en natt så kall och månen den var klar

She didn't understand. She didn't understand—and how could she? How could anyone relate to how he felt, if they were not him? Surely there was someone, somewhere out there, who knew what he meant, who recognized the desolate, gray shoreline as their own land, too.

But that was a thin comfort when his faint hope was crushed by disappointment. Somehow he'd thought she might know what he meant, but maybe her wounds were not old enough; she was still bleeding, all over, and it spilled through the cracks in her voice and the moments of silent. All that spirit blood—but he'd been bled dry, with nothing but dust coursing through stale veins, pushed around by the blackened lump of a frostbitten heart. Maybe, in a few years, she would be where he was, crawling across that very same desert, throat parched and dry. With no sun, no wind, there was no direction, no point. It was just a long, long crawl towards nothing, and he crawled simply because there was nothing else to do.

Her lack of comprehension was written clear on her face, and in the depths of her blue eyes. It was a strange change, almost like the sun breaking through clouds; they weren't clouded with her own misery anymore. Something about his confession had gone through to her, but not the important part. He met her eyes for a moment. His were a bit sad, a bit heavy and tired, and a small, emotionless smile pulled at his lips. It wasn't her fault she couldn't understand, not really. She shouldn't try and follow him to where he were, anyway, because it was not an enjoyable place, and he wondered when he'd let himself go so far into it. Was it because he had not noticed how the world grew more and more desaturated, until he stood in that place where only the lifeless gray stretched from horizon to horizon, with no trail to follow back to where he had come from?

"Open your eyes again. You are not dead, you are fully alive. You just have to feel the sun showering it's light onto you, feel..."

But hadn't he just told her? That yes, his physical shell was alive, full of red blood and strong flesh, and bones? It was his spirit that had withered in its winter of defeat, his spirit that had gone out, like a candle in the wicked wind. He was almost tired of trying, because each time he'd pulled himself to the surface, and blinked in the harsh light, he'd just slipped down again, into the meaningless gray. "...this." Her shoulder was warm, sun-warm, but his was warm, too. I can feel you, he thought quietly; he could feel the heat filling the space closest to her, smell her, and see her scars and stripes, and if he focused, feel the faint, fleeting rhythm of her pulse thundering below her shoulder. He could feel it, but it held no meaning. Not anymore.

"Asylum?" he hummed quietly, questioningly. It niggled at his mind, like something he thought he'd been told, but wasn't sure he could place anymore. But he didn't like the sound of it: he was not mad, he was just.. adrift, slowly sinking into the dark. "They welcome horses like you... Like me." He reached out, breathed in deep by the side of her neck. She smelled of trees and water and mountains, of the place his mind referred to as Windtossed Foothills and Heavenly Fields—did they live somewhere there? But if he'd thought to ask, she wasn't going to stay and respond. She began to pull away, tugged on by something else, and with a few words of parting made it onto solid ground, stepping elegantly from the water's surface. Her cat came running out of the surrounding trees and bushes, and together they disappeared, leaving Mauja standing dumbstruck in the river. It murmured as happily as ever, rushing away to some unknown future, carrying the bright sunlight with it and forgetting the cold of his shadow the moment it was past.

Wings stirred the calm air, and Diego came down again. His talons gripped Mauja's spine, but for once the youth made no attempt to intrude, and kept his brash emotions to himself. Irma, on the other hand, winged away, trailing after Delinne, but it was hardly necessary. Soon enough even Mauja heard her cries echoing towards the heavens, tearing through the air, her voice filled with all the things she could not put into words. Mauja's ears came back, and his tail dragged against the surface as he flicked it once, twice. She still had everything he had not, even if she hurt, but surely the pain was better than the nothingness inside of him?

Irma came back, and settled on his withers. With a sigh, Mauja tore himself from the meandering river, and set his cold hooves upon the spring earth. Ambled along into the forest, until he saw Delinne's shape on its floor. Quietly he approached, and settled against a tree, the flat of his shoulder against the rough bark. He wasn't sure why he was there—to witness the pain of life? The pain of living, and hope that maybe some touch, some spark, would fly back to him and re-ignite his flame? Slowly, his ears came forward again.

"Life's a real bitch, isn't it?" he finally said, as if commenting the weather.

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