i am the vanguard of your destruction

walked when i shoulda run
ran when i shoulda walked

The world was dark—as it ought to be, a particular kind of darkness swept across the cloudy sky, deepening every shadow and staining souls pitch black. Like old, dried blood; the kind of night that made a solid manifestation of each festering wound, of each scar laid bare and open again. The kind of night you ought to spend in good company, keeping family and friends close, loving and remembering and dreaming of a future you hoped to not be robbed of, but you never knew what kind of wolves that lurked around the corner. What kind of.. trouble.. was brewing, like a storm on the horizon; what kind of trouble would come with sick Gods and .. fuck—he couldn't even blame it on them.

They had had a choice. They could've stayed at home, ignored the tug in their bones, ignored the little tether stuck to their souls whispering come, come this way, come come, the fabric of the world is torn open—

Mauja shuffled his hooves on the cliff's blue-lit edge, little rocks clattering about as he stood weaving slightly on the spot. Somewhere, far above those clouds, the stars shone, or at least, he supposed they did. Only a Pegasus would know, really.

Or an owl—but they were sitting along his spine, eyes pale in the darkness and talons stained black with blood.

His blood.

But in the monochromatic light, it seemed just another spot of his, a black star in his white sky; and his mind was so numbed to the special kind of pain they inflicted on him, love bites, and the salty kiss of cold night air on muscle laid bare. Irma's head turned, feathers whispering with the movement. Her perceptions shifted. The world was something new, seen from a different angle; the sounds all different, her keen hearing picking apart the world and painting it in fragments in her mind. The constant roar of the ocean. The dull thumping of water lapping at the blue rock. Mauja, drenched in blue, closed his eyes.

He hadn't come to the Veins in a very, very long time, and he had never been a frequent visitor. The last time .. he had been here with Roskuld, shouting about a flood—the time before that.. he had been looking for Ophelia, and lain crying on the land-bridge as the storm threatened to tear him off the face of the earth. Ayelet, the glass mare, had lain beside him.

Before that, he'd been here with d'Artagnan, and Nyx. With Ophelia. Seen the Moon Goddess come down. Gone here with d'Artagnan to receive knowledge of poison—back then, at the start of everything.

Before everything.

Slow and silent tears seeped from closed eyes; the wind tossed his hair about, and his skull rocked from side to side along with his body. This was not a place of hope, and faith—not for him. It was a place of heartache and heartbreak, every shadow filled up with a time of when he had adored a porcelain queen from both near and afar, and every shadow carried traces of his scent, his sardonic laughter... Swallowing, Mauja opened his eyes, and peered out over the waves.

No. This was not a place for him—not a place of rest and peace. It was a place full of glass memory shards being rubbed into his skin, and with a sigh, he took a single step back from the edge, preparing to melt back into the night.

[ @Tembovu <3 ]