It was beginning to get strange, this perpetual night. Mauja had lived through many sunless days in his past, slogging through weeks when it never touched the upper side of the horizon and left them alone with stars, moon or clouds, but the main difference was that it had still been there, somewhere on the other side of the world. It had climbed tiredly towards their skies at noon, spreading a pale, sickly light before growing tired, and slipping back where it came from. He was used to days of darkness, but missed the stars, the northern lights, even the crisp rays of moonlight. And now, even his body had begun to find it odd, that the days did not cycle properly, that the light of a tired sun no longer marked noon each day. It should, his body insisted stubbornly. The sun should at least try to rise before falling back down into its grave, but it didn't.

And the "days" grew colder and colder.

His loyalties had not shifted, but his game had taken him to another half of the board. His time in the north was done again, his brief check on the herd all he could offer without ruining what he had so painstakingly built. The Basin tugged at his heart, whispered at his mind, sang in his blood, begged him to come home and keep a watchful eye on his herd in these dark times, but he couldn't. He was a protector, a guardian, giving his life for his kin, for the cause, yet he couldn't. He couldn't be up there, stay there. He had to keep hoping the sun would rise again, some day, that things would go back to normal. And for that hope, he couldn't throw away his plans. For that hope, he had to keep living as if it would come to happen, or he would betray himself, everything.

Irma sat upon his withers, the scars fresher than they had been in a long time because she refused to stray as far from him as she once had. The blood had coagulated since her last squeeze, the smell of it faded, old. Her eyes were keener than his, but even they had trouble penetrating the uniform blanket of darkness. Mauja flitted from lantern tree to lantern tree, like a fly following a candle's flame, while some sort of inner compass kept him on a southern course. Memory could guide you so far, and surely that odd blot on the horizon was the most distant, nearly impossible to see echo of the Heart? As long as he found himself there sooner or later he would find the way to where he needed, but didn't want, to be. But how long would it take? It was frustrating to not be able to measure things in days and nights, even if winter had already skewed their lengths, even more frustrating when he couldn't know if it should be light or dark right now. He was adrift in a sea of darkness, with no ability to tell how long had passed, and that grated more on him than the actual darkness did.

Some surge of warmth, or strength, in the frozen darkness had broken the river open again, a trickle and a whisper as it gurgled past the rents in the ice. It drew him, even though his mind dredged up the memories of the encounter with the not-quite-Delinne, and how it had ended. Surely predators had devoured the carcass by now. He'd never have to see her again, red staining her black throat as she stared sightlessly at the stars. A small shudder passed through Mauja as set his frosted hooves upon the riverbank, and before drinking, gazed around himself. He had a feeling the predators would be bolder, and more desperate, in this darkness, and without the magic in his blood to aid him... He ignored the sudden piercing lurch in his heart, and was just about to commit to his drink when his gaze snagged on something. Slowly he let his gaze fall just to the side of her, seeing her only as a darker thing at the edge of his vision, more compact than the surrounding darkness.

He was not alone.

[ thank you <3 ]

She moved in the darkness, a shadow within shadows, but compact enough that his eye caught her – sort of like the sound you only realized you had heard when it stopped. He blinked, and shifted his gaze, tracing the outline of her body. The arch of her back was unbroken by wings, the flat bridge of her face bearing no horn; equine, he deduced, and a dark one at that. It did not exactly settle him, nor did it unsettle him, but he wished that everyone was as light as he. Even in this unlit night he was easier to see than most others, always bearing the faint glow of faraway lantern trees, but she only seemed to suck the light in and swallow it, rendering it blacker than before. And as if he was light, so he, too, was drawn closer, prowling forward a few steps to better see her – as if the paleness of his own coat could reflect upon hers.

She stared at him through the dark, her barely seen eyes piercing. Her voice was many things at once, both hard and beautiful, enchanting and distancing, the words flowing like something from a poem, and not simply everyday speech. Black-rimmed ears flicked forward, blue gaze fastening on her paler face, again tracing the lines, the subtle shift between dark and not-as-dark. And her words went from their impending doom to his own physical shell, and Mauja found a small smile curling his lips in the darkness. Winter; winter embodied, the Ice King, Frostheart. She was not alone in her observations, but he couldn't deny them, even if the scorching sun of the Throat sometimes tried to convince him otherwise.

He was born of winter, and his blood would always run cold.

"Skullface," he said into the darkness, that smile remaining small and soft, but with the sharp edge of frost to it all the same. Would she even see the nuances of his eyes, of his expressions, in this smothering blackness? The nickname was in the language she would know, and not the one he usually used, and for the simple reason that it would be too much of a mouthful otherwise. Haus-andlit? Or something. His eyes twinkled in the darkness. "Perhaps all the stars fell to lie within the trees now." He said it with amusement, turning his head to stare at the nearest shining tree – still, it was quite a ways off, and he turned his eyes back to her. "I wonder how long we, and the trees, can survive without the light," he murmured quietly, mostly to himself, listening to the quiet whisper of the icy river.

[ FOR THE NIGHT IS DARK AND FULL OF TERRIERSTERROR ]

There's something wicked about it all, about the way she laughed in the darkness, about the way he was, by some whim of fate, trapped in the night with her, listening to the sound of her soul flung bare into the air. With nothing to settle his eyes on, nothing of the snowy grass or the sharp ice edges of the frozen river, he was left with a black space filled up with her: her scent, her laughter, her presence, the vague outline of her face, neck, hips. She pressed against him in every way without touching, little sound waves and drifting breezes full of scent lapping against him. Intimate, and creepy, but in the blackness his vague discomfort was masked by the churning of his eyes, a ceaseless, slow spinning of ice blue and distant stars. Mauja's eyes were never still, never honest, yet they never lied, either, for the shields and imitations were solid. And so, once again, he hid his soul beneath layers of pale frost and cold iron, fighting down the vague, half-remembered trickles of anxiety. Mares.

Her voice was like the dark river under the ice, trickling along in the wake of her wicked mirth, and in silence he lapped it all up, pretending there was no uneasiness at all as he shifted his hips and raised a hind hoof on its tip. He could still flee, still fight, just not quite as fast. Snow King, she called him first, and the corner of his mouth quirked. Definitely too common. Fallen came next, and she seemed to enjoy it, teasing a soft laugh from him with her fancies. He couldn't see her smile in the dark, precisely, but he could hear it in her voice, feel it in the air between them. "Don't forget the wings I lost," he added in a gentle voice, before falling silent as the easy mood grew hard and heavy like iron. He didn't like it. It was easier facing the dark and slogging through for hope if no one spelled out his destruction in his face, but he also knew it was to delude himself, and only fools lived on hopes and dreams.

But after all, he was a fool.

And like one, he seized the chance to leave the dreary talk of death and squirrels, saying, dryly: "I truly hope I've not been giving you nightmares."