somebody shine a light
I'm frozen by the fear in me

Life was cruel, in many ways. He felt fragile and full of sharp edges, half-made cracks—leaning back slightly from the exchange as if already bracing for a blow. Because, and it was how life worked—it would come. If not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow, and so forth. It was a bit like love, really. You fell into something—someone—so deeply and it was just a question of time before you'd hit the floor. And when you did.. you'd hit it hard.

His name fell from her lips like.. like relief, and after all, she had come looking for him (for his offer, he corrected himself in the back of his mind), and then she had found him, and, well... He wondered what she would do if he leaned over and licked Tembovu.

“It sounded like home.”

Sounded. Sounded. Did it still? Was there something worth having here, in between the fog and the trees and the two giants? Some kind of safety? Peace? If she wanted to frolic with madmen—

Mauja closed his eyes, teeth pressing together as he fought to keep a hold on himself. Tembovu didn't understand. Tembovu called it, his good self, and Mauja felt like snapping at him, but he didn't even have any words to spit out. Mauja could doubt it, every second, every day of the week, every waking moment, because he still wasn't sure he had stopped being the monster the Qian had thought he was.

In the darkness behind his eyelids Mauja knew the truth, and that had to be enough. There was no logic to it. There wasn't anything to understand.

It was just one of those days, and he stood still, nostrils quivering faintly with the force of his suppressed emotion. He barely even noticed how Tembovu sounded more the King of the Edge than the actual King did.

Or maybe he noticed, but didn't care.

"Then it shall be home to you," he agreed quietly, opening his pale blue eyes. Sabriel looked utterly exhausted, more than she had in the snows of the Threshold. Mauja's head tilted sideways; he had come, he had answered, he had approved—did they still need him? Would she even want him around? Experience kept him from fidgeting, but his gaze slid off the curve of her spine and onto the trees behind her. "We—" And he glanced at Tembovu then, thinking he would not disapprove too much, "—could stand guard if you wish to sleep."

Stars knew it could be terrifying enough to be left alone, asleep, in a foreign place.

Stars knew what happened when the guards fell asleep too.

[ Want a rank change? ^^ ]

somebody make me feel alive
and shatter me