Poised nonchalance and callous deviations – were he in another time, another place, another motion, this meeting likely wouldn’t have existed. In Isilme, they would’ve been at each other’s throats, daggers drawn, swords bared, hatred and animosity unraveling, spiraling in decadent, ferocious possession. His father would have spit and foamed and carved every scrupulous, fractious motion, his mother would have stood in her cold, ruthless animosity, and he wondered what either would think of him now – so altered, so twisted, so consumed by the notion of saving his herd, he’d turned his back on oaths, on assurances, on plagues, and on abhorrence. But the beast didn’t lower his head and ponder it into the void, didn’t ask his parents resting amongst some other wretched earth for their forgiveness (those moments would come on his deathbed, his descent into hell, or some other otherworldly nuances; when the earth went black and he was left with only his demons, answering to all of those vehement days and those yet to come). The beast, the infidel, the demon stared into the midst and trappings of his icy kingdom, craving all the resolution, all the determination, to not falter and lay them at someone else’s fire, someone else’s mercy. The weight of his chilling gaze was taken and snagged by the mountains, by the peaks, by the shell of palisades and cliffs – it was a good, grand thing his shoulders were used to bearing such cumbersome loads, such ruffian hymns and hums, such overwhelming, boundless endeavors, because some days the parcels were heavy and indiscernible burdens. When he was younger, he would have swayed under their temptation, under their visage, under their arches and pedestals, laid out arms and rebellion, sedition and upheaval, just for the taste, the touch, the notions of chaos and bedlam; but now he knew what it meant to be tangled in the haughty wake, and had no use for it now. In some augured sway, in some unwritten future, perhaps, but the present was too imminent, too shadowed, too tense and discordant to arrant death and melee.
 
He didn’t care if the Wildfire was late. There were few things he truly cared about at all, a short list, a meager inventory: family, friends, and his herd. Gaucho hadn’t harmed any, just taken his time. The world was constantly craving and summoning and scattering them to the four corners; had it been his turn to arrive at someone’s gates, he wasn’t sure if he would’ve been expedient either. It was no bother. His silence said as much.
 
The heathen waited, still monstrous, still pernicious, still garbed and draped and veiled in the constant, puissant air of devilry and defiance, but his reticent brow roamed to study the Pegasus who’d entered his home, who’d willingly entered an icy, chilling lair. How much had changed and altered. He almost snorted, almost chuckled, almost mustered the smallest of smiles for the way life morphed, but the notion died, and his ears became the only moving portion of him. “The Basin is cured.” He nodded, casting away the stone countenance, pondering over the wiles, the nature, the scheme and fold of this meeting. But when nothing else came to pass, for both of them seemed strikingly awful at discourse and discussions, considerations and dialogue (even this seemed laughable), he proffered an arch to his brow, a twist in his calculating mind. “We have had a pest lately.” The act, the mere thought, of breaking every bone in the stranger’s body was a delightful change from the monotony of wandering, guarding, and conniving; soon, that particular Pegasus would have a history with the Basin as well. “A gray and white Pegasus. Do you know of him?”