If you could see it up close how could you ever forget—

(Strife.)

Born in war, reborn in war; like a glacial phoenix bursting out of the ice and snow, leaving a streak of blood behind to mark the place of its birth. The only difference was the lack of a distinct enemy.

It felt like war anyway. A savage, cold wind ripping flesh from the bones and leaving souls rent, bleeding out their feeble ethereal blood. Vipers, a twisting, curling mass of them, raw and passionate, brittle and bristling.

Not that he knew much of it, anyway, trapped in a place where his mind was more awake than his body, yet befuddled at the same. It could all simply be a dream, some strange and distant thing, a nightmare dredged up from the bottom of his memory—if not for that distinct feeling of being awake.

Besides, he was never this helpless in dreams.

Darkness studded with stars cradled him once more, and, gratefully, he sank back into the comfort of it. It took too much out of him to stay awake, alive, his heart struggling in his chest to keep beating when all it wanted was to give up. (Too bad it just can't give out.)

Time to wake up, Mauja. It was a thought that was so much clearer, so much more precise, that it could not be his own—spoken in the sweet voice of his Goddess, the one he always tried to deny but always came back to. With her life flowing through his veins, how could he turn away from her power? Knowing that he was at the mercy of her whims, how—?

He had never denied that they were powerful beings, he just hadn't wanted anything to do with them for a long time, and still, he wasn't sure he did. I did not grant you immortality so that you could use it as a means of running away. The softness of her tone rankled, because he fought the pity he craved, hid behind his bared teeth; that's not what I did, he thought in weak protest, while the voice beneath whispered liar, liar, liar.

It was true that he hadn't scouted out a glacier and jumped down, but he could've done more, should've done more, tried something, anything, not just—settled like dust on the floor and waited. Maybe his attempts wouldn't have led to a different outcome, but he would've tried something, fucking cared, and it was a guilt he would simply have to live with.

She bit him, then, a scathing thought like a wildfire through his aching mind. If you want to kill yourself, and forsake this gift, come to me. Don't throw yourself into a glacier.

It's not like I did it on purpose, he thought in her general direction, wondering if she could hear the voice he projected into the ether—or if it was all in his head, anyway.

But then, he sort of stopped caring, because in his frozen core a light sparked, and it wasn't at all pleasant. It swept like sparks through cold flesh and stagnant nerves, pins and needles, vague, distant screams from the furthest reaches of his physical body—slow heat coming through him in wave after wave, precise and sharp as starlight yet slow enough to keep his veins from unclenching and flooding his core with too-cold blood.

And then—

The darkness thickened—

Then there was the sky, free of wolf, free of pretty much everything but strong light, the swirling, dark mist, and a blur of lilac just on the edges of his vision. Moon, probably. More voices sunk into his tired ears, but they simply laid flopped against his skull. One of the owls—he thought it was Diego, a tan bundle against the snow—was dislodged from its place nestled in his mane and rolled half a foot away.

He wasn't sure he could feel anything reliably but he felt colder. It stole over him like a cloud blotting out the sun, a chill terror, vulnerability—

He tried to move. To brush his head over the snow and fetch his lost owl back. Tried to ask for help. For anything.

His muzzle moved half an inch; his voice let out the faintest shadow of a whimper.

Fuck this shit.

He didn't want to admit how afraid he was.

—how senseless death, how precious life.