Sex: MaleYou'll find yourself
Follow your heart
And nothing else
And you can do this, oh, baby, if you try
All that I want from you, my son, is to be satisfied
Much like the reason he was even here in the first place, the look of the sunrise didn't make any sense. Even though the sun hadn't risen to pass the horizon, dawn's light lit the world in an array of warm shades that didn't seem to match the cold surrounding him. It was beautiful and alluring and signaled the end of night and the beginning of a new day, with all the promise a new day should hold. But for all its beauty and promise, it didn't give him any hope. It didn't give him anything. Nothing did.
Weeks had passed, and still he didn't know how it had come to this. Here he sat, in the midst of the familiarity of the Spring after a journey that seemed to have worn on for an eternity, with nothing to show for himself. Mirren had left the safety of Secret Woodlands weeks ago at the first sign of winter's coming snow. The bite in the arctic air had told him that soon the world would be blanketed in white and ice, and despite the reason in him, he'd left his family and home behind to give it one more shot. To give her one more shot. Since @Kite had disappeared, he'd battled with the thought that she might be dead, or that she was alive and well and living her life apart from him somewhere out there. That she was living apart from their child. Or that she could be lost. Or scared. Or scared of him and what she thought he might do now. Or that she had died alone. Mirren battled with the uncertainty of Kite's life or death on a daily basis, unable to find even an inkling of closure, no matter what he thought or did.
Somehow, somewhere, an answer to the mystery of Kite existed. If he didn't find it, no one ever would.
And so, with Nina's blessing, Mirren had left his pack and his family and his home behind and set out into the winter wilderness on one last search for Kite.
It had taken him back to Storm Plains, where he'd been disappointed to learn that she'd never returned. It had taken him far into the north, where he'd found nothing but bitter cold and a vast, icy emptiness that had nearly swallowed him whole. It took him to the east, where, past the red hills, he'd not found even a hint of her and where no one had seen the long-legged, fair-coated woman who had been his life. He'd gone south only to find the sea. He'd been west only to find a labyrinth of land so unfamiliar that he'd almost lost his way home. Mirren had looked everywhere, and by the time all was said and done, he'd seemed to have seen every end of the world except the one where Kite might have once been.
He'd found everything that meant nothing and nothing of what meant everything. In the dark of the night, the worn Tainn reutrned to Relic Lore with not but a few fresh scars to tell of his tale ─ a story of love lost and old wounds opened wide.
...He had given it everything. He'd tried his best to find her. He'd tried his best to find the part of himself that was gone with her somewhere out there. Now, there was nothing else to do but try to live on. As he sat in the snow, watching the fiery sunrise as it danced above the lands he belonged to, his thoughts were of Lyanna's face and @Belladonna's scent and, always present in the back of his mind, Kite's ghost.
Today he would go home, he thought. But first, he would do his damnedest to leave his despair behind one last time.
