A keening. High, wavering, and unearthly drifted and spread over the Edge. It was beautiful, devastatingly so. Filled with a sadness so poignant that it drifted through the ears, to the blood, and pained the organ that pumped so powerfully behind the armor of ribs and sternum.

The Elephant, already beginning to rise with the sun’s arrival, flung his head to its height as the veil of sleepiness shred from his mind. Large ears perked, jaw clenched against the melancholy that so easily overtook his newly-woken and impressionable mind.

Instinctively, before he could even form a thought beyond the initial woe, he begins moving towards the source of sadness. He can offer comfort, aid, help, something to whatever made such sounds. Though, as his brisk walk carried him just beyond the borders of the Edge and to the cliffs, his mind caught up to his body. Only loss could cause such forlorn wailing, of that he was certain. Fear sparked— had the Edge lost another?

Sure enough, dark blue pools landed on a fallen black body. A mare, a horse. Slender and graceful, even in death. His eyes raised to a cream and gold mare, crying above the dead body. And a young, black stallion along side her— comforting her? The source of the song is revealed as his gaze alights on the two crying dragons, one red one gold, above the dead companion of the fallen ebon form. “I am sorry…” His low voice was quiet, words spoken from instinct and drawn out by the mourning song.

And then there is Mauja, already standing in the clearing, shouting and raving fragments that made no sense. And sentences that made too much sense. A snort escapes his nostrils, clouding in the cool Orangemoon morning, as his gaze goes from sad to wary while listening his friend.

His hide shivers once, as he fights the urge to approach the spotted stallion. The anger, the bitterness, the grief— they were all parts of the poison that one needed to bleed out. Tembovu coming and smothering the stallion in compassion would stem the flow… and it needed to gush freely.

Though, perhaps another death was not the best catalyst for catharsis; but, fate was funny that way. Regardless, he still felt the need to at least be near his friend in the moments of his wild words. So, slowly, he approach and halted beside the leopard.

But his gaze quickly shifts and his brows raise at the spotted draft stallion, whose hellhound companion hovers beside him. "If this is justice, then you clearly do not belong among those of us who mourn.” The words, spoken rashly as the growling hound, struck a cord within the Elephant. A cord similar to the one played by keening dragons—

—but oh so very different. It was anger. Of all the ranting Mauja had said— of the litany of deaths and losses bitterly exclaimed— there was now a sermon on mourning being given? Saying who had the right to mourn and when?

Despite the disbelief and irritation that roiled in the giant, a calm mask with raised brows was all that showed on his face. His lips pursed, contemplating. And then his voice, low and firm, rumbled. "Unless there has been foul play,” he looked pointedly at the dead body that was absent of any trauma or other marks that would indicate nefarious causes of death, "Then there is no place for accusations or confrontation here. And, should you seek such things, then it is you that have no place among the mourning.”

There was a finality in his words, spoken flatly and with little inflection. Though his gaze had pinned the splashed stallion as he spoke, his eyes fell back to the crying mare..