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

He knows not why they drift—

But drift they do, tumbleweeds and wave-crests, driftwood washed up on dark, abandoned shores. And if there were any stars here to guide them they were distant and cruel, laughing down upon silver sands soaked with heavy hoof-prints—dents as deep as their hearts. He shifted, a lone ghost in the pallid light. In the dark, he couldn't see the blood soaking into the sand. In the dark, he couldn't pick out the color of the heavy water. In the dark, still his shadow was cast, long and lonesome, reaching for something it would never find, never reach. Sharp, moonlit edges rushing towards a distant horizon, a distant land, through red spray and broken wings—and coming exactly, nowhere.

(For all our dreams are anchored in our souls; all our longing carried within our hearts.)

Just the way his shadow was anchored to his feet.

He rarely went to the Deep Forest. It was not a place of joy, of light, of happy memories, of treasured connections and fondly remembered encounters. No—the forest held no fond memories for the snow-ghost drifting in through thick, dark trunks, following a set of steps left upon that blood-washed beach.

The prints were deeper and darker than his own, leading away from where all drifters wash ashore, because what was a drifter, if not one who drifts? Lost in his own world of night-fog rolling in, of an empty stillness so much deader than any he had experience in this world, he wove his tragic tale of the scent left upon trunk, root and leaf, and the occasional dent made by large hooves.

Tembovu had passed here, seeking something he could find in the depths of the forest—but what? What drove the dutiful King so far from his given realm, so deep into this ancient, dark place? Memory haunted Mauja as he followed, knowing that Tembovu had come from ruin—knowing that corpses laid at his waysides too, knowing that he had walked a road paved with destruction.

Yet for all their similarities, they were different.

And for all his poetry running like quicksilver through his mind, nothing was certain: perhaps Tembovu did not drift at all. Perhaps he had not found the same listless apathy ruling brought; perhaps he was immune to the weight of toil, to the boredom of stubborn routine, the spotlight. Perhaps it did not chafe at his soul and numb his mind as it had Mauja's. Perhaps he had went to the Deep Forest for an exciting date night with some exotic lady, or simply for a stroll, or.. or.. or anything. Just because Mauja's memories of this place held more evil to them than any other singular place it did not mean this had to be a place of malice.

(Yet the trees whisper something else, with their scars and wounds.)

—fire.

Up ahead, it burst through the fading evening light, fire and flame, shearing—a sunburst among the thick trunks, halting the one who fears it dead in his tracks. This place was fucking cursed, and this sudden fire was in between Mauja and Tembovu's tracks.

Well, fuck—before he had much of a chance to do anything the light moved, hitting something with the low-key roar of warmth and flame being belched out; it seared his retinas and Mauja shied back, eyes closed. The fuck was going on here? He didn't even want to know—didn't want to get close to angry fire, because fire hurt, and the last thing he wanted was to get caught in the crossfire of some deranged pyromancer.

But Tembovu—

He didn't even know why it felt so important to find him. It wasn't like he had much to say; his questions had gone back to hibernating after the herd meeting, his vague unease soothed by the steadfast leader's presence. Surely Tembovu was nothing bad, nothing to fear—it had been a good and just choice to entrust the crown to him. (Like he had cared about that at the time.) He was a man come from ruin, much like Mauja, but that was no guarantee you were bad. After all, was there not much good in he himself? Hidden, deep, frozen, but there, in the ice-spiked chambers of his heart?

As if in a dream his frosted hooves whispered over fallen leaves and a carpet of pine needles shed through the ages; eyes were wide and reflecting the flame lingering along the edges of a tree, breaths quivering, in and out, near silent in the growing darkness. He was nothing but a ghost, and then—

The trees parted—

But it didn't make sense—

Tembovu stood opposite the flame-licked tree.

Well, whatever, he could stand where he wanted, it wasn't that—

It was his eyes. It was the deep, deep blue eyes reduced to black. It was the hungry tongue of flame reflecting in their depths. It was the blood on his knees, the smell of singed hair and burnt skin, charred flesh, the angry, distorted swelling upon one of his carpals.

It was his deep, deep blue eyes reduced to black.

It was the emptiness gazing upon the ruined tree.

"Tembovu," he said, quietly, from the shadows wherein he lingered.

So this is what your soul looks like.

Mauja

the white queen