His first thoughts had been wrong. There was no heartbeat here, no pulse to send the thick floods coursing through their glass veins—it was but the slow, constant slide of life, and endless, sedated surge. If anything, it was fire married to glacier ice, but he had a hunch that it was much too hot to ever touch. In his budding winter coat he was beginning to sweat, the thick hairs bred for a northern climate trapping the heat and keeping it close to his frigid heart. His guide was almost forgotten, nothing but a shadow that had led him down here, something sprung of the night and now banished in the sight of the Sól's blood, until her voice breached their silence. So she was real, too, or at least as real as anything could feel when his mind was numb, and the nuances of her voice painted a feral tale. She was, his thoughts told him through the haze, not one to get on the wrong side of.

In fact, getting on the wrong side of anyone was a bad idea. He knew that quite well.

But not everyone had the whisper of wolves lacing their voice. Not everyone had eyes like hers.

He envied her.

Mauja didn't respond, though. His gaze had left the entrancing wall to study her for a moment, and in all honesty, he was not quite sure who she was talking about. An elegant woman? His mind sprung to Psyche and Ophelia, wondering if she was somehow knowing things about him, but how could she? Or was she hallucinating? Was she mad? As she advanced towards the wall Mauja surveyed the room, looking for anything that was amiss, or any shadow he hadn't noticed—listened for a third breath, a third heartbeat. Nothing. He frowned, slightly, and turned back to watch her. She seemed just as taken with the molten display as he, but she was so much more alive. She found words were he had none, prompting him yet again to speak, a question he could not ignore. It needed an answer, needed his rusty voice to slip into the world and light the dark spaces of their silence. But of whom was she talking?

Me, you idiot.
Oh. Her mind was a nest of amusement, his one of confusion; had anyone ever spoken in such a way of his owl before? Had anyone commented on her, noticed her, aside from Tinek? One day, she'd just shown up with him, a scraggly, gray, ugly little bundle of feathers, and then she'd come to be such a part of him..that no one truly noticed? She was, in her own cool-hearted way, pleased with the stranger's flattery, but was not one to show it; she didn't stretch her wings or preen her feathers. She simply sat there, and stared, nearly unblinking, as Mauja honed his gaze in on the shadowy mare again. "Irma," he finally said, voice a little rough around the edges but level, breaching the distance and the near-silence. The wall seemed to sing to him, humming softly as the layers of crystal shifted and ground with the faint fluctuations of the heat. Many things sang, if only you listened. "Her name is Irma." Quietly he cleared his throat, and faced down the heat. His fur was thicker than hers, but still he stepped forward, to stand beside to her—perhaps closer than he needed to, but his systems weren't running as they should—and feel the intimate kiss of the Heart again his sensitive face.