He wasn't looking at Psyche when lecturing his son, merely looked at the young, black child covered by the skin of a dead cat. Quite understandably he jumped into the air, instantly dropping his arrogant manners. Mauja didn't pity him - he had to learn how to go about things in life, and if the King never scolded him or tried to steer him down the right paths, well, how would he ever learn? You needed someone to tell you when you did wrong, but you also needed someone to praise you when you did right. So when Tamlin backed and chewed with a lowered head, the sharpness went out of Mauja's eyes and reached out to blow hot air onto the child's poll. The lesson had been learned, hopefully, and Mauja had been pleased with his son's reaction - submission, obedience, indicating that he understood he'd done something wrong. While most young colts believed they were the center of the world and would be splendid dictators, few were. The longer you let them think it, the more force you needed to beat it out of them. So damn, what was Lotus teaching him? That he'd be the next King? That he'd be glorious, just because he was the son of a King? Pahh. Mauja hadn't stuck the title 'princess' onto Snö and hadn't meant to stick 'prince' on Tamlin either. That had been Lotus doing. If not for this child of his own body, he'd regret that night. But as a parent, you cannot regret your child. It is simply not an option.

"Snö's móðir," he told his child, watching the black mare as she purred his own name. Damn, why did it make him want to run away? Why did everything involving mares make him want to flee? He tensed involuntarily, so swift and minor a movement in the foggy darkness that he hoped it'd go unnoticed. "A stallion has his urges," he said, aloof, yet something vaguely amused laced the small, quirky smile on his face. He knew this state of mind - this, hiding, pulling back within himself, fleeing to the depths of his snow castle and slamming on a facade. It had happened before. Instead of fleeing physically, he flirted with disaster, yielding a vestige of control to the very hormones which had landed him in this situation to being with (folly). But what was he to say - to do? Surely she could not think everything would be as she left it. That he'd just twiddled his ears and waited. I didn't mean to, but he had never promised, either, not to - never claimed to love her. Maybe in time it could've happened... But his heart was all scars, black distrust anxiety. He couldn't trust her. She'd left once. She could leave again. Couldn't know if she lied or not, no no, never know, never know. What if she just smiled and promised and did it all again?

The panic was raising its head like an ugly beast, yet outwardly he remained calm, just blinking solemnly and watching her. Within, he ran around in a frenzy, trying to shut all the open doors and return some sort of equilibrium to his existence.

Mares. Why?

"Why?" his tongue mimicked his mind, though certainly not wanting the answer to such a philosophical question - but simply why she left. Why she came back.

Why the moon rotated around the earth and the earth around the sun and all the stars spun in the universe. Why breath gave them life and hearts grew brittle with age and why bodies decayed. Why; and he needed an anchor, set adrift within his own mind, trapped in a storm of emotion and trauma. Without thinking, he reached down, touching his muzzle to Tamlin's black shoulder. Steady. Psyche wasn't going to eat him. No one was. He hadn't even loved her. So that meant it was just the rest of the world being misaligned, and, defeated, Mauja sighed in his mind.

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