There is a weight to his soul that drags him down, deep into an abyss of confusion and thoughts best left untouched. It had kept him on patrols, drifting like the dead in a sky left light and hopeful with the return of the celestials. Falling didn't scare him, this was where he belonged after all. But his adventures, the wandering and enjoyment of the sun he embodied, those had come to an end. At times he toyed with the idea of leaving to visit Onni, the only other being he felt normal around. Perhaps it was because they were both so odd, so oblivious to all but the most obvious and logical of things. She was his best friend, and at times he wondered if she were his only. Had he not had Destrier at his shoulder in every dangerous event they had faced together, he might have doubted it more. Had he not taken Resplendence beneath wing, close to his heart, he might have wondered if maybe...maybe...

There was a thought lingering there, just below the surface of his comprehension, just beyond the length of his reach. Touch skimmed it, nearly grasped it, felt the shape of it available in one fleeting touch, and then it shattered. This was a pattern he'd paced through restlessly seemingly day after day. It was always just...beyond...his grasp. And he despised that wicked thought, that solution to all the daymares that haunted him, to the sink in his throat and the burn of his eyes as the night faded into blackness, the antithesis to both the sun and the silken glow of the moon before she claimed her throne and true night hailed, and he curled alone beneath the hourglass above to sleep in fitful spurts, trying always...always...to grasp that flickering answer.

Tonight is just as any other; he does not hold it in his hand just as he had not even skimmed the surface days ago. Nights ago, perhaps a more fitting answer. And in the silence of the air he rides like a lonesome golden eagle he hears all, and in that wicked noiselessness that consumes each breath and beat of heart to tear into something meaningless, he hears his name. But no, it couldn't be, because he is nothing but a flicker of gold in passing shadows, nothing to be remembered or mourned, praised or hailed. He is merely...him. A canvas, a warrior with a broken sword hefting a worn shield with a shattered crest. But he fights on because they expect him to. Because he loves them in a way a child loves a parent no matter how fiercely they draw its blood. Nothing he may be to them, but they had soaked their very essence into his blood, and would circulate endlessly, timelessly, under the hourglass. Always the hourglass. Ticking away his time, his worth, with every trickle of sand falling from that shallow pathway. Youth is without youth, in all ironic purposes, and what will he have left behind when he is called to meet his sister who had never had the chance to fill her own with sand. It had been fate's decision to pour so little into her cup, wicked and cruel as she crumbled before life could even begin, scared of the plane nobody could see and struggling to clutch at strings of bravery Kaj had been unable to lend her.

He wonders every night if she died knowing only fear, even with her guardian at her side.

But that sound, it resonates as a reminder in his head, beseechingly ringing into the soundlessness where he is trapped and passionless. And true to the disbelieving dismissal he'd first assumed, it is his name. In a voice he knows, as well.

Golden feathers only faintly glow in the light of a sun slowly retreating, but he tips them regardless and his legs kiss the treetops in longing. The Edge's shores had replaced his heartbeat seasons ago; had the waters worn away the solidarity of his heart as they had the bleached cliffs of his home?

Landing softly as a feline might he curls his appendages inwards, shaking off every sign of oddity and giving a kindly smile to the maiden who had summoned him. Kahlua, the little doe he'd protected and defended from Aaron's targetless and wrongly pointed wrath. "Kahlua," he greets warmly, dipping his head respectfully towards her as he moves closer from his landing to share his presence with her on this sunless time of limbo. It still scared him to see it sink below the horizon, fearing it would remain distant and dark as it had for so long. "Is all well?" Lyrics are low as thunder but gentle, inviting, wishing she would share with him secrets that could keep his own troubles at bay.

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@[Kahlua]
Oh dear, you just...made my Kaj muse explode. Let me love you.