Sjung för mig,
vind och våg,
för ljudet av hjärtslag,
för liv och lust.

One life is but a grain of sand, a trickle through the eternal hour glass: fleeting, brief. One grain does not cause a stir when it joins the others in death, does not leave any impact upon the glass case it is trapped within. In life, we are only as important as we are to ourselves, and as we make ourselves to the ones who love us—but all of this is forgotten in death, in ours and theirs. We dream, we feast upon ambition and vision, but ultimately, for all that our lives are worth, for all that we accomplish and leave behind for more than a year or two..we could simply lay down our arms and exhale the moment we are born, and not draw breath again. It's a pessimist truth, but in the long run, what are we, but broken mortals whose dreams are not made out of stone? When our bodies fail and our hearts give out, what monument is left of what we were, except the memories carried in the minds of others—and when they, too, die, what is left of us? Nothing, my friends: nothing. We become the dust of our crumbled bodies, our names only remembered by the wind, but the wind does not whisper it in a tongue we know. We do not even have heroes—can you name any legend of Helovia's past? Of its bloody wars? Of the days when the trees stood rooted upon the Throat's sandy earth and the ocean waves lapped against a shore which today is nothing but a barren stretch of desert?

Our future is just as lost as our past.

The endless cycle of life, of night and day, death and birth, keeps on turning. Some are thrown off into the abyss; some jump in of their own accord. The rest, we just cling on for dear life. Or maybe we're just like driftwood, shored up against a rock and unable to get free, and eventually the water dries up and we're left to rot, or bake in the sun, but we still can't get free. Trapped, in limbo.

(His eyes are full of stars. They reflect in the glacier blue, in the void, in the whites; they're the life within for the mind is numb and the heart is silent.)

Mauja's black muzzle stretched towards the sky, as if he could somehow reach it, and either join it, those bright, blazing stars, or rip it down. Would it tear like skin, would the celestial blood come pouring out as if from a wound? White breath plumed from his eyes, the sheen of his blaze a blinding curtain; alive, so alive he couldn't deny the pumping of hot blood through icy veins, but the life was dead. He was adrift in an ocean of black waves, simply floating, unsure of in which direction to kick: and instead of just swimming wherever fate took him, he stood still. Maybe waiting for a shark to swallow him whole, or to freeze to death in this relentless world.

The brook by his frosted hooves seemed to almost glow in the astral light, frost-edged thistles and grass shimmering coldly as the night breeze ruffled them. A lone owl circled the still air, a steady orbit around the pale unicorn who stood staring at the sky, heart empty but yearning to fill up again and eyes filled up with blue.

Sing for me,
wind and wave,
for the sound of heartbeats,
for life and love.