i dont know how to take it away from you

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you The water at Gale's feet is tepid, no warmer or cooler than the spring breeze that ruffles the salt-crusted white hair of the stallion's spinal mane. Though he remains unsure how he’d left Islandres, he’s certain now of its demise. The saltwater from his swim there had dried while he rested, leaving him uncomfortable and prompting his venture toward the Pampa’s central river to rinse himself. He wades farther in, until he feels the water close over the iridescent navy of his back, dunks his head, and then returns to the shore to dry in the sun while he half dozes. There had been few places left after the destruction of the storms, but this place had risen from the sea. He is not entirely sure yet that he trusts it to remain, but where else is there to go? He has done his best to avoid anyone and anything familiar, slipping into the woods at any glimpse of blue or white or too-curious eyes. He is alive only because he cannot die, and though Gale had resigned himself to this fate, he had done so with the intention of secluding himself forever on the island of Islandres. But there is no Islandres anymore, and so there is no seclusion.  He can even hear the sound of someone coming closer, far closer than he'd like, so he closes his eyes as though he’s asleep and hopes they leave. @Colby

[Ryatah]

Ryatah

She sees him along the riverbank, and for a long while she simply watches him from where she stands.

The Pampas is not a familiar land to her, as most of the newer lands were not. Most of her time had been spent in Tephra, Hyaline, or Taiga, and she tried not to think of how she likely would never see any of them again: just like the valley and the dale. The grasslands are unexpectedly lovely, though, and wandering the wildflower-filled fields and following the lazy curve of the river has served as a distraction from the darkness that now pulsed in her chest like a heartbeat.

She thinks it is just her imagination that it feels stronger; thinks it is just her imagination that it is even there at all. She had been trapped in the black void for so long that she does not always trust that she has returned to normal—or at least her version of it. She thinks she is just restless, that it is just the tension around her after the flood and the storms—her empathy drawing in everything negative, and she not taking the time to filter it out.

She sees him, though, and realizes it is not just her imagination. Something rises up in her chest, a tangible thread of darkness that feels both drawn to and repulsed by him—a remnant of shadow that followed her home from the void, burrowed into her veins.

But he is not the first one to kill her, and likely will not be the last. He is not the first man to hurt her.
Turning from him does not even cross her mind.

When she walks towards him it is with carefully veiled caution, giving the appearance of ease even though her pulse is thrumming. She is the same as she had been before, with the golden halo and golden wings, and stardust that trails from the ends of them to the ground. But the scar on her chest from where he had ripped out her heart remains, perhaps some masochistic part of her subconscious that did not want to heal the wound all the way, or perhaps because it took far more energy to regrow a heart and she could not be bothered to concern herself with the scar.

“Gale,” she stops a fair distance from him, watching him with eerily calm, dark eyes, and a placid kind of smile hardly touching her lips. She does not hate him; there is no malice in her tone, no disgust on her face. There is only a tentative distrust. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

EVEN ANGELS HAVE THEIR WICKED SCHEMES

@Gale

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Hiding from conversation comes naturally to Gale. He would have preferred physical distance, the solitude that space provided him. Pretending to sleep wasn’t the best way to avoid attention on a sunny spring riverbank in a land full of refugees, but Gale has always been cursed with awkwardness when it comes to dealing with most others. Though Gale had been rather verbose before being Cursed, he had never been much good at the other parts of socializing. He tends to stare (with eerily electric eyes), and forget where he is going even as he speaks aloud, lured away by an enticing thought. The navy creature has almost forgotten that he’s pretending to be asleep (might even be drifting into a dream; it is not as though he sleeps much at night anymore) when the sound of a voice - of his name - startles him back into reality. His eyes open, and fix on a calm dark gaze The crooked knots of immortality and morality makes discovering the scope of his actions while Cursed hazy, even with his memories returned. He knows he’d ripped open that glowing chest, and left her lightless body in a dark place. Nothing like the bright river here, he thinks, and glances toward the water and watches as it glitters beneath the afternoon sun. So many of the magics he had wielded while Cursed seem impossible now, beyond his scope even if he dared try. What had that dark place even been? Had she died? How had she escaped? It seems as though he will not answer, but at last finally turns back to the angel and asks simply: “Would you like me to leave?” There are a myriad of better things to have said, and for once he shows restraint, keeping expression from his face as he holds back the flood of everything else there is to say. @Ryatah

[Ryatah]

Ryatah

Even though she had never known him well before, she can see that he is different. There is something about him that has changed, his skin electric but his demeanor subdued, though she is not foolish enough to trust it. She is no stranger to kind words being spoken between sharp teeth, and the only version of Gale that she knows is unpredictable.

She does not know what sets him off.
She does not know what causes him to go from being placid and unassuming to cold-blooded and ruthless; from smiling lips to a mouth soaked with her blood.

But she is a creature that has always thrived on fear, on walking fine lines and knowingly crossing them. If it weren’t for the strange feeling of darkness inside of her chest this would have felt like the same game she has always played. The darkness unsettles her, though, and makes her suddenly doubt her own usually steadfast nature.

Despite her uneasiness, she finds that she immediately shakes her head when he asks if he should leave. “No,” she says, even if the hesitation in her voice and wariness in her eyes nearly betrays her words. She thinks of telling him what she had been thinking earlier—how he is not the first to kill her, that she has died before—but finds instead that the difference in him is what has piqued her curiosity the most. “You seem different from before. Do you still hate angels?” This time there is a whisper of humor to her voice, as she slowly eases herself against the invisible boundary that resides between them.

EVEN ANGELS HAVE THEIR WICKED SCHEMES

@Gale

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Gale meets her gaze until she says ‘No’, regarding her with momentarily increased intensity. He should leave anyway, he thinks. Regardless of what she says, or what Casimira had said about it. Seeing Ryatah here answers the question he’d been left with after parting ways with the dragon mare on Islandres. The angel isn’t truly dead after all, and that black place had not been an eternity. Yet thinking of it still leaves him with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. One that he can ignore as he flicks his ears forward to hear what follows the ‘No’. It is not what he expects, and for a moment he frowns. For the briefest moment his heart races, fear that there are memories he has not regained crawling up his spine, but the pieces fall into place just before he can panic. She is still stepping closer, and he forces his breathing back to something steady, so that when he answers there is no indication of breathlessness at all. His tone is equally steady, matter of fact as he replies: “It hated not being able to get to you more than it hated angels in particular. Mazikeen wouldn’t let it hunt the angels.” He begins to trail off, but realizes that his answer as spoken leaves blame where it doesn’t belong, and then forgetting before he continues to answer the rest of her question while he's talking: “I was Cursed. A familial affliction.” Another pause, and then: “But broken now.” @Ryatah

[Ryatah]

Ryatah

It does not escape her that he uses the word it, implying that he and the version of himself that had unleashed such chaos across two kingdoms were separate from one another. She is inclined to believe him, since he doesn’t really have a reason to lie to her—she has been hurt numerous times by those she cares about, and no one has ever attempted to spare her feelings by lying to her, and she does not expect an almost stranger to do so either. They have spilled her blood and buried painful words like barbs into her mind, faulting her for every misstep, and never did they soften their blows with lies or excuses.

Perhaps that is her own moral flaw, to so easily turn a blind eye to the cruel things that others do; to forgive and pretend to forget for the sake of avoiding conflict.
To allow herself to shoulder the blame in some way, so long as it means she will not have to endure being alone; so long as it means they will keep coming back.

She makes a soft hum of acknowledgement to what he says about Mazikeen not letting him—it—hunt angels, but does not say anything else. It had been her that had healed Maze when the cursed creature had left her nearly dead on the shores of Hyaline, but she finds herself wondering why he had obeyed the fiery mare’s request to not harm Ryatah while not doing the same for Maze herself. She is all too familiar, though, with how twisted and impossibly complicated relationships like that could be—she is sure she has forgiven Carnage for similar, if not worse things.

“How can you be sure the curse is broken for good?” she asks, her dark eyes sweeping across his face with a hint of skepticism although her tone is mostly curious. She could not lie that she found the idea of being cursed mildly interesting; the thought that one could supposedly do things so wildly out of character, things that they would never usually do. She wants to know more, wants to follow that familiar pull of darkness that she can never quite resist. “You said familial. Is there a possibility it simply lives in someone else now?”

EVEN ANGELS HAVE THEIR WICKED SCHEMES

@Gale

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you There is doubt in her voice, and Gale meets her questioning black gaze to find it there in her eyes as well. How can he be sure? “The curse that afflicted me is broken.” He answers. It might seem nothing more than a rephrasing of what he’s already told her, but he continues. “I suspect the familial susceptibility remains.” His ancestors had found too many cures, had broken too many victims free. Was the darkness that enveloped Gale the same one that had taken his father? He thinks it had been, at least at first. As he carried it though, as it sunk its shadows deeper, as it began to puppet him through the night forests of Hyaline: it changed. It evolved, became a thing more suited for the abilities of the body that it wore. Adaptation to its host had made it something different. What will the Curse be like in its next host? That is one of the many questions he tries not to think of. And yet he senses it, knowing it will occur to him soon. (The sensing came as it always did, a flicker of discomforting lightning just out of sight, a brightness he felt rather than saw.) “Are you…” His voices begins only to trail off “Are you alright after…” Eager to distract himself, he is not especially eloquent, “After me? She said you were, Casimira, but…” @Ryatah

[Ryatah]

Ryatah

She does not question him further on the curse, and instead only gives a faint, silent nod of her head. Curses and magic were tricky things, based on her experience with both. If there is one thing her often tumultuous life has taught her is that nothing is permanent, and nothing is ever for certain.

She has no doubt that if the curse wanted to find a way into a new host that it would do so, and she is sure Gale does not need to be reminded of this.

He asks her if she is alright, and a strange look passes over her face. Perhaps it is the surprise of being asked the question by the very individual that had brought her harm, because she cannot recall that ever happening. Apologies were a rarity for her, and they often came disguised as something else—illusions of beloved places long-gone, being surrounded by and covered in stars, or sometimes simply ignoring a previous conflict and letting it slip away.

“I’m fine,” she finally answers, but even to her it sounds incomplete, empty. She is fine, she supposes, in the same way that she has always been fine. Brokenness had become normal so long ago that she does not remember anything else, and in a way the void was simply one more scar, one more haunted memory. But even she knew that the void had changed her in a far more visceral way than anything she had experienced prior—that the darkness had crept in through all of her cracks, and now it lived alongside her heart and blood and bones.

There is a small smile that pulls at her lips, an attempt to ignore the unease that shifts in her chest whenever she thinks of the infinite dark, the impossible silence, and the madness that had followed her for months after returning. “I must say, of all the times that I have died that is the first that I ended up somewhere like…that.” She can’t help but to think of Carnage, and how the void reminded her of the way he could build worlds to fit his every whim—and how not even he had subjected her to such a place. “It wasn’t my favorite, if I’m being honest, I think I preferred the bottom of the sea.” She is not sure if he will find humor in her morbid lightheartedness, but she smiles all the same, and then asks, “Will you be staying in the Pampas?”

EVEN ANGELS HAVE THEIR WICKED SCHEMES

@Gale

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Gale watches Ryatah intently, his brilliantly blue eyes catching the strange expression that overtakes her following his apology. He’s not quite sure what it is, but before he can place it she is saying she is fine. His gaze narrows, and there is doubt in their lightning-filled depths, accentuated by the dubious thinning of his lips in response to Ryatah’s smile. He had ripped open her chest, and torn out her heart. The skin there is healed (if twisted and scarred), but Gale remembers enough of that night to doubt that he will ever be fine. How can she be, and how can she smile and make light of the void? He processes what she’s said - of all the times she had died? The bottom of the sea? The Cursed Gale had killed her, but he had not been the first to do so. Gale suspects that Ryatah has a most interesting tale of a life, but knowing how much death it is likely to contain, is eager to avoid hearing it. The small smile that appears on his navy mouth in response to her jesting does not reach his eyes, but it is enough of a change from his earlier frown that perhaps it will seem genuine even though he remains quiet. When she asks if he will be staying in the Pampas, the change of direction in the conversation is welcome, and his smile becomes something much more natural. “I do,” he replies. “Do you know who is in charge here? I want to do something. Be useful.” @Ryatah

[Ryatah]

Ryatah

She knows that the story of her life is not the preferred taste for some, if not most. It was mostly darkness with a few streaks of light—just enough to lend a false sense of hope, a shimmering beacon guiding her from one mistake to the next. The choices that she made to survive many would find bitter and difficult to swallow, but without seeing her beginning—without seeing the way the jungle in that far-off long-dead land had molded her in a way that was irreversible—it is impossible to fully grasp how she had no choice but to become what she had become.

She had learned to thrive off being broken and finding a way to rebuild herself from the shattered pieces.
She learned how to find allyship (though sometimes precarious it may be) in what should have been enemies, aligning herself with a darkness that she never should have found herself so close to.

But all those changes, all those numerous times she had been dealt a blow that might have unraveled someone else had given her a strength for forgiveness that was nearly unmatched, and it is only because of all those who had wronged her in the past that she finds it so easy to look Gale in the eye. The scar on her chest does not twinge or burn in memory of what he had done, and even though the apprehension and an echo of fear still lingers in her mind, she is just as willing to give him a second chance as she would be with anyone, and the pleased smile that she gives in response to him saying he would like to stay says as much.

“I am, actually,” she answers him, and where some might have adopted a note of pride at such a thing, her own tone remains level. She is not sure if it counts as being in charge, and she did mostly so that if anyone did long for the solidarity of a kingdom she could provide it. The world had fallen into chaos but the Pampas, so far, remained at peace. “Though I can’t say I’ve really done much. Mostly I have just been trying to ensure others know that we are available if someone is in search of a home, now that everywhere else is gone.”

EVEN ANGELS HAVE THEIR WICKED SCHEMES

@Gale