Drip...drip...drip...

The winter clock ticked onward. The forest fell to silent murmurs as his flock dispersed, leaving the King upon his throne beneath the creaking boughs and frozen branches. But he is not alone, for at his side the warmth emanates from his Queen, and he turns to regard her profile for a few long moments. They've had little time to talk alone, with the threat of this new darkness hanging around their heads. Soft words whisper into his ears from a prior season as his pale blues caress the lines he has long since memorized. "Does she bring joy to your life? Do you look forward to seeing her everyday? When you part do you miss her? Do you feel like a part of yourself is gone? Do you often imagine a future with her? Do you think about children?" Let it be said that Evangeline knew his heart and mind perhaps better than Kaj did. No, surely better than Kaj, for he was hopelessly lost on this path of love and desire.

And then from the past came her chilling answers to a question he could scarcely forget. "From your answers ... I don't think you're in love with her." Had he stopped to miss her in the time they'd been apart? Kaj could remember so vividly a time when she had been his entire world, when he longed to see her effervescent smile and hear the chime of her laughter. Did she even laugh anymore? He was ashamed to realize he did not know, the time had been so lengthy since they had met for anything aside business. Her face had wisened and grown with the duties she had bravely taken astride her shoulders. Kaj had doubted her in the past, her abilities to be a successful leader. He'd been proven wrong, again as Evangeline had predicted.

And there she was, the ever present maiden in his mind. Was he relying too heavily upon her? Was it something else?

The king angled himself to reach out and gently touch his lips to the soft spot behind Kahlua's jaw. Her scent was as sweet as he recalled, but it had been long since he'd last indulged in it. Pulling away, fearing that her feelings too had changed over time, Kaj kept his touch brief. Even still he could not pull his eyes from her. When had he blinked, only to find her so drastically changed?

"Kahlua?" he murmured, only to find himself without words. Recalling her confession of love while he stood bleeding in a bubbling spring, only to learn that she saw him merely as a heart in the form of a prison. Did she even still love him?

Was he even deserving of it?

@[Kahlua]

Her silence was unorthodox, foreign to the quiet behemoth at her side. She was supposed to be sunlight and spring water, a prism of delight and a euphoria for life and the love she held for it. Though with the darkness consuming the world she'd attempted to flee so long ago, Kaj supposed even the Sunshower could not drown out the dreary clouds. Though he assumes that she can feel his eyes on her, there is no indication that she intends to turn and face him, but he has more than enough on his mind himself to occupy the time he awaits for her to confront him. It does not come, no matter how many times he traces the familiar caverns of color in her distant eyes, seeing something he cannot envision nor comprehend. Her mind had always been to sporadic, too colorful and imaginative for someone as simple-minded as him to understand. Seeking her attention, he leans for her, and she melts into his touch like the icicles he'd previously been contemplating.

It's almost endearing, how she so easily recognizes and surrenders to him, but it also casts a warm glow in his chest to know that she trusts him enough to let go so easily. Then again, he was perhaps overestimating that, as Kahlua was quick to trust and already an open book. Seeing her response to the single touch, Kaj stepped closer, automatically lifting his wing to drape comfortably over her spine. Tugging her closer as gently as he could, allowing her the time and strength to pull away and deny him. Though he hoped that would not be the case, so long had it been since he'd last held her so close.

Her azures are bright and all-consuming in his field of vision as she turns to him, but the words are what captivates him most. Kahlua was not one for philosophical musings, she was simplistic and happy. Perhaps she, too, had been spending too many hours alongside Evangeline? Kaj hid a smile at the thought. Instead, he focused on the sadness that clung like sap to every plane of her pretty face, frowning himself to see her so distraught. Defeated was perhaps a better word, for she seemed hollow, like she'd lost something vital that had made her shine so brightly and given her title meaning.

Brushing his lips to the flat plane of her forehead, Kaj hummed in thoughtfulness, turning to stare into the distance as if they had exchanged roles. "I want...meaning. I want to be more than a single blip in a galaxy of existence, to leave something to be remembered by. Foals, friends, actions...I want to have a purpose." Deep voice rumbled in complete candidness, slowly turning to gaze upon her once more. "Perhaps you should start small. Seek joy, seek peace. It is not a requirement, nor is there a deadline for your decision." If Kaj could lift even one burden from her shoulders, he would not hesitate.

At last, a smile. The curl of her lips is a ray of sunshine, reminiscent of the title she bears, and it allows the next breath into Kaj's lungs to come easier. Perhaps whatever is wrong with her isn't permanent, is instead a change or drizzle in her day. Yet she's silent as ever, where previously she would have been exuding light from every pore, chattering on with sparks of fairy light in her cobalt eyes. Kaj did not allow his gaze to even consider straying, deviating from the contours and shadows of her delicately boned features. Awaiting any minuscule sign, tell, or giveaway that could illuminate the situation and determine what was wrong with her. Something he could fix, could understand and therefore eradicate to improve her mood. Nothing is forthcoming, however. Normally an open book, an inked page with no smudges or errant brush strokes, Kahlua is suddenly an impenetrable shell. A statue with a granite countenance. Impossible to decipher, a lost language.

Even farther away than Kaj could have imagined something being in this foreign land.

So in tune, entranced, rapt and attentive to her shifts of expression in that moment, the sudden fall of her ears to the curve of her cranium is a definitive signal to the golden steed that something has gone horribly wrong. He has not healed her, nor has he comforted the apparent offset of her joy. Instead, his words have shuttered her away from him, spooking her like a frightened deer hearing the snap of an approaching hunter treading upon a twig.

She moves away.

"Kahlua?" Regal features crumple, a mixture of confusion and hurt a cocktail drained into his pores and the shallows of his face. Feathers shift in vivid display of his emotional state, though he was never one to hide it from his queen anyways. They flare and tremble against her hide, hesitantly withdrawing halfway as if to allow her to escape his hold entirely. Unsure what she sought. Until her words cracked the air, despite the way they were spoken in such a delicate way. Revealing everything, and simultaneously throwing the king's heart into a ravine of confusion and despair. Had he pushed her too hard? Was this in some way his own fault? But the pain in his breast was tangible, it was not something he could ignore, nor was it borne of guilt for letting her down. Just plain, intrinsic pain. Simplistic in its agonizing reality.

This time, he is the one to pull away. Scorched by this awakening, this violent rip of terrycloth from his previously blinded eyes. Expressive eyes crinkle, half pain and half an attempt to find something deeper. An explanation. Surely this cannot be it? "Have I done something to upset you?" he asks, voice surprisingly unshaken despite the telling quiet of his words. "What have you held me back from? I...I do not understand." Internally, he is howling in agony, because he never understands. He is lost forever in a world of incomplete translation and dead languages, tripping constantly over social nuances until he feels like a drowning man with a thousand water-blurred faces peering hesitantly down upon him. No outreached hands for the confused king. Pity, disappointment, confusion. But he cannot allow it to be seen on his face, can't make her feel any more negative emotions. Rebuilding the old walls he'd perfected, the subtle signs of distress the only cracks in his facade.

Slowly, he pieces it together. The exact moment when her ears had pinned, her face crestfallen moments after his declaration. Eyes widen, and his face falls somber and defeated. "You do not want foals." Kaj is not incompetent. It is a statement, not a question. A shuddering sigh swells his chest, but as it sweeps from his lungs he is left slouched and as small as his looming mass can allow. "I wanted only to make you happy, Kahlua..." it's a forlorn hope, now dashed, that echoes in his lyrics. A potential there for the both of them to back away. But Kaj cannot take this sort of pain consistently, cannot want for his only wish and hesitantly wait to see if Kahlua could ever reciprocate.

If they both pulled away, Kaj didn't think he could ever try to pursue this again.