but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams

(I'm hunting for stars—)

If they could fall, from their places in the vast, dark sky, and land like silver and dust here upon the snowy steppe; if they could melt, those cold and distant lights, and trickle down to grace this world with more than their frigid judgment. And, what would they be able to tell? What secrets would they spill? They had seen much, those stars, witnessed everything; death and ruin, love and life. They had seen the glorious rise of kings and queens, the brutal apex of the reign of tyrants, and they had seen a thousand kingdoms laid to rest.

They had seen every child born, grow old, wither and die. They had seen not only those who had burned the brightest, but all that had fallen into their shadow, no matter how brief their lives.

If any were wise, it would be the stars, but he knew they cared little for the distant lives of Helovian mortals—or any mortals, for that matter. They had not cared for the lives of Frerinn mortals, nor of the Magnar, or any other that Mauja had ever heard of. They simply watched, and waited, and blinked and glittered, remote and beautiful. It was the same lethal sharpness which lurked in the eyes of the Moon, in the razor edges of Maren's mystical gaze. They not merely saw—they judged.

He didn't want to think of the Moon, nor of Maren. He didn't want to think of anyone with the sharp smile of a knife, and the cruel keenness of a predator. (He didn't want to think of bad choices, blue influence, and the question of whether or not his mistakes would lead him to yet again be an unintended, unwilling father.)

So he was out in the north, hunting for stars, eyes glued to the dark vault up ahead as he danced through the thin layer of snow—there was a grace to it, an easy joy of sorts, a little leap each time one fell. He joined it in its brief flight, crashed down as it faded into oblivion, and each time his heart ached just a little more. What awaited it, there in the darkness? (What awaited him, at the end of his brief life?) Would another one take its place? (Would he ever see d'Artagnan and Kahlua again?) Or would they go out, one by one, until the night sky was completely dark, bereft of all light but the moon's? (Would the earth one day become black and barren too, all once living things dead?)

You were born with hope, a fluttering flame in your chest, a tingle in your nerves, a light in your eyes—and you chased that butterfly, dreamed and hunted and ran, and in the end, what would it amount to? When you were dust and bones, did it matter how you had lived?

Yes, he thought, tentatively, all four hooves leaving the starlit ground as yet another streak of light fell among its kin. Yes, it matters, because it was my life.

He couldn't trust that he would get another. And he couldn't find the words to put on it, but—if he would die anyway, he had two choices. Either he would burst his heart here and now and go to his unchangeable, final doom, or he would live while it lasted. Why waste your life on listless apathy when you would die regardless of what you did?

And still, it was tinged with sadness, a crystalline sorrow that it would have to end (—regret, that he had made it end for others). "I'm sorry," he whispered to the first appearing streaks of red and green, shimmying in the glory of its light. "If I could go back, and change it, I would—if I could somehow make it right, I would." But in the face of death, they were all equally helpless. There was no going back, and if he did, he would not be who he was today, and it would be the first few pebbles of a landslide, and the world would be irrevocably different.

Things turned out the way they did for a reason. You could be wiser after the fact, but at the time you made your decision, what other one could you have made? You did not know then what you knew once you had seen its consequences.

He had been cruel, then, and selfish. He had drowned his guilt and shame and sorrow in blood.

Mauja's dance grew somber, then faint, and then it ceased altogether. The northern lights were vibrant, untamed and beautiful; the stars still glittered behind the flame-like light, smugly knowing that once the show ended they would remain. Red chased its way along the lines of his face, courted his moon-shadow, fell upon the snow like a haunting memory of all the blood he had spilled—gleamed in the cold metal of a sentinel, placed there so long ago. Once, it had greeted him as kin, allowed him to pass unchallenged into the northern realm. Now .. now, things were different, its face foreboding, and cold, so cold.

And he wept, again, stars glistening in his tears, for buried in the snow here laid so much grief, so many mistakes and words left unsaid. Slowly, he turned to look behind him, at the vast, empty world. There was no one there to see him standing beneath that silent guard, no one to see him drawing nearer, ears flickering uncertainly as his to the mountains once familiar voice breathed into the cold, quiet air: "Lena?"

But there was no way she would hear him, and he dared not shout.

[ He's still outside the borders. Open to anyone. :) ]

Mauja

the white queen