She laughs at what he says, triggering some instinctual machinery within his young male self that makes him perk up ever so slightly and honing the smoothness of his smile that reflects back onto her; its not that he’s any good at flirting when he wants to, but there are subtle things that women can do that get his hormones moving about in his usually tepid head and, finding what he says good enough to giggle at is one of them. He does not notice the change as much more than a peaked fondness towards the painted mare, a more firm sense of camaraderie between himself and the pretty warrior that he quickly disregards as no more than a coincidence of having both been shadows together in the bright and vibrant land of the Edge.

He nods to her observation, finding it to be very true. He never felt as if he was working, even while he wandered and toiled about the surface of Helovia, finding instruments of his craft and creating from them whatever it was he was asked or desired at the time. It was more fun than anything else, a purely intoxicating moment in time in which he controlled every aspect of something, a part of himself he neglected all to often with his quiet and humble nature, his desire to follow what seemed to be a greater being than himself.

The words slowly trickle into nothingness as they skirt in towards the broken wall, lingering in a rather broken span of it all as her question meets his ears and leaves him wondering why there had been all this ado for such a simple query. He supposes in some lands it may be common practice to keep things quiet about the proceedings within, but this mare was a part of their family if she desired to be here, and so, as he had seen those before him do, he is open with the painted mare who had been welcomed into the mists.

”Quite the opposite, actually,” he remarks, looking down at the gleaming fragments scattered across the earth and against the too proud to fall remnants of the Dragon Queen’s wall, ”I was actually walking its length to see where it would be best to begin taking it down.”

He wants to keep walking into the forest, nervous about lingering to close to the borders for too long ever since he discovered Ricochet slinking about in the shadow of the Moon’s throne. It wasn’t that he disliked the stallion, truly, just that the skeletons in his closet were quite purposefully placed there – and the appearance of one said bone collection outside his doorstep had been disturbing. He could risk being recognized for what he was outside the borders of his herd, but so near to it?

It would surely be the end of his time among the World’s Edge.

Hearing another arriving on slow steps, he turns his head to find the pale and seemingly glowing figure of one of the resident healers, a mare he had come to consider a friend for all that they had done together, an easily accepted one for the purity of her features and the lack of mutated instruments along the feminine lines of her tiny frame. It takes him a few moments to realize that she is crying, ears slipping back in concern for the sweet herbalist and a gentle nicker rising to his lips just as her own delicate voice follows a tender sniffle.

”It is only a moment of welcome, Resplendence,” he says, his voice so deep and bass in comparison to the meek, tear tinted words of the Moon Doctor, ”Cheveyo has come home to the Edge.” The explanation is spoken with furrowed brows of worry and his ears still hold themselves in a rendered position, not sure why it is Resplendence is crying but finding most immediately that he dislikes it with an intensity he cannot really describe.

It makes him think of Ranjiri, crying in the meadow, her young heart soured by the wickedness that had scoured the land, and it pains him to see so many unworthy of hurt as he is weeping.

He does not weep, when he should.

Why should they, for no fault of their own?

”Are you okay?” he asks, taking a step nearer to her but not really sure of the motion because she’s already withdrawn a pace or so away from them without words ever having been spoken. He’s not very good at any sort of consoling or concern, at least not as he can see, and the pounding of his heart against his ribs affirms that he is liable to make it worse just by bumbling around like an awkward fool. Glancing over to the other admitted social failure, his eyes almost plead his desire to be able to instantly vanish into thin air whenever things seemed to hard or too distressing to face before he looks back to the Doctor, that same moment of social horror replaced with one of tranquility, consolation, only the slightest discomfort with the moment bleeding into the glimmering heart of his eyes.

He had helped Ranjiri, though, hadn’t he? He could at least try for his Edge sister.