Kahlua still weighed heavily on his mind, but rather than dwell in his sadness as he was apt to he had ventured from the Edge, intent on journeying to the forest to the south of the Threshold; he’d heard rumors while living in Helovia that there was a pool of rubies there beneath a giant tree, and so that was where he had gone to see if the rumors were true. It was mostly because he was a curious sort and strange, natural wonders such as a pool of rubies were intriguing, but also because he was interested in using some of them to work on two projects at once.

The idea had come to him while he mournfully dwelled in his clearing, thoughts on everyone he’d met and what all of it could possibly mean if Kahlua was not his one true love, after all. What he’d settled on is that it meant nothing, and so he should simply exist in the moment. That thought had inspired another which had led to another, until finally he had recalled the day that he’d walked in on Roskuld and Ranjiri for the first time.

Roskuld had been giving Ranjiri a band of some sort, and in return, his new friend had given the surly butterfly girl a feather in return. It was an inspiring sight in retrospect, he decided, to have witnessed something so sacred; as if they’d exchanged memories, able to wear one another on their hearts and their bodies, totems to recall loved ones by, and it had struck him with an idea that had sent him, for the first time in days, out into the world with a smile faintly lingering on his face rather than a frown.

The forest was dark and encompassing, the tall stallion looking up at the taller trees as he moved through them with the same foreboding he generally feels urging to overwhelm him when he’s alone in such miserable looking places. It’s not that the forest isn’t pretty, in its own ways, just that it is much older than that of the Edge, the trees covered in hanging mosses and their bark dark and worn by time; it is not a forest of welcome, but one of watching, and he can’t help but feel as if he is out of place here as he is everywhere else.

He comes across the great tree and the pool of stones and pauses to smile gleefully at having actually found it as well as the sight itself; while all the trees of this wood had seemed wise and knowing, this one was by far the most regal and proud of them all; it towered, as if it could snatch the Moon from the sky as she rode overhead, and the pool itself gleamed faintly in the trickling light, rising from around its roots as if the tree fed the stones.

He approaches with wonder, peering through the clear water to the red bottom, enjoying the illusion that the liquid is bloody or stained by the stones but knowing better. Deciding not to waste too much time staring at the waters, he quickly submerges his muzzle and comes up with a mouth full of gems; sorting out five large ones and several smaller ones for his other project, he plinks the rest back into the water and sets to work.

He starts with the large stones, first, focusing his will on each as he crafts them one by one into round beads, faintly transparent and deep crimson in tone.

Once he is finished with the beads, he takes a moment to clear his thoughts and turns his attentions to the other project he had in mind. Twisting his neck to grasp Ranjiri’s feather and the branch that had protected him from the wraith and the other assailant he’d earned it from, he lays them next to the stones.

Willing the image of the branch in his mind, he incases it in glass, much more skilled at the art since working with Kahlua’s flowers and thus finishing quickly, moving on to do the same to the feather. He then lays the feather down on top of the branch gently, reveling in the clink of the glass as they meet, lining the rubies down between them in the desired array.

Now, the hard part, he thinks, forcing his will towards the gems at the very bottom of the arrangement first, binding it to a glass bead and then another, connecting the gems in strands until he imagines the beads joining into a single strand and looping tightly about the feather and branch. A gentle mental prod holds it all in place, the final beads appearing along the strand as he exhales his focus in a weary puff of air.

The products, a handful of red beads and a pretty ornament, gleam at his hooves.

Grasping the feather and branch, he reaches back around towards the chunk of dark hair at the base of his withers, gently working the beading around the strands of black until the ornament rests snuggly in his mane. Smiling as he moves to gather up the beads from the earth and string them along a strand of his tail hair, he ponders his next move.

Would he actually go to Dragon’s Throat? Maybe he could just hang out around it until he bumped into her.

It seemed far easier than dealing with all those strangers.

@[Ranjiri]
I hope you don't mind me tagging you butttt he has beads ~