He feared opening up to her, and opening up to the world. She feared him, and his secrets. But he had broken first, his voice betraying his heart- he didn’t know where to run. And she had given him a choice, an option, a place to go. A home, if he would have it. Did he not want it? He said nothing, his voice silent as the wind played across the island. The distant sound of a waterfall dropping its fluid over the edge of this rock was heard in the distance, but the queen hardly noticed it now. Mauja was her world in these moments, the fracturing of his heart like the sound of cracking ice. He was the only music she needed.

Her words, all of them, seemed to go unheard; her extended nose, unseen. She hardly dared to breath for fear that she would scare the beast off. She had come at him yelling, and he had retaliated with anger. If she came at him with tenderness, would he respond in kind or would he run? He was frozen, but as her nose neared him the air seemed to chill her into inaction as well. For an eternity, her nose hovered as if pressing against some invisible glacier that he had erected. She could not press forward against the solid air and so she waited, the muscles in her neck straining against some unknown that she could not overcome.

She did not know what battles he fought in his mind, what wars he waged on the monsters that lived there, but she would have helped him if only he would answer her. Nothingness. The air around his nostrils, his mouth, was as still as the rest of him. They had frozen in time, two statues waiting for the other to make the first move, but while he thought of everything, she thought of nothing except him. What was his reality, if not a murderer?

She still did not know what she believed about him- she didn’t know if she ever would- but it became clear in this prolonged moment that there was no way she could deny him. He was intoxicating in a way that she had not experienced before. Kaj was home for her- he was brave and gentle, he was smart and supportive. When she was beside him and his wing was draped over her, her body and soul were protected from anything that might try to harm her. He would always be there for her, she knew, because she had seen him jump to save her more times than she could count. That was a different sort of intoxication- a love that came from something tangible and known.

It was different with the Frostheart. He was scary and exotic. He numbed her but made her feel alive all at the same time. She yelled at him because… because she knew he could take it, that he could rebound from her assault, that he would hear her words but perhaps also hear what she had meant. He was electrifying and terrifying and whatever it was that she felt for him as she stood there, iced over in that little eternity they had created, his actions and his past meant nothing. He was Mauja, regardless of what he had done.

The Frostheart broke first, tear falling down his face, but the Sunshower was not surprised. He was full of mysteries, and whatever they were he had to deal with them. Her hoof lifted, inching her once-frozen body forward, and she dared to invade his personal space. Her nose reached to his check, if he did not move it, to blow warm air against the chilly path of that saltwater droplet. Pressing, she traced her nose from that cheek down his neck, hooves landing daintily in the grass as though a step too heavy might scare the beast off.

She lipped at his mane as she went, pulling at strands as she trailed down his neck, her cheek resting in the lower crook of his neck and her nose against his shoulder, if he had not jumped from her presence. Softly, she hummed a tune- a gentle lilt that was warm but solemn- her throat not daring to speak again. She didn’t know what to do, or how to go forward, but she would not leave this broken man out in the cold any longer. So she lingered, lips absently beginning to trace over the white hairs of his broad shoulder, perhaps daring to warm the muscles back to life.

Silence was not natural for the vivacious girl, but for the Frostheart she would endure it. If he felt a moistness upon his side, it was only her own tear falling down, a manifestation of the sorrow she felt that she did not know how to help, or even where to begin.

Khan & Kahlua