#talking and conversing and engaging like gale would is so new and novel.

[recitedemise]

There are so many personalities, perhaps a number flirting closer to a million or several. In that end, to grasp them all, one has better start learning, devouring all manner of manual and tomes. However, never one to be bested, Miraak trudges on admirably, and to credit, discreet as ever, Gale had hardly noticed.

But then, in all fairness, they, sat together, had technically just met. He hadn't known Miraak before, the man he'd grown to be when battered with solitude. Gale hadn't flavored his distrust or the quality of those men that had come here before him, and so, Miraak plunging longly in that study of biology? To Gale, it all seemed part and parcel with his hunger to learn. Surely, he little meant to suss him, learning how to treat this wizard in his tailored-fine velvets. Even Gale, half a peacock, wouldn't dare to assume a thought so flattering, but gods preserve him, Gale, unlike Miraak, isn't anywhere near as subtle. Even more so, Gale, unlike Miraak, is gleefully talkative.

After all, some studies, he would happily wager, are better learned beyond the pages of leather-clad books. This is where they differ, a stark chasm in their beings that would rival a ravine. Even after his isolation, Gale would jump oh so willingly into bartering words. He's a...fondness in him still, a sort of honeyed-up soul his rot couldn't conquer. It makes him honestly kind, stubbornly affable regardless if the day would strike him harder, and -- well, he's a mortal thing, too, simple with his wants and his vulnerable heart. Scholars long for knowledge in their hours with their books, but to his core, it was connection that Gale felt starved of the most.

It's a secret. And so, perhaps they've a pretense that they both will nurse.

Stirring, Gale looks to the page that Miraak thumbs on open. He looks to it, seeing little beyond words and a half-scrabbled image of some drawing of Atmora. It's conjecture a best, so shrouded in uncertainty and mystery as it is. It's a bygone era, and sadder still, an echo of a time with whom but one soul can hear. Gale listens to Miraak, their gazes locking as his host, his friend, shares a little of himself. Gale's heart folds a little, that emeralding glow freckling soft in his eyes. Like earth and moss and leaves upon the peat... Loneliness. Not for the first time, he thinks there's not a man more lonely.

"I hale from Waterdeep," he offers, "not so ancestral admittedly, but no less the hotbed for culture and aspiring innovations." He conjures up an image. "I live at her docks, surrounded always with waters as she winks with the sunrise. In the morning, I would smell the stirring of the bakeries preparing for the early birds, and at night, I would watch the stars where they would glimmer the proudest and brightest." Full and alive. There and present. The mirage before them twinkles like an ocean with a breeze, and Gale, looking up, gauges his companion.

Miraak... "How long have you been here?" / @bendwill, continued from here.