In long forgotten childhood times she had understood that the night was meant for sleeping, but she had found that in reality that rarely was the case. Under the night's veil for some the running started; from their own scourging demons, chasing the light of what was promised, but rarely ever achieved. In the distance owls flew off. The mare had not even noticed their shadowed figures against the darkened sky. Now she could vaguely make out the softening sounds of their flapping feathers just before they were taken with the stillness. Maren only watched her company gleaming subtly in the halo-light. His shadowed features dark in the deepened contrast.

But in the impalpable seeming droplets of his eyes had welled up a softness she had not seen before; the lips of the stallion moved again to form words alike. "No." Slowly the tigermare's cautious silver head lowered itself, while in her eyes the cinders of curiosity flickered into sight. "I'm not King," In the sweet greyed darkness the tigermare's body gave in, mist giving way as her feathered legs stepped forward very quietly and with a hesitant trembling. From her lowered perspective she glared up, perhaps in the hope to see the same idiotic individual that she had seen that night, when she had been laying on the ground and he had seemed so large. In the deepness of her eyes still lay her judgement as a dark cloud, but an old-rooted kindness lined it with its bright silver. But she stopped her movement when she had only yet moved a single step forward towards the Frostheart. As if forgotten what she was doing and why – what would she get? She could seek endlessly for silver linings, but at some point all was simply lost. All was simply unreachable and unfixable by her own claws – or perhaps his, too. But the opening of the gates to the King's softer side had showed her only new paths for her thoughts to travel. "I just.. am." So there she stood, thoughtful gaze returned as he denied her whispers.

You are a king, even though one made by mistake.

Nevertheless what her eyes were looking for was neither simple or solid. Why would he stand still on a path he choose to walk himself, even though he must have knew the hardships and objections that would come along with the ride and why – why were his eyes so frightfully soft? It took her some time to reply on his statement, as she wasn't sure what he was trying to point out with it. Or make her say with it. "Yes," the sun-priestess then said eventually, agreeing vaguely with tunes almost softer than the rustling of feathers in the far.

She pulled up her head and let her gaze walk over the silver waters, wherein the night sky gleamed. “What is there left to want? Life is a gift.” But she was sure that had not been the point the stallion had been trying to make. No, of course not; his silence and softness - and those unspoken words lingering which she couldn’t decipher – echoed in her ears as a cry for help. Help…

But she was unable to do so. However much she wanted to; she simply did not care enough.

And then she remembered their oh-so-silent meeting. When few words were spoken and when she had lain in the sharp edges of her own crumbling idiocy, unknowing stupidity and dust - while lit-up tears of something she was not rolled down from her crown. She remembered that when she needed it the most, he had filled her head with distracting thoughts. He had been what her gaze had clung to in her fragile despair, for his faceless eyes had been the ones to keep her from falling through the darkness of the shimmering anticipation that waited on the other end of him. Her light had fallen in dusty clouds towards his pathetic, indifferent and unholy figure. It was like a twisted line in her perfectly thought-out story, and she wondered if he knew she was in his debt.

She had not meant to make him look this way with her greeting, had not meant to hurt him with any of the words spoken. She had simply wanted to let him know that she could make a joke now, too. Like Rei had done then. Perhaps she had wanted to show to him that she was doing better than the last time they had… ‘talked’, even though the mare from that time was gone. But the stallion of then was now gone, too. “But you don’t sound like you are happy with it.”

Unchallenged by the unicorn as she had once been, she was now. And no longer could she pretend she was a leaf on a tree, while clearly she was the water easing it – and in the end the fire that would burn it. Unlike then, the unicorn was no longer something to cling to. But that was okay, because she didn’t need anyone’s hand to save her from the end of a crumbling cliff now. From the corners of her eyes she glanced once again at the marble fault in her perfect little story; still and quiet in her halo-light. Looking slightly uncomfortable. “You can’t decide who you are and be sure that is how others see you, too. That’s something your people do for you, like how I decided who I saw on our first encounter.” But she wondered what he had wanted her to see.



@[Mauja]

Maren

BY THE PRECEPTS OF HER PURITY