that waiting game, Gale. You know what I am built for? Helping those I care about. In whatever situation, no matter how messy. It was too late to take it back the day I made that promise and it's still too late now.” Mazikeen had promised herself she wouldn’t make any more impassioned speeches. That certainly hadn’t lasted very long - but at least Gale wasn’t just standing there, staring at the ground this time. She continues, her voice matter-of-fact and accompanied by a sad smile. “Besides, you’ve already hurt me plenty I cannot believe it would matter much if you did so again.”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
He feels the words somewhere in his chest, a blow not unlike the empathic attacks he has felt from his siblings. But Mazikeen has no such ability, he thinks, this is the real thing. Having regrown his heart, healed his punctured heart, and repaired his frozen heart, Gale had always scoffed a bit at the idea of heartbreak being an actual thing that people felt. Even now he’s not quite sure this is heartbreak, but it is definitely something in his heart, and Mazikeen had definitely been responsible. Is this what she’d felt back in Hyaline, he wonders, when he’d chosen to leave?
This is a terrible feeling.
Gale has always prided himself on his patience, thinking it second only to his ability to think his way out of any puzzle. Together they’d gotten him through every trouble thus far; there was nothing he could not outwait or outthink. He’d thought and waited himself out of a grave, for Beqanna’s sake; his patience is surely an endless well
Yet when he reaches for it now, knowing it will make his infrequently practiced stoicism easier, he comes up nearly empty. Gale stills (not that he’d been especially mobile before) like one of his island’s wooden carvings, the instinctive freeze in the face of unexpected danger winning out for just a moment before he blinks it away. He doesn’t need it, not when he has anger to fall back on. That possibility wouldn’t have occurred to him if he’d taken a moment to pause. But it is hard to think when she scoffs at his admission. Hard to remind himself to tread carefully when he’s wounded in a part of himself he’d thought impervious. The anger simmers there, just below the surface, bright in his blue eyes as she begins her impassioned plea.
Gale is grappling with the fact that he wants to shove Mazikeen away hard for her earlier words and also to hold her as closely to himself as possible and prove he’d meant it. He doesn’t quite hear what she says, but he doesn’t need to. He understands the gist of it: she’s still refusing to listen to him. She’s still sure she knows better, when she doesn’t really know anything at all. Gale reminds himself that her lack of knowledge is his own fault, and that stretches his remaining patience just long enough to let her finish speaking before he interjects.
“Stop thinking about yourself, Mazikeen! This isn’t about you!” His eyes are narrowed, somewhere between frustration and bewilderment. “If you really wanted to help me, you’d just leave me alone. I don’t want to hurt you at all. That’s why I want you far away. I forget about the Curse when I think about you. I forget about everything else in the world. But I can’t forget, Mazikeen, I can’t forget because that might be when it happens.” When one of the Others, the voices of the Curse, might slip into him, and leave him nothing but a voice within his own head, his body puppetted by something dark. His anger is easily spent by his verbal outburst, but rather than relief he instead feels hollowed out and empty.
He shakes his head, but that doesn’t help either, so he tries a deep breath. That’s a little better.
When he speaks again, his voice is soft, and he does not meet her eyes. “So I will ask you one last time: please leave.” Another long breath, another sweep of the horizon, and then he fixes his blue eyes on hers and forces himself to see anything but the mare in front of him.
Mazikeen is, momentarily, too busy sorting out her thoughts to reply to his words - the accusation that she was only thinking about herself - her sad smile traded for a frown that deepens as he speaks. There’s something a little thrilling about his frustration, though Mazikeen doesn’t let herself dwell on those thoughts for too long. Best not to think of the flutter of delight in her stomach as her own outburst is matched with one of his own. Just as she tries to ignore the echo of his words about how when he thinks of her, he forgets about everything else.
He doesn’t mean it she tells herself, though even her cruellest thoughts on the matter lack conviction now.
She stands still on the sand, the dripping of water from her accidental-swim the only movement as the face-off continues.
How could this not be about her, at least in part, when it affected her life? Insecurities attempt to worm into her mind, telling her if she was stronger he wouldn’t be so worried about keeping her away, but Mazikeen won’t give in to those thoughts and the pile of things she is not confronting grows and grows.
Was she being selfish, wanting to stay? It didn’t feel any more selfish than the fact that he wanted to make things easier on himself by keeping her away. No, she was sure she wasn’t (just) being selfish. She really believed this made the most sense - whatever the Curse involved, she could keep Gale from hurting anyone else. And whatever lay between them might muddy the waters but that simple fact was true. His own determination to keep her away was enough proof that he'd be dangerous. And if he did hurt her - better that than anyone else.
She’s thinking about how unfair this all is when she recognizes one of the emotions underlying her thoughts, one that she thought she had successfully squashed when Gale had left Hyaline and she felt stupid and weak in his wake. Hope. The damning feeling that she simply was not ready to give up on him and she didn’t want him to give up either. An utterly inconvenient emotion but true enough to dig its roots into her now that she’s looked at it face-on.
Before she can try to respond, Gale speaks again. Asking her to leave. She won’t, of course. And - well - there is the minor detail that she doesn’t know if her shadow wings will even return to her. She certainly doesn’t want to just go swimming about in the darkness and either eventually hit Tephra or drown somewhere lost at sea. So she can’t really leave right now either - though she doesn’t bother with these excuses.
Looking at him, she feels like she could burst into flames at any moment and would enjoy every moment of it. Thrill is at war with anger as a delightful, anticipatory calm spreads across her entire body. Except for her damn heart, beating so wildly she suspects that’s where the fire will catch first, for better or worse. Something flashes in her orange eyes when she speaks, her voice quiet but strong. A dare as the corner of her mouth twitches ever so slightly.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Mazikeen’s ability to distract him is uncanny enough that Gale has its suspicions that it’s at least partly magical in nature. He knows now that she doesn’t do it on purpose despite his earlier suspicions otherwise, which emboldens Gale enough to step closer. If he looks elsewhere, he is sure that he’ll be able to avoid the uncomfortable consequence of his thoughts fleeing when too close.. Its her nearness that is the trigger after all, and can what he can’t see really hurt him?
The brindle stallion isn’t exactly sure what he’s trying to do, but it’s something along the lines of shooing her away like he does the wild predators of his island home. A show of bravado is enough to send all but the hungriest crocodiles back into the marshes. He doesn’t usually stand this close to them though, and he’d not been expecting to be able to feel the warmth she radiates across the distance that separates them. He can’t see her, but he knows exactly where she is. His heart races, loud enough that he’s sure she can hear it.
Gale holds his breath as though it might keep his senses from being overwhelmed, but he isn’t certain it helps.
He knows that he is taking a risk in not watching his opponent, but it truly feels the safer option in this moment. Another step closes the space between them, and with his face turned away from her, Gale gives her a gentle – but firm – push toward the sea. He doesn’t push far enough that he has to move his feet to stay balanced, but it’s enough to demonstrate his intentions. His voice is a low rumble in his chest, and he feels it most strongly where his chest is pressed against her shoulder.
“There are Monsters in the sea, Mazikeen.” He says, and he says it like it is an interesting bit of trivia and not like he is taking another step to push her toward the sea. “So grow those p…those wings of yours, and fly back to where you came from.” He almost calls them pretty, which some part of him is certain is an objective and true observation, but he’s even more certain that it would not go over well in this situation.
He is watching himself from overhead, and the disembodied sensation of viewing his equine body from Erne’s avian eyes allows him the clarity of mind he might not otherwise possess. Gale does not trust his physical instincts; and he suspects it is safer to observe from up here than to feel from down there. SafER, but Gale thinks that he will not feel truly at ease until long after Mazikeen has left. If he ever really feels safe again.
His thoughts wander, and when he realizes and returns to himself, he forgets he’d been avoiding his own eyes, and he opens them to meet Mazikeen’s orange gaze.
Gale swallows hard, and decides that acting like a statue might now be in his best interest.
