"Lena."

The call is soft, lacking any urgency or intent. He is searching for her, but he isn't worried, so he looks without earnest, set to wandering the wilderness of the winter land and throwing her name out to the wind with some sort of mixed hope. She is a busy mare, his mother, and he does not demand her time lightly. Her job makes her invaluable, and its often the reason he seeks her, now that he's grown, but he looks for her now in the ways he once did as a child, seeking the guidance and wisdom and gentleness she had always possessed.

Öde had loved his mother. How could he not, when she doted on him so, served him as the king she whispered he was into his ear? It made him spoiled, selfish, arrogant - traits he still carries, parts of him he doesn't feel anything towards but recognizes all the same. He chooses not to speak of them though, so many find them ugly, and it reminds him of her.
He had been angry with her, when she left him, when she let the darkness consume him.
He had been angry for a long time, and it had kept him as a wraith for longer then was healthy. She had never been healthy though, he saw though now looking back on those memories, fond or not. She had been mad, and he had gladly run down into the madness with her, then beyond (if it were possible) until he got so lost in the dark he couldn't pull himself out.

He did though, and then he'd found a different sort of darkness in death. It lacked the power and the rage that being a wraith had heralded; death was freeing though in its own way, but it was cold and distant and void of things that mattered. Death was defeat, and he had hated it too. She saved him though, and though he wanted to hate her still, he loved her for that sacrifice, for that love. He loved her for all that she had done, good or bad, because she had done it for him - on good nights he even thought perhaps she let him become a wraith so he could feel like a good.

Then he thinks, wraiths are not gods. They were more like demons. Powerful, terrifying, otherworldly; yes, but not godly, and so it was beneath him.
He snorts.

Then there was Lena. His other mother, or something.
She had saved him too. She took him in from the wilds, gave some meaning to his wandering hooves, some purpose to his beating heart, a head for a crown to sit one day and a crown to covet in the mean time. She had given him gods too, and not just the DemonKing, but the Helovian gods that met him in life where Oblivion met him in death. She gave him laurels by way of manners, teaching him in ways she didn't even realize that a king, a god, was so much more than authority and cranial adornments. She smoothed the rough edges and made him into something suitable.

He smoothed more and more each day, and he sought her now for more of that.

"Lena," he called again, patient, curious, hopeful.
He stalled before the green house that was not so green, head tilting back and forth as he sought her out amid the flurries.