I'm fading, barely breathing, can't hold on...

Whatever it was that he had been feeling, the discordance seemed to be infectious. Mauja lived in a wild land with those who froze their hearts and masked their souls — countless times had he seen the lid settle behind their eyes, closing off the jar of their secrets. It was a subtle shift, but as his restless eyes lay upon Midas, he saw it, and wondered what it was that the painted stallion wanted to hide. Himself, or something specific? And why? Was it the disturbance he sensed from Mauja, the ragged remnants of anger and annoyance? He does not trust me, the Frostheart thought, knowing it to be true, and warranted. Was he not the enemy of all of Helovia? Again he quelled the bitterness, gaze snapping to a dark shadow approaching under the starlight, even as Midas' voice formed words. “I have been enduring what is required of me.” Did he suspect the reason for Mauja's faded anger was Kri, and the battles? Mauja sighed, and turned his head aside, peering out across the thistles even as one ear flicked, listening to Paladin as he drew near.

But he was given no chance to respond, explain, to even sort through what he felt about standing there with two stallions he barely knew and easily could call enemies. Paladin saw to that. "You were watching the battle my daughters' waged on the Foothills. Why?" For a moment Mauja remained silent, fighting down all the rising emotions and half-formed reasons — fighting down the uneven beat of his heart, the specters both white and black dancing in the fog. He did not need this uncertainty, this.. this dual longing, the desire of a perfect dream he would only sully with his presence. Yet he could not help but be acutely aware of the fact that Paladin was her father, and that he was closer in age to Mauja than she was. Was it an uncomfortable thought? In many ways, yes; in some ways, no. Knowing that he had not been able to cast the emotions aside was, perhaps, even worse, as day by day he plunged deeper into the life where they had no place.

"I am a friend of Ophelia's," he finally said, his voice light, and turned his head back to them. While there was something akin to life in him, in the cast of his eyes and the lines of his body, the depths of his souls, and thoughts, was masked by the ever-present shield laying just below the surface of his gaze. But only a fool would think him heartless, a dead statue of marble and ice. "Tinek sought me out to ask my help, but I was too late." He gave a shrug of his snowy shoulders, and sought to smooth out his own wrinkled, cranky mind; in one breath he damned Kri for sticking her nose where it didn't belong, and in the next he admitted to the fact that he would've helped if he could've. It certainly would've been a sight — Mauja and Kri, fighting on the same side, but it did nothing to soothe his own guilt at the hypocrisy.

Fortunately for you, you didn't attack him, Irma pointed out, gleeful of his insight and sadistically mirthful of his self-dug hole. She had no time for idiots, and he was being one.

Mauja Frosthjärta