Time held a ticking hand on the bundles of curiosity. Youth endeavored to exploit, leap, and bound into its intervals, lace and weave adventures into the palm of its unruly alms, press and cajole until it gave up and allowed the lacquer of foolish freedom. Intrigue, mysteries, unraveling the nature, the wonder, the labyrinths, the enigmas surrounding their world was an eternal blip of childhood, and for all their inquiries, few were ever truly answered without guidance, without perils, without escapades. The wilderness provided a wide berth into their exhalation, into their merriment, into their delight, to soar into the skies, leap into crystalline waters, to venture deep into mazes and warrens, to beseech and possess the fiery incantations their parents spoke of, dreamed of. Speculations washed and varnished the days of ignorance, like sparks, like burns, like cinders, rupturing, scalding, igniting passionate, fervent tirades, and they sank into their lilting hides and pervading tomes of the earth, reaching for solutions not entirely in their grasp. Wait until you’re older the world whispered, wait until you’re stronger, the lands murmured, wait until you’re wiser, the winds crooned – but if they were to forever linger in the doldrums of biding, all they’d become were anticipating, anxious fiends, basking and pulling at their chains, or listless dogs, parched and scorned. Erebos held no inclination or aspiration of suspending, pausing, his crusades, too emboldened, too audacious, springing from the coils of daring, intrepid beasts, confident, assured, and brazen, christened in ashes and coals. He yearned to see the sovereigns, the terrains, the kingdoms beyond their mountainous walls, to witness power in sanctions of dust or cliffs, to possess and seize knowledge of palaces and palisades out of reach. He longed to stand amongst the unknown, trace and sketch the unruly boundaries, press his wild, untamed fixtures into the loams and declare sagacity upon its prowess; he wanted to know, to understand, to picture the provinces postured in stories and tales. The Hidden Falls, Adelric’s home, with its cascading water, or the World’s Edge, with its misty moors, or the Dragon’s Throat – because what was it like to see a dragon, a flying lizard, a firebreathing beast? Who was crowned in the smoking depths of the desert? How had it failed to fall beneath wars and pestilence?

Luckily, he had companions with similar machinations – Aithniel, flying, ivory beacon of the Basin (who claimed she’d been born within the depths of the all-mighty dunes), and Rikyn, for fellow princes always stuck together. They snuck and calculated, slithered and sidled, marched and presided as icy convoys and envoys, hummed in silence and thought in humble decrees. The lithe scion dipped and rambled over the lands of the lost; through thickets and fields, past bleeding, ferocious caves, choking, smothering, hazardous dust, refusing to falter, to turn back. Stubborn and resolute, determined and chaotic, the ruthless entropy drove his shell, his vessel, amongst the treacherous masses, potent puissance on each dreg of their journey. The lightest snippet of snake coils curled along his mind: what would his father say if he knew they were wandering through the depths of desecration, if they were escaping glaciers for sand, if they were marking explorations with brutal finesse? Pushing the sentiments away, for he held no desire for his features to become distorted and molten, he proceeded along as the terrain changed, calling over his shoulder to his comrades. “It’s so hot here!” The climate shift was a cumbersome thing, clinging to his hide like a strangling, smothering cloak; so different from their cool, chilling wind and frigid rime, but he presumed they were getting closer if the scathing, savage heat was pressing into their lungs, across their spines, out their veins as sweat and tested fortitude.

Eventually they seemed to have made it: a wide island etched by massive walls, solid stone, by carnivorous craters, by callous canyons and brilliant red hues, carved dunes and shoal carved and sculpted by an tide’s ebb and flow (perhaps he could dance and skate along its edge too – meet the sea again). Not daring to cross the strip of narrow bridge, Huyana had always commented on borders, and honestly, he didn’t know if they had machines like their grand, stalwart sentinels looming in the distance, striking down non-inhabitants and curious, prying eyes, the lad simply stared, jaw slightly slack, eyes widened, itching to take everything in. Exclamations slipped from his mouth without reluctance, impressed with the stone structures and reeling columns, the seemingly endless flat expanse, the ocean rolling into its confines. “Wow!” Most intriguing and surprising was the piece of timber in the distance, scarlet, ruddy, like spilled blood, like splashed ichor, and the little beast wondered what it meant, what it represented, or if its existence was a normal part of the wastes, thriving amongst the cactus and grass. Inclining his cranium towards his brethren, with a ruffian smirk, a hint of pride at their arrival and investigations, he voiced aloud the first question of many, twisting his head ever so slightly to indicate the cardinal tree. “What do you think that is?”

[Basin foal exploration/adventures at the Dragon’s Throat borders. Please wait for the other foals to respond first! Thank you!

@[Rikyn] @[Aithniel] ]