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 ]