The first indication that he is not alone is when the stag he's observing stands up stark straight, bob-tail held erect and ears pivoting frantically as the water from his drink trickles down his chin. Volterra watches from the shadows, wondering if somehow the stag had managed to detect him, but the great deer's antlered head is pointed towards the other side of the clearing. Just like that, his legs whir into motion and he disappears back to the forest, leaving the colt resolutely alone, or so he believes. Disappointed, but pleased he has managed to file away a new scent for the future, the young barbarian moves towards the now-vacated pool, intent on having a drink himself - until he sees a sight on the other side of the clearing that makes him freeze. It is suddenly apparent that the stag he was spying on did not flee from Volterra himself, a harmless young colt, but from this.

She is dragon. Juvenile memories of his father's bonded flash before his eyes, all sharp scales and elongated tail, yet it is though that memory has spliced itself with the picture of a horse, to create something that is both. She is not purely dragon, that much is apparent even to the colt's young brain, but nor is she fully equine. He suddenly feels remarkably dumb for ever thinking Auriel was a dragon simply for having horns and wings - he'd been a lot stupider a couple of weeks ago, apparently - because this creature puts unipeg hybrids to shame. Not only is she armoured in numerous places with scales, but two dragons flutter above her; a red and a green, like Cynder. "Woah," comes the colt's awestruck voice in the form of a breathy whisper. Something about the young mare's dragons do not seem entirely right, however; they are not as solid as Cynder was, almost as though they are visions as opposed to reality. But none of this matters to the young titan as he steps closer, feathered feet kneading the moist soil below as his nose flares to inhale the new scent of this dragon-girl. A boring old deer is nothing compared to this new discovery, and the memory of the stag is ejected in favour of this.

He stops a short distance away, crimson gaze focused on the two dragons - he may have no sense of self-preservation, but he does recall the danger that his father's dragon exuded, and knows better than to bound up to them and their bonded when they could burn him alive in the space of a second. "What are you?" he asks her, blunt and juvenile in his unbridled curiosity.