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 ]