The wind blew, but even it seemed tired, too slow somehow—the dying breath of a world long since sunken into the sea. It tugged at his long forelock, spun it about his face, tangled it against his frost-covered horn and strung it awkwardly over one ear. It tipped back beneath the uncomfortable sensation of hair sliding across it, spilling the pale strands back where they belonged.

Every thing in the physical world had its place, it seemed, but did all things know their place? The only way his forelock could truly move from its place where it grew from his head was if it let go but hair decomposed, it had to, otherwise the world would be full of hair, and frankly, Mauja wasn't blind enough to not notice such a thing. He exhaled, a long and tired sound, and his head lowered beneath the weight of memory, crowns no longer there; Erthë stood silent next to him, but he didn't look at her. He could feel her, and that was enough, and in the silence he could hear her think.

That, too, was enough. With all that he had dredged up, all the memories condensed into something as intangible and flighty as words, he suddenly wanted to be alone—to finally take flight from the edge of the world and soar towards the sea, where there would be nothing but the ocean to whisper in his haunted ears.

"I'm sorry," she said as he shuddered out another sigh, eyelids closing over blue eyes again to keep the tears at bay as all the names spun like snow in a snowstorm in his mind—all their faces, a blur, a trail of things dropped but never buried. Sorry for what? he thought in the darkness of his head, listening to the distant hush-hush of the ocean's waves and the much closer breathing of the child. With Glacia? What was it with Glacia?

Perfect memory never lasts. (It's a thunderclap, a heartbeat dark as sin, an arrow of fear striking true.) But one word, one word was all he needed: weak.

"Oh," he simply said, shining eyes slipping open again. "—but I am, I'm just too good at lying."

Too good at pretending. Too good at making things up. Too good at smiling even though he buried his heart. "Thank you for telling me all this, Mauja. It's really a lot, isn't it... all that really happened in just six years?" To her, it seemed a lot in a short time; to him, it seemed forever. His eyes closed again, black muzzle dropping towards the sea until it brushed the air where the limestone cliff ended and death began. "Yes. So much death and despair, and just six years." The eye nearest to her, pale as glacier ice, cracked open and peered up at her. "Think of me in six years, will you? When you look at where you are, what you've done..." His tail moved through the dreary air, but it was hardly even worthy of being called a lash, the mellow way in which it rippled against his hocks.

"I'll leave you to your thoughts," he said as he turned and walked away, drifting into the fog, a ghost falling back into the void of memory.

[ The end. <3 ]

lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .