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

Rain lashed a grayed-out world into apathy and drove the fog into the ground. Tendrils of it skirted about his feet, fleeing to the safety of the low bushes, but finding it just another trap as the water droplets instead found purchase upon the bare branches. Mauja stood motionless among the trees. His coat seemed gray, plastered wetly to his black skin, and his forelock clung to the contours of his face. Some chunks even licked up his horn, frozen in place by the supernatural chill coating it. All in all, he gave a rather soggy, dispirited air off, and the rain didn't exactly do anything to hide the fact that his flanks had begun to cave in on themselves over the past couple of weeks.

And at the same time, he felt .. something—the stirrings of bitter cynicism, and his lips curled back into a mirthless smile. The weather certainly matched his bleak mood. It mirrored his desolation, and his hopelessness.

He was barely even aware of what he was doing anymore. He hadn't set foot outside of the broken glass wall since the meeting, yet he'd barely met anyone.

That was intentional, of course.

His heart kept throbbing, dully, beneath his breastbone. Stubbornly it trudged on.. and on.. and on.. and would keep doing so, forever. His love story with d'Artagnan had come to an end, and he was fairly sure he'd written the final chapter with Tembovu .. and he would keep writing those last chapters, no epilogues, for everyone else. His children would wither and die. His grandchildren would wither and die. Everyone he loved would wither and die. And he would be left alone, no longer by his own choice, but by circumstance—he would be offered respite, companionship, but in the end, it was temporary. A decade, maybe two, and then their bodies would give out and he would have to start all over.

He hadn't admitted it then, but something in the back of his mind had made up a story, something for the future: a certain someone joining him in immortality. But the chances of it happening...

And, with a bitter sigh, Mauja figured that the majority of Helovia's population was intelligent enough not to pick immortality.

Something stirred at the edges of his vision. One black-rimmed ear flickered, and his head turned to see what it was—he knew his heart should've lurched at the sight of Glacia, sopping wet and all alone in the rain, but it was too tired to do more than stumble. A faint trickle of adrenaline leaked into his system, but it was enough to get his limbs moving after a second or two.

What was she doing here, out in the rain? Banks of fog and low cloud drifted across the drop into the sea, rain pelted them both; his ears flattened to his neck as he came out from the small copse he'd been sheltering in. What is she—

She moved as drunkenly as he felt he did most of the time—sluggish and disoriented and sort of unevenly, as if you were lost in another world where you quite couldn't see where you went. As if the ground kept tilting and changing and realigning. His heart picked up its pace. If she was as fucking lost as he normally were—

And ambling towards the Edge—

He wasn't stupid. White smoke billowed out of his nose as he made to intercept her, to stand in her path between her and the edge, and stare at her with the most stubborn look he could muster. If there was anything he had learned over the years, it was that there came better days.

And when those days came, she'd regret that she was dead.

...

Paternal logic. Don't question it.

[ @Glacia <3 ]

Mauja

the white queen

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

And it breaks his heart to see her like this—

He was tired, exhausted in a way he had never been before, but it didn't matter any more. The ache in his bones was just another thing he had to cope with, the weight upon his eyelids chased away by the new, different grief opening up inside his chest.

That slow, tired lifting of her head, and the sluggish half-reaction of her ears—it was what sparked it, was solidified his worry into a hot leaden weight in the pit of his gut. No...

When had his daughter become the spitting image of him? Did grief run like a curse in his veins, passed onto his child? When had he let her become this haggard, haunted shadow of herself? She was a mother—she should've been happy, in the way that most of the mothers of his children never had, she should've been with Rhoa and her child and... He swallowed. A small, lifeless body had robbed her of that, and in his own misery, he had failed to be there for her.

His child, a mother.
His child.. broken just as he.

If not for myself, then for her.

If something dark spawned on the ledges with them, he would not have the energy to run. The coils of his muscles were taut and tired, and he shifted his stubborn stance to keep his hocks from quivering. For himself, he would not have moved in this dismal rain—but for her, he had to.

For her, he had to be strong, because she had no strength of her own left.

Running away seemed to be another thing passed down in his genes, as her heart ran out of her eyes and away from him. One black-rimmed ear flicked as sad blue eyes watched her face turn in another direction. Was she ashamed of her grief? Was this what he, and Sialia, had taught their girl? To always be a mountain, a glacier?

But mountains can crumble, and glaciers can melt.

And he was guiltily aware of that only once had he called any of his children more than merely a fond 'son' or 'daughter': only as Snö lay dying in a pool of her own blood on a foreign shore had that kind of words tumbled from his dark mouth. Only as he had already lost her had his heart cracked open and let out a little of what otherwise simply made him feel foolish, for love was an emotion which burned and scorched and he was, after all, made of ice.

"It feels like its killing me." And his eyes, icy as they simply were, softened at that, and he thought of all the long years, all the tears left unshed, all the grief which had stalked him in the shadows .. and he drew a shuddering breath, remembering how it had, at last, come tumbling out of the mess d'Artagnan made of his heart.

They moved at the same time, she to him, and he to her; his thick white neck draping over hers, soft black muzzle rubbing against her soaked withers. (Perhaps, the Gods cry because we have not cried enough—) He wanted nothing but to keep her from the pitfalls which had broken him, and yet, just like Snö, she wandered down the same lonely, desolate road, running from shadows and haunted by loss. They were a brood of ice, knowing nothing but how to lock their hearts into boxes, one after the other, as life kept trying to punch through.

And sometimes, it was the heart trying to get out.

"I know," he whispered back into the folds of her silken, ragged mane. "I know, love, but it won't. You just have to hold on to that in the most desolate of hours."

[ lel you're in good company @Glacia ]

Mauja

the white queen