He spoke. She listened. In this moment, nothing else mattered, because she wanted so badly for him to be innocent, to know that she had done the right thing, that she was reversing some of the damage that had been done on her by too many encounters with evil beings, too many stabs with a unicorn horn (total one), too many nervous days watching the wall and hoping the unicorn walking down the border was friend and not foe. She prayed to the Moon Goddess to let him be innocent, prayed to the Earth god, the Sun god, the Time god. She prayed to Mirage, to Hellena, to Resplendence. Let him be innocent, because she was trying so very hard to do the right thing. And he went on speaking, and she went on listening. But her prayers grew thin, and then stopped altogether.

There was nothing to pray for. She had been praying a losing battle. And it made it worse that half his words were spoke in riddles, in nonsense that she could hardly understand. But there was one thing she understood with crystal clarity. Torasin died because of me.

Now she breathed. Because breathing was step one. Horses breathe. Horses eat, horses sleep, horses drink as well. But now was not the time for those things. Now was the time for inhaling, for exhaling, for feeling the air rush in and out of her lungs. It was time for staying calm, not panicking again. It was time for being an adult, a mare, a grown woman, instead of an eternal child. It was time to grow up. But how could nature, Mauja, Hellena, her herd ask her to grow up so quickly? In an instant, even? This wasn't what she had asked for when she had invited him. But it was what she was getting. And she struggled now with her confusion, because she was trying her very best to be good, to be as nonjudgmental as possible for Kaj, for herself, but every time she tried something bad happened.

Kaj's accusing eyes danced in her mind, boring into her even when she wasn't there, and her eyes began to mist again at the memory. All of Kaj's angry words and accusations, Lace's bitter defense and Evangeline's cryptic an eye for an eye sounded in her head. What did that even mean? It was like she was trapped in a room with all of them shouting in her ears, telling her what to do, but none of them agreed, and how could she do so many different things? And Kaj, the one whom she wanted most to listen to... it was getting so hard. She tried, she had tried so very hard to open her heart to this stallion, and where had it gotten her? She had dragged him, a killer, to the Edge. To the very doorstep of her home. And for that instant she was no better than the rest of the Qian, the ones that judged before they knew, that hated because of what they thought, that called for sentence before the trial. Because the subtlety of definitions, of the difference between kill and murder, was lost on the girl.

All around her, the forest lived on. Trees rustled in the crisp autumn wind, birds chirped, small mammals rustled in the brush. All around her, life went on, but she was a statue, frozen in time. Because her heart was broken. Because she wanted to cry and couldn't even find the tears. Because she wanted to wind back time when Mauja was still a lost soul, a wandering friend with no crimes on his record. Was that only hours ago? It seemed like years to the overo woman. Years and more. She was ancient, older than Hellena, older than the Qian, older than the Edge and the time god himself. She was eternal.

And then her heart resumed beating.

Hellena was there to take the reins, to fill in what conversation the painted girl could not. Was he sorry. It was enough to get her moving again. Her blues eyes reached for his own, water threatening to spill over the bottom rims, not sure what she was supposed to feel. Not sure what she was supposed to do. Perhaps, much to Hellena's chagrin, all she wanted to do was run to Kaj, to find him, to beg him to teach her how to be the woman he wanted her to be, because she didn't know how to keep trying when it seemed like all the odds were against her. But Kaj was not here. Mauja was. She took another breath. She could do this. But in the end, she couldn't. “You're lying,” was all she managed to sputter out, hardly a whisper, a dent in the air around them. But it echoed like dynamite in her head, so great the silence around her seemed to be. Then she found one more word. “Irma.” Perhaps Mauja would understand what she was trying to say, despite the speech seeming like utter nonsense. I am hers.