Someone was coming. Pitiful that his owls had more braincells to rub together than he; her black beak clicked, sharp talons poking his sensitive skin again. A shadow fell across the red backdrop of the sky, and he blinked. Sluggish, but not stupid or sick enough to not react. It was more mental anyway. Depression can bring anyone to their knees when coupled with physical ill.

"No shit," he growled in response to her statement. You didn't need eyes to notice it. He smelled of it. She seemed disapproving, as if it was his fault he was stuck out here with a burnt back. Perhaps you could argue that it was, for not standing down, but wasn't it the Gods' fault for having put him on the throne in the first place? Irma clicked her beak again, a faint thread of disapproval stretching across their bond. Either she whispered, or she yelled. They had not found a middle ground for the intensity. Now she whispered, and he felt like scowling. Did everyone disapprove of him right now?

Instead he merely kept his attention on the drafty mare. Hornless. Of course. Everyone was either hornless or stupid. Or both. Irrational anger boiled inside of him, but he was in no position to argue - no position to fight. He could probably hold his own fairly, but there was no point in starting a quarrel. His gaze, so often like secretive glaciers but now just tired and sad, dropped to her feathered hooves. Healing. Part of him wanted to snarl and run her off and leave him to his misery. He had failed anyway. Failed to protect his home, his family. Or had he? Sighing, he rubbed his temple against the cave wall. He knew that only by acting like a spoiled, shamed child would he truly fail them. He was meant to be a King, to keep his head tall, but it was hard when his neck refused to lift it. It was hard to always be strong. To do everything right. To balance between right and wrong.

He'd been shoved, and he'd cut himself. Some part of him wanted to bask in the pain and the guilt, to prick the wound each time it began to heal just to watch his own blood flow. Stupid, really.
Perhaps he just wanted someone to notice him. Few looked at you with kind, concerned eyes, asked if you were alright, when you always had your head high and did your duties diligently. When you always masked your exhaustion with a smile, and promised that you were fine.
She said that she was Tor and a healer. He felt like bashing his head against the wall.

"Mauja..." It was a soft voice, obviously someone who knew him, or at least his name and his looks. It tugged at his memories, pulled at something in his heart, and he pushed his head off from the cave wall to get a better look at her. She was as he remembered her - pristine white, like newly fallen snow, accentuated with blood. Such a contrast, it made his stomach turn. Horses weren't made for war and bloodshed. He remembered the feeling of it sliding down his face, shuddered. Was the bridge of his nose still colored faintly of rust? Maybe.

Between her ears, a pose comically mirrored by his own owl, sat a dragon. A silver dragon.
What the? How?
"Ophelia," he said, not quite a growl. He was too tired to do anything but it. So you're a mix blood. But he had never been one to blame the offspring for the sins of their parents - she was innocent of whatever damned lust had conceived her. "You're a sight for sore eyes." Pain lanced his body as he slowly moved forth a couple of steps. His voice was rugged, raw, each motion a hammer falling upon him. Amazing, how used to pain one gets.

"You can get me a new backside," he told her flatly, yet there was something - a spark in his eyes, the briefest shadow of amusement. Then it went out, faded, lost in the roar of pain. His gaze settled on Tor.
He'd never been against using the hornless for his own gains.
Would she demand something in return?

"What can you do?"

Mauja Frosthjärta