Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Despite the magics that it had taken from her body, the murder of the angel had been deeply dissapointing. Her Self-Sustenance has slowly eaten away at the Curse’s bloodlust, leaving it with a hollow core that the Empathy threatens to fill if it ever stops minding that other angelic ability. At the edges of its consciousness, the creature can feel the remnants of its host attempting to stir each time it wakes from slumber.
Each time this body is killed, the resurrected Gale is able to hold off the Curse a moment longer. There are only a certain number of lives the thing is afforded, it seems, and as it approaches the end of them it becomes ever more difficult to kill the soul tied to this body - and to keep him dead.
So the cursed thing sleeps only when it forgets not to, when it grows physically exhausted of always using some magics and of never using others. Of thinking always of some things and never of others. Tonight it wakes disoriented and groggy, crammed into a crevice of rock far too small for the brindled equine body it wears. The last thing it had seen were a pair of silver eyes, but there is no recollection at all of what had transpired afterward.
There is blood on the stallion’s navy lips, and the pink tongue that tastes it finds the sharp tang of a carnivore. Divest is probably not dead then.
A gust of air into the cavern brings with it the sound and smells of the evening, as well as the indistinct images of those souls it has brushed across. None that it recognizes, so the thing becomes small enough to slide free, and then returns to its glowing navy and perlino coat before it slips out of the cave and into the moon-dappled midsummer night.
The thing that looks like Gale shakes out its white mane, growing long and pale down the length of his navy spine. The feathered wings at his sides are pale white save for a crimson V on the left, and though illuminated infrequently by the bolts lightning that flickers across his body, are nearly hidden in both the night and the long tendrils of Shadow that lurk beneath him.
The brindle stallion takes a deep breath of the humid air, thick with the scent of ripe grapples and the sound of insects. The bright blue eyes close for just a moment, and when they open again, the cursed creature stands on the black sand shore of Islandres’ central isle. It can feel Gale, stirring at the familiar sight, and squeezes both life and magic from him in a vicelike grip until he's nothing but a shadow.
In a nearby lime tree, a blue-eyed osprey watches as the stallion winces, shakes his head, and disappears into the brightly-colored jungle.
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