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

[Gale]

Even though he knows that she speaks in jest, the brindle creature still smiles, both pleased by the adjectives and easily playing a good-humored Gale. He says nothing, only gives her the same handsome smile that had won their father several hearts, and looks toward the sky when she does, pondering his own query.

He can feel her. Just there, at the edges of his awareness. She’s fidgeting like Ciri had when she’d pulled down her stars, a jittery sort of movement that does not move a muscle in her body. Magic, a kind he does not have.

The Curse has been at work through the summer, turning the mountainous Hyaline into a sanctuary and eliminating risks to his survival. Mazikeen has pledged her obedience, and he has rid the lake of the kelpie infestation. Looking now at Aela, he wonders how soon she might become a risk to his survival.

Mazikeen had only made him promise not to hurt his brothers, as unaware of his sister as Gale had been at the time. How brightly would the Alpha’s fury glow, Gale wonders, if he came to her bed tonight covered in his Aela’s blood?

The image is almost worth the hassle of killing her, but Gale only smiles instead of lunging forward, and yawns before meeting her gaze.

“I’ve learned a new trick,” he tells her, having come up with the idea several hours earlier but not yet having had a chance to practice on anything but a pastel fawn.

“Would you like me to show you?” She does not think he is fearsome and terrible, and he wonders how long that might be so. Not long at all if he fails in his attempt, he thinks, but at least she will not live long enough to hold it against him.

[Aela]

If Aela had been raised by Lilliana, she might have recognized the warning in Gale's handsome smile. It's the same one that lead her mother into temptation. But all the palomino (can barely) see beneath the dim glow of starlight are the curves of a smile that echoes her own; a devastatingly attractive feature that Aela has learned to use just as much as her slender neck or her rounded hips.

But none of her physical attributes have any purpose here.

So the gold-striped mare looks up at the stars when Gale does and her blue eyes glance towards the East, where Pangea (the place she will always consider her home) waits, and Aela wonders more about the stars on Skandar's skin than the ones above the pair of siblings. Will he still be there? And even if she can convince him to come to the Pampas, what then?

Aela always has a plan. And she has the beginnings of one in mind. The Pampas Prince is driven more by lust than ambition but she can use that to fuel discontent in the South. But there is still more to do - Skandar hates his birthplace, Tephra. Perhaps they might ignite the volcano? She glances back to her half-brother, the blue-brindled shadow beside her, and contemplates asking what kind of chaos to bestow upon Hyaline.

(It is coming and wouldn't it be a kindness to tell him, to at least give him a choice?)

She's still trying to get a gauge on his mood but there is nothing. There are no memories lingering clear enough in his mind for her to see. How had he learned to be so guarded with them? Her magic is still trying - probing and searching for any crack it can find - because Aela is a persistent creature. The shield that Gale has holds and so the golden mare has no choice but to turn their father's smile towards @Gale and try another tactic.

Aela has always been intrigued by the abilities of others. What powers they have and how they can wield them. What their weaknesses might be (having spent time in the presence of magicians such as Straia and Eight and Beyza, Aela has learned that they exist). "Go ahead," the young mare says, thinking that perhaps whatever Gale does might give her the answer that she has been searching for.

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you She consents, and Gale smiles.  Wanting to be sure she does not move away, Gale uses Wishbone’s magic to hold Aela in place, bending her bones in a manner that will keep her upright and motionless. He considers silencing her as well, but decides that if she screams, the sound of it echoing off the mountains would be worth the risk of being overhead, and leaves her head free. Her neck he turns to look at him, telling her: “I learned it in Tephra. I think it will come in handy tonight.” It is difficult, what he attempts, but the Curse is nearly as single-minded as its host had once been. He knows no other way to the heart than through the chest, and becomes a thing equipped with dexterous knives that make quick work of the perfect flesh of her chest. There is blood - it sprays warm and wonderful across his face - but he recalls the flinching of the deer and is quick, slicing out a bite sized morsel of her heart and sealing it with Mazikeen’s fire. (The aura alone would have cauterized the wound, but it is the unexpected light healing he gains as he swallows the bit of muscle that will keep her alive. How lucky that she’s saved herself.) When Gale has a mouth again, when he’s released her bones and licked the heartblood from his lips, he gives her that same warm smile. “Fancy, huh?” @Aela

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

She never considered that Gale might be more.

It had bothered her, the way that none of her emories could seep into his mind. She kept trying to sense something from him and all she could gather was darkness. There was nothing. Though she had only met her half-brother once, this hadn't been like the time before. That meeting with the iridiscent stallion had been wide open; Aela had gathered memories from his childhood in Loess, to sensing the emotions that being in the presence of another Curse-sired sibling had wrought her rather sensitive sibling.

Aela thinks his new trick might be the barrier that she had imagined.
She thinks it might be an ability to block out Magic.

But what he does sears through her in a way that pain never has before. She has suffered bites and wounds from the Eclipse monsters. Sabra's lightning magic has danced across her golden skin. Narcisus has possessed her very soul. Carnage has entered her mind and yet nothing feels the way that this does now. It is like Sabra's lightning is striking her soul, that Narcisus' hold of it has finally spread, that the shadow creatures decide they have nothing to fear from the slender palomino and tear her apart. There is no moving away from this and so Aela wields the only gift she has: an intense blue stare that she fixes on the brindled brute.

If he intends to kill her, Aela intends to hold him in her gaze until she no longer can. It will be a memory that she intends to sear into his mind.

And yet, as he splits her chest open and sends agony radiating through every inch of her body, he does not kill her. Aela does not die (later, this will convince her that her ambitions make her Immortal; there is still too much for her to do and achieve). Gale's younger sister is familiar with the way that her gift seeps into others and grants her what she wishes to know. There is a feeling within her that she isn't used to, a depth of feeling that sends her reeling back from the pegasus. The shifter is smiling and licking his lips while Aela scowls and the last of his fire aura surtures up the wound on her chest. It is still Gale that she is looking at but this isn't the same brother she had first encountered in the Meadow.

Her lovely skin starts to become as dark as the Hyalinean night.

"Gale," she seethes at him with heaving sides. "What did you do?"

@Gale

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Gale’s sister does not scream. Her eyes are a soft color - summer sky blue - but they meet his like a wall, like she might somehow stop him with their intensity. She probably has stopped mortal men, he thinks, savoring the taste of her heart. She might even have caught his eyes, relation to his host irrelevant, had the twisted darkness had a taste for mortal women. He likes to hurt them, and they are all lovely when they scream, so one face is much like the next. They are unique more for their powers, and Gale finds these strange. Uncomfortable even, and he scowls. “Hopefully not something I regret,” he answers. There is always a learning period after consuming a new magic. Aela’s magic is running freely through him, giving the nothingness emotions. It has no heart to feel them, so they circle about inside him, sharp, barbed, smooth, pleasant, as if they are physical sensations instead. He feels nauseous. Gale blinks, still scowling, and does not notice that Aela herself has changed, that in taking and stealing and mending her he has altered some vital bit. Later, when it has altered her magic to a level he can recognize, perhaps Gale will understand what had conspired between them. For now, he only knows that he has a new power that makes him ill, that he can successfully remove the heart of a still-living horse, and that Aela might someday become an Obstacle. “You should go home.” The words are terse and his lightning blue gaze is dismissive. “Or to...wherever.” She is the sort to wander, it seems, unpredictable. Dangerous. He frowns again, and that is all the dismissal she’ll receive before he disappears. @Aela