Clatter. Hooves scuffling over a broken path, pebbles dancing lightly to the beat of her step. Every noise was amplified, both by the silence of the world and the slowly gained sensitivity of his hearing – and all his nerves pulled taut. Frosted hooves danced lightly across the hard surface, spinning to face an unknown threat. Irma was already in the air, trying to make out who it was, but the dim blue glow was hardly enough to see by, not even for an owl. Still, as she spiraled above, she knew that it was only one approaching, and the chirp its companion gave was almost familiar, teasing some old, hidden memory...

Mauja knew better. Somehow, his mind repeated the familiar rhythm of her footfalls, playing Tinek's sounds in his mind, and this time, the pounding of his heart wasn't fear, or that constricting, choking sense of devotion. No, this was something else, fleet-footed and elated, too light to belong in his icy chest. His soul was supposed to be a snowy, desolate landscape, his emotions as frozen and solid as the glaciers, his heart like cold marble, but for all of that, it was blood, and not ice, thudding through his veins.

Sometimes, it is so easy to despair. To want to forget, to become something else.
The doubts of this entire world are wearing me down.

She heaved herself across the ledge, slender and graceful, always so much beautifuler than his memories of her. Only life, breath and blood, could do her justice, but all of those half-realized truth he buried beneath the snowdrifts. He was stealing moments from a life he had no right to, trying to fit into a skin he would have to abandon, and whenever he asked himself why he kept going, he couldn't find an answer. Each time he resolved to stop this torn identity from taking shape, it washed away when he came near her. He had a vague word for it, but the less he thought of it, the less he acknowledged it, the easier the future would be to bear.

Blue eyes trail a blue-tinged dragon.
Blue eyes trail a perfect, spiral horn.
Perhaps she had a place in his future, but she had no place in the future of many others.

Briefly, her eyes were on him, and he felt himself shift ever so slightly; his neck tugged upwards, head dipping down as he breathed in her scent. It truly was her, but her silent attention slid from him to the runes – but his stayed on her, gently tracing the lines of her body, seeking for flaws and finding none. It seemed nothing had come out of the darkness nipping at her heels, for which he was glad; but then Tinek gave a sudden roar, and Mauja flinched. For a moment he remembered a snippet of a dream, Psyche and him running side by side, crashing through the lines of an army.. coming closer to the inevitable conflict, the conflict he lived with every day, until he turned to look over his shoulder, only to see silver jaws consumed by fire.

Despite his body screaming with too many memories of burning pain, nothing came to touch him, only the incessant silence of the world. It lapped against him, a cold comfort, and Ophelia's voice was all the sun he needed. Damn, since when did I become such a fool?

Since the world threatened to take her away? Trying to teach him to follow his own advice, and care for the things he had, before it was too late? To learn what really mattered, and what didn't matter?

Problem was, he had no idea.

"We are," he rumbled through the darkness, watching the subtle wind-shift of blue across her white body. They both soaked it up, like canvas desperate for paint – it seemed that only the dead of winter, when it was full of snow and trees, was interested in shielding him. "Mostly, at least," he added as an afterthought, remembering Roland, and how it had seemed he needed some kind of affirmation, something to hold onto in the black. Slowly, Mauja drew a step forward, and Irma came down again. Wind rushed across his back before she settled, gently gripping his withers with taloned feet. "And you?" Because it could not be said that he cared terribly much for the Foothills, so he asked only of her, breathless in the darkness as he yearned to hear she was alright (or maybe it would be better if she wasn't, so he could hold her again).