Some time between finding Lana and then discovering her and Aryel had escaped, Athena had started to notice a change that had existed inside her for quite some time. When first she had arrived, she had no qualms with the people around her and instead had desired only to finish her quest and leave in peace. When Psyche had caught her and forced her to stay, Athena had started to dislike staying in the beautifully cruel land of the Basin. She longed for the crimson sands of home, the warm sunshine and kind faces she knew so well. Yet even then she did not hold anything against the inhabitants, merely accepting their ways and not desiring to change them, because who was she to judge them? Perhaps they were that way because of oppression, destruction, or they had been raised that way. Yet, she had been left behind. Aryel and Lana had disappeared without her, and because of that Athena felt as if she had been abandoned. She had done everything she could to help Lana, and still the femme had left her without a breath of word in warning. Athena was left taskless, friendless, and tired. Without something to consume her time, she often went wandering with no real aim. Never straying out of the Basin, but also finding places not many members traveled. Though she had found a friend- at least on her end, she was unsure of how he saw her- in Mauja, she did not desire the company of those who were more oppressive. So instead she found ill-traveled paths, where the snow lay untouched by hoof and sprawled out ahead of her like sheets of welcoming whiteness. Her feathered tail fluttered quietly, the beating of wings that would never rest upon her shoulders all that accompanied her soft breaths that crisp night. Though, it was always crisp and cold in the Aurora Basin. Like fluffy cotton candy clouds, her breaths blew back in a strange mixture of warm and cold against her golden cheeks.

Athena clearly had no idea where she was going, but that was often the best part in her travels through the little-seen lands of the home of the unicorns. Extravagantly long tail left small marks in the snow as it swayed to and fro in a rather feline fashion, leaving a clear path wherever she walked. That evening- for it was nearly midnight, she idly realized- the moon was full and pregnant in the sky, the northern lights dancing overhead and painting her shimmering form in their colors. The path ahead, despite there being a lack of one, was clearly illuminated by the bright glow of her ruling Lady overhead. Faintly Athena missed her patron, the Goddess she was so devoted to. Every evening she sent up a prayer, asking for guidance and thanking her Lady for allowing her this experience in order to grow, apologizing for her inability to return to the Veins and finish her quest. This guiding light, so bright on this day, only served to comfort her aching and lonely heart as she trekked uphill. Needing to be closer to her Lady, far away as she may be, Athena had found the tallest part of the Basin and started climbing. She needed, irrationally, to be as close to the sky as she could that night. Despite never wishing to leave the ground despite her species, Athena wanted to be near the light of the Lady that had aided her so in past times.

When she could climb no farther, the land leveled out and became a place Athena was awed to even see. Tall evergreens towered in a half-circle, white as the snow that forever graced their branches. And there, in that small meadow, sprouting from the snow stubbornly, were hundreds of lily-soft petaled flowers. How they lived in such a harsh climate was beyond her, but they were painted in moonsilver without a single variant of color. Large, full petals caught the light and reflected it back to the moon they resembled so beautifully. Athena found she was the only source of color on that clifftop, watching the flowers dance in the wind like a reminder that even in the harshest of places beauty and simplicity could flourish. Golden canvas, glowing under the moon and the northern lights overhead, moved carefully among these blossoms. Not daring to place her hoof where any one of them rested, not wanting to disturb their beauty. Curious pale muzzle reached down to nudge at a perfumed cusp of one of them, and found them just as cold as the snow and wind around them. What had she expected? That in their strange divinity in this land they would be anything special, anything differing from the rest of the world? Perhaps.

Soft amber eyes turned skyward to where her Lady glowed high above. Feeling a sudden urge to speak, to confess, her words began to softly fall like snowflakes to rest upon the inviting flowers that would hold her secrets as loyally as her Lady. "I often wonder why it was you sent me here, my Lady. I never doubted your decision, but now I see that this place is changing me. Is it in the way you had foreseen?" It was her own private confessional, and her honey voice seemed as if to spread and fill the air without shattering the silence in a cruel fashion. "These people...I have grown to care for some of them. Is it you that keeps me from harm in these lands? Or is it merely my own unexplainable luck? Regardless...I feel that maybe I do not wish to return home. I wish to care for these children of snow, not because I desire to change their views, but because they seem so impossibly cold and broken..." The light of the orb overhead glowed in the reflection of her eyes, mottled browns focused reverently upon it. Were any listening, she was unashamed of her own confessions. And why would she be, anyways? Truth was all that spilled from her heart, and that image seemed to turn the snowflakes she had likened to her words red, staining the flowers below with the color when they dropped upon their pale and welcoming canvas. "I wonder, has anyone shown them warmth? Are they as reserved with each other as they are with outsiders, even of Unicorn breed? It seems such a sad life, if that is true. Maybe I cannot change them, and maybe that isn't my job. But I just wish...I just wish I could show them that I care. That somebody is there, that somebody will be there always to pick them up and dust them off, kiss the spots that ache and love them for every bad trait, every flaw. Is it wrong of me to still remain this way when many of them would feel no regret in watching me turn their snow with my own lifeblood?" She knew such souls existed, had seen it in the dark eyes of Aviya and d'Artagnan. Had watched as the father had given his daughter the feathers of her friend, as if it were a trophy.

Sigh escaped before she could catch it, and warm gaze was shielded as her eyes fell closed for a few moments; basking in the moon's rays. "The darkness I see in them, I only wish to embrace it and chase it away. Heal them not with anything that could aid them physically, but with my own love. Is it because I hail from a land of warmth?" Even here, in the most secret of places, she dare not utter the name of the land from which she had hailed. Even if ears were not nearby, she was wary of bringing war or distress upon her home, not for her own well-being. Eyes opened a sliver, softly lidded as she wished that her Lady could be there to give her guidance. She had no doubts that her Lady had desired to turn her colder, make her wiser. And she was, but perhaps not in the way she had anticipated. Maybe if she had been treated as Lana had, this would not be a problem, and she would have been molded as her Lady had desired. Athena could not hold this against the Goddess, for she didn't doubt that she needed the toughening up. Yet her heart remained as sunny and warm as the one that always warmed her home. Gaze always inviting and accepting, far from judgemental. Yet another sigh escaped, a silver-crafted butterfly that flew away from her in yet another cloud of frost. "I do not know what to do, my Lady. I am not wise like you, strong enough to decide what I can do and fight for it. All I have is love, and often I wonder if the saying that love conquers all is true in the least. I do not feel I hold any importance simply by having this trait..." For the first time since beginning to speak, she dropped her gaze away from the glowing celestial being and crown moved to crane down towards the flowers, inhaling their soft pure scent that was all that could distinguish them from the snow. "I belong in no place, now."

::ooc- Thought they needed a private thread finally <3 Mauja is fully allowed to hear/listen to all of her confessions, or as little as you'd like. Permission from tamme to create the flowers used here!