Thank you for all the pain...

Darkness curled around the land like a blanket, a veil of shadow strewn with diamond stars in the distance. Perhaps it was meant to comfort, to allow heavy eyelids to fall shut and sleep to claim weary souls, to give the waking, vigilant guardians peace and quiet as their keen eyes and sweeping ears looked for signs of trouble. But it did not comfort him. It laid across his heart like a constricting net, across his mind like a weight of doubts, and in the middle of the night he snapped awake within a cave, covered in sweat and with white rimming his winter irises. For several moments he panted in the dark, looking for ghouls and sneaking shadows, expecting hounds to bite into his flesh, but he saw nothing, no matter which way he turned and where his eyes went. He was alone, with his heart hammering in his ears and his breath too loud.

The darkness was not his friend anymore.

Exhaling a shaking breath the alabaster stallion drew out of the cave, and into a world lit only by stars; the moon was elsewhere it seemed, but he did not mind. Blinking in the murky light he stepped onto the worn-down grass right outside his haunt, and raised his dark muzzle to the skies. A white shadow crossed it, sending comfort, before disappearing again. For a moment he looked after her. She was a light in his darkness, but she could not dispel this, nor untangle the nest in his mind. She could not ease the doubts, could not give him the strength he had once possessed, or help him sleep easy. He could not help it, the terror of his nightmares, the voices like whispers in the dark, and time and again they drove him into wakefulness in the dim hours. He smiled in daylight and slept when no one saw, clinging desperately to an old life, hoping to merge with it again.

Would it be so easy? Could he ever be what he once was? He smiled bitterly in the dark. What had he been, even? And what had changed? He knew that he was closer to the edge, dreaming of waking, only to sleep and dream again, within the dream, until he was not sure he had woken all the way.

And so often, he saw her pale shape in the darkness of his mind.

Lowering his gaze to the hidden valley Psyche had been given he started to move, drifting along the slopes, heading for the corner which steamed into the sky. Mauja had never been fond of heat, nor of being wet in cold climates, but something about the pools drew him in that night. The air gradually warmed until he stood by the rim of one, watching his ghastly reflection in its inky surface. Steam tasting of earth and metal mingled with his breath, and the sky slowly took on a shimmer, in vague, distant shades of green and fire. In the spring's mirror he saw it spread, flaring sky-fires and sheets of water rippling in the heavens. And again the white shadow flashed, the ghost-owl who descended on silent wings to settle on his shoulder.

From a ghost to a ghost...
He was the one who haunted the Basin, but if he was awake or asleep, he knew not.

Mauja Frosthjärta