He was mistaken; Caneo learns this quickly, as the mare laughs and the girl turns her own strange, mismatched eyes on him. “No Sir, she is not my mother. Who are you? I am Zünden.”

        “Zünden,” he murmurs back, tasting it, though one ear and one eye remain cocked, for a moment, at the larger shape of the grown unicorn. She says nothing, but her laughter hangs in his mind. Her eyes, like the eyes of the bird on her back, hold something keen. Hungry.

        He smiles, and his gaze slides to the girl again. “I'm Caneo.” Cute thing; better with words than he was at that age. He feels distant, prickling concern for her, out in the wide world so young, precocious and fearless and lovely. She smiles at him, and calls him ‘sir,’ and he can only simper back, wondering how serious she is – how learned. As she thanks him, he nods, tail twitching so the thin strands at its tip sway gently in the still, sticky air. Caneo knows the smell of storm and feels it gathering around them, but now seen, he hesitates to be the first at showing fear.

        Zünden asks a question then, indicating with a motion of her strange crown the marking twined about one pale foreleg. Caneo’s long neck extends to grant him better vantage, one brilliant blue eye tracing the red-black curl of wire patterned in her flesh. Then slowly he retracts, recoiling within himself, remembering. “Hm...” Wasn’t there somebody a little like that, at the herd meeting? So many faces then... His ears tilt back as he thinks, and into the silence steps the nameless mare, vocal at last, and not kind in the least.

        He was mistaken, ever thinking her a mother.

        In silence, Caneo takes in her bitter questions, his ears pricking slowly again. Was she at the meeting, too? He can’t recall every one of the faces – spared so few of them any mind. But when he leans in, he thinks the scent of that thin air lingers just over her hide. What would the others say now, if they saw her? Lena? Roland? They both knew much better how to curb their tongues.

        He simpers, laughing silently as if at some joke, when she looks at him. Does she want to be partners in this? Co-conspirators? Something bitter, wretched, hideous writhes in his chest and he wants to laugh in her face but he smiles instead, his tail tip swaying again, and he peers down at the girl. Caneo isn’t brave enough to earn the mare’s disfavor outright – not yet – but he is a little worried, in his own way. His voice peals gently on the air again, soft, silver as the velvet glimmer of his hide. “Don’t you have a momma, though?” Go back to her, he thinks, falling silent again, waiting for the girl to act.