The world had been quiet since Mune took over being the Guardian of the Moon. It'd had taken him those dangerous, frightening days and nights to find a balance, to find himself, but find it he did, and the balance he'd made was one that fit the world well. He took to it like a fish to water, after he learned to trust himself.

Leeyoon had to admit he was doing a good job. He hated it, of course, and wished it was himself up on that marvelous moonbeast, wished it was he that carried the moon and the balance and saved the world. Of course, he'd never have put the world in danger in the first place-

No, no, those were vicious and dangerous thoughts. Thoughts that had made him help darkness almost consume the world he loved so much. It was arrogance, selfishness, and he supposed he should know better by now.

Still, when you dedicate your life to being and becoming a certain thing, to do a job, and that job is taken away, what is one to do but reflect and perhaps feel bitter, if only for a small while?

And that was where Leeyoon found himself, and had been for some time. It seemed like years had passed, but truthfully it'd only been a few months. He contemplated his purpose in life, or rather, his new lack of one. What was he to do now? What could he do? He knew the moon, the night, being a holy leader, being important, being everything he wasn't anymore.

He supposed no one was unkind to him for having been usurped by Mune, but no one seemed to miss him when he stayed in his cave for days and days and slept and didn't speak. No one came to look, anyway, though he had barked at a faun a while back for waking him, so maybe that was his fault, too.

He'd been in his home for too long again, feeling the walls as intimately as he knew his own form, as well as he knew how the cycle of night and day passed, as well as he'd memorized the books and ancient writings.. too well. The quiet drip of water in the dark recesses was too familiar now, no replacement for words or conversation or birdsong, and it made him ache for the outside. And yet..

No. He sat up, body cracking from too little movement, and made his way outside.

Night had just crossed over the land, the early evening flowers alight in blues and pinks, the fauns singing them to life. Their coos once seemed mystical to him, but now they were a language he knew well, a language unto the land itself. All it took was his touch to stimulate the plants similarly, but he kept his hands to himself now. He didn't feel worthy of the honor of stoking the land to waking, not when the moon herself-

More dangerous thoughts. These ones he'd humored too many times, feeling pity and bitterness and a wrath directed not outwards, but in. He'd worked so hard, after all, had studied and worked and toiled to be what he was supposed to be, and it wasn't enough? What a miserable thing to know.

He walked near the fauns as they performed their duty, listening to their songs, and though several waved, no one spoke to him, and he felt that suited him just well. His voice was dry and cracked and untested for several nights now, and if he were to have to speak, well, he didn't think his normally smooth voice would be the one that appeared.

Early evening turned to midnight, and the tasks of the evening fell into self care and community work. Food was shared and the fauns talked amongst themselves in groups. Leeyoon only walked, lost in thought with a conversation between himself and his demons, though they were thankfully less literal than the ones that had preyed on his weakness. He walked and thought and walked and thought, until a small conversation suddenly caught his attention.

"..She didn't look so good. So pale! And thin and wobbily!" A faun complained, voice caught between embarrassed and concerned. His companions bopped his shoulder with a mild and fake aggression.

"Stop making things up! There's no fauns outside the group, Nule, and certainly none like that."

"No, I swear I saw her! She even had an unclipped tail, and when I tried to ask her about it she looked at me like I was gonna bite her and ran off! Why would I make this up?" Nule whined at the disbelief. Leeyoon had come to a full halt at the edge of the clearing across from the pair. This story was.. peculiar. An unclipped tail on an antisocial faun? Two impossibilities that contradicted his understandings of the world.

"Because you like telling stories an' fibbin'!"

"Meela!" Nule whined, but Meela only smirked, as if she won a secret game. "I can prove it, I can! I saw her just past the northern limits of-"

"Oh, stuff it. I believe you, now can we just leave it?"

"Shouldn't we do something about her?"

"You tried; she didn't seem to eager to be helped, so let her live with that." Meela shrugged. Nule thought on that for a minute, and then shrugged in compliance, and both went back to their breakfasts and more common conversation.

Leeyoon, however, was still halted at the edge of the clearing. He wasn't usually one to be conscious of other people, but something struck him about this supposed solitary faun. He couldn't put a finger on it, but he felt a strong pull, or connection. A curiosity, at the least, he supposed.

As a leader, he had often previously put on a show of being compassionate and magnanimous and considerate. He would have made a grand show of going after this clearly crazed creature, of bringing her back to society and being her personal hero, but he wasn't performing that role any more, not in any sense of the word.

But.

But, he couldn't imagine going back to his home and sitting in the dark, beyond the depths where illuminating plants grew and where fauns slept and ran and lived, and staying there, not knowing this. He couldn't imagine that he wouldn't just sit there and wonder about that faun, lost and unwell, for what faun avoided her own kind? What faun had never had her tail clipped?

And, like that, more and more his thoughts were consumed with a need for answers. If she was a myth, he would soon know. And, if she were real, he'd know how she came to be the way she was.

Leeyoon slipped into the woods, heading north.

It was nearly day when he was almost ready to give up. His feet hurt from misuse and their sudden expedition, his back ached from being upright so long, and even his eyes hurt from the exposure to light, even the gentle lights of the flora around him and the moon in the far distance making his head ache. This discomfort had quickly turned to a seething attitude, but even that old feeling wasn't quite as deep as this strange need to know, and so he kept going.

He hadn't seen any sign of unusual activity, having wandered out of the fauns usual territory into less tamed woods, but he followed nearly the entire northern 'border' on the words of the faun Nule, and wasn't done looking. His ears and nose were weak compared to fauns, but his sight was immaculate; if there was a chance she was real and had left signs of being out here, he would undoubtedly find them.

It was difficult to fight the agitation of the struggle, but something about that felt.. invigorating. He hadn't tried to do anything in so long.. even if this search was fruitless, he thought, it was the most he'd done in quite a while.

Or, if he were being honest, it was probably the biggest thing he'd ever done, for he'd never done anything outside the shadow of his supposed destiny.

He wasn't sure if he liked that thought, but he didn't have time to really reflect on it, because that's when he found her.

Quietly, almost unnaturally so, even for a faun, she was walking just twenty paces or so ahead of him, and she was just as Nule had described. Her gait was uneven, unbalanced, her cloven hooves stumbling, only barely catching her weight beneath her. Her fur was paler than any other faun's he'd ever seen, and true enough her tail was as long as she was tall, thick and muscled and fluffy with wavy hair at the end. Leeyoon had never seen an adult faun with an unclipped tail, as it was tradition to remove them before the faun's first year was up. It was an issue of balance and health- ancient books told that more often than not the tails of fauns were how they were caught by the few creatures who would prey on them, that they were too weak and broke and caused illness. The books were unclear how, exactly, but the tradition remained.

The fact that this faun had survived to adulthood, tail intact, interested Leeyoon all the more. He hesitated, though, because he remembered what else Nule had said, that she'd been aggressive. Leeyoon wondered now if she was sick; she was antisocial, according to Nule, and no faun that he'd ever met behaved that way unless they were very unwell, and the same was especially true of aggression.

Still. He wanted to know.

Quietly, he cleared his throat and tested his voice, and when he felt satisfied with the sound he could produce, he called out, "Faun!"

Like pale blue lightning, her head whipped around, eyes latching onto him almost immediately. Leeyoon was struck still with shock, her eyes showing nothing but fear. There was a tense second of stillness, her fullbody fur ruffling from hoof to tail to shoulder.

And then she ran.