but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams

Fearing fire, it came naturally to him to stay away from Helovia's churning, burning heart. It was one of the places he not exactly avoided, but seldom came to—and why, he couldn't quite say. It was a beautiful place, the maw of the world belching flame, such a beacon on dark nights, a place of warmth, magnificence, danger. Only twice could he remember standing upon its rim. Twice, of the countless times he had passed it by, and both times had been.. strange. The first time, his raven feathers had fallen to burn. The second time, he'd grown.. angry, out of his mind, attacking the mare Megaera long before her rise to fame and fortune in the Throat.

So, quite naturally, he avoided standing upon the Heart's rim and peering into its depth. It led to madness and vulnerability; ever watchful, ever cautious (—cowardly), he did not want to take the chance of someone coming upon him.. and shoving him into its fiery depths. Mauja had burned more than enough. He didn't need to end in fire as well.

Frankly, he didn't want to end at all.

He didn't want to be hurt at all.

So he locked himself away and skulked about his emotional basement, terrified of the debris he'd left there, and of his own shadow. It glared at him from every corner, from every sealed jar and locked door—doors which glowed around their frames, as whatever he had accidentally sealed away struggled to breathe, to live, to get out. And, with his heart pounding in the back of his throat, he backed away, fled into the darkness of the corridors, until he found some new curiosity within himself to be afraid of.

(Was it the beginning of the end? The fact that fear had broken free, and haunted him, day and night?)

Its prison glared empty and dark, the road to it forgotten. Maybe he had never stood before it and watched it. Maybe, he didn't know how to find it. He had always been afraid—of everything. Of failure. Of recognition. Of pride, and love. Of greed, and envy, selfishness. Death. Life. He was a brittle, dry leaf trembling in the wind.

And if only his eyes dared to speak of all its secrets—

But they didn't, and so, the ghost that haunted Helovia remained a pale mystery, all soft smiles and soft eyes locked away in his own snow globe. Left to his own devices he existed in a kind of equilibrium, suspended between the comfortable numbness of his deadened emotions, and the tug of their existence—and he remained oddly functional, oddly kind, oddly at peace with things.

Until you rattled the globe, that is. Until something saw fit to remind him of the half-life he lived, how cruel it was, how dangerous, how selfish. And the blizzard would rage all around him until the snow settled, and when the snow settled, he was back to what he was—detached, but gentle.

Lately, it had been storming more than ever. It was just a breath away, just a thought away, and his heart would start quivering and mind screeching and nothing would make sense and, and—

He ran from the storms in his head. It was the only thing he had ever taught himself to do. Run, and distance will pacify them. He had been raised a warrior, to stand fast in the face of their enemy, to think before charging but when committing, to commit wholeheartedly. No regrets. No fear. No doubt. (Doubt kills.) But their enemies had been tangible, flesh and blood—emotions.. emotions were a different thing altogether. And somewhere, at the start of his life, he had gotten it into his head that emotions were a liability, a weakness.

Or maybe that was just after Isir died.

A white streak fell from the sky, a falling star touching down next to the roaring flames, and Mauja squinted against its shape. Small, fragile, white—the complete opposite of the one whose name rang like a mournful bell through his memory. It was Erthë, and what was it she had said last they met? Or rather, shouted after him as he fled from his memories and feelings. That he was weak. (Somewhat out of context but the mind that thrives on torture likes to twist things to its own ends.) It had fired an irrational spark of anger in him; somewhere along the road he'd picked up on the notion that emotions were supposed to make you human, but more and more it seemed it only applied to some of them.

And how the fuck was he supposed to distinguish between them? Bitter, angry, he stalked nearer to the white princess (gods, everyone seemed to love her, but Mauja couldn't for the life of him understand why, she was just an annoying brat—), totally oblivious to whatever object eclipsed her attention so.

How come you were supposed to love in the face of fucking everything, and that was good and right, but when your love said you'd do them more good away from them, it wasn't alright to have doubts? When all he wanted was to protect her from pain, and it tore his heart out to feel like she was better off without him—that he should leave her life and never come back—it was .. wrong, somehow. It made his teeth itch for pale, cold porcelain skin between them, to grab hold of that young body and toss it like a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf—

With his dark maw half-open, eyes blazing and ears flat, the beginning of a snarl on his face, he stopped. Wordlessly.

This was were emotion failed him. This was were emotion let him down. Blinded him. Clouded him. It stole the purity and the honesty from him—it stole the man who had regarded the world with simple curiosity, who had asked questions for truth without judging, who had almost religiously refused to pass judgment on anything without having the whole story... It stole him, and replaced him with a beast that made even his executioner days seem benign and merciful. Maybe he had been truer to himself, back in the Plague days.

"Erthë," he finally said, the anger washed away, leaving him hollow, worn. He felt like a husk. An empty vessel. His head had fallen low from its icy heights, and his eyes had lost their usual clarity. Slowly, he turned his head away, to stare towards the distant midday horizon.

He didn't know who he was anymore.

Mauja

the white queen