och jag växte upp snabbt, från min barndom var det allt—jag föddes redan slagen

då tänker du tyst och skriker högt, memorerar hela jävla monologen som skrevs för din inre röst,

Dawn was one of Mauja's absolute favorite times of day, and especially in winter.

So really, the only thing ruining the moment was the fact that the winter season had passed (he frowned for a moment, because his memories from it were still a hazy, fractured mess). It was still beautiful, though—the way it crept from near-gray through pale blue into pastels, and finally .. the sunlight breaking over the horizon, a nearly painful glare skipping over the rolling backs of waves.

He just wished it had been colder.. that the blue had been more like ice, the peach and rose of the sky just a hint paler, and the sunlight.. the sunlight in winter was magical, the moonlight in winter was magical, the—well, everything in winter was magical.

But it wasn't winter anymore, and those precious moments of barely-above-the-waterline sunlight were fading with each beat of his heart. Soon it would be full-blown morning, and while the chill of night would linger a few more hours, it would give way to an early spring day. Hopefully, it wouldn't bring rain, so the damned slush of the ground would keep melting and drying up.

(Did he mention that he hated fake winters? When it wasn't cold and snowy and crystal clear?)

Mauja had just barely decided to figure out what to do with his day when some of his problems were solved for him. It was the echo of an echo, a voice that spoke words he could not pick out that drifted in with the morning breeze from deeper within the forest. Mauja's ears turned, until his entire head did, and in the distance he saw two shapes emerge: one the unmistakable figure of Tembovu, and the other...

For a moment, Mauja's heart skipped a beat as he thought d'Artagnan?

But there was no gleam of sunlight upon his glass horns, and the outline was a little wrong, his coat a bit too dark with not enough red in it...

A stranger, then, padding out towards the Edge and stopping there, peering out. One black-rimmed ear turned back, then forward again.

Well. Only one way to figure out who he was.

He felt like a piece of a glacier breaking off when he finally convinced his cold legs to move, large hooves leaving dents in the semi-stiff morning slush.

The closer he came, the more he picked out; the refined lines in the stranger's lightly dished face, the dreamy way in which he peered out across the waves.. Mauja walked along the world's rim with the ease familiarity gave, glancing down into the waves only once. A long time ago, when they had cried his name for a trial in this very place, he had contemplated whether he would have to leap off the edge in order to make his fate his own—but Kahlua had saved him, and in the name of the shattered Qian and the Edge she then ruled, absolved him of his perceived crime, and the trial had never come to pass. And that had been that, and no more had Mauja needed to contemplate a flight from these white cliffs.

"Good morning," he called out, his light voice overriding both breeze and waves with ease. White head dipped in greeting to them both, the morning light glowing from within his eyes, and his dark lips curved into the small smile he had borne so often in his past. "Who's your friend, Tembovu?"

Because if he wasn't a friend, well, Tembovu had wasted a great deal of time in which he could've simply chucked him off and into the ocean.

[ My presence in the thread is likely to slow it somewhat but I hope you can bear with me :x @Tembovu @Achaius ]

och jag växte upp snabbt, från min barndom var det allt—jag föddes redan slagen

då tänker du tyst och skriker högt, memorerar hela jävla monologen som skrevs för din inre röst,

[ Don't worry about it ^^ And I'm nearly delirious with hunger so apologies :x ]

Peace. How long ago was it that he had felt it? This.. quiet contentment, this lack of doubt, of questions with no answers—reprieve from the creeping anxiety, the gnawing stress, a kind of restlessness that used to lay like a thin film over his heart. And so far, to his amazement, this morning hadn't had any of that. It was just the sky and the surf and the cliff and three stallions standing by the edge of the world, wind tousling their hair with a feral kind of gentleness.

No paranoia. No suspicions making his bones ache. No over-powering, deep, driving need to fix some shit in this fucked-up world, just—just a rare moment of undisturbed curiosity, of.. well, being in the moment.

The d'Artagnan-esque stranger backed away from the dead-drop. Mauja kept watching him with the same light in his eyes, listening to the deep, comforting voice of Tembovu. Achaius—someone Elsa had found and asked over. Odd that the general herself wasn't here, but then again, Mauja knew what it was like to be busy, or anti-social, or a thousand other things that made you not want to act guide for a stranger.

Even if doing it would boost your herd numbers.

“This is Mauja, a leader of the Edge,” Tembovu went on, and the only sign he gave of disliking having been named by his title was a slight twitch by his withers. Oh, well. Everyone found out sooner or later—and "later" was sometimes at a herd meeting, where he would stand as the more demure White Queen while Torleik blared out his position with pride.

It wasn't really that Mauja disagreed with being proud to be a King, it was more the fact that it wasn't how Mauja wanted to do things: wasn't how he had done things in the past, but the past was the past and it wasn't his fault that he had been thrust back into this position with company ...

He shoved the thoughts aside. He wasn't going to let thoughts of Torleik sour his so far pleasant day.

He nearly choked on his breath when Achaius suggested Mauja might like being addressed by his title. It took some effort to not—comically, though—yell NO in his face. It was the sort of thing that would, given enough time, make him casually flip out and distance himself.

If Mauja wanted to lord over them, he would, uhh.. uhh... .. turn them into slaves, or something. "Please," he said, his small smile turning into a grimace. "Just Mauja." His ears flickered, blue eyes drifting between the odd pair. In hindsight, he shouldn't have "intruded"—should've just hung back, listening, watching, waiting. Now.. well, now he had to somehow be a part of the conversation. It was a bit odd to realize that he had no particular desire for that—that that all he felt like doing was resting his head on Tembovu's ass and just let the world play on without him.

But finally, his gaze settled on Achaius. "And how do you find it so far?" Mauja might be a leader here—too aware of the competition in the Threshold, and Achaius might be a bargaining chip in the big game of Helovia.. but there were no traces of that in his voice, no measurement, nothing being weighed; just simple curiosity.

och jag växte upp snabbt, från min barndom var det allt—jag föddes redan slagen

då tänker du tyst och skriker högt, memorerar hela jävla monologen som skrevs för din inre röst,

Observing had always been Mauja's game—reading every little shift in the plane of another's face, in their stance, in the swishing of their tail, the way their eyes moved.. he had always looked, and analyzed, and had given nothing away himself; immovable as a glacier, locking away the vastness of his mind beneath a small, pleasant smile and a curious light in his eyes. What little his body had moved had always been permitted, let out by choice rather than instinct.

But now.. now, whenever those subtle gray eyes landed on him, Mauja was aware of how this had changed—how he had changed, tangled up in the mess he had made of himself. On good days, he just seemed normal. Mortal. On bad days.. on bad days, he was an erratic mess of signals, half-formed, stitched together body language conveying only pieces of a story, and eyes that were dead, or blazed with rage, or glazed over by tears.

Emotion, fighting to get out through the cracks of his shattered armor.

Still, the weight of Achaius' eyes was light, a feather's touch, the breeze itself—it wasn't quite something he thought of, something he noticed, just another testament of how he had changed. The tiny details slipped under the radar as he tossed and turned in the vice-like grip of life.

“I like it,” he said, blunt in the way of honesty, and fixated his gaze on Mauja as he went on, about the drop into the sea, and the ruins of the glass wall. Mauja tilted his head to one side, held his eyes a moment longer, before turning to peer into the fog. "We hide," he said, softly, his voice a dramatic whisper twining with the strengthening wind, "within the fog." And his lips curved into a small, wicked smile, a flash of something going through his eyes as he turned to look back at the stallion. He wasn't sure what the bay had meant; was there something more to the words? Something elusive, that escaped Mauja's grasp? And if so, what had he just told him? That they hid some sort of darkness within the herd? "More surprises that way," he said, casual and flippant but behind the ice of his eyes he had weighed every word—wondering what he gambled for, and against whom, or what.

But then the wind picked up, a howling gust that snatched the words out of Tembovu's mouth and nearly scattered them to the wind; the giant swayed, and Mauja braced, moving a single hind hoof with an air of not being particularly disturbed.

Truthfully, he wasn't; the wind always blew here. Parrying it was second nature.

But Tembovu had asked an interesting question, one Achaius picked up on, and once again Mauja regretted his decision to leave the safety of the fog behind. Like, what on earth was he supposed to say? He was still struggling with the idea of ruling here again and not running a party-crashing racist freak show. Did he have purpose? Did they have purpose? All he and Torleik had said was something along the lines of.. well, general acceptance. To suggest that a person united the herd, when most of it was simply inherited ... and religion, that was out of the question. Mauja had tried that a few times, and none of them had ended particularly well. And, if by some chance he would like to run some shady movement from the depths of the fog, well—it hardly was the kind of thing he would confess to someone he didn't know.

So with a very faint sigh he shifted his weight to lean lightly against Tembovu. "Truth to be told, I think it is the land itself that unites us. I lead with a king not of my choice, and those under our protection are mostly the inherited remains of a herd that relocated." He offered a light shrug. "Helovia is not a kind place in which to deviate. Peace and acceptance is preached at every corner, and I have seen the rise and fall of many orders—racist bands, mercenary companies, religious orders... In the end, we conform to same gray, bland mass, where none steps out of line because if one does, the entire machine comes after you. In their self-righteousness they are blind and cruel. I wouldn't advocate for war or misery, but the hypocrisy I have suffered from them makes me sick." All the while he spoke, his voice was soft, and light, gentle in a way that was at odds with the words he spoke. "At some point in time, someone set a precedent that is now followed almost religiously, a norm for how to act, how to think, how to behave. It offers no true forgiveness."

His gaze swept out to the Edge. "Hah. Listen to me ramble..."

The Queen fell silent.

[ @Achaius @Tembovu ]