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]
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