en natt så kall och månen den var klar

[ Finally. Sorry, @[Snö], for the wait <3 ]

His snow-cold trail had crossed Helovia's Threshold many times—too many, some might say. And the trails of his offspring had crossed it numerous times, too, always weaving in and out of existence, part of the spider's web of lives that covered Helovia. A finely woven mesh, a blanket across the world, and somewhere in the center of it all the Gods prowled, and the winds of Death snuffed out this life or that.

Trapped. Neatly, elegantly trapped by whatever otherworldly pull that kept them there, in this godforsaken corner of the world, where lives had a tendency to simply crash into the ocean like cliff-faces sheared off by a storm; a violent crack of thunder and lash of lightning, and something lay in shambles, tattered and broken. Sometimes, it was the very fabric of the world tearing open and spilling blackness into their land, blight and plague.

And it spread, through the roots into the leaves, from memory into bone; gone were the putrid corpses and the sharp-toothed darkness, but it remained in souls and hollow hearts, echoing dully along the corridors of remembrance, a boiling ache in the marrow. For all that he knew, and for all that the world cared, he might very well carry that illness in his heart—corrupting what he touched not with rot, but with pain.

Because everything he touched, fell apart.

Just like how putrescent carcasses sheared apart at a simple touch.

Another of his shattered statues, a creature wounded and blighted by his careless touch in its life, stood upon the desolate, moon-washed shoreline. He had known her instantly; there was no way he couldn't, not even with the faint red roaning paled to gray in the moonlight. There was no way he could not recognize his haughty daughter, despite the way she was not poised like an angry, warrior queen.

He would know her, even if she was only bones laid out before him.

If he had loose ends to tie up, she surely was one of them—and he could not balk from her, and leave her like this if his life ended in a swift flight off the World's Edge, or with his own ice tearing up his veins; he couldn't walk away from this, no matter how much his mind wanted him to turn and run because there was no way he could see himself through this with his sanity intact.

She was his daughter.

Those four, simple words held more meaning than he could ever convey to anyone. Frosted hooves turned over soft sand, the whisper of his passage faint in the night—full of the sound of the ocean's steady turning, and the cry of some lonely gull who couldn't sleep. Maybe he was hungry; maybe his belly was as empty of fish as Mauja's heart was of joy; and Mauja pitied that gull, with such a sudden, intense focus that it made his gut ache in sympathy and his eyes water.

He couldn't understand it. He couldn't understand why he suddenly stood on a desolate stretch of land and imagined this lonely, hunting gull and his entire life—maybe he had young to feed, valiantly hunting the shallows to make sure they would survive, and maybe his partner was gone, and.. Mauja blinked, head and heart swimming, world blurring with the strange intensity of the emotion. He drew in a shaking breath, and if the whole episode wasn't baffling enough as it was—he felt Irma ghost on silent wings, to hunt for that damn, lonely, crying gull.

He'd meant to call out to his child, to try and repair things, to try and make something right, but as he stood there thinking about the hard life of a gull of all things his voice failed him, and he watched her in silence.

Se dem brinna över verkan se dem dansa framför bål
Se dem mässa inför satan se dem smida sina stål

en natt så kall och månen den var klar

He could feel the peace fade, the moment when she became aware, the moment when even the gull slowly began to fade from his mind. With his throat still choked up on emotion he kept advancing, ever so slowly, a wisp of cloud blown in by the night wind and painted by the moonlight; closer, and closer, as if cautiously approaching a wounded beast.

Because wasn't that what she was? The way she'd reacted each time he came near, as if his very presence hurt her? There was neither rhyme nor reason to the pair of them, both as illogical and volatile as their feelings, always running (curse that bitch, Illynx, for nailing the truth so deeply into his mind he couldn't pretend to forget it again), and always away from each other.

And sometimes, back. Like how he and Psyche always ricocheted and bounced back, somehow colliding again. In the same way, Snö kept tumbling back into his life, and he was never prepared to catch her. He just let her fall, bruising her time and again, and never knew how to patch it up either. She was too old for him to gently rub her aches with his nose, wasn't she?

Damn; had he ever even done that? Shown her some kindness and not just his empty-headed stupidity?

He'd faltered, he'd faltered when he'd listened to that gull (it had shut up now, probably because there were owls awing in the darkness). He just stood there and stared at her blurred outline, tears glistening in the corners of his eyes and threatening to spill over. Her head turned. She looked at him. Said nothing (and to be fair, neither did he). And looked back out to sea.

He drew a deep breath. No matter how her behavior kept hurting him, the way she always ran and blamed him for the pain, he.. she.. he drew another deep, unsteady breath. Wasn't it his fucking duty as her father to go through fire and flame for her, to hold her tight when she was breaking, no matter how much he was bleeding, too?

There were two sides of the coin.
She was his daughter.
It meant that he had to be her father.

He couldn't have one, without the other. He had no right to her love and adoration without giving all of himself for her.

"Snö," he called out, in a choked-up voice. His hooves were moving again, eating up the distance, bringing him closer even though his soul kept leaning back, away. All he wanted to do was break whatever honor and pride he had left, and run away. Away from the pain and the fear, the fear of hurting her more and leaving this with no daughter at all—away from everything that could go wrong.

But he didn't. He kept walking, until he drew up next to her on the shoreline.

It was the hardest thing he had ever done.

Se dem brinna över verkan se dem dansa framför bål
Se dem mässa inför satan se dem smida sina stål

en natt så kall och månen den var klar

It was so cold, the world around him, and the space between them. While his sinking spirit reached out, hers brushed him back; nothing in her eyes revealed any kind of happiness at seeing him. Slowly, his gaze flickered away from hers, back out to sea. Perhaps he should've kept his eyes on her, but if he had to admit defeat in some battles in order to win the war... He blinked. Moonlight glittered at the edges of his vision, refracted by the wetness around his eyes. Was it weakness? Or just slivers of his fractured soul leaking out?

He didn't deserve anything but her cold indifference. Anything but the way she had looked at him, committing his broken appearance to memory the moment before he would run.

Except he wouldn't run—not tonight. Not anymore. Not from her and what he owed her.

His heart. His life. His dying breath.

She sighed, as if something went out of her, but her voice was nothing less than a whiplash anyway. Inwardly, he winced; he still didn't deserve more than this, because what had he ever done to show that he cared? To show that she was more than just something spawned from his seed, by some happenstance? Because what did he expect, when he'd swallowed all the love back, and never dared to let it out? Because he didn't know how to? But how would he ever learn, if he never tried?

Always too caught up in himself. Always so afraid of failing he never dared to pounce.

Slowly, heart trembling in his frozen chest, he turned his head to look at her again, and tried to really look at her; Psyche was always elusive to his eyes, like smoke, and in some ways Snö had inherited that. He had a hard time seeing her without seeing everywhere he had gone wrong.

Had a hard time letting go of himself as the focal point.

But she had his strength, in the compact build of her body, the regal arch of her neck and the pride etched into every line, every plane—the same wounded blue for eyes.

"You," he answered her thickly, fighting to draw breath through the burning, aching lump in his throat—to speak without falling, to speak without crying. He didn't even know why, just knew that every emotion ran rampant, to the point where it threatened to spill over the top.

"Just.. to be with you."

Se dem brinna över verkan se dem dansa framför bål
Se dem mässa inför satan se dem smida sina stål

en natt så kall och månen den var klar

A pause as heavy as the glaciers.

She looked up at his words—not up at him, no, but at the stars, and for all that it mattered.. he could as well be them; cold, distant, insignificant. He had stepped back from life to simply become its observer, a spectator at the sidelines, someone who had forgotten how to breathe and never had learned how to love.

So he stood there with his barely beating heart, looking at his firstborn daughter, who looked at the cold stars, and he wondered if it was a cycle that would never end, a circle that would never close; if he looked aside, would she look at him?

Would they ever look at one another, and think something of warmth? Of joy? It hadn't been in his blood back then, all cold politics and schemes, no time to show the little girl he loved just how much she meant, somewhere, in the deep, dim, dark corners of his bestial heart...

And she's grown up the spitting image of him, just as cold, just as wounded, fangs bared and breath as icy as the winter. She spoke to the stars, and Mauja heaved the faintest of sighs, sad eyes drifting a little lower and black-rimmed ears resting back. Sorrow came easily to him. Always had.

"You were always important to me," he responded in a low voice, barely louder than a whisper but with the cold, seeping strength of his soul—the way he had been their leader, holding their attention yet never raising his voice. It rocked, as steady as the mountains, but was light all the same; a bit steadier, now, and his gaze traveled back to her face, to her eyes. The stars reflected beautifully in them, and he wondered what drove her to look to them for composure; could she not stand the sight of him, or was she afraid of what looking upon him would do to her? He was no stranger to having his mind undone simply by a glance, though the tide of his own emotions was calming—they would never cease their motion, rocking in against the shore, but something in him resigned itself to the long, hard road of winning her back. It made it a little easier, made his throat not feel so tight, but the ache in his heart no lesser.

"And you always will be."

[ @[Snö]. ]

Se dem brinna över verkan se dem dansa framför bål
Se dem mässa inför satan se dem smida sina stål

en natt så kall och månen den var klar

"Really..." And in some ways, he felt like the quiet word, soft as a sigh, was the very embodiment of their relationship: cold, distrustful, distant. Really, his heart echoed, but not with doubt—with finality, certainty, and the deep, stabbing pain which seemed to permeate his very existence. It lay far below, buried beneath layers upon layers of ice and snow, but it was there, a living, pulsing wound, each beat driving the sharp edges a little deeper in. Really, he wanted to say, but it was not his place to say anything at all.

He knew what he knew. It was up to her, whether to believe him or not.

Truth was such a fickle thing, and trust just as flighty. His jaws pressed together, biting down, swallowing everything that threatened to bubble up again; tears, explanations, meaningless words, screams and shrieks. Was this it, the moment everything hinged upon? This wait, stretching in the silence between them?

What went through her head? And her heart? What did she want from him? He knew what he wanted: he wanted.. her, his daughter, to mend everything he'd broken and somehow patch their relationship up, for them to become what they should've been all along... He wanted her trust, and to trust her, and for things not to be so cold between them—he wanted to be a part of her life, even if she was grown now and would have her own adventures to go on... But what did she want? She didn't need him. Maybe she had, once, when she was young, but now? Did she even want him in her life? If she asked him to leave, and never come to her again, could he do it? Should he do it? Would he, if she asked him with all the right reasons?

She seemed so lonesome, so desolate, painted pale and cold and hard in the sterling light, a delicate porcelain doll someone had dressed up in armor. He was fighting so hard to not run away from this battle, so if she bade him, would he be capable of fleeing?

No, he thought, I will not run, not even if she asks me.

Because he was done running from this.

And suddenly she was moving, her head turning from the stars and onto him. Pitifully, like a kicked dog still longing for the affection of its master, his black-rimmed ears flicked forward, every sense sharpening. "For real?" The doubt still discolored her voice, but whatever he might've thought to say in response to that was forever lost as she went on to say, "Then why did you replace me?", and Mauja felt the whole thing whirl into a whole new perspective. Replace? With Tamlin..? How could he ever replace her?

"I could never replace you," he began, a faint hurt blossoming beneath the stillness of his voice. Because it did hurt, to think that it was what she thought—that it was what she'd thought all these years.

That he'd sought to replace her. That.. that... his mind went to the owls, and the gull. Perhaps, it was something you had to experience, in order to understand.. that love is infinite, and when the need arose, you simply found more love in your heart.

And never any less.

"I would never want to," he went on, still quiet, his pale eyes searching for hers. At a glance, there was so very little of Psyche in her... "Is that.. what you've thought all these years?"

[ Raven distracted me with this towards the end of the post xDDD @[Snö]. ]

Se dem brinna över verkan se dem dansa framför bål
Se dem mässa inför satan se dem smida sina stål