There is the usual moment of silence between the two of us, the other mare more hesitant than I prefer in females I encounter but no less calm and belonging than she should be. Most strangers startle when discovered; she merely returns my gaze, the sweep of the iris as it swallows the details before her.

That she was once here was not a fact I could verify with my own knowledge; Dog, in all her socialite prowess, would have known her had we done more journeying among the others, had we left our lonely burrows to dwell among their voices, their auras. But I am not Dog, and their company most often hurts.

It does so now, as I listen to her tale. The tolling of the bell is dark and wicked as it spies her horned face and the smooth flesh of her shoulders, and while her words are still grasped by the logical mind that lay beneath the smut of my blood, it is only my practice in overcoming its rancorous sound that allows me to continue the conversation in a fair light, rather than one of arrogance and rage.

She had been rendered unconscious during a storm, something that I had my own tribulations in; I’d survived a broken wing, having been tossed from the heavens into boughs, and the limb still suffers in the deep cold from time to time, the wound not old enough to have sunk away into the realm of phantom pains. If I dwell on the memory long enough, I can hear the bones snap and pop, I can feel the fire spreading through my shoulder to the fine tips of my wings, and perhaps an emotion reminiscent of pity floods me as I think of being unconscious in a wood with no friends to search for you.

Her laughter is stiff, drawing one of my ears back in agitation at the sound. It was useless, unnecessary – if there was no humor in her tale, why display it?

Even more annoying is that she wants to talk to Midas, and that I have not the slightest clue where the painted man roosts or where his jester Czarina may be. Both ears fall back, not a flattened state, but rather one that implied thought, a lack of something that I should have. My tail curls about my ankles.

"Perhaps he is at the steps," I say, accent laden voice rich and trickling while my eyes are distant and thoughtful, Dog’s tail wagging in approval at the notion – together, as one, we pivot to where the meetings were most often held, hoping the stranger will follow us, "what skills have you, while we search?"

My features bob with each step, curvaceous frame captured in the sunlight that ripples down the strand of land exposed to the light by an absence of boughs alongside the rivers. We will follow this one to the steps, for it is the most forward stream and will most efficiently take us anywhere we wish to be – the cold denotes there will be no swimming and the useless mare has no wings to cover them, anyway, and so I am left to my hooves, walking as a lesser beast among lesser creatures.

The bell snarls.

"I am Cealestis, of the learners, oh," I offer, searching my brain for the rather foreign word that I have been told is my position, "a Genetrix?" A dismayed whine comes from behind me, the emotional flood reading that Dog does not like being left out of the introductions, and with a twinkling eye, I glance back to her before returning my forward aims. "She is Skýlos, Dog. Either she knows to be herself."



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