He was always out there, somewhere, haunting Helovia underneath star-cast skies. Ever roaming, like the waves rolling in to different shores, and while he had some kind of home it wasn't.. it wasn't home in the sense that he returned to it every night. It was just a safe harbor, a free pass across fractured glass walls, a means to be able to find her without having to go through the hassle of border guards.

To be fair, the only reason he didn't have to put up with that shit was that he knew too many cross-country paths in. That, and the fact that he'd gone there like, what, once? Twice? In the past months. When she'd first brought him back to that place, he'd stuck around a bit more, but in the time since he'd seen less of her and it had had him straying. She was the magnetic pull anchoring him, and without it, he drifted.

Night had come again to relieve them from the day's sweltering heat; moonlight glowed gently along the edges of his pale frame, touching and reflecting, creating a ghost in an otherwise shadowy world. It was the curse of being a white horse—you were a torch in the darkness, an easy mark, but also, he found, intimidating. Some didn't know what to make of those who were so visible.

For isn't it those who are so, who are unafraid to hide, have reason to be?

Mauja was dangerous. From the tip of his horn to the furnace in his soul, all of him spelled destruction.

And even in his heart, liquid gold passing through flame-sheathed veins, there was danger, sharp knives protruding from the frostbitten mess.

But they were all tip-in.. left there by others. Little things to remember them by. And some, he had probably punted in there himself.

Like this one, its ivory handle inlaid with the finest of red, the name tag covered up in rose petals. It had grown brittle and fragile, as brittle as his voice as he whispered, "Ophelia,", and he felt the remnants of its spine dig a little deeper.

At first, it was just a slap in the face to stop him in his tracks, that quiet way your heart beats just before the ground erupts and tries to shake you off, something so deadly and calm and quiet you're not at all sure the world is about to end.

Then, it was everything else—a feeling like falling, the desire to fall to his knees and cry, sweats and shakes and cold, clammy fear, everything crawling over his body like ants on a corpse, tiny feet tap-dancing for the devil.

And his voice formed whispers but nothing made it past his teeth, because he didn't know what was truth, and what was lies anymore. It had been so long, those years he had spent hunting and running and agonizing, that final secret laid out in his blood and trapping him—his own perfect device, jaws closed and holding him still. It had been so long and then it had all gone wrong, there had been blood and murder and a shadow and something in him had died a little.

Given up.

And something else had bloomed in its ashes.

Mauja's blue eyes slid to the side for just a moment, the moonlight tracing sorrow in the white rims. He had dreamed and wished for so much else, for so many different things from this, but here they stood, after all this time; she bedraggled and exhausted in her pitiful, dogged march, and he, as cold and distant as ever. But he was tired of turning away.

Just because things had changed within, his fragile, delicate hope shattered like glass on a marble floor, it did not mean that he had forgotten, or that he somehow cared less, or.. or that he wanted to see her in this state; what had even happened to put her in this place..?

Just dare.

"Ophelia!" he cried, but it was still hushed in a way, and his hooves thundered over the night-damp earth. Uncertainty had his heart hammering in sync with his feet, because.. because... He set his jaw.

He didn't care about the risk of some black mongrel barreling in between them yelling filth.
He didn't care about what he felt or not felt anymore.

All he wanted to do was wrap himself around the slivers of her heart and hold them together long enough for her to heal.

I swear I won't let you down again.