The behemoth watched, listened, and witnessed the particular nuances, the intriguing sentiments: Mauja’s stunned silence, his son’s youthful exuberance, and Enna’s careful, quiet lacquer. His stare became a taut, narrowed study, a thorough examination, as if somewhere he’d done something wrong, as if he’d stepped too far over the ledge, as if one more reviled lack of manners had christened the ceremony abruptly severed. The rest of him was all the more immobile again, features returning to vacant nonchalance, stoked to oblivion, as uncomfortable in the archaic silence as he was in the throngs of his masses. His ears twisted, and he felt confined, shackled, tethered to duty and enigmas, one more ghost dusting the fringes of the World’s Edge, lost and forsaken, forever destined to be one of its forgotten refugees. Then his eyes fell upon the leather strap around Mauja, and he said nothing – nothing at all about how it looked eerily familiar, how it once belonged to their favorite Doctor, and the forbidding creature took his time with spelling out any more secrets. Guarded again, uncertain and calculating, arching a brow as the frosted Lord simply uttered a glimpse, a phrase, tucked back into nothingness.
 
Was this how it was to be then: more brooding, more brewing, and naught passing between them but the time of day?
 
Then more things seemed to fall apart and unravel, and his smile faded away, softer and softer still until it no longer existed, mayhem and rune sparking over the dust of their years apart. I’m sorry I never came to see you.
 
In his cold, blackened, misshapen heart, the beast, the Reaper, knew hardly anyone wanted to come see him.
 
He was revolting and brutal, menacing and ferocious, cursed and stoked and consigned to oblivion; too foreboding, too malicious, too inspired by sedition and upheaval to be much more than a weapon. Maybe he didn’t want to see them either – because they saw his flaws and they realized he was just a piece of death and destruction, no matter how much he tied himself into their frozen lands and bled over and over again for a kingdom that often didn’t want anything to do with him. They glanced and stared at his devilish sway, they adhered to his command, and they loathed behind glaciers and iron walls.
 
Had Mauja been that way too? He wondered briefly, then pushed it aside; all recherché and defiance again, bolstering his harsh malevolence to the surface so the blunt chords didn’t strangle, didn’t choke, didn’t define him for his outcast measures – but for his strength, for his determination. The cold slate of his eyes lowered, and jaw slackened, however, for he wouldn’t allow Mauja to take the full blame. His mouth carved a feral sentiment, a blunt, keen truth.  “I did not come to find you either.” But he hadn’t known where the beast ever was – and so plunged on, sometimes alone, sometimes isolated, sometimes no more than a forbidding, unattainable, living, breathing sword. Then his stare adjusted back upon the spotted stag, remembered the years of being under his command, of reigning as soldier and General, stabbing and lacerating and hiding from diplomacy, carving his atrocious revolution and abominable vehemence: terror, horror, and devilish oeuvres. Thereafter, he was uncertain of what else to say, where to go, how to flicker over their dictated charts; yearning to look over at his son, at the Mender, for advice on how to mend fractured moments and splintered years. His heart felt heavy, burdened, cracked, and dismayed, because this wasn’t how it was meant to be.  “But I am here now.” Slowly, the smile reappeared, very faint, very finite, gathering behind detached ruminations and stitching over old, sadistic wounds.  “Are you well?”