Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
The crystalline heart within Gale’s body had remained still for several hours. The sun is only a few hours from rising when it finally stirs. The opalescent black surface of the jewel shatters into fragments so small they fall like sand across the bloody corpse of the brindle stallion.
From the space within rise shadows, thick and black. They shimmer through a myriad of shapes as the bodiless thing looks down at the body in front of it with a hundred different sets of eyes.
The host is empty in this moment. No consciousness inhabits the striped body, no bit of Wolfbane and Lepis’ son remains in that empty shell. The lunged lobsters have already begun to scavenge the body, picking off the exposed flesh around the wound Mazikeen had torn in the throat.
The Curse tries to re-enter the body, and fails. He tries again and fails. He tries until the sun begins to lighten the distant horizon, and only then accepts the inevitable.
If the Curse were to leave the body here, it knows that Gale would eventually return to life, pulled back by the regenerative magic that exists in each cell of his body. It has never willingly relinquished a host before, and for a very long time it considers what to do next.
Finding another host is out of the question. There are none with Gale’s abilities. But it cannot inhabit a dead body. It will just have to wait until Gale returns to life, however long that might take.
A ribbon of shadow stretches out toward the body, and the next moment both the Curse and Gale are in Hyaline. Gale’s body lies near the entities, beside the glittering lake. In the darkness, unseen, the Curse again becomes a jewelled heart, buried within the chest of the brindle stallion.
When Gale returns to consciousness, the Curse will return as well.
Or rather, that is what it had intended to happen.
Instead, when the body finally regains consciousness and rises to its feet, the Curse remains, as hard and still as stone, within his chest. Gale blinks, and shakes his head, and looks out at the clear mountain lake.
Where is he? This place looks nothing like Loess, and he steps closer to the lake to slake his sudden thirst. The face that looks back at him is not what he expects, and Gale blinks. The face remains, and he supposes that it does look like his face, if he were many years older.
The last time he can remember looking at his reflection he’d been just on the cusp of adulthood. This is the face of a grown adult. What exactly has happened, he wonders?
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