He still hasn’t shaken that instinct in the back of his mind. It twitches through his toes, moving them at night across the earth and past the trees, under the blanket of foreign stars. It has in days past driven him south, lost him in the dark and tangled heart of this place, but it brings him homeward now. Home. Does he call the Basin that with any honesty, or is it because he knows no other word?

        The velvet sky begins to wither, pale grey softening the crisp edge of the eastern horizon. As the stars begin to die, one by one twinkling out, Caneo pauses on a desolation of grass and ugly hillside to bid them farewell. He promises, silently, to learn their names and their stories, though he’s yet to meet anyone who looks heavenward with any wonder. They all seem quite focused on the ground.

        With a sigh, he moves forward again, hooves brushing lightly over tundra flowers and small, spongy carpets of moss. His silver fades in the bleak light, changing to match the subtle creep of dawn, the cool colorless approach of daylight. Roland promised earlier that truer cold would come; Caneo wonders about that, about the kiss of Frostfall and the future – all the future. His eyes skate appreciatively over the fragmented backs of the mountains, wondering what it’s like to watch ages pass, to look down on the small things of the world without any feeling, at all. The stars have left him here with nothing and a hollowness begins to open up within his chest. It is familiar, but still it aches.

        He thinks of home when he reaches the yawning mouth of the cave: blue, glittering his own reflection back at him. Behind him lie the hills and grasses; ahead is all cool underground, smiling in the coming light of day. “I want to go home,” he implores, the singsong beauty of his voice marred by a tremor of frustration. North, but not enough. Patient, but not enough. He frowns, his tail whipping against the sharp, narrow angles of his hocks. The strange walls glitter with a brilliance like water and even pressing his nose in toward the cold air makes his lungs feel like they’re drowning.

        Caneo steps forward, his toes echoing on the hard earth. Only once; he pauses afterward and peers down the tunnel as it stretches on, like a hungry gullet. The very essence of the places shivers revulsion all along his skin and twitching, he steps out again, even as the ice begins to glimmer like a living thing, like divinity. Even as the sun rises, brilliant and reassuring, but too far away to do him any good.