en natt så kall och månen den var klar

[ Snö is rather charming, y'know. ]

What business he had been on was his own. And what business he would go on, was also his own—because he had made it his own. It was nothing he needed to broadcast to the world, though some would know, and some would not, but that was nothing new. Mauja had always been mysterious, and kept his secrets close to heart.

Nor was it strange that he was there, in the Threshold. He'd come and gone a lot in his lifetime, a moonlit wraith drifting under dark skies. And it seemed that something always happened, when he came, be it monsters or otherwise; a quiet morning in the Threshold was nothing but a dream. The darkness lingered beneath the trees, trapped thick against the earth by the cover of clouds. They wept softly, and Mauja wondered who for as he returned to the land he always returned to. Irma gave a weak cry, but the other owl remained silent, gliding beside her, slipping through the patchwork of branches.

"Faelene?!"

The cry stopped him dead in his tracks, black-rimmed ears sweeping forward, a black flood of adrenaline roaring through his veins. He'd been hoping, and praying, to slip back in unnoticed, to find a new rhythm of things, and do all the other things he had to do, but those were dreams as distant as the stars. Helovia was, despite the good tries of many, not a peaceful place. And if Faelene was injured..? But no, the cries (he recognized the voice as Illynx's) went on, and Mauja's dark nostrils flared. He could not ignore it. He could not ignore his friend—friends?—just for the sake of his own future. There were limits on how selfish even he could allow himself to be.

So he honed in on the sound, frosted hooves hitting the solid ground at a fleet-footed trot, chipping roots and clacking against rocks. His heart was pounding, his mind spinning, but he hadn't the slightest clue what was going on. He just feared the worst; he always did.

Soon enough he saw Illynx through the trees, and heard the voice of the pale frosted chestnut mare—

"Her name is Sielu, if you were wondering."

And like the dead come back to life he burst through the barely leafed thickets, tall and majestic and crowned with white and frost; two owls alighted upon his scarred back, watched the scene with impassivity and curiosity. Sielu lay upon the ground, smoke stirring in the drizzle and eyes closed; Illynx's hooves had danced muddy gouges nearby. Mauja's blue eyes fled to the trees around them. No sign, no scent, of Faelene.

"Dætur," he breathed, the sound swallowed by the mist of his breath in the moist, cold air. His gaze slid across Snö, acknowledgment in their depths, before falling on Sielu, even as his hooves drew him closer. What had happened to her? Why was she lying here, all alone?

When had she grown up? Where had he been all along, fouling and breaking every promise he had made?

It hammered the coffin nails deeper into his heart, and silently he lowered his muzzle, and the walls of his mind, and touched his soft muzzle to her cold, wet shoulder.

Wake up.

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