The black stranger disappeared through the darkness, silver light arcing across his fading outline as he left the odd pair behind; Mauja watched with a sense of sorrow as the ocean rushed up to wash his tracks away, melting the faint padding of frost and filling up the dents. His heart constricted in his chest as another piece of his past washed away again. He yearned to follow, to burst into canter across the sands again, not only because he wanted away from this wretched moonlight. Questions fired rapidly through heart and mind, and if he'd got things his way, he would've been left alone to track that fleeting glimpse of his past – but he wasn't, and his gaze snapped to Gaucho the moment the tall stallion danced around. He was light on his feet for his size, but Mauja knew that simply because you were tall, you weren't clumsy. The brute seemed proud, and Mauja's blue eyes seemed to dance and ask what now?

Gaucho's voice seemed to vibrate in the darkness, deep and rich, but the syntax of his speech was oddly clipped, as if some pieces of padding were missing, so gears rattled around when the wheels turned. Gone, indeed, he agreed silently, black-rimmed ears politely tipped forward. He tried to deny the fact that he was desperately listening for another trace of the black stallion's existence, but he was, of course, doing exactly what Mauja had said. Trusting what he had said, too; another life saved for now, and all he had to do now was get himself out of this mess. Safe, now; laughable, that assessment, but he didn't say anything about it. He was as far from safe as he could be.

Though, apparently it could get a hell of a lot worse.

Going to the fire would be stupid enough, but Gaucho going to Kri was about fifty times worse. "No need!" he said, rather hurriedly, trying to plaster on a reassuring, confident smile. Whoever this Gaucho was, he'd better not go to Kri, or Mauja would have his balls. Briefly he glanced up at the snake tangled in his antlers. It had crawled forward again, hanging from somewhere, its black body burnished to a fine pale sheen in the moonlight – and it was hissing. At him? At someone else? Saying something? Tasting the lies? Mauja's mind shield was probably as broken as his soul, but he was desperate not to give the game away. Desperate to keep Gaucho on the ground. His eyes flicked down again. "He's gone. He's not coming back. I promise. You don't have to go." An empty promise, because naturally, he didn't know at all where the brindled man had truly gone, but if he still had any brain cells to rub together, he would've done what Mauja said.

Beneath the white skin, his blood raced hotly through his veins, a throbbing pulse matching his- fear? No, not quite fear, but a mounting anxiety, a deep, desperate desire to send this stallion obliviously on his way, and leave in peace.
No need to get Kri involved.

( No worries. <3 )