The commotion faded as suddenly as it had come, leaving them with only the night breeze, and those ever-burning flames, moving. Mauja's madness had burned itself out, drowned in the vastness of his conflicted mind, and she, well—it was not surprising that she chose to remain still. The cool air stroked his back, his shoulders, his face; white strands veiled his eyes as he watched her. Such small breaths. He understood. He knew, and he knew to keep his mind reined in. He knew what a struggle each movement would become, how vulnerable you were in you feverish, inflamed state, and the anger at your weakness... The longer he looked at her the more he realized she'd gotten off easy. It could've been so much worse.

“Well met, Mauja.” His eyes, soft with the exhaustion, snapped to her face. Well met...? That was hardly what he'd say under the circumstance, but it was what she had said, with something lighter lacing her pained voice. He breathed out a half-mute, brief snort. The corner of his mouth curled up, a faint gesture in the darkness. Well met, indeed. But she didn't stop there, no. To Mauja's incredulity, and bemusement, she went on, speaking to him with the same gentleness as before. Oddly enough he found himself believing her, that she truly wished to forget their dramatic episode, and he wasn't sure he could complain about that. After all, the fewer the ones who hated his guts.. the happier he'd be. Blue eyes sought for her dark ones. "I promise," he swore, solemn. It was the least he could do, for his sake, and for hers.

She began to answer his question of her origin with a rather unlikely answer, but quickly changed her mind. South? The Throat? Of course. Despite the openness of three of the four realms, the vast majority of pegasus seemed to prefer the Throat. And no one called them racist, even when there'd numbered but one or two wing-less with them. And Kri, she'd not been even half as pleasant as he'd been when meeting with others. Apparently, if you wanted to keep secrets and good faith, you should act like a defensive bitch. There was irony in it, but it felt too old now—too old to be bitter about. Just some fanciful token of his past, something he could hold up to the light and study every tarnished line, then shake his head in amusement and put it down again. Helovia had been dead set to be distrustful of him, and nothing he'd ever done had changed that.

“And you, Mauja? You don’t seem a desert native.” At that, she drew a gentle, but oddly humorless, laugh from him. No desert native indeed. During Helovia's darkest days he'd lived with them, a shadow on their outskirts, a dark, handsome stranger with something on his mind; a scheme, a plot, always out of reach just behind his smiling eyes. He'd made sure they'd taken little notice of him, until that first moonrise.. the moonrise which had brought everything to its knees. "You're right about that," he said instead, sealing Dreven further in his grave. "Originally I come from the far, far north. Three or so years ago I came to Helovia for the first time—I've lived here and there since then. Currently I call no place home." And I don't think that should be changed anytime soon.

He just wasn't ready to face the world again.

[ -dumps liquid gold over it- xP ]