Her voice, it was true to his memory of her. Unlike the other memories being eaten away by time and darkness, the moments he had spent with her, all those days ago, remained untouched. She spoke, and gave him another question, and his heart leapt at the realisation, hurting in a good way. And it warmed him, and touched him, so that for several moments, he didn’t register the question itself, and was content just acknowledging its existence. But he heard it again in his head, as clearly as he’d heard the first question, the one months-old. And then he was quite for a while, thinking about the question, and wondering about its answer. Only, there wasn’t one. There were three. Three questions. And what could he say, that would satisfy? The truth would only ever hurt. But he couldn’t lie, not to her, and he couldn’t leave her behind again, her words still hanging in the air.

“I am many things. Messenger and Coward and Orphan. Ashmane, Alone. False King, Traitor, Son of War and He Who Brings the Night. Blackheart, I was called, once. Unbelonger.” There were tears in his words, and his voice cried for him. “And I wish, with my whole and damaged heart, to be other than what I am. Dreammaker. Soulseeker.” He fell still, and silent, and gathered himself together once more. It was not yet finished, his vague and terrible story, and her remaining questions were not yet answered.

“I belonged to the Desert once,” he began, his words catching in his throat. It was hard, difficult to speak of such things. It hurt to even think of them, to scrape together the fading memories, where the bad far outweighed the good. The darkness always threatened to extinguish the light. “They… They... Said they loved me once. And maybe it was true for him. But I do not believe my mother ever really loved me. She mourned instead for my brother, who was killed not long after I was born.” He sighed, and looked out over the world that lay before the two of them, his eyes distant. “Her name was Dogwood, and somehow my f-fa.. Somehow he came to love her, and ‘til her death, she lead the herd from his side. I don’t know how, because everything she touched fell apart. And her death, it was his undoing…” He shook his head, and snorted, flinching and cowering away from some dark memory – the darkest of all.

“And in mine,” he said softly, in response to her words, her voice alone enough to make him turn back to her, and he dithered uncertainly for a moment, before he settled down beside her, on her left. So that he wouldn’t lose sight of her. His functioning eye was dark, dark in colour, and never in any other way. Only once had it been dark with hatred, but these days, it was sorrow that turned his dark eye into deep pool, and his emotions were like ripples on the pool’s surface. “Kinslayer is what I am, and Kingslayer. Born of bad blood and a mad mind,” he tried to smile half-heartedly, but it wouldn’t stick. “Guess I never had much of a chance, anyway. None of us did.” He tried to keep his focus on her, he tried, he tried. But the monsters wouldn’t leave him be, and he drew in a ragged breath. “I envy them,” he whispered, his eyes wide, wild. “The pain would stop if I freed myself, the way they were freed. But I remain bound by these chains, because I cannot do it.” He swallowed, his eyes looking glazed, as if he were in some kind of stupor. “Some days it hurts to keep breathing, and I wonder how I’m still here.”

And he felt her still there beside him, their shoulders meeting fleetingly. Those few seconds of contact gave him strength. It renewed him, and he imagined a flame flaring up inside him, guttering in the dark sea and the cold wind, but fighting, fighting to stay lit, to keep burning. He longed to lean towards her, to brush his shoulder against hers again, or even to let his muzzle linger on the skin of her neck. He could move, and hide his sad and ruined face beneath her chin, because he was scared and weak, and she would protect him, wouldn’t she? So that one day he could protect her. He could take, and take, draw strength from her until he was no longer spineless, no longer just the shell of a creature that was able to be something more than the one who stood beside the mare that was the mountain, beside Jezibelle.

But though his soul thirsted for bravery, and his heart hungered for courage, he didn’t touch her. Oh, it was so hard for him not to crumble and snatch a second brief moment of contact, steal a caress that would only last as long as a single beat of his underdog heart. Because he needed closeness like that again, now, please. But his want was stronger, and what he wanted was to give, to give and never take. He wanted to give her more, and more, and more. He had nothing to give but words. And his battered and bruised heart still somehow capable of beating, of wanting, to love and to be loved. But it was fragile and afraid. So he gave her words, even though they hurt. Because before he had met her, he had been empty, a living ghost, and nothing had mattered.

She mattered, the mare that was the mountain. Jezibelle.

And this truth was rooted so deeply, and strongly within him, that Balthazar, sifting through his dark-and-light half-memories, believed that this was something new, something that hadn’t existed before. It was no sad echo from a past life, nor a distorted reflection of any of the ones he had loved once. None had mattered in the way she mattered, not his brother, nor his stars, nor his sun. He had loved each of them with everything that he was. And maybe even now some broken part of him loved her in a broken kind of way. Maybe he would grow to love her just as fiercely as all the beloveds he had long since lost. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe not. But he knew one thing to b certain. Jezibelle spoke to him, like no other ever had.

The mare that was his mountain, she sang to his lost and lonely soul.

Even now, he could feel the darkness inside ebbing, because she was near, and her voice was in his maimed ear, and her scent in the air so that he wanted to breathe in, and in, and more, so that his heart would never forget, even if the monsters ate up the memory of it in the dark and difficult days he had yet to face. And his shoulder remembered the touch of her own, and wanted more, more. But no, he couldn’t take, and take. Because she had given him much already. So much. And he wanted to give back to her.

“Balthazar, I am Balthazar.” The words tasted strange on his tongue. There, you gave, now take, take, because you are weak, and she makes you weaker, but she can also make you strong.His meek and meagre amount of determination crumbled, and he was stirred into action, so that he stood before her for just one moment, his good eye fever-bright, like embers that spiralled towards the stars . And he shifted, ever-so-slightly to his left, so that his head hovered near hers, his seeing eye fixed on hers, his hardly-there-at-all ear waited near her mouth, and his heart trembled in his chest like a timpani drum. “Balthazar,” he whispered, his voice breaking. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard it said aloud, before today, before now. It was loneliness and a kind of death, not hearing your name in so, so long, not hearing it spoken with sureness by another, with warmth, or feeling. How easy it was to lose oneself, when one lost sight of their identity, and became caught up instead in who others said they were, and who others said they weren’t. He winced as a thought stabbed at his heart. When had she last heard her name spoken aloud, for no other reason than that the speaker wanted to say it, because it was beautiful, and because she mattered?

Balthazar tipped his muzzle up to her ear, closed his eyes, and breathed out her name.

“Jezibelle.”

More. He wanted to say it again, again. But he needed to give her other words instead, the ones she had asked for. “I killed a monster, and I was afraid, for many had loved him, and only three loved me. So I ran away, I left. And I left and lost them, the ones that loved me.” Everything was raw now, his voice, his throat, his emotions. “If I had stayed, then maybe…” he shook his head, his voice pained. “No. They deserved better than me anyway.” And he drew away then, and wondered whether he should leave. Because he remembered that this was no place for him, even though she was here, the mare that was his mountain. And because of her. He couldn’t say for sure just yet, but perhaps she deserved better too.

Balthazar couldn’t bring himself to leave. He was weak. And he needed to be strong. And he wanted to hear her voice, and see her face, and stay, for as long as he could. The half blind, half deaf, unkempt and underfed creature stayed near his mountain. Again, he moved closer, and this time he did touch her, his muzzle shyly met her cheek. Like a moth to a flame, he hesitated and drew back, before returning, each moment of contact making him stronger and weaker, but no less shy. His eye was dark, and not so dark, and his useless ear twitched with uncertainty. “Jezibelle,” he murmured. “How did you find me?”