Her objections were shut down. Not just once, not twice, but three (four?) times, with different words and different level of intensity, but rejected they were. And it rankled, it stung, it burned to realize that her words meant so little.

Of course she knew this wasn't the time! But when would there be time? When they got back home? When they had found Tembovu's kid too? When someone actually got hurt by the beast that so cunningly had slithered into their midst?

Would they only listen to her when it was already too late, and her warnings came too late?

Hurt and furious by their collective refusal to listen she flattened her ears and turned resolutely away from all of them, not so much as looking at any of the men or the chunk of a mare who was glaring daggers at her. Without saying a word, lips pressed into a thin line of disapproval Erthë landed on the snow several yards away from the whole around which everyone was gathering, her eyes busying themselves with the bleak landscape and the jagged line of the horizon. The scenery fit her mood perfectly; the wind was strong as it was cold, strict and stern and unforgiving, just like she wanted to be. Like this wind Erthë wanted to sweep away, blow off somewhere in a whirlwind of snow and become the frozen expanse, vast and distant and uncaring.

If she were, then she wouldn't have to be hurt by scolding words, or be berated by a foul beast - the very same beast who would have killed her had it not been attacked by others at the very last moment. Did he even care that glistening teeth and drooling maws appeared in her dreams each night, every time she closed her eyes, ever since? Did anyone even care that the howl of wolves made her skin crawl, that the stench of their fur on the wind made her want to retch and scream and run to the ends of the earth?

No, they didn't care. All they concerned themselves with was a man in a whole who had done nothing for any of them, a ghost in the mist who wouldn't have bothered to look for any of them, had they disappeared. The former king, the former queen, the former member of the herd...

But what are you now, Mauja? What will you do when you get out of that frozen limbo? Are going back to doing nothing again? Too afraid to care, because you might lose. Too afraid to live, because you might yet die after all...

Too afraid to die, because you might have to keep living?  

Well, you know what? I'm afraid too. Don't you dare act as if you're the only one!

"If we get some rope, maybe we can hoist him up" she said, unsmiling as she turned her head to glance back at Tembovu and the Sparklight. "Those who can fly might be of some use..."

Her eyes turned towards the sword-carrying demi-god, angry and accusing and challenging; she was leaving when her supposed friend was still stuck in a glacier? What kind of person did that? Erthë wasn't even sure she liked Mauja but she was still there, despite Mesec and fear and useless legs. And she, whole and strong and a fucking god-child would leave because of.... of what exactly!?

What a fucking hero.

Big girls cry when their hearts are breaking