það var farið að skyggja og fuglarnir þagnaðir [ warning: rambled character development incoming. ]

"That's quite enough, little snow-angel," and he knew that he shouldn't have been surprised. And in a sense, he wasn't, for he knew how flimsy and thin his skin had become, how he floundered where he had once been graceful and frigid, the way he suddenly had a heart. The words seemed to echo across time, so similar to the conversation he had had with d'Artagnan, and that had been a whole season ago. Had he truly come nowhere since then? Was he still the same broken stallion who had stepped through Asni's mirror half a year ago? Half a year — he was truly wretched, and Psyche had made him Lord. Lord, for his silver tongue and soft touches, Lord simply because she, too, had some kind of heart, but hers had teeth and his was just.. wrong. All kinds of wrong.

"And what are you now, Mauja?" Broken. Melted.
Why wasn't the frost running off his horn in rivulets? Why wasn't his coat slowly fading to dull gray, robbed of its pristine shade?
Why am I still this way?

He was silent, and motionless, some remnant of his past glory keeping him rooted in the spot, his pale eyes unreadable. He had no desire for Prometheus to see the storm beneath the lid of his iris, for it was not a flattering storm. Some part of him wanted to raise his head in defiance and say you're wrong, but I have come such a long way since then... He had spent his life atoning for past mistakes, ruthlessly hounded himself to learn to admit defeat, and admit that he was wrong, and Prometheus was right, and they both knew it. Mauja would gain nothing on trying to pretend otherwise, and thus he listened in a frosty silence. Yet, it takes a great deal to stand motionless and listen to your own shortcomings laid bare, but Mauja had sworn, never again, and listened. Listened, and agreed, and had no idea where this was going.

"Why do you fear what you once regarded with defiance?" I'll be damned if I know. His cool gaze remained upon the rotten colt, hating himself for wanting to blanch and turn aside; forcing his relaxed gaze to remain upon the white of bone and the decomposed, putrid flesh. At their first meeting, he had found the colt fascinating — and still, he did, torn between his desire to study every detail or to turn away.

I shouldn't have needed to help you kill her.
Irma's mind-voice, a jumble of emotions, concepts and colors, lay around his mind like a haze, but despite this she could not bring herself to show him the same scorn that Prometheus did. Why, she didn't quite know, but even as she rolled through the air somewhere else she listened through his ears, drinking in the sound of the undead's speech.

He wanted to say, the war is coming, but couldn't. He had nothing more to offer than flimsy, half-made plans, words of caution, of the vast numbers of the rest of Helovia — instead, he let his gaze fall to the tiger as flames erupted again. Sometimes he thought all the fire thrown around in the battlefield in the Edge was the reason his spirit had become incinerated, but it had been so long ago.. so why did it still haunt him? Still silent, Mauja tugged at his magic, and a foot-and-a-half high spike rose slightly in front of Pyr, not near enough to be a threat, but near enough to feel the wash of heat from his flames. With a closed, thoughtful look on his face Mauja watched as little streams of water ran down the weapon's sides, the heat of Pyr's fire slowly wearing it down, distorting its shape and consuming it. He knew that within a few minutes, the slender instrument would be gone, even if his mind still tried to grip it.

"But I see you've let the ice around your heart melt," the colt said, and Mauja agreed in his thoughtful silence, for what else could he do? He didn't know what to say. He didn't even know what to do to fix himself. Long moments passed without him saying a word, merely watching as the ice continued to turn into water. The pause stretched longer than it should've in a regular conversation, and in the end, he heaved a small, quiet sigh and raised his gaze to Theus' sunken eyes. "I will not deny that I am out of whack, yet to simply say 'I know' feels like I'd insinuate I am unwilling to change this fact," he said, his voice surprisingly level as the storm within faded away to nothing but the same aching bitterness, the throb of frustration over his own miserable existence. Somehow, he knew that it was linked to everything, that he had to overcome that listless apathy — that to fix one thing, would be to fix the other, but he had no idea where to start. "Are you really that weak?" d'Artagnan's voice, somewhere in the back of his mind, and as vehemently as he wanted to deny it, he couldn't hide from the truth. If he tried to deny the problem, he'd never change. If he didn't keep admitting it, reminding himself of it, he would become that weak. The deeper he sank, the longer it was to the surface, yet it felt like he'd forgotten how to swim.

Have you lived your disguise for so long that you have become it?
What happened to smiling as your gut constricted in dislike, saying I won't harm you while holding a knife to their back?

His eyes remained on Prometheus, vaguely searching, and for the first time in a long while, at a loss of words.

[ and yet I couldn't get everything I wanted in here. :c I guess Mauja's not entirely ready for it. ]
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