Your heart's a mess,
you won't admit to it, it makes no sense.

They took little notice of him. He was but a quiet spectator in the night, a ghost lost in the darkness by the shore—no one, nothing. Unknown, forgotten by the world. His heart was oddly light as he admitted to having failed, a long time ago. Shouldn't such an admission be accompanied by bitterness, burdens and aimless anger? Instead, he felt detached, as if he was observing an event which didn't particularly concern him. You could always rise up again, Irma suggested while circling his two fellow wanderers, wings beating steadily. Her keen eyes picked out most details, allowing Mauja to remain where he was.

It hadn't always been so. The days before he received her egg seemed unimportant somehow, even though they had been the days of his glory. But as far as his heart was concerned, they held no importance. They even seemed dead. The soul twined around his brought life with it, little nuances and shifts, observations; a few years ago, if he wanted to know what went on between those two with him on the beach he would've had to walk up to them. Now, he could remain here.

Had it turned him into a coward?

The black dog's barking had gone silent, as had the shouts of the pale stallion. The lull of water against sand remained as the only sound, the soft steps of the mare and her hound too distant for his ears to pick up on. His ears flicked back, once, then forward again. The silver wash of moonlight made it all seem a dream, surreal, nothing but ghosts moving in the thick afterlife fog. Unwilling to be left adrift, separated from their dreaming, Mauja drew himself forward, a quiet and graceful phantom trailing after the girl. He kept his distance as she moved in across the dunes, towards the stallion, speaking chiding words as her dog bared its fangs. Mauja remained at the water's edge, breath pooling thoughtfully into the cold autumn air. Was it bravery, or idiocy, to approach someone like that, and reproach them for their treatment of their companion? She was so young, so small, compared to them both—but maybe her heart was larger than her body. Blue eyes grew distant, his pulse light and fleeting. He'd followed his imagination into the mists, became a creature of the veil himself; Irma picked up on the stallion's response. His words did not mix with his voice, not when he wasn't screaming anymore. His voice was too tame in the moonlit dark.