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

[ Mau needs to come un-blocked so you're unfortunately the recipient of giant, unrelated word vomit. ]

(Who are we—)

Just beggars and thieves, wolves and whores—

Lighthouses in the darkness, ruptured and fractured, shattered glass and struggling embers choking in the shadows—ultimately, forgotten. Darkness had risen from the sea, sunk its claws in deep, sundering bedrock and crawling up a staircase turning cracked in its wake.

And their hearts were those beautiful, pulsing lights encased in glass—trapped and blaring out their life for all to see, and too high up to ever be saved; helpless in the face of the darkness. Devoured. Shadowy tendrils sprung their fragile armor, a pressure growing, slowly, surely, until it all came apart in a torrent of shards and a single, quivering, terrified breath. A gasp.

Broken in every way you were left in the destruction of yourself, gouts of flame—your blood—sputtering haphazardly but darkness is no fuel for fire (desolation and love) and one by one they will go out, until only the beaten remains of your heart is left, a smoldering mess that will never again be a bonfire.

Like moths drawn to a flame—
(The darkness which rise from the seas.)

Because we cannot let something beautiful be beautiful without destroying it.

Cynicism, misery, greed...

That was life: the struggle for your glass to stay strong.
The rest was just a wait for death.

And his would be very long.

He had already failed. He had already come undone. He was perpetually trapped in a broken, beaten, defeated body, mauled beneath an army of silent stars and left to die in the cold snows. He would never be more than he had been on that night, wracked by fever and shame. He would never be anything but a soldier who failed. That was the night he had died.

"Gods," he whispered softly, the closest he had come to praying in a long, long time. Nine years since that night.

Nine years without a heart.

“Mauja,” but never without a name; the soft sound fell from dark lips, a curse living in the blood of them all. His ears flipped back momentarily. They all called him that, a name lovingly given in another life, but it was hollow. It was as empty as the body which hearkened to it. He was what others had made him, what others had needed from him; at times, he had been cruel. At times, he had been kind.

But was there any thing, any memory, any trait he possessed, which was truly his?

Shame.

Guilt.

Grief.

Tembovu apologized, his bulk teetering on the limestone brink, his demons leashed (—for now). But what did he apologize for? Burning him? They hadn't spoken since, after all. Or was it something else? Something related to Mauja and the Moon disappearing behind a wall of fog, and exchanging secrets? Perhaps he was not used to witnessing mortals (for I am not a God; I am not their equal) bickering with Gods. His pale head turned a fraction, blue eyes locking onto the deeper ones of Tembovu. The lost darkness branded into his memory, cast into deeper shadow by a charging, molten beast, was nowhere to be seen.

"What for?" he asks lightly as the cool wind blows.

As if the world isn't ending.

[ Aww, Tembaby. <3 ]

Mauja

the white queen