He had fled.

From the misted woods and cavernous springs, he had escaped. The borders had vanished beneath him, miles eaten up with every beat of his wings. Days and nights that bled together, punctuated only by the times when he was grounded with the necessity of sleep hounding his heels. Hours spent bleary eyed and staggering in the skies, only to crash carelessly to the earth on aching knees, stumbling to the nearest spot and collapsing into an exhausted slumber. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run to for more than a few fortnights. Archibald and Kahlua could handle the Edge for that long. They were his safety net, in the political sense, for Kahlua had done nothing but ruin what was left of his little world of peace.

The forest greeted him like an old friend, for what little he'd seen of the place. Dark, comforting in its vastness, insidious but in an inviting manner. He sank into its shadows like a drowning man, awash on a distant shore. Hours spent beneath its boughs, a canopy of understanding. Silence and comfort. He didn't owe anyone anything, not in a nameless part of a shadowed forest, the moon his only guiding light. And that, too, was bathed in the blood of the innocents she had slaughtered beneath the guise of Gaucho's skin. Was nowhere safe? Was he doomed to the corners of his mind forever, trapped in a steel cage of despair and desperation? He had to get his family out. But how?

"Tá sé go hálainn."

A soft voice cut through the cloud of his mind, sharp and clear, but gentle in its deliverance. Kaj paused midstep, turning with pricked ears towards the source. For a moment he considered turning and running, away from the company it presented. Yet, he recalled Azaneen in that moment. If he had run from her then, would she still be safe, still be alive? He couldn't walk away, not with that memory so fresh in his mind. Even though the memory of Kahlua's betrayal was fresher, it did nothing to impede his progress, slow and deliberate though it was, towards the unknown speaker.

Shouldering a low-hanging evergreen branch aside, summer sky eyes fell upon a maiden staring up at the moon, illuminated by the light that shone deep into her pores and came back out in threads of silver and ivory. She was beautiful, but he couldn't allow himself to think that. Not when his heart was too weak, too shredded, to survive yet another failure incited by his own shortcomings. Yet she drew him in nonetheless, with a winged companion and wistful eyes.

A soft nicker hoped to draw her from her musings.

Stepping closer from the brush, the beast ensured she retained her space. Perhaps she was in a better mood than he, but if not, he didn't want to be chased off by those branched antlers.

"Allo, m'lady. May I join you?" Though he attempted to make his voice firmer, it was clear that he was weak, pitiful. Seeking the company of another, yet desiring in equal turn eternal solitude for the foreseeable future. Perhaps she could pull him back from such a brink, were she kindly enough to care.