He almost felt like it merited some title, some recognition: Mauja, the breaker of spirits. It wasn't the first time, it wasn't going to be the last, but it was undeniable that he had a knack for ruining things. With a few simple, vague words he'd caused a new-made mother to distrust and doubt the father of her daughter, and now, with the bitter tale of an old man he'd moved a kind, gentle soul to tears – and not tears of the good kind, but the kind of tears that came when something, your hopes and dreams perhaps, were dashed. In silence he let them fall, watching from the corner of his eye as they tracked a star-reflecting path down her cheeks, to fall upon the flowers. Somehow, he felt like it was about more than simple faith. It went deeper. He hadn't robbed her only of her deity, but of the comfort—and pride?—she'd felt in the company of the Moon, was it no so? For a moment, he had threatened to reduce her to nothing again, a shadow and a whisper. He'd brought her to the brink, and then back again.

Mutely he stood with his muzzle against her shoulder, steadfast as she pressed against him. His mind argued that it was wrong, the principles of his life told him to move aside, take his words back, dump her in the dirt and rub it in, but tonight, tonight he simply wasn't strong enough to do it.

Her quivering breaths washed against his shoulder, and patiently he let her. It was with words he had broken her, so was it with words he would have to heal her again, and make her whole? As he waited, his blue gaze wandered freely over the snow-capped horizon, breath steaming into the darkness. They were under the Moon's watchful gaze, but surely she'd turned away in distaste already, unwilling to witness such blasphemy towards her glory. Deadly, beautiful, and vain; would she one day regret the way she'd cast him, and the unicorns, aside? Would she one day see what could've been, if she'd kept him under her sway? He knew that he could go further still, that he could be so much more than the outcast lord and dethroned King, and when she realized what she had passed up on, would she try and make good on it?

He doubted her pride would let her.
He was cautious to think a single mortal, in an eternal time stream, would matter so much. After all, the sun would set and rise, long after he had died, and what, then, would he but a half-forgotten name, a legacy slowly washing away with each rain?

No. He doubted a creature eternal would ever care that much about the deeds of a mortal, a day-fly, a creature of such a brief and insignificant lifespan. He'd swum in the streams of time, and witnessed the days past and the days of what could've been. He understood the age of the Dragon's Blood, and how much the world had since changed. Just as no one today remembered the forest that had once grown in the Throat, no one would remember Mauja once all that time had passed again.

Athena's shaking voice was spilling into the night air again, and he was glad to be torn from his reverie; contemplating how the world would forget him was not all that pleasant. The silence lay warm across his throat, even as a myriad of words burst into life in his mind: anger, that the Moon had so carelessly declared them racist, and the desire to snarl that it was an unfair assumption, but it only showed how little the astral mare truly cared. Wonder, at the fact that gentle Athena had gone her whole life without a true friend. Shock, at her fear of failing him – didn't she know what a monster he was, what kind of beast lay asleep in the ice of his soul? But perhaps even monsters seem kind, when they smile and touch you with a gentle paw, soothing your ruffled feathers.

Perhaps even monsters had hearts.

"She failed you," he began, choosing to ignore her fears, her strange devotion to him. "A rapist can only be 'healed' by a sharp object driven through his neck. Loneliness can only be cured by companionship, and even those of a single species' bloodline can be lonely. Racism is a choice in life, a decision, and not an illness." His voice was gentle, touching on contempt sometimes; what kind of tasks were those? Was a hybrid's loneliness worth more than the loneliness of an equine? And was even the Gods advocating peace? "There was never anything there for you to heal. I'm sorry." Slowly he rubbed his muzzle against her shoulder, before sighing. "Sometimes being alive is a very thankless thing, Ari."