"Mauja. Dad. Mauja." The words are wrong on her lips. Dad is the stranger, the figure that was her hero as a child, when she lived in the World's Edge. Mauja is the distant citizen of the Aurora Basin, reinstated Crux to the Bane. Both she does not know as well as she should, as both father and... leader? Snö repeats the words, tasting them, the bittersweetness that comes with them as she stands in the spacious caves she has come to name home, the uneven floor hard underneath her, uneven and rough cold stone, bathed in the cold light of the quickening autumn. Again and again she says the names, the conflicting images in her mind. She does not notice she only worries about Mauja- her father- not Psyche. Psyche is a stranger to her, at least in this world of approaching adulthood. They become a rhythm, a rhyme, a curiosity to her young mind, a symbol of... of what?
It is odd that at the same time she is thinking of family, so is Mauja. It is even stranger that she too, the ice princess, misses the warmth of home despite her freezing heart. This is just a safehouse, a room to stay, temporary, not permanent to her. What is permanent is her sanctuary to the south, the place corrupted by those without horns and those bearing wings. Indeed, the two WeyrLeaders were cruel parodies of the two unicorns that should be standing there. They were pegasus and equine, sallow, below the unicorns' cloven hooves. How dare they poison the once pure place on the edge of the world? How could they... disgust fills her at the thought of the impurity tainting the pine trees... it was a different land, a different place, one where Monster still was a unicorn.
She missed Thais, even though he may have been mindless.
And then the varnish blinked, and her heart gave a sudden ache. For she had spoken in the past-tense.
Did she not believe he was coming back anymore?
Her lips were numb from speech; the cave, echoing her soft words back to her, fell silent as her mouth closed. For a long minute Snö stood, torpid, oblivious to the world around her, until Tarak gave a soft, low rumble in his metal chest. Suddenly, swiftly, Snö was pulled back into the deepening cold of the cave, her mind registering the call of her name on a velvet voice- Mauja, or her dad's, voice. While the varnish felt a slight twinge of annoyance at being called like a dog- like Monster- she came, for she had not truly held conversation with the Frostheart for longer than she could remember.
"Da- Mauja," Snö said, reaching out to brush her muzzle to his, if he would allow her to. Why he wouldn't, the white mare would not know. Haphazardly the daughter realizes, somewhere in the vague back of her mind, that any thoughts of what to call the Frostheart had been lost in the wind as she moved. Mauja. Maybe that would change after they... talked. "Do you miss the Edge?" And suddenly, all carefully structured ideas she may have conjured to begin a conversation was lost, and she wanted to know he missed it to, she wanted to be comforted by knowing she was not alone. "I miss it. I miss it more than I realize. This doesn't feel like home. I want to do great things, I want become... like you and Psyche. Feared and admired. But I don't want to do it here, in the north where no one notices. I want to be home." It was a tirade, words that flowed through her mouth and did not stop, a flood. Snö's mouth suddenly closed, her lips hardened slightly. She was an adult, not a child. She should not need comforting like she so desperately hungered for.
Some alien part of her wanted to ask him if he missed Monster as well, when he disappeared and returned as a dog, and left again. But maybe that was her little girl thinking, not a stallion's thinking.
Little girl.
She was not a little girl.
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