When the gods had deigned the paths of Kahlua and Mauja to cross, had they considered what they had put into motion? The queen, hopelessly infatuated with the mysterious man that she could not read- a friend that she couldn’t always trust. A man that had taught her so much more than anyone else, who had watched her whirl from high to low, and every emotion in between. A man that had so much more depth to him than she had to her. And that man, strong and stoic, placed on the erratic ship that dictated the girl’s emotions. The man forced to take her changing whims the way a sail takes changing winds. And yet, the man saved in some small way from a darkness that had been eaten his soul, destroying it. Had the gods known that her soul was as destroyed? Had they known these two might fix each other, in some small way?

Fate, or coincidence, it had happened, and the queen was not sorry that this man who she so easily could have called her enemy was instead called her friend.

A child herself, she hardly knew how to take care of him, but she held him anyways, let him press against her, pressed herself against him, played in his mane where she so often found comfort. Again, he let a moment stretch out like an eternity, and like every time before she found herself uncomfortable with the infinity. Somewhere, absently, in the back of her mind, a thought rolled about, just a gnat buzzing, hardly a fully formed idea at all. She wondered if she would ever be ok with the way his stoic mind seemed to create these eons with ease. Would she ever be comfortable with floating in the nothingness of boundlessness and perpetuity? It was hard to imagine, but then, she thought perhaps if she was there with Mauja, that she might learn to be ok.

His moan startled her, her body tensing and then relaxing, and her lipping at his mane paused until he spoke again. Short-circuited? He could not see her brow, but it furrowed as she tried to understand what he was getting at, what mystery of his he was trying to explain to her that she was not understanding. Still, somehow, the drag of his wetted face up her shoulder was a comfort, the way his horn tickled the air near her flank thrilling and dangerous in the safest way she could imagine. The scar on her hip, a gift from Farenjar and a reminder of the Basin’s attempted invasion, twinged, daring to remind her of a different sort of thrill gained by a horn, but it was a memory long gone and one that she had come to terms with.

For a moment she was distracted, blue eyes watching the owlet as he gathered the stone from the ground, but Mauja’s voice captured her attention before she could devote much thought to the curious action. And in that moment, finally, she let herself release a ragged breath, heavy and relieved… happy. The stone was a light in the darkness of the forest, but Mauja’s thanks was a light in the darkness of her soul, a bright spot in the murkiness that had made its home there. She felt a lightness she had not known for months, an easiness that she had not known for seasons, and when he placed his head back over her spine she dropped his mane and pressed into him as well, her happiness turning into a soft hum that followed the song the forest played in her honor.

“You don’t have to thank me,” she whispered between stanzas of her imagined song, a breath of hot air blown from painted nostrils across his spotted back. Every time they met, it seemed that they ended up entwined, twisted together as though it could shield them from the darkness of life around them, but she didn’t mind- the closeness was enrapturing. “Have you ever said no to a god?” she asked then, feeling safe in his clutches, not sure what answer she wanted or expected from him, but knowing suddenly that his answer was so important to her that she had to ask, needed to know.

Was Kaj being high and mighty in his anger, or was the queen really as weak as he had made her feel?

Kahlua

only light can drive out the darkness