Agony had nothing on the raw confusion of his mind.

Each step was halting, an uneven, jagged torment. From a distance he simply looked lopsided, as if his legs belonged to four separate entities and not the same. The right front one barely touched the ground. The only reason he moved it forward was so it wouldn't lag behind and get forgotten, but it required him to cycle it forward with each step.. and that required him to rotate his shoulder forward, and that, was a source of excruciating pain. Each step he took was punctuated by a gasp, even though he numbed his nerves with ice. The blood running from his charred shoulder and barrel was diluted, streaming towards the earth in pink rivulets, but he barely noticed anymore.

Pain was the least of his problems. Pain was the least of his concerns. He felt as if someone had whipped the insides of his skin, turned his soul to glass and shattered it against a rock; some part of him had fallen to pieces, broken, his mind drifting and floating like a piece of driftwood still upon the waves. He could've walked for days and not noticed — could've fallen headfirst into the pit of fire.

He shouldn't be sad. He shouldn't have wept. Shouldn't have raised a monument over a dead equine.
Yet he had.

Irma drifted above him on the warm winds, and only when he nearly walked into Ophelia did she nudge his mind; blinking, as if surfacing from a deep sleep, Mauja stopped where he was, and took in his surroundings. Smoke and heat-haze rose from the heart. Ophelia stood just half a yard to his side, staring longingly at.. the Sun.

Mauja was too tired to care; every nerve throbbed with exhaustion, and if he accidentally prodded the feisty deity into incinerating him, he'd not mind it so much. "Sól," he called in an almost-gentle voice; with water dripping off his horn he lowered his head a fraction, the most respectful way he'd greeted a god for a while. So far, there had been something honest about the Sun's temper, more so than the cold blade of the Moon in his back, or Asni's vile game. "I have known nothing but your wrath, but pray tell, is there something of kindness in you?" I didn't mean to kill him. Help me.

Few could turn back time, or properly raise the dead, but perhaps he could lessen the agony in Mauja's shoulder, heal him out of the kindness of his heart — knit the flesh and skin closed, and show that he was a God, and not a monster.

[ essentially Mauja wonders if Sunny can heal his shoulder/barrel, which has been blasted by dragon fire. :) ]