[o] upon whom the pale moon gleams

With no one wearing their real face It's a whiteout of emotion

Night lay against the sands of the desert, forcing  dry heat to flee unto the blazing stars like vagabonds returning home. What remained near the bonestrewn plain was a deep cold, the kind that settled between bone and marrow and refused to leave. Colder than death, and more dangerous - at least for the small figure that roamed the dunes, with only her armour to ward against the chilling wind. Turn to stone here and she could be left standing for ages, a statue for wind and sand to slowly erode into dust. Would the heat of the sun be enough to thaw her out once dawn broke, or did it indeed have to be fire that did it? Maea suspected the latter to be the case. 
Over her head, a sliver of moon offered next to no light, only the vague sense of delineation where sky and earth met. By its position she judged it had been two or three hours since the sun disappeared; all light had gone from the western horizon, and none had yet to appear in the east. Midnight, then, or slightly after - this was where her trial would truly begin. To survive one night with armor and abilities alone - she had left the chakram at home to prevent temptation and habit from kicking in - would indeed be a challenge, and one she faced gladly, if through chattering teeth.

Ahead, a paler shade of black had been drawing her in. The closer she got, the more intentional it seemed - built, with structure and intent - and now that she was almost there, Maea recognised the bone shrine to Ludo and Mort. 
She walked around it slowly, picking out details of bleached bone and hollowed sockets before darkness snatched them away. Wind whipped her pale hair into her eyes; she found a nook to shelter from it and hunched low, her dark skirts pooling around her feet. Found that the history she had in this desert, at this shrine, no longer weighed on her like it once did. To think that she had been so near to putting all that she was into a bottle and throw it in the sea, or bury it under oaktree roots like some cursed genie in the bottle. 
"I'm glad we never made that deal," she told a grinning elk skull prominent in the wall beside her, in a murmured confession between friends. "Can you imagine having a whole life flooding back in, after building up an entirely different life?" Not to mention the insult to those who knew her, to be erased and ghosted –
She sighed, blowing pale sand into the night. "I should still like to be friends with Ludo, even if I am a child of Dygra now. Next time though, I'll make sure to bring gifts. Maybe we can play a game..." She hoped it would like that. 

Rising to move on as the bite of cold air grew painful, the woman rummaged through her pockets and uncovered a small bird skull she had found earlier. Fragile and alone, she felt it should  stay here where it could be closer to company; tucking it in beside the elk skull, she hoped the wind wouldn't blow it away from there.

And I've only got my brittle bones to break the fall

Maea

Damien

and every demon wants his pound of flesh
but i like to keep some things to myself

Midnight held the desert like something brittle, but not broken. Each breath Damien took felt thinner than the last, dry and sharp in the back of his throat. Cold coiled beneath his coat despite the weight of it, despite the years he'd lived in places colder than this. Maybe it was the emptiness that made it worse. The wind here didn’t howl like in Halo. It whispered, and left you to wonder if it was wind at all.

He hadn’t meant to wander this far from the skyship. A brief stop, they’d said, to take on some rare materials. He hadn't asked. He wasn’t here to fill the captain’s log. 

The shrine rose out of the dunes with all the subtlety of a half-buried carcass, easy to mistake for natural ruin from a distance. But Damien knew better. He’d seen places like this before; shrines stitched together with reverence and grief, picked clean by wind and memory. Some had comforted him. Others had unsettled him more than he liked to admit.

He kept his distance when he saw her, a figure already seated in the shrine’s crooked shadow, head bowed against the wind. He might have turned back. He was no priest, and this wasn’t a place for conversation. But then her voice carried. Soft, like something meant only for the bones.

“I’m glad we never made that deal… Can you imagine having a whole life flooding back in, after building up an entirely different life?”

He stopped. Not because it was any of his business, but because her tone wasn’t confession so much as recognition. And because he knew what it was to feel like a ghost in your own skin.

“I should still like to be friends with Ludo, even if I am a child of Dygra now... Maybe we can play a game.”

The shrine loomed pale and silent in the dark, a structure born of grief and patience.

Still, the wind had died. The desert had ears. And some truths had a way of dragging others out behind them.

It was a private moment, or meant to be. But he was already there, already close enough to hear. So Damien stepped from the shadows, a tall figure wrapped in a heavy coat that had seen colder winds than these. His face, sharp and weathered, caught the sliver of moonlight—dark eyes steady beneath furrowed brows, a hint of stubble lining his jaw. Hands rough from years of work cradled a small carved token, fingers moving over it with a hesitant familiarity. Something he'd carried with him for years. A memento.

His voice came low, even, almost like it belonged to the quiet:

“It’s harder than it looks, carrying what’s left behind.”

“Sorry,” he added suddenly, realizing himself. “I don’t mean to intrude. Wanted to leave something while I was here.” He held a piece of an antler in his hands, twirling it absently. The worn, smooth edges caught the slivered moonlight, but he made no move to set it down — yet. Hesitation was plain in the way he lingered with it, as if - despite his claims - he was unsure whether to hold on to it or leave it behind.

With no one wearing their real face It's a whiteout of emotion

Her head whipped around,  and for a moment it was no woman who stood there, but some wild creature, all nervous tension as she weighed in a split second between whether to fight or flee. He surprised her; the wind whispering over broken teeth, through hollow jaws and shifting sand had muffled his footsteps, and with the thoughtful comment it was clear he'd heard her quiet confessions. It was too dark to see clearly what hue the blush held, but it was there in her cheeks when she straightened; drawing up like pride was a mantle she wrapped around her slender frame, like the black of her dress needed any help with affirming her dignity. Like a cat once the hackles had settled along its spine. 

"Don't let me stop you," she replied, perfectly polite despite the reservation in her tone. Hers was a low, misty kind of voice, better suited for soft whispers and murmured confidences; it strained to make it across the distance, to cut over the wind and her own thundering heartbeat. "I was all but done, anyway."

For a second her gaze fell to the piece of bone in his hands, then drifted off. Less curious about his offering than the off-hand comment; that did linger with her, even as she began to walk away, to grant this stranger the privacy she had been denied.

And I've only got my brittle bones to break the fall

Maea

Damien

and every demon wants his pound of flesh
but i like to keep some things to myself

Her dark silhouette shifted, the folds of her dress brushing the sand as she began to move away. The wind caught at the fabric, pulling her into the dunes like she belonged more to the desert than to him or this moment.

“Wait.”

The word came before Damien could decide whether it was wisdom or folly. It left his mouth low and deliberate, heavy enough to settle in the still air between them. His hand closed tighter around the carved antler, the bone’s worn edges biting faintly into his palm. The instinct to keep it — to turn back to the skyship and leave whatever this was untouched — wrestled with the stubborn pull that had brought him this far from warmth and company.

“You said you were glad you never made that deal.”

His voice carried in the space like a shadow, steady but not without weight. He studied her profile in the moonlight, the poise that seemed stitched together from dignity and something far older than pride, and felt the prick of curiosity sharpen into something closer to need. She could keep walking; most people did. But there was something in the way she’d said it, like the bones of a truth he almost recognized.

“What did you mean by that?”

With no one wearing their real face It's a whiteout of emotion

Pausing mid stride, she glanced back over a thin shoulder, expression unreadable. Her silence was a question, patient in the lingering hush until the man coughed up his question, only to turn brittle in the aftermath. Answering demanded and explation, after all. Required laying bare embarrassingly intimate details about herself she wasn't sure a stranger needed to know. The silhouette of him in the wan moonlight offered little in the way of encouragement; his face was a blank mask, the unassuming outline a painting that moved her not at all.

Still. She knew the kind of courage it took to ask questions. Especially of strangers. Especially when the answer might not be what you wished to hear.
"It means just that," she murmured, in the end. "There are some things you cannot run from - no matter how tempting it is to try." Some things would keep haunting you until you turned to face them, and others would never leave your shadow entirely regardless of how you tried to make amends. Forgetting everything wouldn't erase what happened, only bury it. The good, along with the bad.

And I've only got my brittle bones to break the fall

Maea

Damien

and every demon wants his pound of flesh
but i like to keep some things to myself

Damien didn’t move, but his gaze held her in that dim space between retreat and return. The wind tugged at his coat again, cold finding the seams, threading through the rough wool and the spaces between calloused fingers. He didn’t shift away. Not yet. He could have stepped back, let her go, but there was something in the weight of her voice — the quiet residue of her own choices — that made him linger.

“Sounds like you’ve already tried,” he said, low, measured, almost conversational. It wasn’t an accusation, nor exactly a question; it was observation, offered like an open hand rather than a prod. He let the carved antler twist slowly in his palm, watching the moonlight catch along the worn edges. Each turn was deliberate, grounding him, giving him a tether to a past he carried quietly with him.

“Some lives just slip through… and all you’re left with are the pieces.” His voice caught the quiet weight of memory, but it wasn't bitter, just steady. “You think you can leave it behind… but it never truly lets you go."

"Makes you wonder what’s worth holding on to, doesn’t it?”

With no one wearing their real face It's a whiteout of emotion

She almost snorted, almost scoffed with wry agreement. Certainly her mouth twisted in a half smile that was entirely unimpressed - directed entirely at herself for being too easy to figure out. A shoulder rose and fell in a light shrug, neither co firming or denying what the man had already deduced. "Whatever still holds meaning," she replied to his musing, matter-of-fact. "If it still heals or hurts, if it still defines you – " Again, she shrugged. Good and bad had nothing to do with it. "Until it stops you from moving forward, hold on to anything that keep you feeling things." In her experience, numbness was the great enemy. The weariness that consumed color and dulled the senses, erasing the little things that made a life worth living. If anger kept you going, or weeping into the pillow at night unburdened you, if revisiting a grave to converse with the dead or the greedy consumption of food or drink brought even the slightest wash of color to gray days - so what if it was ugly and pointless to anyone else?

"What took me too long to figure out is to recognise when to let go. That's why I'm glad I didn't reset my life. I'd still be waiting to figure that out if I had, learning nothing all the while." Her gaze fell to the antler in his hand, pale against the darkness of midnight, then drifted off to the shrine. "Well... guess I'm still figuring out the how of letting things go. Perhaps you have an easier time of it than I?"

And I've only got my brittle bones to break the fall

Maea

Damien

and every demon wants his pound of flesh
but i like to keep some things to myself

Damien’s fingers stilled on the antler, twisting it absentmindedly. The weight of it, familiar and solid, grounded him—but also reminded him of everything he had carried alone for years, the memory of a man who had been the closest thing to family he’d ever really known. Rane hadn’t been perfect. Not by far. But he had been there, in the spaces between harsh words and rough lessons, giving enough that an orphan boy in Halo could survive. That boy was gone, and so was the man. Just a trace in snowdrifts and whispered advice left in the margins of memory.

He exhaled slow, like the air had weight to it, and Maea’s words stuck in his head the way a splinter does. You can’t dig it out, can’t forget it’s there. Until it stops you from moving forward. That was the line, the hook. And it was true. He’d hauled his memories with him like sacks of wet sand—faces gone, hopes broken, the cold silence after. Some of it had kept him alive. Some of it had nearly buried him. Holding on hurt, but letting go felt worse. Maybe the trick wasn’t either. Maybe it was knowing which pieces to keep, even if they cut your hand when you held them. Maybe that was the whole point...

“I don’t think it gets easier,” he said finally. His voice wasn’t bitter, just flat, the way it got when you were telling the truth and didn’t like it much. He glanced toward the shrine. “Rane… he left this behind.” Damien lifted the antler, pale in the moonlight, the tips jagged like broken teeth. “I told myself it was proof. Proof he gave a damn. Maybe that he gave a damn about me. Proof that I meant something, to someone. Even if he never said it out loud.” He let out a short breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Thing is, this bone doesn’t hold onto love.” The word came rough, like it didn’t belong in his mouth - like it was ridiculous. He let the silence sit heavy after it for a moment, as if the truth of it was too raw to dress up with more words. "Just weight. Stink. The way blood gets into the cracks and sticks.” He turned it in his hands once more, then set it among the other offerings. As if it were just another bone. “Maybe it's not about carrying the grief. Maybe it’s just about remembering what mattered before it went to shit, and leaving the rest where it belongs.”

He glanced at her, a faint acknowledgment rather than a question, a shared understanding in the sands between them. The wind tugged at his coat again, but this time, he let it, letting it thread through the seams and spaces as if it were weaving the past into the present without pulling him under.

“I guess I’m figuring out how to do that, too.”

With no one wearing their real face It's a whiteout of emotion

The wind that billowed his coat stung her skin like needles. Even rich velvet did little to stave off the bite, and she drew her arms around herself, rubbing palms against numbing upper arms to lend at least an illusion of warmth before that too was snatched away.

He was eloquent in his musing, the train of thought one she found familiar. Loss lived in everyone, she realized, whether it was a dead pet, a family member, a life overturned. She nodded subtly, recognizing a connection upon which a relation could be built if given half a chance - friendship, kindred spirits - and something eased in her posture. Turning back to face him fully, she no longer seemed on the verge of leaving - she even angled the horned head in his direction, mildly curious.

"Who was he? This... Rane." Dropping the name was like begging to talk about the person. It would cost her nothing to listen, if this person wished to unburden herself; it might even distract her from the chill of the night.

And I've only got my brittle bones to break the fall

Maea

Damien

and every demon wants his pound of flesh
but i like to keep some things to myself

Damien studied her for a moment, the way she turned back instead of walking away, arms curled close against the cold but head tilted toward him like she’d decided the sting of wind was worth staying. It caught him off guard, that small shift. Most people didn’t ask. Fewer still waited for an answer.

“Rane was… a trapper,” he said, the word flat, pared down to the bone. “Took me in after my parents vanished. Blizzard swallowed the whole party, and I was too young to know what that meant, except that they didn’t come back. He kept me alive after that. Showed me how to set a snare, dress a kill, find water under the snow.”

The corner of his mouth tugged, not quite a smile. “He wasn’t gentle about it. Never really was. You learned, you kept up, or you froze. Tried to need him for more than that, he’d… remind you not to.” His thumb rubbed against the edge of the antler, though it wasn’t in his hands anymore. Habit, ghost-memory.

“But he stayed, until he went out on the trail one day and never came back. I was old enough to know what it meant, that time.” He let the quiet hang, letting her put together the rest. “So I kept this.” A nod toward the shrine where the antler lay. “Proof I hadn’t imagined him. Proof I hadn’t been alone, even if it felt like it, most days.”

With no one wearing their real face It's a whiteout of emotion

She could picture it, perhaps too well. The terrible cold and darkness of Halo when the blizzards covered the land. Rooms where the heart fire burned out because none came back to tend them. A small child passed between households, because no one would really abandon a kid but everyone also had enough with feeding themselves. Maybe it was a well of kindness that made the trapper take in the orphan - maybe it was simply convenient, an extra pair of hands in a land where you either worked together or starved. He sounded a bit like her father. Even more like ger grandfather, except she'd never had to doubt the love at the center of that wrinkled old man.

Now she understood better the weight of leaving the piece of antler behind. Except, she thought she noticed a discrepancy between the action and the words this man led with, like he was still trying to convince himself that this was the right course of action.
"You don't need proof anymore?" It was a brave thing to do, she thought. Like tossing yourself out at sea in a sailboat, without a lighthouse to remind you which way led back home. Forcing change to a point of no return - again, something she was well acquainted with. Courageous indeed... and perhaps a bit foolish, if done entirely without roadmaps or plans. "What will you do next?"

And I've only got my brittle bones to break the fall

Maea

Damien

and every demon wants his pound of flesh
but i like to keep some things to myself

Damien’s jaw worked, slow and deliberate, like he was chewing on words that didn’t want to come loose. The moonlight licked across the planes of his face, catching the hollows under his eyes, the way his mouth set hard against itself.

“I don’t know if I need it,” he admitted, voice low, roughened. “Some days I think I do. Some days I think holding on to it just keeps me stuck.” His gaze flicked toward the antler again, sharp and longing both, before pulling back like he couldn’t quite stand to look at it too long. “It mattered once. Still does, I guess. But it doesn’t bring him back. Doesn’t keep the cold off my back. Feels like I’ve been carrying a stone that isn’t mine anymore.”

He drew in a breath, let it out slow. The words that followed didn’t come easy, and it showed in the tightness of his hands where they curled into loose fists at his sides. “Maybe leaving it here means I can stop looking over my shoulder. Stop waiting for someone who isn’t coming back.” He gave a short, humorless huff. “That’s the part I keep tripping on. If I don't have it, then it’s just me. No proof, no story. Just… me.”

Her second question sat heavier, though, and he didn’t dodge it. His eyes lifted to hers, steady but shadowed. “And.. next?” A pause stretched, weighty. “I'll just keep going. Same as I always have. Hunting, logging, whatever work I can lay my hands on. That’s what I know.” His mouth pulled taut, as if he might leave it at that—but he didn’t. “But if I’m honest…” His voice thinned, quieter. “I don’t want it to just be more of the same. Don’t know what else there is for me, but—” He broke off, shoulders shifting in a shrug that tried for nonchalance, didn’t quite land. “Guess I’ll find out.”

His brows lifted a fraction as he peered at her then, curiosity lingering at the edges. "And you? What will you do next? Or are there still things holding you back?"

With no one wearing their real face It's a whiteout of emotion

Listening quietly to the troubles and challenges this man wrestled with, she was reminded of the shades haunting her own mind. Family that had vanished, friends who'd gone no contact, whether dead or lost or just disinterested in revealing themselves. It made her realise with some surprise that she'd made actual progress in her striving to change. Hearing from another who faced similar issues as she'd wrestled with - and mostly overcome - was oddly refreshing. Like seeing notches on a door frame counting away the inches as proof that she had indeed grown.

Picking up on something he said, the wraith-like woman returned to the sheltered spot by the shrine, hunching down to sit where the wind couldn't get to her. "Are you alone, then? Is there no one else around you who remember Rane? Does his house no longer exist?" An ivory tail, pale as the bones piled into the shrine, whispered across the sand and wrapped around her knees. "Forgive me if that really is the case. I just think it might benefit you to try and expand your vision a bit.  Perhaps only you may not be as isolated as you think." It was something he would have to figure out for himself, though, and she tried to refrain from saying too much. He hadn't asked for her opinion, and already she'd said more than she should...

A huffed lauugh cut off the train of thought, surprised and wry in equal measure. "Of course there are," she said lightly, because the journey of self-realization was one without end. "That never changes, I'm sorry to say. The moment you work out one knot, three more appear." Picking at a seam in her dress, she considered how much to share, whether to offer anything at all or keep her struggles to herself. The man spoke so openly though, that it was easy to get pulled along and forget they didn't  actually know each other.
"For me... I need to change the way I think," she eventually said, settling for a layout of what challenges she faced - the next hurdle in her particular obstacle course. "My ideas on how the world works - or should work - have caused some grief, for people around me. Led me to do things I'm not proud of. Perhaps it's a matter of overconfidence, or maybe I'm just selfish... Either way, change needs to happen. Not sure how to make it happen, yet." It wasn't the kind of renewal that a change of scenery could do much about. Core beliefs weren't easily challenged nor comfortable to overwrite - and she still questioned whether it was even necessary. Of course, the evidence was piling up against her, but still... Still. Was she really the only one who was in the wrong? It didn't feel fair, somehow.

And I've only got my brittle bones to break the fall

Maea

Damien

and every demon wants his pound of flesh
but i like to keep some things to myself

Damien let her words settle a moment before answering, his eyes cutting toward the horizon like he might find the truth out there instead of in himself. “Rane didn’t leave much behind. No family of his own that I ever met. Just a few things that are probably long gone to snow, and whatever I carried forward.” His mouth flattened into something close to a smile, but it wasn’t one. “If anyone remembers him, it’s probably just me. And not all the remembering’s worth keeping.”

He shifted his weight, brushing his hands down his coat like he could scrape the cold from his palms. “Maybe you’re right, though. Maybe I’m not as cut off as I think. It's... hard to see past your own shadow, when you’ve lived in it a long time.” His gaze lingered on her, not sharp but considering, as though her presence alone was proof enough that the world didn’t quite end at the line of his boots.

When she spoke of herself, he listened. Really listened. Her honesty had a gravity to it, and he found himself answering without the armor he usually put between his thoughts and his tongue. “Changing the way you think… is very hard. Wood’ll bend if you heat it, metal if you beat it, but the mind…” He shook his head once. “The mind fights you. Holds on to what it knows, even if it’s poison. Maybe that’s why it feels selfish. You’re not just fighting the world, you’re fighting yourself. And that’s a kind of battle nobody else can fight for you.”

The words tasted strange coming out, but they rang true enough that he didn’t take them back. He glanced toward the shrine once more, the antler pale against the heap of offerings, then let his eyes drift to the windblown dark. “Seems maybe we both need to figure it out. What to keep, what to let go. What’s worth changing, and what’s just the bones left behind.”