Mauja Frosthjärta

It was always night—or at least so it felt. He's Rudolph the White-Faced Unicorn, a blazing stripe down his face to guide every hungry tooth to his throat, and every eye to his ghastly frame. That didn't really bother him, though; Mauja had always been white. Moonlight had always turned him into a blazing beacon in the night, except when the snow glowed the same way. But, before this, he could hide in shadows. Even the starkest of white becomes lifeless gray when no light strikes it. It's harder to mute the glow of something on your face, to scrub off the celestial mark left upon him, cracking his mind and heart in two; he couldn't hide anymore. And in the darkness, he couldn't see as far as he used to, because that veil of hazy light was always there. Blessed or cursed? He breathed out, and shook his head, mane rattling against his thick neck. Mauja, the walking torch. At least wolves avoided his alien, glowing face.

He would find nothing here, no salvation down south by the fiery pits of hell and the fortress called The Throat. Everything he cared for lived and thrived in the snows, but he hadn't dared go that way.. hadn't dared to set foot upon the isthmus and trek into the harsh wilderness, to search for the missing pieces of his heart and puzzle his useless future together. Instead, he paced Helovia's shores like a restless ghost, the spirit of someone left behind even though he still had a body—if there could even be such a thing. Somewhere along the road he'd fallen off the path, and he wasn't sure what to do about it anymore. It was like walking headfirst deeper into a blizzard, until he really had no clue anymore, and tonight in particular he felt like someone had emptied his skull and filled it up with clouds and jelly.

At least Irma could still see in the darkness. By the seat of the rolling waves a dark shape stood, outlined in silver—like all black creatures were—and awash with moonlight. There was something familiar about him, in the slope of his haunches and the set of his shoulders. A thin horn pierced the sky. Someone from a past which felt so distant it could've belonged to someone else, maybe?

Mauja kept walking, placing one hoof in front of the other. Some part of him was wary, anxious even, maybe afraid of who it would be, but the major part of him just didn't care. Irma, graceful and pale, swept in lower, her eyes scanning the young stallion as she passed. Washed-out red; ears, horn, face. There had been violence here, of the good kind, playful and superior from Mauja's side—but he was bigger now, wasn't he? It had, after all, been a long time ago he'd last seen Voodoo. His mind kept spinning, coughing up the facts and memories as he plodded closer, until eventually he stopped nearby, ablaze in the glory of the moon. "You've grown," he simply said, blunt, and his eyes roamed the red-blazed face.

hold my hand we're off to wonderland