He’d met the fire-colored stallion once before, a chance meeting in the Threshold – fate propelling them together, leading their paths to merge. Both had sought to win a feathered one over, and to the same herd, a very strange thing if you knew the heart of the white one. Pale and pristine, a breath of winter in the darkness, his heart was frozen over and his soul a bleak landscape; loveless, some thought, but that was neither true nor the point. Mauja was, supposedly, the Lord of the Basin, the unicorn realm far to the north, yet there he’d been, recruiting in the name of the red sands and Kri.

I guess you could say he’d taken a vacation from the snows – but it wasn’t a holiday where he laid on the beach and relaxed. It was the kind of holiday where he was always looking over his shoulder, expecting someone to shout out or leave a knife in his back. Sumati had so graciously sealed the fate for them all when she’d taken the white beast home, and he was careful not to lose the position he’d earned with a few lies and smiles. And so, there he was, skulking on the outskirts whenever he dared, always an eye or two or four on the surrounding lands, making sure no one he didn’t want to meet met him. He’d been so very careful, and for almost a whole season he’d managed to keep up with the game, and the darkness was both a blessing and a curse. It cloaked him, but it made him more vulnerable because he couldn’t see as well. It was easier for him to melt into the shadows and flee, but it had begun to grate at his mind, and wear at his spirits. He’d gone from simply assuming the sun would rise again, to yearning for it with each passing day, a fervor he wasn’t familiar with, and yet it never rose.

For a few days he’d still known if it should’ve been noon, or sunset, maybe even the darkest hours before dawn, but as far as the passage of time went, he was completely lost these days. He had no idea at all, and he felt like a dead fish being tumbled around by a playful stream. Uprooted, and not just because he lived with the enemy and skulked around where no one saw him, but because he was lost in a darkness that never yielded to light. It wouldn’t have surprised him at all if he’d suddenly lost touch with the ground and floated into the starless sky.

Faint firelight washed a diluted red-and-orange against the contours of his body, turning his white coat a rather unidentifiable shade. He could’ve been anything, or anyone, really. Just another nobody, not at all infamous. Irma patrolled the skies for him, though she’d stuck close ever since the darkness, and still did; she saw what she saw, and it was probably more than the horses saw, and if she saw something they didn’t want to see.. well, he’d just get out of there, and lurk where no light touched him. He just had to run away, and the darkness would swallow him up, just as much friend as it was foe. Heaving a quiet sigh, and knowing that no white smoke plumed from his mouth in these southern regions, Mauja turned his blue eyes away from the distant bonfire, and back to the borders. He’d exchanged the sands for the gently rising and falling red rocks, their smooth surface scoured clean by wind; each step he took was soft, the muscles in his legs flexing to cushion the fall. He was not quite sneaking, but neither did he want to broadcast his whereabouts to Helovia. He didn’t want the company of just about anyone – no, there was a certain stallion he sought… a red beast that towered above even Mauja, horns upon his face and wings upon his back, a miasma of things. He’d met him in the Threshold, that great crimson beast, and as they’d turned back home to the Throat, they’d decided on patrolling together some day. While Mauja was careful not to mingle too much with the herd, knowing how dangerous it was, it would be good to have some sort of ally, and Hector seemed perfect. Not only was he physically impressive, but he didn’t know who Mauja was, so he’d swallowed the Dreven thing whole. Some part of his damnable conscience pricked at deceiving the stallion, but he was already deceiving everyone, so what did it matter if he added another burden?

His soft hoof-falls echoed among the wavy rocks, every sense straining to find Hector in the compact darkness.

[ for Hector, only. <3 ]

Or was it a matter of Hector finding him? Flimsy movement, and a drifting smell, tugged at Irma's attention, and down on the ground, Mauja froze. He held his breath, waiting for the signal to run, or shrink back into the shadows if it already was too late. His pounding heart counted the seconds ticking by. He could almost taste the adrenaline in his mouth.

But strangely enough, the thought that drifted into his mind was one of bemusement, and assurance that everything was alright, but he remained motionless in the darkness anyway, unwilling to try their luck beyond what it might hold. He felt like a sitting duck, simply standing where he was, but he knew that the best way to remain undetected was to remain motionless. Still, every nerve itched to run, and Irma kept her damnable calm. He could've growled at her. Some days he well and truly enjoyed her cold and careless attitude, but at moments like these, it grated on his nerves worse than waiting for whatever was out there to pass.

Or come shooting out of the darkness like some kind of missile, aimed for him. Mauja strangled a noise of surprise, hooves splaying and shifting with a grinding noise; what the hell?! Darkness, somehow more compact than the darkness already surrounding him, swept down, followed closely by the massive crimson beast he'd been looking for: something poked and prodded at his mind, at his heart and soul, and adrenaline surged through his veins. He was vulnerable, more vulnerable than he had ever been, and the thing inspecting his fears would find many things, but the most tangible one was fire.

”Dreven! It’s good to see you again.” It was a rather enthusiastic greeting, and while his frayed nerves still hadn't settled entirely, he had to say it was a relief to find that the massive chestnut hadn't figured out the truth. Somehow, he seemed to genuinely happy to know the darker truth: either that, or he was one hell of an actor. Mauja didn't dare trust either notion, but felt himself slip into the skin of Dreven, a grin splitting his maw. He doubted Hector would see, but it was the kind of thing you somehow felt, or heard in their voice – just like he heard how Hector was smiling. He couldn't keep a slight laugh in. For being so large and important, he seemed awfully young at times, but his enthusiasm was a welcome change from long hours of black-stained loneliness. With Irma to keep an eye out for others, it would be good to have some company for a while again.

"Aye, we did!" he agreed, feeling strangely jolly, and at the same time knowing that saying I'd love to patrol with you wasn't really Dreven's thing, and would come off sounding really weird anyway.. as if patrol wasn't all he had in mind. So he swallowed the wording and the tone of voice, settling instead for "I was actually looking for you, so that works fine," and giving him another rather invisible grin. Hector, the mind-reader, but Mauja willingly fell into step beside him. It felt both good and strange to have the large brute beside him; strange, because he had to stretch his steps to keep an even, comfortable pace, and good, because he was tall, and had huge wings. Wings Mauja could hide beneath, should an aerial patrol pass over. In some weird, backwards way, it made him feel safer to have Hector beside him.