[private] it's all up in the air and we stand still

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you The sky overhead is filled with stars, bright and glittering. The wind blows down from the mountains, crisp with the scent of snow, and Gale shifts comfortably against Mazikeen’s warm side. Almost awake, he stretches, then curls more snugly against her and drifts back to sleep. Some time later, when Gale is still dreaming, his body wanders down to the lake. There is no sign that anything is awry; Gale’s face looks no different as he stares at his reflection in the water. Same blue eyes, same white mane, same white-blazed navy face. He takes a drink, and thinks about Mazikeen’s fighting fish friend, and decides that perhaps he’ll drink from the streams instead. This feels rude, somehow. Who else might be here, he wonders as he looks up at the slopes of the mountain, sweeping away from him as though he stood at the very heart of the world. The moonlight is bright on the stark cliffs of bare stone, and Gale will wonder in the morning why he remembers the beauty of the moment so clearly when he cannot recall anything else about it. A shadow crosses overhead, a black osprey who thinks it strange that Gale is not responding through their telepathic bond. Gale hears something and goes still, searching for the source of the sound and relying on the senses of this equine shape to find whomever might be approaching. @[anyone that wants to meet Gale who is currently not Gale :) ]

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

It's funny, how little the dark bothers Aela.

Beqanna had suffered a year, and then some, of it. The pitch had swallowed everything and the population of this realm had been left to stumble through the darkness. To find a way towards the future. Aela - who has never considered herself much of a warrior - had learned how to battle with Magic and how to use her skills in a way that allowed her more freedom than she ever found in the daylight.

The Eternal Night had happened and many had suffered; and a few, like Aela, had learned to survive.

But during that time - Aela who had been so full of ambitions and aspirations - had to focus on survival. There had been the knowing of where to hide yourself, of how to keep cover from the monsters that might make you a meal (and that would never do for the palomino who was meant for so much more). It had been the knowledge of how to slowly tear them apart (if the Monsters stayed that long) by each thread of emotion that had spared her and kept that golden coat of hers so flawless. It had also been that knowledge - the time it took to learn it - that had taken Aela away from her goals. All that lost time could have been better spent in daylight, just waiting for the perfect moment that she has always been waiting for.

The moment that Fate comes to find her and tells Aela: now.

Fate, however, is fickle and Aela has never been good at waiting. So on a night when she is coming back from the Pampas with a mind blazing full of ideas, she takes a shortcut through Hyalinean Mountains to return to Pangea. The striped girl weaves through the rugged terrain and has no intention of pausing in the kingdom of the East (not out of disrespect but Aela has such little time to waste and what would she do in Hyaline?) There is a glimmer of something familiar that pauses the traveling Aela, a shade of blue that she knows and the golden girl stalls her journey home when the moonlight reveals the familiar shape of her half-brother. He's never struck as the type to be nocturnal but then, Aela is a girl full of curiosities and so she doesn't pass the chance to ask with a sly smile: "Isn't it past your bedtime, @[Gale]?"

you know Aela absolutely wants to meet Not-Gale lmao

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Gale had attempted to keep the Curse from memories of Aela the same way he has tried to keep it from the rest of his family. A sad, pathetic attempt, but an attempt just the same. It has most of the memories now, pieced together where most of Gale’s family is residing, and had intended to visit them each in time. It had meant to do so wearing the better of the twins, but the twins haven’t been born yet and fate has dropped a blood relation of this body directly in front of it. Should it kill her now? It smiles at the idea of consuming her heart, and with it the abilities that she’d shown in the Meadow. No, no. Mazikeen rests too near; she’d hear the sounds of a scuffle and intervene. The alpha is a constant weight on its plans, her orange eyes ever burning into its back like a pair of hot coals. Tonight it feels a different set of eyes, and turns its navy head to see Aela. She is grinning, a sly smile that lights up her golden face, and the Curse wonders if she, too, will weigh him down. Best to keep it casual, it decides, give her no reason to suspect. So he offers her a perfectly Gale smile, seeing a sibling that he hardly knows but appreciating the lightheartedness of her question. “It’s hard to see the stars during the day,” says the Curse in Gale’s voice, with Gale’s same pensive expression as he looks up at the clear sky, and chatters idly like Glae is prone to doing. “I’ve been watching them move across the sky. They’re different here than in Islandres, and I recognize some from Loess.” @[Aela]

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

If Aela had been a mindreader, she would have been fascinated by Gale.

The way that the Curse batters the memories of her half-brother around would have certainly been of interest. The way that something dark wrapped and warped itself within that brindled body would have roused all the curiosity in hers. But what she thinks is Gale smiles and the palomino suppresses an eye-roll.

She didn't know this brother well - no better than knew Reave, really - but they both share a common gift with Heartfire and Aela knows better than to meddle with that kind of power.

Besides, there are much better uses for it. Better to harness it, if she can. And if it requires indulging a fraternal sibling in idle chatter, Aela doesn't mind. She smiles back at him - lovely and impish - before saying, "The dark doesn't bother you?" she murmurs, sounding surprised. She isn't, not when Gale could shift into something with much larger teeth or claws. It's another trait that she finds quite useful and the young mare has no intention on turning any of that towards her.

Better she and @[Gale] get along because there might come a day that she needs a familial favor.

Aela brightens at the mention of Loess. "I might be making a trip there soon," she tells her brother, rewarding him with one of her rare dimpled smiles. "A diplomatic one." Her blue eyes look up then at the stars - some of the same ones that Gale says were in the South - and asks with a silver voice, "Perhaps you might tell me some of its history?"

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you At her query, the thing that wears Gale tilts its head. Bothered by the dark? An odd question, since Gale memories of her were also in the darkness. Has it missed something? Are there memories that Gale had not given up? Gale is still sleeping, and the Curse has no desire to wake him. Not for something as trivial as a single question, one that it can answer in a way that seems very Gale-like. “No,” it says without taking its eye from the stars overhead. “Not at all.” Gale hadn’t known much of this younger sister, and so the Curse does not know much. Gale had trusted her, even from their single interaction (such is the nature of Gale), but the Curse is not as gullible. Not after Mazikeen and her too-numerous deceptions. Best to treat them all as enemies, because sooner or later they will be. She asks about Loess, and the parts of the Curse that had been burnt there twinge in phantom pain. It reweighs the benefits of killing her tonight, but as delightful as the idea of the Hyalinians waking to find a body is, the Curse knows the timing is not right. In truth, even Gale could not tell her much about the southern kingdom. He’d once known the history of the place, from its founding as The Hills to the way his family had ruled it for nearly a score of years. But the parts of him that had known such things are still in Tephra, and Gale knows only that his mother ruled there and that Oceane rules now, and most details of what the place looks like. He’d never bothered to ask Eyas for a re-education, and he’s not sure she’d have paid enough attention to their mother’s lectures to remember much anyway. “I’d rather not talk about Loess.” It says instead, and finally looks down from the stars. Its tone is flat, but not unfriendly, as if this were a subject that Gale would politely avoid discussing. His parents had died in a fire there, after all, and so it is not so strange a thing to avoid. @[Aela]

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

Perhaps she shouldn't have sounded so surprised.

There were plenty who were still afraid of the dark after the Eternal Night. Aela sometimes stumbled across the memories of nightmares, things that other horses tried to stifle down as the sun rose. If it wasn't those traces she found, there was always the stale scent of sweat in the air to find where a troubled soul had tried to rest.

She hadn't thought that Gale would be that kind of sort. Not when his advantage gave him a leverage that others did not have. For any trouble that a shadow creature might have tried to give the iridescent stallion, @[Gale] could have made himself bigger, stronger, faster. Given himself a sharper bite and a longer claw. And if none of those abilities had worked, perhaps he might have made himself appear as something else through the ability that he shared with Heartfire. Perhaps, thinks Aela as she looks over to her half-sibling.

Even with Gale, Aela is prodding for weaknesses. That ever-curious side to her when it comes to Magicks wants to know what his are. What are the limitations to shifting, where does his Sight start to dim?

It seems like a compromise to ask about Loess.

But Gale doesn't want to talk about it and that does make Aela curious. She isn't used to being denied something she wants. Her childhood with Kota had given the palomino anything (within reason) that she asked for. Visits with their blue roan ancestor always Revealed some delight or another, making Aela eager to join the broader realm outside the isolated North that she had been raised in. She had always been indulged and acquiesced to.

"It still bothers you," Aela replies lightly to Gale's flat tone. His parents had died there. That had been where the fires that he had spoken of happened. She can't mourn the absence of a parent (but could she call Wolfbane that?) that Aela had never known. It makes her pause, though, because she thinks of Kota and Heartfire. She imagines the latter with a memory from Pangea, when their (great)-grandmother had told the young mare that she was leaving for Beyond. If there is something that could tighten Aela's chest (which is usually so full of ambition), it would be that memory.

She'll ask after Loess another time.

"Would you like to hear something fanatical about the stars?" she asks and Aela dims her glowing stripes so that they might see them better.

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Gale has a great many weaknesses, and most of them have been found and broken open. Are any of them vulnerable to her still, the Curse wonders? It recalls how it had felt in the Meadow when she’d defended herself and holds back a shudder. Aela believes that he speaks of the deaths of Lepis and Wolfbane, and it keeps the pleasure of the deception from appearing on dark face, which remains flat as he meets her gaze. Unable to lie, it simply does not answer. She breaks the silence with a question about the stars, and it is such an abrupt departure that it answers without thinking. “Yes.” It takes him several attempts, but he manages to dim his glowing by the time the stars appear most brightly overhead. The glowing is a fairly new expression of magic, and not one he has much experience with controlling. He’s not had a reason to; the light added an extra challenge to his nocturnal hunting in Hyaline. Aela dims her glow far faster. Would it gain that ease if it devoured her heart? Gale’s head tilts curiously, and it stares more intently with his bright blue eyes as it waits for the story she means to share. @[Aela]

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

Her relationship with Gale is something that fascinates Aela (apart from Reave, she has no interest in her siblings). And now it is even more fascinating because she can glean nothing from him. She had caught memories from Gale before and now there is nothing. Just darkness. Has he gained a new ability that prevents her from seeing him as she had before?

So she flashes images of horned Yanhua from when she had spied him in Pangea, of Nashua during their last meeting in Taiga (and hadn't he been furious with her! The prodigal daughter, it would seem, she was not), and even though he isn't technically a sibling, Aela flashes a memory of gilded Wherewolf because the scowling stallion always warranted a reaction.

Aela finishes sharing the images just as her glow finally fades and then there is nothing to contest with the celestial light above them.

"I encountered a youth," she explains, thinking of sweet Benjamen who wore his heart on his forehead. He hadn't been from Beqanna and that had been the sole reason that the palomino had entertained him for as long as she had. There were rumors of other worlds out there and Aela's curiosity (like her ambition) is almost as big as the heavens above them. "He told me that the stars above us are lives playing out in another realm." The striped girl glances up, studying the few constellations that Kota had once taught her. "When they die, their light goes out. A chosen few pass on and the rest end up down here."

Her mouth curves skeptically at the tale.

"What do you think?" she questions Gale with a conspiratorial look, "did we do something terrible in a past life?"

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you The walls it had built to contain Gale have been helpful in other ways as well. They’d kept out a pesky mindreader it had encountered, and they muffle the echoes that she sends to Gale. He realizes what she’s doing only in time to See the final one, a pale-haired young stallion with glittering dapples. It is no one Gale had seen before, and the Curse frowns in concentration as it attempts to place him. Gale has pieced together that Aela is the child Lilliana had been carrying when Celina had shoved her into the water, though he’d not puzzled out who had raised her. She knew Heartfire as their great grandmother, but hadn’t known their father. The answers had been out of reach for Gale, and though the Curse suspects that it might now be able to discover them, it has no interest in doing so. It is, however, intrigued by theory that she’d been given. There have been stories of celestial creatures, moons and stars and suns walking the earth, but Gale had neither met nor Seen them. The Curse decides in this moment to find one, and to learn what happens when they die. Perhaps one of every kind, just to be sure. “Not as terrible as what I’ve planned for this life.” It replies in a tone as light as her own, and an accompanying smile. @[Aela]

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

Her bloodline is filled to the brim with stories.

Kota has told her plenty about the legends that concern Beqanna. Heartfire has Shown everything in-between all of Aela's questions and then her recent treks in Nerine have shown her glimpses of a future that Aela can still hardly conceive. The strange boy that had found her on the rocky ledges had just another curiosity, another glimpse of what life and magics linger outside this realm.

Perhaps, someday, when she has lain enough ruin across Beqanna, Aela will look towards other worlds.

The smile on her face turns sly when she sees Gale frown. It had been frustrating to press the other memories beneath his iridescent skin and sense no reaction. It had been even more frustrating to sense nothing from him. But frowning Wherewolf intrudes like she hoped that he might. During their last meeting, Gale couldn't hide his memories from her, and Aela was able to glean much from him. Enough that when he says that he has terrible things planned for this one, the palomino doesn't believe him.

Gale's light tone seems to confirm what she suspects; he reminds her of the brothers in Taiga that seem so good.

It makes Aela laugh. "Ah, yes." She murmurs, still glancing up at the shimmering starlight. "The fearsome, terrible @[Gale]." It's as close to teasing as she can come. (She means no offense to the brindled stallion. He bears the cremello scars of a warrior and while Aela certainly thinks that he could stand his own ground in battle, Gale is not someone she imagines intentionally searching for a fight.)

"Something is different about you," Aela muses when she looks away from the night sky above them. Even now, there is nothing for her to intercept from her half-brother. The golden woman shrugs it away but it does irritate her - Aela who spent the Eclipse sharpening her skills, who had been praised by Heartfire for her wit and perception - that she can't sense anything from the pegasus standing nearby.

He is Dark.

Her pale lips quirk again, an unspoken question hanging between them as she turns to look at him.