He’d worked a long time on this particular treasure, his spirits swimming ever since he had made his last venture out of the Edge; it had been a normal day until he’d come upon a tree that had been felled by lightning, its top branches blackened and deep splits running down its sides; curious as he always was and looking to take some samples from the charcoal to use as coloration for his crafts, he had spent a good twenty minutes gathering the most firm, viable pieces from the piteous ruins of the once majestic oak before he’d seen the glimmer of something metal in the trunk.

Two amulets, one of bronze encrusted with a jade dragon and the other a bright, burning gold with ruby flame, already prepared to be strung to his neck with two matching and unique chains; the dragon pendant had the more simple attachment, a chain of linking loops, but the flame was both a solid, fish scale strand and a chained strand of burnished gold, the solid strand about a half inch thick. They were pretty, he decided, polishing them against his shoulder before slipping them over his neck, and he had worn a smile ever since.

With his very minimal knowledge of the divine structure in this land and the gifts that they gave to the equines of Loorien, he figures that the dragon emblazoned thing is of the Earth and that the other is the Sun’s, and while he also figures they are magical he hasn’t the slightest clue how. Still, he was chosen to find not only one but two, and that was plenty enough in combination with the resonating praise he’d received from Sheba to bolster his mood into one that soared almost as high as the eagles in the clear blue sky above.

The day prior had kept him fueled through the evening after returning home to settle his charcoal into his stores, and without much pause he had begun work on a pretty trinket that he hoped to offer to the Earth shrine on the strange blue peninsula he had once come to. It was all together around the size of a hoof, but much artistry and care had gone into the gleaming glass; it had taken nearly twenty stones to color it and he had been working on the project for nearly eight hours before he set to creating the final hoop which would have a strand of twine pressed through it for transport and hanging.

As the final bit came into place, Dragomir steps back from his creation to observe what he has made. The glass is carved and detailed, shaped into a landscape of a large, verdant tree growing along the banks of a serpentine river and framed by mountains, and with his collection of stones he has colored each segment; sapphires and bits of turquoise added a glinting blue tone to the water and the trunk had been colored with actual bark, the leaves tinted with crushed emerald and the mountains colored with some deep grey slate he had discovered some weeks prior. All together, the trinket gleamed and caught the light splendidly, and he was quite proud of the piece as he looked down on it in its completion.

Grabbing up twine and finishing off the neck strap, he slips the object around his neck and sets off into the afternoon light towards the shrine where he had once been chased away.

----


The blue glow of the magma lights his pelt as he crosses the land bridge into the isle of the Gods, his blue eyes ever searching for danger only to find that this place is different than it had last been. A shadow casts over head and reveals an island of sorts ringed by clouds, the fluffy white objects wreathing the isle occasionally floating down to the land mass that held the shrines before rising back up to linger with their brethren. It makes his progress slow as he looks upon each facet of the strangeness here, large hooves clunking gracelessly against the heated stone below him.

The shrines are still there, he takes note of as he arrives, and he slowly makes his way towards the stone that he believes belongs to the God he wishes to thank on this day. Lowering his neck to allow the gift to slip downward, he quickly grabs the twine strand to avoid losing his other amulets in the process.

Just as he reaches out to slip the twine down over the top of the stone, however, one of the clouds catches around his ankles and leaves him fumbling to escape it.

His timing is ill; the cloud rises too high too suddenly to allow him to dart off of it, leaving him leaning over the edge of the fluffy thing with eyes wide and horrified and the trinket he’d made for the God of the Earth dangling humorously from his lips, nostrils wide and fluttering as he inhales deep, panicked breaths.

He ponders jumping but knows it will likely end in his legs breaking, and he at least knows that the clouds will take him to the isle and that there will be more returning down to Helovia if there is something dangerous up there. He mostly wishes he had not come here this day, and mostly decides in his journey up that the Gods of this land simply want nothing to do with him at all and have spent much time contriving ways to keep him away from them.

When the cloud finally reaches a height that allows him to escape, he plunges off of it as fast as his hooves will allow him and careens through a misty veil into the splendor of the floating isle.

His trinket drops from an opened mouth, awe striking him to the core at the perfection that the Earth Lord has created here.

Pink petals trail through the faint breeze and dance around his ears as he manages to recover from his dumbstruck stillness, momentarily pausing to attain his fallen gift before delving further into the land, all thoughts of immediately leaving lost in the faint smell of others and the beautiful surroundings that exist here.