The past was a living, breathing monster, a thief in the night, bedding with the horrors that consumed the mind, the mad desires that ruined the soul, and the phantom pains that warred against the body. How long had the past clung on, long after the trials it had given him faded like dust in a fading field, life taken, and given, with the ease of an uncaring custodian? He could still remember the agony of the leather whip searing like a hot rod against his flesh, could still taste the iron in his mouth, blood pooling against his tongue when he dared not cry out. Could still feel the cold of his body, laying there in the rain drenched earth, its humid, sweltering touch seeping against his sides, a slug in his nose that threatened to suffocate him right there where he was fated to perish. That night, that moment in time when he had finally given up, finally broke down, repeated itself like a never ending mockery, a memory to last a lifetime, whispering that he had failed. It was those monsters that never went away; self-doubt, self-disgust, self-fear. To possibility that the damage that lingered just beneath the surface was to great an endeavor to take on, and the truth of the matter was that at times, he didn't even want to try. 

Some may call him weak, and perhaps they were right, but the trauma of the past was a sickly wound that had been left to fester, and with the promise of treatment, there was no end in sight as to whether it would ever look anew. Perhaps that was to be his fate, to lay consumed in the memories until they were all he ever was, fixated and vengeful in the hate that ruled his very mind. How true that thought was, his expression bitter as iron cold eyes gazed out over the vistas, the mists rising like a living sea in the valleys of stone. Whenever he remembered the past, it made him sad, made his strength falter, only to bleed into a rage that festered on the ugly taint of self-hatred. He neither loved nor forgave himself, ruled by the memories, fractured as they were, of grand warriors that was meant to be his fate. An Arnor who had knelt where none had done so before. He could not bare to return to them, couldn't even if he had wanted to, and perhaps that was the most bitter thing that lived in his uncertainty. He could not remember the way.

It both broke his heart and gave relief to his being to know he would never walk those fantasy halls, those places made of gilded starlight and silver glass that lived on immortal in his very being. The Arnor plains were a simple place, free of the complexities of the world beyond, remained untarnished as the memories fell away like water escaping his grasp. Judal had accepted this new reality he led, even as he attempted to give up on the past. She had pleaded him to do so, had raged and struck against him even when his mind was black with the ghouls of the past. He could not move on, could not live if he didn't let it go. And so he tried, he tried so hard, and failed every time. Incapable of looking upon her, for surely she would know, he came to these steep cliffs every time, gazing out across the realm of Night, watching as the color was leeched from this beautiful, blessedly ignorant place. Watched at the moon rose and set white fire into everything. Even the most simple of forest realm made a dream in the light of her radiance, and his darkness. It was never enough, but it was enough to soothe the most persisting of thoughts. As all Arnor did, he gravitated to the mountain holds, feeling the sharp stone beneath his hooves, the strain in his legs as he dared to climb higher, higher still, cloven hooves cutting into the rocky soil. The exersion was exhilarating, as the air thinned and his mind calmed, taken away from the sounds and scents of the masses gathered in the court of night. They were not his kin; this was not his home, and yet, there were times he wished it was, that he could be a product of this easy life they lived, with simple conflicts and harsh politics. And that was perhaps the reason why he hated them the most.
"Speech."

As much as he fell into this fixation he held upon his past, this inability to let go, there was an old ire to be found in the stallion of the old lines. An idle mind drew accursed thoughts; a working body banished all evil. These were words he had come to know in the pits, the wisdom given by the elders to had lived lives long into the twilight hours, those who had endured through the cunning of a mind that focused on one thing; survival. This life was but one of many, a trial to rise to enlightenment, so the scarred fool had said, a man respected for no other reason than his age. An accomplishment it was to live so long in the blight of a masters hand. Judal had always believed his words folly; a delusion forced upon them to keep the masses docile, to keep the chained bound to their purpose. It was by the heat of his own resentment that he had thrived in the struggle, working day in, and day out, his thoughts whirling in a chaotic collision of hatred and desire. Perhaps this though, this poison that ruined his ability to find joy in life, was the very thing the stranger had always fought to oppose. What was freedom when one could not even enjoy it? Sometimes he would scoff, his heart aching even as whispers gave cruel reality; there was no peace in the life he lived. There would be no renewal, no great cascade of water to cleanse the dirt from his wounds. They would fester, they would rot, and one day, they would kill him. 

This, he could accept, or at least, acknowledge. And yet, as he gazed out over the vast lands beneath the banner of the night, Judal found a tentative contentment in the quiet, in the darkness that veiled the great steeps he wandered. These mountains had become his own in a way, distant from the halls that stood pledged to the sovereign line, yet another man to claim himself above others. There was no love to be had in this place he had come upon, these borders that had crossed his path in the wanderings since his arrival here, only that it offered a moments reprieve from the silence. And that was surely the one true fear he had, those hours when the shadows were so dark that they stretched over all things, engulfing even the moon and sun, leaving the night an absolute. Those hours when the murmurs of the herd fell silent, and the winds grew tired in their relentless sighs. Those hours when the memories began to resurface. This was why these mountains held a comfort for this damaged heart, her shrieks a constant, never ending in her battle cry. It drowned out everything else, it shielded him in her cold breath, and allowed his eyes to glimpse all that she could offer him. A beautiful place, one that was untouched by the dunes of gilded sand far to the west. A place where no familiar faces could be seen. To see with eyes unclouded gave him those comforts he dared to take in the deepest hour of the night, ones he had learned to finally accept, even in the gratitude of his only company.

He wasn't alone though. The scent that painted the strangers hide was the first to signal her presence, a phantom wraith from the lowlands. Silver eyes, from contemplative to sheer ice turned, the balding mark upon his face a beam of moonlight against the bleakness of the rocks. Each strike of his hooves sounded sharp against his ears, each breath swollen, exhaling from flared nostrils, taking in the smells that came up like an offering. The temptation of this intrusion upon his solitude brought the mountain blood from his perch, corded legs straining to keep him steady, a tension in his girth, his hips, his spine. When she appeared, a pale figure upon the rise of earth and rubble, Judal paused in his steps, crown rising, tilting, so he could see her more clearly. Another breath and he was certain she was no member of this court he had befallen. "Why are you here?" he murmured, a detached tone portraying his utter disinterest in her answer. "Come to pray to your beloved Denocte." That wretched fantasy.

She was of fire, of the life blood that filled the air and earth beneath his feet; the heat that rolled across his back like the brush of silk, smothering and tempting in its addiction. What would befall the serf who wandered into the desert, his back bare of the necessities to live, so enraptured by the beauty of crystal silver, shimmering in the distance, a mirage to play upon the eye. The absolute power that came with the rising sun, full and bright, casting out evil and shadow, the darkness that was set the villain in their fine retelling. It was almost a fevered mockery to his thoughts, the way in which the wind tousled her mane, the fine flaming locks a spider of fracturing light, curving over the slope of her sinuous throat, rolling as the cindered clouds of the rising sun. It was all so romantic. His expression, dull in its apathy, the cold, polished steel of his eyes watching, always watching, catching and devouring the fainted of twitches across his hide, even while amidst the tresses black and silver, his mind scoffed at the superficial guise they all held. The eyes that looked as if they stood above him, righteous in her scrutiny of him, as he was in her. They would speak of impressions in those first moments of encounters, the vital piece that would define the picture painted in one's mind, a snap shot of what beauty or beast stood before them. It was difficult to amend foul wrongs, more so when one made no efforts to do so.

In short, he resented her already, the damaged part of his memories leaping forward, twisting her beautiful picture into all the other maids that had hung off the arms of their jeering lords. Polished little birds who thought the world owed them a favor. His crown, tilted from where he had set his eye upon her shifted than, rising, the Obsidian spire of his horn a space in their meeting that devoured the silver light, leaving nothing to refract upon the disk of his face. Attentive to the wild games the peaks would play upon the naive, the stone underfoot long conquered by water and air, Judal cleared the distance, his nimble legs claiming the slope between them until at last, he stood on level ground. The zealot gales were in turmoil, thrust into open sky here, where the two halves of the mountain made it whole, buffering against the shorn length of his mane, pulling the long threads bound against the arch of his shoulder. "I could care less of which grand entity you whisper your deepest desires to when you lay your head down to sleep. Though, I must applaud you. You're are the first to not swoon your amorous devotion to revered voices." His tongue charred with the barbs he returned in favor, the fire in his chest suddenly flaring in typical Arnorian fashion, amused by her ire that seemed to live on the edges of her body. Taunt, held in perpetual tension as if she were prepared to forever defend her case.

And yet, before their game could continue, the shadows came to life, and the king of the dark appeared, away from his carnival of lights and fine wines. It was that very festival that Judal had made for the pass to escape, the silence of deserted pines a comfort, the cold and open views of the highlands more so. A spy who listened and jumped forth. It seemed their fair king was a shadow-walker. The slighter stallion passed, his body awrithe with gilded gold, spun like fine threads so fair, they seemed more apart of him than a mere vanity. They sang with his steps, the gypsy king, gone where the wind may take him. To her side, defending the 'interloper.' Interesting. Wrong? There was plenty wrong here, his slips finally splitting away from the flat affect he had kept like a solemn mantra, a coiling bark of a laugh. "To which do you refer? Her presence here on these mountains? Or her sealed lip at her religious choices? Neither truly. Though I remember something in the laws stated to me in my visit to the city that strangers were to be escorted, and not left to wander freely in the great kingdom of the Night Court." Unless she is a painted spy returned from her long voyage. The fire woman didn't not taste like part of this land... or why the king held so close to her, coming to her aid without true reason. Familiar with these hills, confident in her place and stance. A woman who had seemed as large as her vitality for but a moment until the male had come to lean over her like a devout protector of the fair maid. She suddenly didn't seem that impressive.

At least she had the spine to speak for herself. Judals' mithril gaze turned to her, a shine there in his expression, fading as it was, the amusement whisked away as he fought off what almost felt like disappointment. "What a dull question," his eyes slid away from her, taking in the lights just barely visible from their rise, the fairytale walls of the night realm come to life with the freedom from the occupation of the sun. "Names tell you so little about another. Its like... telling the blind the color of the sky. They call me Judal. And just who are you?" throwing the words back at her, finding that he really didn't care to know the answer. She had told him already who she was, just as he was in this moment. The jolt of fire quenched, like an ember left to the cold, open sky.
"Speech."