i am the vanguard of your destruction

Night again, and the trees are swaying to some rhythm I can't feel—it's not the thu-thud of my heart, or of my feet, or the slow, gentle spinning of my soul. I'm drifting, in this river of silver, listening to the rustle of feathers and leaves, trying to hear when the world catches its breath.. but the keening through hollow trunks is nearly constant, rising and falling like a breath, but on this night she's not an easy sleeper; it's not a nightmare, because her breath never rises into a banshee's scream, but it hitches, and then slips out in a long, long sigh.. a crescendo, almost like the prelude to a howl, but her celestial voice falls back into the lull.

Mauja's steps were slow, and uncertain; he weaved drunkenly over the path, stumbling over roots, too tired to lift his feet. Somewhere, a crow laughed savagely at him, and he stopped to stare blearily into the trees, but amidst the shadows he couldn't see its beady, greedy eyes staring at him. Irma could, though, and sent it on its way; a chill up its cowardly spine was all it took, and then it was gone, swift and silent. He stood staring after it—or at the emptiness, really—for a good few minutes longer.

Mauja.

Her voice was always so cold, so precise, shearing through the thick layers of thought: clear, ringing through his mind with all the wildness of wolves weaving around it. How could one, small heart and soul hold so much power contained in it? So much ferocity?

Go to sleep, Mauja.

The use of her actual word-voice in his mind, the double mentions of his name, and the way she said it: no hesitation.. she'd been thinking on it for a while. She'd been phrasing it, pondering whether to tell him, or not. Delivered it with icy perfection.

She was the Frostheart.

He was.. he was.. what was he?

Still staring dumbly at the night's shadows. Behind his veil of light, the thin stripe on his glowing face, they were too dark to see into. Mauja the pitiful, pathetic, pa.. pa... something. Oddly enough, paranoid hardly fitted him anymore. He frowned. When had that stopped? When he'd stopped caring? When he'd said fuck it all so many times he really started to stop giving a fuck about anything? And when had that happened? And.. and.. so many questions, and no answers, no answers on this night, when his body was quivering with its demand for sleep and his brain running itself ragged, both predator and prey. Neither was winning. No one was catching up, no one was getting away, just an endless circle going nowhere.

He'd lost focus of the tree. There were many trees. Some were real, some were doubles.

Mauja.
And some jumble that was Diego's imitation of Irma's mind-speech; maybe it sounded vaguely like mawjaw but more like a screech to raise the dead. Fortunately, it was only ringing in his (and Irma's) skull, but it did little more than make him blink.

Still staring at the damn trees.

And Irma was chasing Diego off the branch they'd shared, feathers ruffled and flying, clearly annoyed with his bothersome use of the link they shared. Mauja burst into a spontaneous fit of cackling, but it ended in a drawn-out sigh. He was too tired for that.

He didn't notice when it happened—but his eyes slipped shut, blocking out his blue from the world. It was dark, and dreary, behind his eyes, a thick, dank fog the color of ash, burning like acrid smoke in his lungs. He slogged on through it, hounded by shadows he could not see, but the trench he was moving through was full of icy sludge.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he found it odd that there was such a deep, narrow ditch full of cold, cold water in the Deep Forest—but he had more pressing matters on his mind.

Like.. slogging on.

Very important business, yup.