Art by Neverr ♥

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

tell me you miss me and I’ll come home
I’ve been away from your hearts too long

Picking up where he left off had never been Mauja's strong point.

He had always been more inclined to run, throw everything he had built, all he had loved, to the wolves and go somewhere else; start over, from scratch, until the mistakes piled up too high, and he ran again.

And again, and again, and again, a vicious cycle never ending as Mauja fled from himself.

He would rather disappear again, than linger here, like a ghost with his heart anchored on the limestone cliffs. Go somewhere where no one knew his name, his deeds, his failures—like vaulting down a glacier crack and having to be rescued by his patron Goddess of all things. And worrying the herd. Disrupting the daily rhythm of things with a fucking search and rescue.

He would only have been a good Emissary if Tembovu had, for whatever reason, wanted to have a chat with the icy heart of the Steppe. He had been doing his job excellently, lying comatose in the dry, cold belly of the mountain ice. Much alliance, very diplomat.

The only thing he had learned was that he couldn't starve to death, either. Just like the starlight sat in his heart and kept the organ beating after all his blood had left his veins, it did so too after all the fuel had been burnt and the temperature had dropped. It was strange, to have had his immortality proved twice, and both times because he was too dumb—the first time, he hadn't been brave enough to tell Tembovu his darkest, most despairing moment had passed. The second time, because he hadn't really tried to get out of his grave, trusting that someone else would fix his problems for him.

Wanting to know if he would be missed. (The scar on his chest throbs, dully.)

Stupidstupidstupidstupidstupid—

He could've lain there forever, centuries and eons, waking to a world where he had already lost everything to the steadfast passing of time. Mauja was lonely in his deathlessness, and it had driven the icy wedge deeper into his heart.

So he isolated himself. Withdrew, into the confines of his own bitter mind, and watched the world go by as his body fought against the lacking Frostfall foliage in an attempt to wake the fuck up again. He felt cold and lethargic most of the time, and what grazing nature offered was but a bleak shadow of the spring's lush riches; each rib was still too prominent on his white frame, hips jutting out and his sides sunken. Winter fuzz aside, he was lackluster, dull, and matted, and his owls were no better. Mauja couldn't catch much for them, only on occasion being strong enough to throw his magic at some unsuspecting bird and felling it for them to eat—so they lived purely off of the starlight stubbornness they leeched from his soul, unable to die, and unable to start living again.

They slept. Diego was stuffed into the leather bag—which he wore only because it was a convenient place to store an owl, because even its slight weight was like a mountain weighing on him—but Irma sat stubbornly on his withers, claws painfully anchored in his scant flesh. She, unlike Diego, wasn't really asleep, but she wasn't really awake either. She just existed, and Mauja was too much of a stubborn social failure to figure out how to ask anybody for help—or even realize that someone could help him, much less want to.

He had disappeared. He didn't want to come back until he was restored, but it wasn't like they had paid any attention to that when they rescued him—of course they had taken him home ("home", such a strange, bitter word bounding in his skull—), and he had taken to lurking in such a way that they might as well have left him in the glacier for all that anyone knew. There was a word, "recovery", and he didn't have the slightest idea how to go about it, and never had, no matter how small the problem.

There were three possible explanations for what happened next:
1. His concentration was slipping,
2. His radar wasn't set to noticing Alysanne,
3. Alysanne was on his (subconscious) list of accepted ponies. Friend-ponies.

A potential fourth explanation was that he usually relied too much on his owls to steer him clear of others, and with them as they were.. well, it was only natural he'd wander into someone sooner or later, as he was actually walking (wow) on this fine, snowy winter's day.

Regardless of why, he found himself staring at a motionless Alysanne; he among the trees, she frozen in a clearing, green eyes tracking up between the falling snowflakes. She looked peaceful.

He said nothing.

[ Hello I am rusty. @Alysanne <3 ]