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BY THE PRECEPTS OF HER PURITY
She had never caught his laugh before. It sounded strange, off, faded, but she guessed this was as close as she would ever get to hearing it. After all, she wasn’t good enough with jokes and other nonsense like that to make him do it again. Tragedy seemed to follow him like a stray dog. She looked at him with squeezed eyes from underneath her shadowing, feathered hand. Was there then no bright side to Mauja's existence? His gaze simply remained averted and she wondered why, wished — as she sometimes did — that she had been better at reading other’s expressions. His voice bloomed along with the waves crashing in her ears, with words dripping in gloom. For whatever it was worth, Maren smiled back to him. Depressing as always I see. She probably saw him the happiest he would get. “I’m glad too,” she agreed with slight, perhaps unnecessary amusement. Maybe she had just gotten too used to seeing the Frostheart like this, familiar with the sadness, yet appreciative of his company. Even if Tembovu had taken his crown, you are still the King of Fireflies to me. Smashed, burned, broken.
The foam of the pulling and pushing seawater cringed around her as if she was a drop of oil, tainting the shoreline. Perhaps she should have looked for more in his words, instead she decided to notice something else.
“You must have been through a lot,” not sounding at all as compassionate as her voice could have been as amusement still lingered. Showing sympathy wasn’t really her strong point either. With the sun beaming from the ocean, Mauja's face lay half in light and half in shadows. He looked young, yet his age dared to drape him still within the deepest, darkest rims. “— In this land… You must know a lot about it, too.” Was she provoking him to tell her more? Maybe, but she knew that he knew more than she did. Would he tell her, like Mesec had done, that time in the caves? She had learned of some of the Helovian History from him, and the Wall of History deep inside the Heart Caves, but was it all — Was it… enough?
Of course it wasn’t. It couldn't be, she thought as she continued to look up to the marble faced statue that the Frostheart turned into as soon as he was done moving his lips... that was; the few times he did. The way he had moved over the land, the way his gaze watched the sea from their eyeball prison, the way the Helovian winds had soared past his figure, curled around him — ruffled his mane just enough to not make it look like anything out of the ordinary — But when she looked at him it might as well have been a clandestine greeting to an old friend, a scandalous, fearless caress from a secretive lover. A memory of who he was, used to be. He must have been here forever.
She swallowed, turned her cheek to his stone features and looked out over the sea instead, slightly... jealous. Perhaps. The gold of her eyes was quiet and far away like the sunset. Why do I feel like I am not supposed to know something? Why did she feel left out when there was just the two of them here? And why did she feel that asking him for his knowledge now, would mean more to her on an intimate level then what they had done last time.
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