Darkness. Their constant companion, the shadow fallen across world and sky, the black waters rippling in towards a slate gray beach, onyx river under onyx ice, ink sliding down your throat... What had once seemed almost natural, a half-remembered memory of a distant past, had become a burden, something alien, a thing that wore away at him and grated on his nerves. It had been so easy at first, to trust his feet and his nose and his ears, to live with his eyes closed, but with each passing day, the sunrise his memories told him to expect never came. And with each day, a sense of loss settled in his soul, the stale, snow-covered grass turning bitter and brittle in his mouth, and the water tasteless. He was too keenly aware of what it was like to live trapped in a dream, and now he was, yet again, trapped in this nightmare of fate and destiny, or whatever else it was that the Gods did when they were not here to shepherd their realm. Even though he frequently disagreed with what they did, he didn't think they would've just upped and left for no reason at all – somehow, he didn't think them cruel enough to just decide to leave, nor vain enough to leave only for the mortals to grovel and beg for their return.

But perhaps it was just him growing soft again. Perhaps they truly did have hearts of ice, and deserved the title he wore more than he did.

Because he certainly had a heart.
For better or for worse, as with all things.

Again, memory guided him, frosted hooves shuffling over rocks, searching for purchase, the steady, beaten path off the mainland. He knew that the cold lava lying like the ocean by the shore would be blue, but not as blue as the water lapping against it. He knew that his own nose was dark, felt the shifts in the ground as his whiskers danced across the stones to guide him, and he knew that his own body was white, but he could not see it anymore. The memory of color and light was distant, like a lost childhood dream, and he was just the fool clinging to the dashed hopes, things that were better left alone. Why piece it together, when surely it would break again? Mired in the darkness, he felt as if he was losing his grip on the world, his grip on himself, on sanity – like a hungry man whose hunger could never be sated no matter how much he ate, whose thirst could never be slaked no matter how much he drank. Thinking of bright, vibrant colors, the sunlight glitter off the lake or the northern lights dancing in the sky, the iridescence of a magpie's wings.. it was like longing for something he could not have, driving himself mad with yearning.

So he tried to ignore it. He tried to embrace the darkness, and not miss the light when he left the lantern trees or the distant glow of the Throat's fire pillar. But how could he not miss it? No matter how cold he was, no matter how the world froze over when he breathed upon it, he was a creature of flesh and blood, warmth and life and light. He could any less live without his body that he could without light. His mind kept telling him the sun would rise, but it never did, and the internal clock was just as confused now as it had been at the sudden darkness.

Hooves scuffed over rocks, pebbles clattering off the path and down onto lava and water. It would be so easy in this unfamiliar place, to simply tumble off the edge – break a leg in the darkness, and die a broken man robbed of light, and all other kinds of things he tried not to think about. His muzzle felt raw from tracing the path, progress so slow when he didn't want to risk his life, but finally, there he was, standing where he should've been able to see the shrines bathed in some kind of light, be it sun, stars or moon; but it was dark, aside from the faint, distinctly blue glow of a few flowers clinging to Earth's shrine. They seemed too bright in this darkness, and Mauja's eyes, so unused to any form of focused light, closed against it. He peered at the shrines through his white lashes, and felt Irma grip his shoulder tighter, a comforting squeeze that sunk slightly into his scarred flesh.

And for some reason, he thought that there was hope still; and when he opened his eyes, he realized that the flowers were not alone in their strange glow. Words, runes, letters, imprints, whatever they were, shimmered as they crawled across the surface of all four shrines; Mauja turned his blurred gaze aside, and blinked several times, overwhelmed and struck silent by the sheer force of the emotion they conveyed.

He didn't even remember why he had come here.

[ @[Ophelia] <3 ]