Perhaps it had been some kind of misguided masochism which had driven him to sometimes utter them in the past, sharp blades so different in their intent from the irritated words thrown at his herd members these days—blades meant to hurt those he loved, so he could watch the pain carve its way deeper, deeper, deeper, and know that he had caused it. And that knowledge was a deeper, more intimate form of agony, like burning without fire (—he knows that one well). The connection shared and severed amplified the pain.
Older now, maybe wiser, Mauja stilled his tongue. He bade his blood-slick lips to not sneer, forced the words, with all their scathing scrutiny, back down into his lungs.
He did not need to lash out each time someone came a little too close.
He did not need to make everything about him.
Wasn't that what he had tried to do, anyway? Make it about her, for it was easier than to make it about him? (Because when it's about him, it always ends like this—) And yet, there they were, Mauja's eyes full of dry fire and his lungs full of unspoken, cruel words; he breathed in through tight nostrils, his world black and full of stark silver edges. It tasted of adrenaline.
“I’ve noticed. In myself, not you.” His jaws clenched as he stared daggers at the forest. Perhaps, in sharing, there was something to be had. In speaking of himself, doors could open—but he wasn't sure. He didn't know enough about her, because she did not speak very freely of herself. What little she had given was not enough.
Always his weakness, his need to know, to have the truth of all sides before judging. Only for so long does a blindfold last when you know it is constructed out of nothing but arrogance. And now he found that he could not judge her properly, could not say, do not put such little value in yourself, because he had but pieces of the truth.
Her dark muzzle moved on the edges of his vision, and, detached, his head turned to watch it. It descended like something sinister to his warped mind, a soft, at first fragile, touch to the too-hard plane of his shoulder; he stared it, as if uncertain what he was seeing, what he was feeling.
It felt absurd. His mind began to form the words you are touching me but they never made it to his tongue. He swallowed them, too, and stared out into the snowfall again.
He didn't know what to do.