The enthusiasm with which the girl spun about to greet him was suprising, Dragomir balking backwards a pace as an unknown name was shouted at him. The swift decimation of the brilliant smile, however, immediately slowed the racing of his heart and replaced it with a feeling of saddened confusion; he was unsure how he had failed her, or even how he had initially inspired such joy from her with his stammering attempts at conversation. Thankfully for the distraught young male, however, she answered the question in turn, her sad eyes looking him over and filling him with a secondary curiosity at just who this Fewrare was. Dispondently, she agreed that the task of removing brush from her path was the best place for an unskilled being such as himself, his head nodding slowly in mixed emotional turmoil as he quietly began to slip away from her to begin his tasks, very much like a dog with it's tail held between its legs; however, she also offered him lessons, to which his flustered face bloomed into a soft and pleased grin and peered back over his shoulder towards her, his second nod more fervant and cheerful than the first. "Excellent," he said, happy that his teacher wouldn't be as wise or superior to him as was Mirage or Smoke; that they could learn together set to motion a stream of pleasant emotions towards the overo mare that Dragomir couldn't properly describe - though he didn't attempt to, for once in his short life. "I look forward to it, Miss Kahlua."

Giving a polite and slightly awkward miniature bow, his dark muzzle pushing towards his chest and one forelimb extended to lower his front half just a smidgeon towards the earth, he continued away from the Glazier and towards the nearest pile of branches and limbs that had been ripped from the heavy trunks of the trees Mirage had torn from the earth. Grasping the first of many branches to be relocated, he began seperating the larger pieces from the smaller, forming several piles along the outskirts of the cleared area and attempting to remove those nearest the pretty lady to allow her to keep constructing on the glass wall. As each pile turned into a mound, he slid off into the woods to gather some vines to use as tethers, returning with several long and thick green plant forms that he had located to the easterly side of the forest. The thick vines sported withered and seemingly once blue flowers, and he found that while he worked the make-shift rope about the bundles that it unleashed a pleasant and holistic smell. Marking the plant and where he had found it in his mind, he intended to later ask Smoke or another of the myriad herbalists about just what the vines were, but for now he found that it made quite excellent binding material and was satisfied in this new found knowledge in itself.

With his bundles in tact (about twelve from each pile) he began the process of dragging them to the nearest camp fires to the wall building location. He supposed he could leave well enough alone and let them sit along the outskirts of the forest's edge where he had initially piled them, but all too often he had seen the others of the herd gathering burning materials from all across World's Edge nearly daily. The gathering had slowed with the change of the seasons, to be assured, but that same change would soon bring the cold back around, and the more warmth that the fires could provide for him and his peers, the better off they would be. On each collective bundle, he'd left a length of vine around two feet long for him to grasp and drag, and soon enough he was back at rebuilding his individual piles of debri.

And so it continued, for many days, the young man remaining silent but for the occasional, "Excuse me," and "Thank you," given to those who toiled on the task at hand around him.

-------

On the final day of building, he stood and admired the massive structure that Kahlua had built; there was still plenty of wood to be moved to other locations, but all in all, nearly all the fires within the Edge had been visited by the painted stallion baring his gifts of combustion, and the weariness of having ceaselessly wandered to and fro had worn down on his stamina and filled his desires to do anything other than work. For being young, Dragomir was rather strong willed and determined, and where most youths would have grown bored and wandered away from the labor, he had found great delight in the muscle building endeavor. For one, it had given him an opportunity to learn more of his herd mates, these strangers who he mostly avoided and surely never went out of his way to converse with; even the non-equine members had been quietly observed rather than balked at, an achievement that he was quite proud of. He still was not sure if he believed Mirage's words that they were all the same. It would seem that most of the faces who had come to bolster the defenses of the Edge had been equines, a reaffirmation of a deeper work ethic and stronger physical prowess than other species. But those who had come baring horns or wings had shown no signs of being less capable than the earth walkers who had come, and so he was left with a luke warm, grey tinged sort of emotion as he usually was.

The greatest of lessons, however, were not those in reconstructing his soul to better fit an undivided universe as Mirage wished of him, but those he gathered watching them all toil away in unison. Like clockwork, they moved as gears with one another, and he found that in their joining, they had accomplished what one being could never do alone. He thought of his parents as he watched the overo lass set her mind to the last section of the wall, and their life of near solitude on the island. Even if he had not left and Svello and Vihar were there to assist, he did not believe that all five of them could have accomplished what he was now looking at. In fact, he had a hard time truly accepting that it had been Kahlua herself from whom the wall had formed, watching her in quiet concentration from his reprieve with a sense of respect and awe that had built in him during all his time working alongside her. Weariness knit her shoulders, as he was sure it did his own; but he worried for her, knowing that she had worked much longer than he had, and while the work she had taken on was not distinctly physical as his tasks had been, he did understand that utilizing magical talents required a mental energy - energy that she was surely running low on.

Seemingly in response to his inward concerns, the final segment of the collosal wall glimmered into existence, the girlish paint spinning about and bursting with enthusiasm for it's completion. His own smile was friendly and exuberant in it's own way, though less vibrant than Kahlua's to be sure - Dragomir's emotions weren't a leaping, sparkling river like Kahlua's, much rather the whisper of water beneath two inches of ice, but he derived great pleasure from her own happiness, much more than showed in his limited emotional expressions, a tangible sense of pride lingering between all of those who had come to improve the security of their perimeters. Bouncing around like an excited sparrow, Kahlua's affections assaulted Dragomir briefly - truly just a jovial rub with her muzzle along his shoulder - and left him standing like a statue, paralyzed by the touch as if electrified, staring wide eyed with a stupid grin still lingering on his face as his eyes disbelievingly watched her carry on to maul others with her joy.

The already broad blue gaze of the young man nearly let the orbs burst from his eyes when the jigging crafter's knees wobbled and buckled beneath her, sending her elegant and beautiful frame to the leaf strewn earth at the base of her latest creation. A sharp intake of breath followed his shock at her collapse, limbs quickly carrying his weight to her side. "Kahlua?!" he nearly shouted, panic filling him as he arrived at her crumpled frame; a sigh of relief left him as he noticed her ribs delicately rising and falling with breaths, though the concern didn't fade from his features. Raising his head from it's position of inspection, having found no immediately wounds on the mare other than the assured bruises where she had impacted the earth, he looked to Mirage and the others for guidance, unsure of what to do. "She's breathing," he said softly, deep tones alive with a hum of worry for the Glazier. All of his day dreaming of learning how to build as Kahlua and the others did flashed before his eyes, the strange lull of attraction that he felt towards the heap of beautiful woman at his hooves driving his panic at her collapse. Ever the honor bound fool, the young man was inclined to stand alongside her until she woke, to protect her from... from what? Squirrels? Falling pine nuts?

"Don't suppose we can just leave her here," he muttered, looking back down at her with an expression so distressed that he surely would have had a good laugh at himself, were there a mirror at hand, his nose hovering above her sleeping frame, hesitant to touch her despite an obvious lack of personal boundaries in that area on her behalf (she had just tackled all nearby with affection, hadn't she?).