"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
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
He monitors her behavior as he moves nearer, his keen eyes missing no movement. The trouble for Gale is in interpreting them, and what can it possibly mean that she is glowing so brightly that he must shield his eyes with magic? He has been trying to not use his Sight, lest he be Seen, but the other option is being unable to look at Mazikeen with his own eyes. The choice was clear.
Standing beside him, she is tense, so still that he wonders if she might feel like the stones underfoot if he reached out to touch her. He wants to, but then her ear flicks, and she snorts, and it feels suddenly like the tension in the air disappears all at once.
Mazikeen is clearly displeased, but she is definitely no longer vibrating with rage. Gale is very sure this means he’s managed to diffuse the situation, and he feels a little pleased with himself for it, which is soon overshadowed by the fact that he’d caused it at all, and he’s back to frowning as she meets his eyes.
He does nod - he won’t joke about it again - but mostly he looks into her bright orange eyes. Had this been a brief glimpse into her future? A chance to see the hurt and fury as himself, and not as whatever thing Gale will have become by the time he hurts Mazikeen on purpose?
The flood guilt forces him to look away, but the Curse drinks down just enough of it that it does not overwhelm Gale and change his mind.
There is a blank space in his memory, part of their last conversation, and it weighs heavily on him now. The way she uses ‘seconds’ feels like it should be familiar but Gale can’t quite…He'll just look at her, he decides. Look at her and talk and that will make the world feel right again.
“I love you,” he says the moment he meets her gaze. “Right now, I know that as much as I know anything. I know that I’ve thought of you most every moment I’ve been away. I told my brothers about you, and they told me...” well, he pauses, realizing that perhaps not all of what his brothers had told him was entirely true.
“Well...they told me lots of things. Did you know there are things we could do that are even more fun than fighting and kissing?” As he is with all his knowledge, Gale is eager to share, and after asking the question curiously of her, he takes a step away to stretch languidly.
He’s getting ready to shift to something that will take him more quickly to Icicle Isle, having sudden remembered the Midsummer Festival, but Gale very much enjoys the way feline limbs feel in a stretch and does not want to waste the chance, especially when he’s been so recently Healing. Ending his stretch with a shake of his maned head, Gale realizes he’s assumed that Mazikeen is free to leave immediately, and so he asks:
“Are you ready to go now? Or do you have other stuff you have to do first? Before we go to the Festival, I mean.”
She lets those three words diffuse her anger further still, focusing on them and not whether or not it’s foolish how much she actually needed to hear them and to look him in the eye as he says it. And even though the doubt has not entirely faded, his voice helps and a little more of the tension seeps out of her body. Mazikeen hates how deeply she feels anything - it’s always felt like a weakness to her. And while she’s been working on not beating herself up about it, the progress had been slow. It’s too easy to believe there’s something fundamentally wrong with her and she should try to shove everything down and just be fine the way everyone else seems to be. Which is exactly what she’s trying to do now. She doesn't apologize, but neither does he - and she supposes being even on that front is good enough.
Mazikeen takes in a deep inhale to calm herself as she listens to him speak, a corner of her mouth twitching at the mention of him talking to his brothers about her as she had talked to her friends about him, and on her exhale the cracks on her body continue to fade and wink out. There are a few that linger, burning bright down her spine, but she is not fracturing the same as before.
She’s not sure whether it was her anger or her pain that caused the light to arrive but either way, it’s incredibly inconvenient considering her newfound determination to try to keep one of those things to herself.
Gale already had her attention, whatever bit of it wasn’t pointed inward in self-loathing, but the mention of things that are more fun than fighting or kissing draws her rational mind further out from where it had retreated (and the curiosity that it brings extinguishes a few more embers). Her gaze follows him when he steps away and stretches. He then mentions the festival (she’s glad she doesn’t have to suffer through asking if he still wants to go with her after she just erupted) and whether there’s anything she needs to do before they go.
“That depends.” She states, and there’s a flicker of amusement in her eyes as she tries to finish settling back into her right mind. There’s only a little light left on her skin as she turns to fully face him - the anger not having gone fully to sleep again but she makes an effort to only sound calm and intrigued when she asks “What are these things that are more fun?”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Even Gale knows a calming breath when he sees one. The way its effects alter the glow of Mazikeen’s body is unexpected and he decides the glowing means she is agitated in some way, and resolves to avoid it going forward. What a remarkable sort of thing, far more practical than his faintly glowing scars, and beautiful too.
He watches as they fade, retreating up her neck, her sides, remaining only along her back. Her fiery backbone, he thinks to himself with a smile, and he wonders if it is hot to the touch. When she turns to face him he’s settling down more comfortably at her warning. Best to be comfortable for things that depend with the two of them.
Well. That is not what he had been expecting at all.
Gale has avoided thinking much about the activities Mazikeen asks about, and he’s clearly not expecting her question.
“Well....” There is quite a bit to tell, and as Gale considers where to start, his eyes start wandering, and his attention soon follows suit. The broken saber of her tooth that he’d snapped reminds him of their battle. Gale admires the sleek fur of this shape, the way she sits like a coiled spring, ever ready.
The few feet between them feels suddenly very large, and Mazikeen much farther away than he’d prefer. On his recently stretched legs he moves closer, bumping his navy face against her shoulder and running his cheek along her neck. Her white fur is softer even than it looks, and he can feel the strength in the muscles beneath it.
When he speaks, his voice is a low rumble, belieing the rapid rhythm of his heartbeat. It starts with kissing, he tells her, and progresses from there. He presses against her as he speaks, rubbing his chin gently against her shoulder. “So. Worth delaying the festival for?”
04-16-2021, 09:14 AM (This post was last modified: 04-16-2021, 09:16 AM by Mazikeen.)
Mazikeen
A small shiver runs down Mazikeen’s spine as she watches Gale look at her, extinguishing all but one of the glowing cracks that had remained there. The last one flickers between her shoulders, a physical display of the venomous voice in her mind telling her how wrong it is that he should affect her so much.
But there are other thoughts vying for attention now too and Mazikeen knows (whether it’s wrong or not) that she likes how he can diffuse her anger. He’d done it the first time she’d arrived on Islandres too, another day she had been ready to tear him to shreds. She likes how he looks at her as he closes the space between them, the way that first bump of his navy face against her shoulder turns her mind into a pleasant version of the white noise she feels when she’s in a rage - momentarily making all of her storming thoughts hazy and distant.
It makes it easier to pretend the hurt isn’t there anymore and that she is absolutely, without a doubt, doomed for worse in the future.
Even as she hates herself for loving him so damn much she enjoys the low rumble of his voice when he continues. His words encourage a confusing mixture of excitement and uncertainty. She wasn’t even sure she had been any good at kissing so she worries now about how much her inexperience would shine if they went further. If it progressed, like he said. Never mind that he’d confirmed that he was just as inexperienced as she was - just with more experienced brothers, apparently.
But now that she's calmer, she wants to make up for the last few moments, wants to scramble her way back to joy. She’d been so worried about letting anger ruin their last meeting and she had plunged head-first into it this time. There are precious seconds that have been wasted now. This was how they should have greeted each other. How they could have, if only she had been a little bolder. Next time, she promises herself, even though she knows she’ll probably always wait for a sign that he wants her still.
Right now it is not hard at all to give in to the more pleasant thoughts, not as he presses into her and rubs his chin against her shoulder and warmth that has nothing to do with glowing embers spreads across her skin. Like her body knows exactly what to do while her head spins. Mazikeen turns her head to pull gently at his thick mane before nuzzling the long white fur and letting it tickle her nose when she replies in a low voice of her own, already following his lead. “I’m okay with being a little late if you are.”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Unable to read what flickers behind her orange eyes, Gale is content to simply watch her. The rest of the world melts away around her, and though her anger fades and Gale uses only his natural vision, he would swear she still glows in his eyes.
The realization that a day will come that he cannot stand and admire her comes quickly and without welcome. The Curse swallows it down, and Gale is able to live in the moment.
Gale can feel the low rumble of her voice against his cheek, and replies with a purr of his own as he leans into her touch. The summer night around them is cool, and her pale body is deliciously warm. He moves slowly, from kissing to more, and in the end instinct guides them far more than his siblings’ advice.
Gale is no less awkward at making love than he is at everything else, but at least he has the excuse of it being his first time, and his focus being more on making sure Mazikeen enjoys herself than performing well. (The last two are tied together, he’ll learn, but perhaps not tonight).
In the end, he is breathless and looking up at the stars. Rolling over so that he lies on his belly, Gale looks at Mazikeen curiously, his blue eyes filled with so many questions that he cannot decide which to ask first.
In the end, he settles for one that seems the most important: “What do you think the difference is between that and making babies?”
His purr brings forth one of her own which then deepens as things progress and Mazikeen cannot quite seem to string a coherent thought together enough to be embarrassed about it. She’s far too distracted. There are a lot of nerves (and some momentary irritation about biology and who is where in this scenario) but it doesn’t take very long at all for her thoughts to fade away and the world condenses to just her and Gale.
Any awkwardness on her part or his is quickly forgotten in the moment as tries to just let her instincts take over. Afterwards, she stretches luxuriously - feeling a little lighter and thinking that hadn’t been nearly as frightening as she had worked it up to be. The anger is still there somewhere but it’s been effectively smothered for the time being and Mazikeen feels no desire at all to try to dredge it up. She’s happy to let it lie, to think of other things and do what she’s supposed to have been doing - enjoying what time she has.
Mazikeen swears she can actually see the presence of questions in Gale’s mind when he looks at her - she’s feeling far too lightheaded to try to come up with any of her own so she waits with a hazy smile on her face to see if he’ll actually ask anything. When he does, a gentle laugh escapes her and she reaches out to nuzzle his navy cheek before settling herself down beside him, not pressed against him but comfortably close. “Timing, maybe? I feel like pregnancies usually happen over the winter? Which I guess makes sense, that” the slight emphasis on the word meaning to refer back to what they’d just done “is certainly one way to keep warm and fill up cold days.” Her smile sparkles with humour as she says this and she doesn't look away as she feels a blush race across her skin.
Mazikeen supposes she should know all about how pregnancy worked but she had just never really paid attention before - she’d joined the pack before her mother became pregnant with any younger siblings and none of her close friends have had kids (that she is aware of, and she did in fact completely miss Breach’s pregnancy). But she thinks she's noticed pregnant mares over the winter and the births must happen sometime after that. Though she never could tell the difference between a foal that was three days old or three seasons, they all just looked so small to her.
Her insecurities have not settled back into her mind yet and it makes her bold enough to ask the question she thinks of. “Would…” She trails off, trying to think of how to phrase her question - orange eyes sparking with their own curiosity as she looks at him. “Would you like to? Make babies, I mean.” Mazikeen hadn’t given kids another thought since their last conversation on the matter but she wonders now if this is something he’d like to do before the Curse takes over his life, or if the mere presence of the Curse means it is too dangerous of a thing to contemplate.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Gale cannot be sure he’ll be himself tomorrow, and in such a world there is no time for long term plans.
This is what he has told himself whenever his mind wanders back to Mazikeen’s question about children. Children are a long-term commitment. Much longer than he’d expected, actually - it turns out it takes years for them to grow up enough to be on their own. Gale’s memories of his own childhood are fractured, and he’s never been around children enough to learn how to tell their age.
Longer than he has, Gale decides as he listens to Mazikeen’s amused explanation. But that would certainly be a delightful way to pass a cold winter night, and at the thought Gale leans against her, enjoying the sensation of being pressed against her from outstretched paw to tail.
“A good way to fill up a summer night, too.” His reply comes as she rests her head across him, and there is the soft rumble of a contented purr deep in the back of his throat. The barrage of questions behind his eyes fade, leaving only the query of if it would be rude to ask if they might try again. Gale has decided that he’ll just start with more kissing and see if she’s agreeable that way, when she speaks up.
The way she pauses, as though choosing the right words, is enough for Gale to know that she’s asking something important, so he tries his very best to pay attention and has to lean away again so he’s not distracted by kissing the very soft place below her curved ear instead of listening.
It’s a good thing he does, because he might have been startled into stopping when she asks, and he’s sure that Mazikeen - with her quick interpretations - would have taken it to mean something other than it does. With that in mind, he is unusually careful in his wording, choosing carefully rather than blurting out and over himself and careful - always careful - to be honest.
“I’d like you all to myself while I have you,” he says, rather than a yes or a no. Neither is right, because he does want to make babies, especially with Mazikeen, but this is not a world in where such a thing is possible. He is smiling as he says it, and he reaches out to brush his cheek against hers. He doesn’t mean to say more, and will not remember adding: “But I think that if you were persuasive enough, I might be inclined to share.”
It soothes worries that had not yet fully formed to hear his words and the contented purr that rumbles through him so that she can feel it reverberating in her skin. It's a pleasant feeling, his purr, and her paws flex a little in response. Mazikeen had not thought yet to wonder if he cared for it at all but it seems like it must not have been very awful at least and she is glad.
Gale’s response to her question about making babies sends pleasant warmth down her back and she smiles, finding this answer to be quite agreeable. Then with his cheek against hers, Mazikeen lets out a low, soft laugh at his addition about him being persuaded to share but she finds that the idea of children fades away again from her mind. If he had felt strongly about it she would have agreed without question (and not simply because she’s in a mind to be agreeable about anything right now). But instead it remains a dream she’d share with him in a kinder world.
For the best, she may remember when she can think clearly, considering where their future lies.
Even those dark thoughts are far away right now. She’s existing just in this moment and Mazikeen enjoys the feeling of this new bliss so much she wishes her mind could always be this calm. She wonders if it'll always be like this afterwards and finds herself looking forward to finding the answer to that query.
“I like the idea of you having me to yourself, actually.” She shifts then but it is a subtle change. Exchanging the smilodon for a white lioness that matches Gale’s shape. Mostly it is just to get rid of those sabre teeth as they would have hindered her as she leans over to whisper her next words into his ear - letting her nose brush the soft fur there. “And of me having you to myself.”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Though it had been described as more fun, Gale has already categorized what they’ve just done as a entirely different kind of fun than fighting altogether. They both have their perks, though he has now a decided favorite when it comes to Mazikeen, and he’s pleased she seems to feel the same.
He can feel when she shifts, and the shape she takes brings a delighted smile to his whiskered face. Though he had been as enraptured of her saber-toothed shape as he is most others, there is something...different about this one. He tries to decide what it might be, but he’s distracted by the whisper in his ear.
Gale shivers. Hearing her say the words is at once affirming and sensual, and the brindle lion leans against her whisper.
“You may have me to yourself anytime you please,” he replies, “Now, even, if you’d like.”
It’s the shared shape, he decides, that the two of them are them are as close as they can be. He’d felt it when they were horses, and when they’d been ospreys together. Not identical, but a matched pair. Reaching over, he nibbles gently at her neck, trying to find the place that made her purr so delightfully before.
Mazikeen is pleased to have gotten a shiver out of Gale but then his words send a shiver down her own spine and she forgets to gloat. So she settles for just being pleased that she can affect him and gain some more evidence that the feelings in her are echoed in the magnificent lion beside her.
The deep purr that rumbles through her can’t be helped when Gale’s nibbling finds the sweet spot on her neck and her eyes flutter closed for a moment as she lets herself enjoy the sensation his attention brings. The thrill in her heart is unlike anything she’s ever felt, both similar to and different from the exhilaration that comes from a good hunt or a fight. Better, she's pretty sure, though she's currently feeling very biased. So the question of whether she wants him now is one she immediately knows the answer to.
“Now sounds perfect.” Those words are more breathless than she intends and embarrassment threatens to seep in but she pushes past it, pushes into Gale as she begins to rise. Her eyes are bright with intention as she nibbles on the ear she had whispered into before tugging on it gently and beckoning him to join her. She feels it too, the sense that they are now a matched set, and there are some curious thoughts ghosting through her mind about shapes and species. She brushes off these questions for now though, thinking she'll share them with Gale and his inquisitive mind one day (if she can remember them).
