i am the vanguard of your destruction

Och där kommer dom jag ser dom mellan träden
Snälla kan du hjälpa mig att fly
Deras ögon är som mareld över världen
Jag kryper där i askan, fågel Fenix född som ny...

What am I even doing here? He swallowed. It tasted bitter, the briny air not able to fully purge it. Here: the beach, the Edge.. Helovia. At the end of a long and crooked road it had lain, offered him some chance of starting over, but instead of going for redemption he'd gone for rekindling his crusade, returning to the ideals hammered into him by the witch-hunters. It had been like sinking back underneath the surface to dwell in murky, lukewarm waters, kept safe as much from himself as from the outside world. He had looked to those ideals for strength and meaning, and he had found both, and he had been so much more (that pain was hollow now, though, meaningless and insignificant), but it had all been a lie.

He'd come to Helovia to start over, thinking he could reap the world, but instead of cutting his losses and fleeing with his wounded heart and pride he had remained, to take every single battering it threw his way. He was no martyr; martyrs aren't self-proclaimed. If he clung to ideas that were three years outdated and stubbornly insisted that, yes, he was Helovia's demon, it wouldn't make him something beautiful, some kind of pariah or outcast angel—it would just make him a bitter old fool.

He shifted, a blue-washed ghost in the lightless night. What was he, if not a bitter old fool?

It was the kind of depressing truth he lived with, habits that were too hard to break, thought patterns that had somehow become parts of his skull, so hard were they to shift. And now, this.. this re-awakening of something he had thought was dying. Part of him wanted to give up, and part of him wanted to keep hoping.

He just didn't know what he wanted the most.

Diego's head suddenly turned, sharp eyes sweeping once, then finding, and locking. Someone was coming, sweeping through the dark night air on oddly shaped wings—a small shape barreling through a dusky world, a little light-bringer, or maybe just a lost soul trying to find home.

Maybe, a lost soul come to return to the sea. One Pegasus comes out, one goes in.. balance. A humorless smirk curved his dark lips, but he didn't turn to watch. He wasn't sure if he wanted to attract attention, because he was standing upon a thin edge that could tip him either way, between something resembling normalcy and that other, darker beast—the kind of restlessness that made accidents happen.

The small girl's touch-down wasn't all that graceful, though, and the bond swam with amusement as the owl watched her somersault into a neat pile of wings and legs. Mauja grunted. She probably would've screamed if she'd hurt herself, so there was nothing to worry about. The body could withstand more than you expected of it, even such small ones as hers. So he simply kept on gazing out, wishing she would go away quietly, because what could he offer her? Nothing. What could she offer him? Nothing, probably.

Distraction, at the most. Maybe he needed it, maybe he didn't, but the beauty of others is that you never get to decide for them what they're going to do. So, of course, she came bounding over—the kind of youth who either didn't know or ignored fire, then, and not the kind who had been burnt and feared it. Not that there was any literal fire here...

And so his quiet night was shattered, falling down in a soft sprinkling of shards around him. There were no stars, just the ocean's blue glow, and the muted attempts of his sun-rock trying to escape its prison of talons. They were both ghosts in the lack of light, outlined in the hazy reflection off the sea; it made his eyes seem darker than they were. "Myrrine," he rumbled quietly. He wasn't angry, he just felt.. sad, in a way. A little lost, a little desolate. "Of course I remember." He didn't remember everything, and far from perfectly, but he remembered much at least. Slowly, his eyes slid over her back, to the oddly bunched, striped wings; obviously, she could fly with them, but to his inexperienced eye the looked.. stunted. Misshapen. His head tilted to the side, long forelock sliding off his face to hang before one eye, and with calm curiosity he asked "Can you spread your wings for me?".

[ @[Myrrine] ]

i am the vanguard of your destruction

[ lovely new table ^^ but maybe you could just use a regular font (like times) with no alteration to line-height and letter-spacing when threading with me..? I have a really hard time reading this one :( andddd there's no need to tag me ^^ 2nd and: warning, massive(ly) weird post incoming o_o ]

Companions—bah.

Neither of them had been his choice to make, and to be honest, both of them were selfish assholes who cared for no one but themselves, and the other two souls unfortunate enough to be bonded to them. Irma had broken more than a few equine hearts with her frigid eyes and uncaring ways (though, really, why should she roll and revel in the doting of a stranger just because she wasn't a horse?), and he suspected Diego would break more than his share, too. As it was, the owl stared at the filly with his flaming eyes, and Mauja wondered if it was as visible upon the bird's features as it was in his soul, that rank, hot flame of smug arrogance. Did he just look disinterested, or was it written all over his face that he didn't care?

Mauja didn't know, but he suspected the former, and couldn't be bothered to turn his head to look upon the owl. Besides, what if he did look like he'd just watched something about as outlandish as a slave asking for the princess' hand.. and what would he do about it? Lecture him? Hardly; the owl had no obligations towards anyone, and no reason to "behave". He could stare daggers at anyone for all that Mauja cared. In fact, it was his right to be a little bit of an ass if he wanted to. He didn't exist for shits and giggles, or to be some cute puffy bird. He was an owl, proud and regal and dangerous (except to horses), his sharp talons cleaned of blood but the mind remembering what it felt like to sink them into soft, warm flesh, and feel life squirm in its death-grip.

So her happy greeting of the arrogant owl was like pearls before the swine, wasted on a bird that saw her as nothing more than a temporary source of amusement. Still, it surprised him to feel a thrill of warmth—Diego, then, was more vain than Irma. Interesting.

But then it wasn't about the owl anymore, though he felt the bird's lingering amusement that (shit, was there nothing that creature didn't find funny?) Mauja had spent such a great deal of time thinking about him, but rather it was about them, the only two present who spoke the same tongue. She called him sir and he cringed within. He was no sir, he was just a bloody Mauja, which was synonymous with things like "dethroned king", "idiot", "bitter fool" and other such things that surely everyone wanted to be—not. But the girl went on—fortunately skipping the sir this time—and he peered at her as she spoke. Now, his experience with people her age was fairly minimal, but the first thing that struck him was her language. She spoke like someone years her own senior, or like she'd been raised in a very formal court, or as someone of high blood, or.. or.. whatever. Everyone-and-their-cousin was some kind of renegade noble in Helovia. So she was a princess whose parents fell out of favor or died of the pox or were burnt alive for consorting with demons or maybe her father shagged a doe (or a stag? who was he to force the "norm" upon anyone), or whatever, but she was an out-of-fashion princess and he was a King made noble only by a brief spat as ruler in Helovia (of two of its kingdoms, no less). So.. a failed King. An out-of-fashion princess and a failed two-time king.

The point?

Who gives a fuck about that.

No, wait—the point was that she had a very serious, very mature language.

The other thing that struck him was what she'd actually said. I'm so glad you do. It.. sounded part "this is what I say to be nice", but more than that, it sounded genuine, and almost like relief. Like, what had she expected? To introduce herself, all bubbling and happy, and two weeks later be forgotten? Even though he wanted to laugh at it, beneath its surface yawned a huge, huge black void.

Did she live life like that? Expecting to be forgotten?

Maybe that was what had happened in his distant fairytale kingdom—the King had forgotten he had that particular princess, and she'd been left to fade away in darkness, away from the sun and stars. Except.. she had broken out, somehow, or just said fuck it and taken those wings to the sky and gone to find her own future. A slight frown creased his forehead. She actually seemed too young to be capable of having the "fuck it" mindset—you sorta needed to know that what was going on was wrong in order to give it the finger and leave.. and if you're that young, you still sort of just accept everything as being right, even when your gut tells you its wrong, because.. because.. you place so much damn trust in those who are older—your parents—mentors—those who abuse you and your trust, either knowingly or not, and..

Okay, so she hadn't just said "fuck it" and left. In fact, she probably wasn't a princess at all, so his mind should just shut up and go back to the present.

He realized he'd been so lost in thought that he hadn't said anything, but the moment she spread her wings the movement jolted him back from his daydreams of distant lands and potential escape-from-being-forgotten scenarios for this Myrrine. (It was an exotic name.) Shut up.

She spread them in the darkness, and the white soaked up the ocean's blue glow eagerly—they were bulky, and striped, and sort of odd, and didn't flare towards the horizons with the same sweeping grace as a bird's wings did.. but, ah. "Butterfly," he murmured as his mind finally recognized their shape. Of course. They were neither stunted nor broken nor misshapen—just different from a bird's.

Feathers be superior.
Thank you for your input, asshole owl.

But she spoke again and his mind was already freewheeling, free falling, going numb with the rush of air around it. It had been in the back of his mind when he had spoken—spread your wings for me—as if he'd been asking her to do something bad, something wrong, because it was just one word off from something else.. and it had been there on his tongue, not because he wanted to say it, gods no, but because he could say it. But he hadn't, but he'd been thinking about how similar the sentences would've been, and just how wrong, and her reaction didn't make it better. Come closer, touch them, and he wanted to scream at her to get the hell away from me—

He didn't want to do anything to her. He had no fucked-up plans or even any desire whatsoever to commit whatever sin it was his mind toyed with. It was theoretical. It was the notion of the possibility. It was the curiosity of how far he could push her, the worry what had happened to her to put her in such a trusting, inviting state of mind (had they done something to her to normalize invasive touch? or.. or..), the.. well.. part of him wanted to tell her to close her eyes and stand still and beat her just to see if she'd let him.

Wondered if he could touch her and pass it off as a "new experience".

Theoretically. And that was the annoying thing: the very idea of it repulsed him so violently he could've bounced to the moon, but as a theory it was intriguing and.. well, disastrous. But he couldn't stop thinking about it.

He realized his mouth had gone dry and he'd zoned out with his soft muzzle resting against her nearest wing. It was strange to the touch, different (exotic shut up she's not a princess), sort of ticklish, and he peered sideways at her. She seemed just as lost in thought as he had been, or maybe even more, wings fluttering dreamily as her eyes gazed inward, at memory, things only she knew.

It was a damn good thing she didn't know what had been going on in his mind, because frankly, it bothered him—it bothered him because it was tempting to see if she could draw any lines at all and tell him "no" or if her need for validation—remembrance—went deeper than her sense of self-preservation.

Politely he withdrew his head, knowing that he couldn't just turn around and leave her quietly, because the movement was sure to bring her out of her thoughts. Motion, when caught by the eye, had a way of doing that. So he was stuck on the beach with her, his reeling mind sniffing at doors it had no business opening. So he hounded it back a few steps, away from the land of don'tgothere and back to the land of out-of-fashion princesses.

"So..." he said after a moment, a decidedly awkward lilt to his light voice. "What's your story?"

Because a, he was curious and b, she was young so it couldn't be that long and c, it was a damn better way of validating her existence than all those other things he could do.

[ lmfao okay so it's official I have no idea what the hell happened in this post xD @[Myrrine], and I just want to put extra pressure on the fact that nowhere does he WANT to do things to her in that manner, it just struck him as a "would she accept it if I asked this of her too" :x also there is no need to mirror the length of this (there never is a need to mirror length when you post with me ^^) ]

i am the vanguard of your destruction

[ sorry for the wait <3 ]

And who is he to say she had validation issues, anyway? It was just a haphazard guess flung into the vortex between them, a plausible conclusion spawned from an over-active mind, analysis made between the lines—the lines of something that might've been nothing, except there was darkness in her. For a brief moment all the sorrow in the world took up residence in her young eyes, clouding and darkening, and he felt something in his heart.

It was that voice again, singing its dark song, the one Elding had taught him—

Death, death, death...

The song that was nothing but pain; the memory of it, the fear of it, the certainty of it. Pain would always follow, would always find. It was inevitable, and the way of the world, like an old friend coming to greet you with its sharp little knives. They slid so easily through skin, through bones, needles slipping through veins as they hunted hearts.

He knew what it felt like, when your eyes became like that, heart haunted by those memories. He knew it and the little stab going through his own was part memory, part sympathy. She was even younger than he had been when he first learned just how much it hurt to lose.

Would it set her on the same path that he had walked? The one of calloused hearts and locked-up emotions, of drowning in seas of guilt, and eventually being washed up on a bone-white, desolate shore, and finding yourself a husk—hollow, and uncaring? Would she have to walk the same road of fear, the inability to let someone in, and the long years of attempting to undo the soul-knots time had pulled tighter and tighter?

Would she, too, lack the courage to love?

Kah—

And nothing he said would bring—

Fuck, he wanted to spit it into the sand, to yell, to rush the spotted little girl and hold her close and breathe on her until her heart was warm and all the pain was gone, until she fucking forgot the sadness that had, for the merest moment, swallowed her world.

And it had been so brief, just a flash of it, and if he hadn't been looking at her he wouldn't have known, and if he hadn't known.. Would it have mattered? What would he have done? What could he do, anyway? He knew the truth of things; whatever she had lost, whoever she had lost, were lost, and nothing could bring them back. Life took and when it spat you out again it was in this godforsaken land, and he wondered who were the strongest: those who stayed, or those who left?

He felt weak, out of breath, but he hadn't done anything except remember a few things, old memories, newer memories, snatches of conversation and thought, emotion coursing through his veins and crippling him. It was a certain kind of poison, sweet and hot and numbing all at once, fear and hope and everything—trepidation. He knew something—one thing—in that moment, and he wondered for how long would remember.. when he would forget.. if he would forget...

"I will tell you, but I would like to have you answer a question for me as well, if that's alright."

He couldn't manage a single word in response, throat locked up as tightly as his heart (it was trembling in his chest, kept safe by ribs and shields of ice). Just nodded mutely, barely even registering her.. statement? Question? He'd have to answer something. So what? In that moment he had the answers to every question the stars could've asked of him, but for the love of everything he couldn't—didn't dare—to formulate the thought. Just breathed, evenly, deeply, peering at the girl with crystalline eyes, revealing nothing but attentive curiosity.

Nothing of the storm raging beneath his pristine skin.

She moved, then, at first thoughtlessly, reaching out a black muzzle towards a spotted shoulder—his head canted to one side, all those things still making his heart race in his throat (he was glad it had buried those other thoughts), but something gave her pause. He felt her hot breath against his skin, against some scar left by a long-forgotten enemy (they probably didn't deserve what he'd done to them, life-thief)—blood racing, world spinning, and for a moment he had the impulse to throw himself at her, just to close the gap and feel something tangible, solid, real.

But he didn't. He just stood there, looking at her from behind the white veil of his forelock, breathing, breathing, breathing, pulse yelling death and love with a single voice. And then she was pulling back, as if something about his body had frightened her, as if the shield around his mind could be felt, or the ice in his veins an aura, something to make her pause, and finally, not dare.

It took effort to rein his thoughts in, to catch hold of his mind again—it had slipped away, out of control, out of reach, having forsaken its musings on princesses and kings and the theories of validation for something that revolved entirely around him.. and that messed-up thing suspended in his chest.

I think they call it a heart.

She was speaking. He had asked, so he had to listen, to fight down the nauseating fear, push himself out of his own mind.. find that space, those vast, empty caverns of crystal and ice and focus. His eyes closed for the briefest of moments, black-rimmed ears flickering, ".. taught me how to play and have fun, and although it was just us, she made every day something wonderful...", and something in him was finally letting go of that weakening, sickening sensation. Breathing became easier, without him having to pretend that it was. "I was playing one day-"

And then she was crying, a soft sound as if her tears were scalding hot with shame. It came so abruptly it took him a moment to register, to realize, to understand. She had been abandoned at birth, taken in by a deaf-mute nag, and then—lost her, to something, to the world or to death or.. his mind looped back a few steps. Validation. Could a wound from the first day of her life have left such a deep scar? Could it be that he was, in a way, right?

She had turned her head away, tucked her head, and a slight frown creased his 'brows. It was not easy to cry, less so in front of others, but he knew what it had done to Elding—purged her wound. Were these dignified tears a precursor to that? Did she turn away because she did not want him to see, because she wanted them ignored, or because she wasn't sure she could entrust him with them? After all, she knew nothing of him, and if she did, would she even dare stand so close? He might've washed himself clean of blood but he would never forget its scent, its heat upon his snowy skin...

Silently he reached out, soft muzzle aiming to brush over her neck, to offer what comfort he could—which was not much. He was Mauja, frostheart and ice king, sitting all alone upon his frozen throne in a cold, empty fortress as the sun rose outside and fell on high walls and barred windows.

But old wood grows winded and cracked, and maybe, just maybe, there's a thin sliver of sunlight falling through those warped passages and touching the stone floor of his soul.

And so, maybe, he's Mauja—

—the Light of Dawn—

—and he gives what he can, which isn't much, but it's giving all the same.

[ @[Myrrine] ]

i am the vanguard of your destruction

What is he?

Lover, father, friend and foe, protector and guardian, sentinel, ice revenant, frost-wraith and snowbeast, the one who shrieks in the northern wind—he is everything, and yet, he is none of those things. Because he is Mauja, a torn soul, a thousand shades of blue, described by a million different traits but restricted, bound, by none. He has capacity for great love, but also for great cruelty. He is both the lord and the one who listens—the one who leads, and the one who follows. So it doesn't matter what they ask; who are you? What are you? Because he is not a single thing. There is no one thing he can pick out as defining him more than any other. The only thing he is, is himself, as vast as the glaciers but hiding a Wolf-Rayet heart beneath.

Somehow, he's gone from being lost and confused to being the one who puts the pieces back together.

She wasn't old enough to have been struck into a myriad of fragments yet. She wasn't old enough to be a cracked artwork the likes of he, a glass statue struck time and again, old and weathered and worn—some features smoothed out, jagged edges where bits had fallen out slowly filed down again by rain and sand blown about. She was still young. She was still relatively whole.

But isn't it in breaking that we become unique? Isn't it in how we handle pain that we grow? If all was joy—if all was perfect—if everything was whole and happy and you had never known the soul-wrenching pain that devoured everything and stranded you in the most absolute of darknesses .. how would you know what you had? Mauja had seen complacent princes (and princesses), spoiled and bored with their safe, royal lives. He had seen some of them turn to torment for sport.

He had seen some of them brought low and made human again.
He had seen them learn to cry out of fear and pain.

And somewhere along the road he had realized that you needed pain as much as you needed joy, because without one the other could not wholly exist.

It's just when your soul has grown tired that you fear the pain. And that's when you lose sight of life.

His sun had been clouded over long ago.

But that's not what this is about.

There was a limit to how many broken pieces his soft, velvet nose could shunt back into place. There was a limit in how much of the pain of others he could carry on his shoulders, no matter how briefly. And that was why he was, in a way, grateful that she was so young, that her pains numbered so few, that her bruises were new yet and, hopefully, slowly healing—that she wasn't so full of jagged edges he would cut himself on by accident.

But gods he didn't need her inflaming his mind with thoughts again. It sprang up like a fire, something hot and harsh and biting, snapping at his face with flame-fangs and a long, forked tongue whipping out to strike him between the eyes. She was pressing into his chest, a memory that tasted of Glacia and how she had broken her own walls down, a moment that tasted too much of what he had thought of before—of all the things he could do to her.

Though maybe it isn't about what you think, either—maybe it's about what you do with it.. with what you know, what your thoughts are. Which impulses you act upon, and which ones you don't.

He'd certainly been hugging a lot of little girls lately.

Ew. He wanted to spit the thought out and fill his mouth with sand to wash it clean. What was wrong with his head sometimes?

"I was playing one day," the story went on, his head having fallen down her neck to her withers, the strength of his neck holding her, but lightly, not wanting to trap her in an embrace he was strong enough to hold but she maybe wasn't strong enough to break out of. The sound of her crying had gone softer, her voice a little thicker, and just like how he knew that pain was vital, he knew that it hurt—that every loss marked you in a way, altering you. It was the way of the world. You never went to sleep the same man that you woke up as.

She spoke of squirrels and pools of water, before finally moving back, slipping out of his grasp like liquid—and he let her go, remembering a dream in which he had lain in water, crawling out of it only to find.. her.

And they had raced the world's ending; she, as lithe and graceful as a doe, and he, the destruction raining stars and tearing the heavens open in her wake.

Promises shared in the darkness of a cave, red roses blooming and gilt light spilling out of the cracks in his body.

The End.

He knew what he knew, but it did not mean it had to hurt any less.

"So ... I suppose that is my tale." He nodded, slowly, mutely again, something distant drawn across his blue eyes—his mind was rambling, for a moment struck by the thought that he, too, needed to find a brilliant pool of water and fall into and climb out of it with wings—

But he startled the thought away, watched it disappear like a flock of birds taking sudden flight. It was not what he was here to think of, that other, unasked question lying on the tip of his tongue, wanting out, whispering in his heart the words he dared not speak—what is it like, to fly?—but he swallowed it, merely shaking his head. He had no more question for her, because the one he had was one he dared not ask. So he buried it, next to all the other little secrets he carried within him.

And then—and only then—did it creep up on him, what he had agreed to, the bargain he had struck with her.. her secrets, for a secret of his.

He was Mauja—he was the one who said nothing of himself, the one who gave nothing more away than little smiles and guarded glances, the one who offered nothing of his thoughts and secrets.

The only time he had spoken of himself had been to a sleeping youngster, in a language she did not know.

His heart is racing in his chest, now, trying to outpace the inevitable. Her gaze was roaming, and was that hunger in it, or just his own fear reflecting in the darkness? And how long was it that she looked, making it feel like an eternity, the cracks growing wider under her scrutiny—spit out already, spit it out, and he wasn't afraid of her—he was afraid of where she wanted him to go. He was afraid of his own introspection.

He was afraid of the pain.

"Why do you hide yourself behind such an emotionless expression?"

He wasn't surprised. Or, in a way he was, because ever since he had learned to mask what he felt with nothing but calm, quiet curiosity, no one had bothered to ask him why he bore his emotions with such precise control. But at the same time, there by the gently glowing sea, he wasn't surprised it was the one thing she caught on to, and held on to. Perhaps that was his greatest mystery to her, she who wore her heart on her sleeve and smiled so brightly.

But what do you say to answer such a question? Habit? But it wasn't—it was slipping anyway, wasn't it? He'd been weeping like a madman for months, unable to stop it, unable to control it, and he had known rage like he never had before, confusion, loss, had worn some of it so openly that surely he wouldn't have recognized himself if he'd been able to review the scene...

"Armor," he finally said, quietly, the first thing he had said in a while. His voice was low, and his gaze slipped out to the dark, distant horizon.

And then he said no more.

[ his horn actually doesn't glow, which is about the only thing that struck me ^^ aaand the dream I talked about is from this thread; the lanterns won't go out at night @[Myrrine] also what the fuck why do these posts end up so derpily huge?! ]

i am the vanguard of your destruction

[ I'm really sorry for the wait, love. ]

And it's time for me to clean up your mess,
I will take it without any regret
And it's time for me to open my eyes and to recognize
We don't beat from the same heart...

It's quiet, there by the ocean—a hushed song spun from the gentle rhythm of the sea, and the feather-soft whisper of wings shearing the sky. But the gulls, with their discordant voices, were silent. Perhaps the pearly glow off the waves held them as well in awed thrall. Perhaps something about it was holy to them, respected, something so absolutely divine to make more noise than your own heart was sacrilege. Because after all—what did he know about the faith of gulls?

It was quiet, because Mauja said little, and something about it seemed to lapse the girl into silence as well. After a moment, he glanced sideways at her. Where he came from, their color was a blessing, merging flawlessly with snow and rocks, breaking up the contour of their body and hiding them more thoroughly than anything else could (is that why I lived?). Here, though... Here, they were ghosts in the night-time, cruelly reflecting the glow of moon and stars—or, in the case of tonight, the sea. Its faint glow shimmered along their pale hairs, a dew-like light cast back at the water. Two ghosts, their voices more quiet than their hearts.

What was she thinking of? Was she thinking at all? Did.. did something about him invite these interludes of silence, did something about him spark these periods of introspection in others? Because come to think of it, time seemed to move more slowly around him, like the world froze, and slowed, until things simply crawled by.. at a pace where he could pick each moment up, scrutinize it, and then put it back down.

Control.

At last I know what I should do.. Undo my sad...

He swallowed. Each time he thought about it, it hurt; but each time he didn't think about it, it felt.. right. Not easy—never easy. Life was not easy. Life was full of hardship and difficult choices. Life was.. life was full of biting down and bulling through, and hoping that some day, you would be able to stop and breathe.. that your heart would be able to beat, without that hitch, the needle-sharp whisper coming just behind every pulse. Undo what hurts so bad...

"I'm sorry for not asking earlier, but might I have the honor of knowing your name?"

She was as quiet as the seas, just another shimmering wave rolling in, its breath an echo of the leviathan roars he had sometimes heard when the storms urged the waters to crash against the cliffs. The honor... Where was the honor in knowing his name? It was just a name, a specific noise to call for his attention—a name tag to put on all the shit he had done. It wasn't the name of retribution and redemption, not the name of an angel, just.. heck; his name wasn't even something that defined him. He could outrun his name any day, run away, change it, never again be Mauja and no one would know if they came looking.

He couldn't outrun his own spots, though. So names were useless, worthless, they held power only if you knew what that body had done while bearing the name. His sins were old and dusty, and many of them not known to Helovia—what would she know of any Mauja? Most had forgotten about him, if they had ever known.

"It is Mauja," he finally said, because that was what she asked—what his name was.

Not who he was.

And he was no one, and everything, and had borne more than a single name in his lifetime. He had had more identities than this, this birth-name, and this birth-name had been worn by more than one man. After a moment his gaze slid off the child, and back to the distant horizon. Names... Names and faith and doom and.. he thought for a moment of his brother. His name meant nothing at all, but he had the end of the world spelled out across his brindled flanks. Superstition forced him to remain in the north, though they both knew that he rather would've followed Mauja back ho—

—home..? Was this home? Helovia was the cesspool he'd lived in the past four or something years, but.. He glanced up to the Edge, its pale outline murky in the lacking light. Maybe, something up there was home. Maybe, someone up there.. was home.

"Does your name mean anything?" he asked, after another of those eon-like stretches of silence; asking it seemingly of the night, because his eyes were elsewhere, something distant and thoughtful drawn across his face. But then, after a moment, he turned them back to her, the innocent child who got tangled up with a tiger, the blue of them clearer, brighter—like stars.

[ @[Myrrine] ]