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

but there's a language that I never spoke
and it's clogging up inside my throat

Earlier that morning . . .

He was tired. He was so tired, like he'd been chased to hell and back without a rest; there was a deeply seated ache in his entire body, in his heart, in his lungs, in his bones. He felt heavy in a way he never had before—burdened and leaden, numb aside from the pulse-rhythm throb going through his body with each labored beat of his heart.

It had left him at the edge sometime at just before dawn, stumbling and tired and for a moment he had stood there, staring drunkenly out over the edge but deciding that falling down was just too much of a hassle. He didn't have the luxury of signing off anymore; at some point he would have to clamber out of the ocean, whether that was in one piece or many, and he hadn't felt up for it on that particular early morning. Instead, he had stumbled back a ways, and for reasons now forgotten, collapsed in a small stand of shrubs, moss, and dried-brown bracken. The snow which clung to the chill of the shadows camouflaged him neatly, his spots breaking him up against the mixture of bare branches and dark juniper needles. Whether or not his state of being should be called 'unconscious' or 'asleep', he had been it almost before he hit the ground.

---

Sunlight brushed tenderly across his face. Its sparse warmth filtered down through the wreckage of his hiding place, and played across his body with gentle hands. Content, and more asleep than awake, Mauja soaked it up, drifting in its warm embrace. He didn't want to come to. He could hear the world just on the threshold of his awareness—the lull of the sea, the call of a gull, the whisper of the breeze and the chirping of birds. Somewhere, beneath it all, he heard his own pulse, and the slow, even sound of his sleep-breath. He knew that this precious state straddling the line of waking and sleeping could not last forever, but he clung to it as best as he could, unwilling to face the world and yet another day of tormenting himself.

The birds were louder, more insistent. The sun had moved, teasing the corner of one eye. It was just on the verge of painful, a red-tinged corona around the darkness of his eyelids. He ignored it. A minute passed. The bright spot grew larger as the sun maneuvered to glare him in the face, and when the moment of the pain overpowering his desire to remain inert came he knew that he was awake. He screwed his eyes shut vehemently, and stretched his head back, further in under the juniper bush. The shadows beneath it were cold, a sharp contrast, and with a groan he cracked his eyes open.

Sunlight bathed the edge with the sort of strength and vibrancy only found as the world turns into spring. Melted snow dripped from the tips of boughs, and the few patches which remained to coat last year's grasses looked slushy. After the blessed darkness of sleep, it just seemed too bright, and he shut his eyes again, wanting to fall back into the well of oblivion.

But of course, sleep wouldn't return. He had slept long enough, was too awake; moving his head had alerted all of his nerves of the fact that they still existed, and his muscles were beginning to let him know that they wanted to move, dammit. He wasn't sure of how much of the ache was sleep-stiffness, and how much was the lingering result of his recent inability to rest, eat, or sleep. If he had been bad off most of the time, his drunken pre-dawn suicide contemplation had been four times as bad. With another groan he began to pull his splayed limbs closer, and he raised his head just to smack it into the juniper bush. Brilliant. He fell back down again, all four hooves returning to their position of as far away from his miserable self as possible. If he disregarded the fact that he was lying on his side, it was almost like standing.

Grunting, he made another try, this time with his eyes open. That way, perhaps he could dodge the juniper, and hopefully not poke his eyes out on something else either. Not that he got very far that time around either—with his head raised he became aware of something he knew that he had seen the first time he'd opened his eyes, but for some reason had decided not to understand what it was, or the implications of it.

Tembovu was standing nearby. Not five-yards-close-he-could've-stepped-on-me nearby, but more like twenty-thirty-yards-no-chance-he's-not-seen-me-now nearby. Sleep-muddled, ravenous, and still tired to the bone, Mauja froze as he was, mostly knocked out on his side. He regarded the King silently for a moment, watching the golden highlights struck in his pelt, the blue sheen of his black parts.. from this angle, he was imposing, even given their distance.

But there was more to it than that. His stance was relaxed, like some weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Mauja was too far away to make out his face, but something told him he'd not look like he was aghast at just having set his friend on fire.

Well, he hadn't.

Yet.

By now, both of Mauja's black-rimmed ears had flipped in Tembovu's direction, and his head was back in the sunlight. The setting was too peaceful—it couldn't last, right?

"Good morning," he simply said, half-loud, ignoring the fact it was probably more like midday or early afternoon; he was too muddled in the head to be able to read the sun.

man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same