But now...how can she be happy about life, when death comes so easily?

Lace. He has been a stalwart in her life since she was a green young filly in the Woodlands. Her sire trusted him, and, by proxy, so did Nyx. In Helovia, he was one of the first faces to greet her, bringing her and her father into his home. Yes, he'd caused some serious shit when she brought him to the Edge a few months ago, but she did not let that sour the years of friendship they'd shared prior to that little incident.

Now he's gone. Claimed far too young by the all-consuming force of Mother Nature. Ironically, the silver is aware that when she lay keening over his fallen frame, onlookers probably thought she was mourning her fallen mate and the father of her foal. They probably thought her a weeping widow, doomed to love a dead husband and raise her child on tales of its fallen sire. They couldn't be more wrong - he was her best friend, and so much damn more than any lover could possibly be. She'd loved him platonically, although perhaps a part of her had wondered what if? But their relationship had been so much purer than anything the ironheart had experienced, built on trust and a mutual history. His loss hurt her more than the death of a former flame ever could. Lovers could be gathered, stored like trophies; true friends were rarer than rocking horse shit.

She'd found gold when she found Lace, but now he's in a place where she can never speak with him again. Her pregnancy takes a back seat to her misery, and when she re-enters the Edge she cuts a dejected sight.

She doesn't know why she is compelled to let Mauja know of Lace's fate. It seems stupid, futile, as though telling her king of the cobweb stallion's passing may make him magically decide that he actually liked him. The silver soldier draws up to the Edge just as the moon rises in the sky, slaying the sun and blossoming into a great white sphere of life. Perhaps Lace is up there now, watching her, raising an amused brow at her silly, petty grieving. She stands, a sentinel against the encroaching darkness, sides swollen and cheeks stained with the ghostly paths of tears, waiting for Mauja. She doesn't even call for him, for fear her voice will crack - she trusts he will find her, as he always does. "" =

Too late, she realises how this could look. Her, crying, swollen-sided and miserable; he could well be putting two and two together and getting sixty-eight. Jesus, she wishes this was as easily solved as it would be had a man forced her beneath him. That was a problem that could be fixed with one single vengeful stab of her horn once her child was free from her womb; Lace's death, on the other hand, cannot be solved with sheer brute force.

She looks to him, numbly. His face is devoid of emotion, a mask of ice and emptiness, whereas hers is animated and streaked with evidence of her stupid, feeble feelings. For one strange moment, she wonders what he would do if she threw herself towards him and cried onto one of his spotted shoulders. If she embraced him like the friend he...is? Could be? Damn, he'd probably keel over from a heart attack right there and then. The thought makes laughter bubble up, unbidden, from her throat; it sounds traitorous, alien, wrong, and is quickly replaced with a strangled sob. She is a state, and she doesn't give a damn. She is weak, she is more snow than steel, she is cursed with the same emotions as everybody else on this planet, she is not strength incarnate as she always hoped - but she can't bring herself to care.

"Lace is dead." The words tumble from her lips and burn on their way past, like she's vomiting acid. "I thought...I thought you would want to know." She tries to compose herself, to man the fuck up and stop crying like a baby, but she can't. At least she can blame hormones for her weakness, even if she knows it would just be an easy excuse. "And no, he wasn't the one to knock me up, before you ask." She jabs her muzzle towards her massive sides in demonstration, forcing the false humour out of her reluctant jaws. Again, she's cautious that he may be adding two and two together and getting sixty-seven, this time. Because surely his steel soldier would not crumble into malleable mush over a simple friend?

Those ice-eyes of his open when her information spills forth, and for a moment she wonders what she'd do if he began to gloat. If he said thank the Gods. If he said I wish I'd been the one to do it. What would she do? In her grieving state, probably slap him, or sit on him, or both. Then regret it afterwards. Her tear-stained eyes look up at him with a hint of defiance, daring him to say something derogatory about her fallen friend. I'm not sorry that he's dead. Those thunderous eyes flash and her ears dart backwards, just for a moment - don't you dare, don't you dare - but he continues, and she relaxes. "Thank you." Her voice is slightly stiff, unaccustomed to accepting comfort or words of sympathy. But, from him, they mean more than from most other people, because he does not seem the sort to hand them out like fireflies in a jar. She doesn't think they are hollow, and she chooses to think that they come from the bottom of his frozen heart.

When his muzzle extends, she's cast back to when she stumbled upon his sorrow (quite literally stumbled, thunder and all) and contemplated offering a similar gesture. She resisted, feeling it too personal, too intrusive - and yet she does not think either of these things when he is the one to make the move. Her own nose shifts, extends, touches to his own, revels in the tiniest, fleeting moment of comfort - and the shock of physical contact with him that isn't during a fight, or an accidental electric barb. She lets herself be reminded, for a second, of life, of the fact it moves on. That there's always other friends to walk into the hoofprints vacated by the ones that time takes away, and whilst they might not be the same sort of friendships, they can still be satisfying and comforting.

Then she moves back, vulnerable, her pain in her eyes for all to see; an open book, laced with nothing but leather. No steel. No iron, no ice. Just the abject mourning of a woman, not a soldier. "You shouldn't have to see me like this," she says, and her voice is almost a growl - rage at herself, for her sins, for her sorrow. This is not befitting of a warrior, and she tries to draw herself up, to summon strength from where there is none to be found. "How do you cope, Mauja? How do you live when you lose someone?" Because he has - she hasn't. How do you survive?

If only the lie she's woven around herself - the lie that she's strong, that her only emotions are lust and sarcasm - could become truth. If only.

She looks to him, begging for answers with her gaze, pleading, practically on her knees. When he speaks, she listens with the rapt attention of an avid worshipper at church, hearing the benediction of a priest whose every word - including lies, should he choose to tell them - is swallowed like gospel. She doesn't know quite how much he's lost, and indeed she has never been present at any of his losses, but there is something about him that just screams...broken. Broken, but so god damn strong. He goes on, day by day, ruling herds, living, whilst she has crumpled into a blathering wreck at her first death, and it was only the death of a friend. Not a child, not a lover. Just a friend. So why the hell has it affected her so badly?

I never lived. Her head jerks up from its hanging position, and he's crying, shit, he's crying, and could it be that she's underestimated quite how much he has lost? I wasn't the machine I tried to be. Oh, that rings a resonant note with her. This proves that she isn't the machine she'd always fancied herself to be, a war machine at that. She is no better than anybody else. She grieves like everybody else on this lump of rock.

And so does Mauja.

As his voice rises to a crescendo, she can't help it - she flinches backwards, startled, afraid. She has never seen him like this, and there's a combination of guilt that she's caused it, and awe that she could be one of the first to see it. "Mauja...shit, I didn't mean to..." To what? Upset you? Make you relive memories you've probably buried? Through her own crystal tears, she looks at him, the ice crumbling before her very eyes. Mauja.

It just serves as a reminder that, whilst they may have met many times over the years, she knows next to nothing about him. He is a closed book and always has been, and yet when the fountain of loss is tapped into, it's a fucking tidal wave. Like her.

And there's no shame in that. But there is, isn't there? Nobody likes to see grief. They politely avert their gaze, awkwardly offer condolences and then run far, far away so they don't have to witness your misery. It's expected that you weep for a bit then man up and move on, but that's not how it works. It can't. And the ice king is right, there's no shame in sorrow, yet it still has to be hidden like a dirty little secret. Like he hides his.

She finds herself reaching for him again, and this time she doesn't care for restraint. Her muzzle seeks his shoulder and the rest of her body moves, too, for an attempt at a full embrace. Because this time, it's not just him comforting her - it's the other way round, too, and that somehow makes it that tiny bit better. "It gets easier, though, right? As the months and years pass, it doesn't hurt so damn much..." She pauses, looking up at him, back to being a worshipper in church begging for the truth she wants, needs. Her pleading blue gaze is almost begging to be lied to. "...does it?"