Home, when has it ever been so?

        Caneo is a ghost, more now than ever before. If he haunts the Dragon's Throat it's only because he has nowhere else to go, home in name alone better than all other options. He cannot fathom why he never felt this way before, this pull for something to root against, hold on to. Maybe he's just tired; certainly the past several days have tried even his desert-bred endurance, wrenching the strings of his insides further and further apart as if to test the elasticity of a soul made far too thinly to begin with.

        The moon watches from above as he crosses the bridge without fanfare. Caneo's cloven hooves, usually so light, skim just high enough to propel him forward with every step. At night, this desert looks like any other: bleak and unforgiving. It isn't to the sand he goes, but to the vast blackness farther in, where the moon peers out of dark water, laughing.

        He hates her.

        He remembers loving her, but he remembers too his young self did not understand love. Slowly then he draws up to the shore, his head low, his gaze wary and his ears twitching despite the stillness of the night. Perhaps he needs a healer; perhaps he needs to be gone from here. Unsure, aching in a way he's never ached before, he merely lowers his head to the water's edge and murmurs, “Go down.” The tiny shape woven into his mane stirs sluggishly, diminished either by pain or by fear or by the crippling anxiety in her companion's chest. He wants to rend them both apart; he settles her near the water, instead, and cocks one pale eye at the strings of muscle holding her tail to the rest of her body. Stupid.

        “You should clean it,” says Caneo, who knows nothing at all but feels anxiety crawl up his throat like rot. He hates this, too — this worry eating at his heart. “It won't fall off if you care for it right.” I hope.

        Footsteps.

        Any other night, Caneo would smother the impulse brought on by context (moon, water, desert on every side) but tonight he aches with empathetic hurt, with worry and with rage. Tonight, he snaps to the noise, to the soft voice, with a razor's focus. The movement isn't so much hasty as it is precise; Caneo pivots, his head swinging up. Between his toes, the serpent tastes of the water and recoils, like a child pressing back against every insistence he throws at her. Too cold, she breathes in shivers slow thoughts, a heaviness pressing down against the back of his mind as, separately, Caneo stares into the dark. He makes no acknowledgement toward the snake save silent irritation, as he takes in the pale creature standing apart from them still. She is a unicorn. That isn't enough to settle his nerves.

        “Did we wake you up?” Caneo says, answering her question with a question. In the dark, his voice is sweet, almost as soft as the shadows. “I hope not.” He quiets as he gaze falls to the tiny shape between his front feet. Inside, he's seething. Inside, he's running his horn through the stranger's neck. But in reality, he's just looking at her, his expression no more threatening than it usually is — maybe even pleasant. The tip of his tail twitches once. Her second question rings in his ears.

        Caneo glances down at the snake. His tail hurts. His heart beats like a hammer against his ribs. His gaze shifts back to the mare. “You're a healer?” Did he see her at the herd meeting? He doesn't even remember. “I don't think we've met.” And now is not the time for introductions, he thinks, but his attention is on the snake, all on the snake, on the light at the edges of the water and the shadows crawling around them both. Home is supposed to be safe. One ear twitches to the noise of the creature behind the girl, and it's an unsettling sight, and it sets him further on edge. Hers? He needs more time — to think — to run.

        “I'm Caneo,” he says. Gesturing vaguely at the snake, he adds, “This is a friend of mine. She hurt herself the other day while she was playing around.” And it's true — true enough — if Caneo thinks of them as the same being, the same frantic heart beat pulsing through two bodies. He's repulsed by the thought of allowing anyone else near either body, but he can't deny the necessity of the situation. “Have you healed someone like her before?” Why can't Tandavi be here, instead?