i am the vanguard of your destruction

[ "I'm gonna see my grandfather!" lmao sorry he's skin and bones. ]

The thin mists swirled between the trees, lent thickness by the cold Orangemoon air—yet thinner than they ought to have been. The presence in them had vanished with their Goddess, and he had passed by more than a few herdmates looking lost and stricken.

Mauja wasn't lost and stricken, per se, but he ached all over, and had his doubts and concerns. But he kept them close to his heart. No reason to worry others. Speculation was plentiful anyway, and having watched Amaris nearly topple over the edge just because she couldn't keep track of her limbs and her hopes..? No. He didn't need to add his voice to this. Besides, he was just an old relic—some bit of driftwood in a horse's shape.

He lifted a hind hoof, brought it forward, put it down. Shifted his weight. Felt his thin muscles strain, his joints ache, his bones groan. He gritted his teeth. Moved the next hoof. Repeated the process. It was slow. It was tense. It looked highly uncomfortable, but half a year in the sea hadn't been kind. He should've been dead many times over, but he wasn't, and no one had ever said immortality was comfortable. He was skin draped over his skeleton, with barely anything between. That he walked at all was just because he was stupidly stubborn. Or just plain stupid.

"MAUJA THE FROZEN LIGHT!"

His name—full formality, full of.. well. Things he didn't want to deal with. An audience demanded, not even requested; a voice that brooked no argument. Someone was here to see him, and they would see him, because there was no other way this was going to play out. Come now or I'll hunt you to the ends of the earth—that kind of thing. Mauja stood still for a couple of seconds, trying to calm his racing heart.

Did his visitor know what state he was in? With fumbling care he changed his direction, heading towards the border instead—it was still slow going. Still only ever one leg being raised at the same time. There was no flow to it; it was halting and jagged.

He wondered when he had become a dog to answer the calls of others—since when he had evoked so little respect in others. Was he now, what they had always seen? A broken creature. A fallen creature.

He knew, of course, who it was. There was something about the voices and scents of your children. He didn't have any particularly grand, romanticized ideas about offspring—it had been one of his many thoughtless acts in life, but not even his fleeting nature could prevent some kind of bond from forming in his heart. Each child had carved themselves a place in his soul, but many of their nooks gaped empty and raw. Some, were filled with hope.

One was full of only grief.

It seemed to take forever, and it didn't get easier. His pulse thundered in his ears. His black nostrils flared. It wasn't dignified. It wasn't graceful.

It was walking death.

The lowering disk of the sun traced the curving outlines of two black bodies; one achingly familiar, the other so small he didn't even register it at first. His head was pounding, his muscles ached and when he finally reached them, his knees buckled without his consent. He didn't even get to have a say in it—his skeletal form folded and fell, a low groan making it out as his too-sharp body touched the earth. Slowly, he righted himself, his limbs folded beneath him. The owls, recovering slightly faster, had abandoned the sinking ship as it sunk, but slowly clambered back onto the sharp ridge of his spine, and huddled there.

He wasn't in condition to walk across half the herdland—and he had been pacing restlessly for too long already. For any other than his children, he would not have come. He blinked his blue eyes—too large in his sunken face—and fought to keep his heavy, crowned head lifted.

"Yes?" Death said softly.

[ @Glacia ]

i am the vanguard of your destruction

[ I'm sorry for having taken so long on these replies. :/ Love both Glacia and Gwyn. <3 ]

Okay.

That could've gone better.

They both screamed—raw, animal noise, shearing through the peaceful evening and drifting banks of mist. The small black shape backpedaled, taking cover behind the mare who was already throwing herself forward, hooves pounding the earth. Mauja's chest burned. His legs burned. His eyes burned, hot shame wrestling exhaustion, and neither really won out. They hung in perfect balance as he pulled his aching limbs close.

The world swam in his vision. The edges were blurred and dark; the breaths sucked in were a strange contrast to the softness of his voice, a little bit of his history coming alive and masking the rugged noise. His dark nostrils vibrated.

She was crying. Her warm nose touched his face, and the contact sent a jolt through him—it almost hurt, his nerves crying out once in the darkness, but no sound left him. He twitched, but it was barely enough to hold back the flood of exhaustion. For him, it wasn't death crawling up his spine, but sleep. His fragile heart was cradled in magic.

And what had happened to him, indeed? The ocean? Immortality? Life? He stalled, unsure of what to say, what to do—was this what they would've come to anyway, ten years down the road, if he hadn't been the chosen of the Moon? An elder, feeble creature, with soft, painful teeth and arthritis. Would she have taken care of him, lain down next to him to keep him warm on cold nights, and waited by him until the last breath whistled out of his lungs..?

Before he knew it, he was crying too, and the world spun a little as he fell back on his side. For a moment, he was worried that something else—something more sinister—had happened, but then he realized it was only the fact that he hadn't been able to balance his slim bulk in an efficient way, and the last of his strength had given out. So he'd fallen. Just like that. Sprawled inelegantly on his side in the grass, he looked very dead.

"I love you too, Glas," he managed to say, trying to keep the conversation in his head, in a way that it made sense; he was still reeling from the walk, from falling, from.. from Glacia's reaction. No one else had really commented on his state, and part of him understood, belatedly, what a shook it must've been to see this pitiful thing come walking out of the fog.

Well. And she didn't know he couldn't die, right? Gwyn—Ulrik's granddaughter—asked the question, but asked it of Glacia, not of him. "And hello, Gwyn," he managed after a while, not wanting to ignore the kid. Ignoring kids never worked out in anyone's favor. Carefully, he sucked in a deep breath. Held it. The owls sat on the flat of his shoulder now, staring at the horses with smoldering eyes. His heart was beating just a little easier now.

"I fell..into the sea," he began, straining a little to keep his voice above a whisper; he rarely made it more than a few words before he had to inhale, and start up again, "between frostfall..and birdsong. They only got me..out..a few weeks back." Which, yes, translated into I just spent over half a year lying in the water. And he wasn't crazy. He wanted to lift his head off the ground, to bring it closer to her, look her properly in the eyes, but he wouldn't manage to, so he didn't even try. "I..I can't die," he said, not sure how else to put it. Adding so don't worry felt cruel, but he wanted to reassure her—both of them, actually—and he didn't know how.

"Did..did you know..Ulrik was a..a friend of mine?" he said instead.

Because it's totally normal to try and make conversation when you're 99% dead, yep.

[ @Glacia ]