She had held onto hands cold and warm, but both had never hold her vast enough to make her stay. Not like the golden grains and fires birthing cinder and smoke had been able to. She had her sanctuary. Now they needed theirs. She looked how the mists leaned and spun in the shadows of the forest. Fluorescent crawlings and dances around her figure in the silent symphony of a by the night composed moonlight. Because whatever the moon had done, in the deep shadows of their little chapels – and playing good and evil with the god, they would need her vigilant embrace, whenever she would return. . . But of course Maren had nothing much to do with something that was – for her – so irrelevant. She had her own religion to uphold, her own church to lead and her own god to worship and please. Still, balance was such a fragile thing.

The season of the Sun had come and gone and the moon shone through the canopy of the forest as the doorstep to this new seasonal darkness. Even as a worshiper of the light, she admired the gloom and silence that was its company, for this was how the circle and balance that embraced the world – with its concealed soft cushions and pointy claws – worked. Deciding against that was stupid and idiotic and short-sighted and would be prove that their kind had gotten lost in the gift of evolution. But evolution had its edge and Helovia was walking it now, wearing its red stained cloak. It left her unsure where to categorize this conflict without letting the scholar and priestess within her fight over the weights of their judgement, too.

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness some time ago and the tigermare looked around. She liked to wander without knowing to where, and that was how she had found herself in a reflection of unfamiliar silvery waters. She stood in the silence of thought as the white smoke danced around her. The mists – not her mists – simply added the mystery that some minds needed to come to certain visions. Of course her always pondering mind knew that she was close to the World’s Edge, and a nibble of curiosity tried to wallow her only further into that direction. After all, she had witnessed enough of the selection of the new King and Queen that she had developed quite an. . . interest in the politics that had hold the land in its unsteady grasp after the invasion. But she hadn’t spoken to her Sultan about a spontaneous friendly visit, and thus she would not linger and, like a good girl, be gone along with the mists by morning.

Still, the stenches from a land left to rot were hard to ignore.

Marens eyes pierced like a wind-rose through the shadows of the dense vegetation. Something made her stand as still as possible. She felt the weight of the light above her head like she was a small version of the lighthouse they were trying to construct at home. Nevertheless, stains tended to make her curious, as she liked her carpets in holy white and shiny marble.



@[Mauja]

Maren

BY THE PRECEPTS OF HER PURITY