The red dangles tantalisingly close, like a delicious apple growing just out of reach. He aches to lean his muzzle forwards and touch it, to see if it is as solid as his father's green had been when she entwined the amulet in his mane, or whether it is as flimsy as the fog that looks real until his hooves crash into it and send it dissapating into nothingness. The songs they make, the childlike laughs they create - oh, how he wants to dance amongst them, to be bonded heart and mind to them! Imagine, him, Dragon King, master of the beasts. Of course, the brash boy does not realise that dragons can never truly be tamed or controlled, that they tie their consciousnesses to horses out of choice, not out of fear. A part of him - the domineering, overbearingly arrogant part - sees them as dumb animals like the deer and the rabbits. Majestic, yes, regal, yes, dangerous, definitely, but less intelligent than the equines they bond to, less evolved, less advanced and less capable of true complex emotions. It is a blinkered point of view that will likely not change until he bonds with one himself - if he is ever to be so priveleged.

The young leviathan's pride is deeply wounded at the scoff that leaves the dragon-girl's muzzle, and he flips his ears back and gives a haughty pout. Her words sting, and his lower lip ejects dangerously - a sure sign that a fully-fledged temper tantrum is on the way. "I'm not small! I'm bigger than my sister, and most other foals I've met!" Indignant voice is filled with boyish conviction and masculine desire to be the biggest and the best. Naturally, he is small in the grand scheme of things; he is only a handful of weeks old, an infant, but he doesn't particularly appreciate the insult, even from a god. But she seems adamant that she isn't a god, and surely if she was she would want to shout it from the rooftops? And, if not a god, then what the hell is she?

She gives a name, and he files it away, deciding to ask his mother about it - Confutatis has her metaphorical fingers in dozens of pies, and would surely know of a half-horse-half-dragon running around Helovia. "I'm Volterra," he says, pout disappearing and chest thrusting out proudly at the giving of his name. His curious red gaze never leaves the dragons or their bonded, darting between each of the trio with barely-veiled hunger. "You look like a dragon, but you look like a horse, too. How?" Perhaps it's a disease she caught? If so, he sure as hell wants some of that disease. Imagine, scales! "My father had a dragon," he announces. Yes, his sire is his father now, not his Pa, because only tiny little children said Ma and Pa, and the young colossus is far too old for that now! Why, he's almost a whole month of age, and must be sophisticated to reflect that. "She was green, like that one." He gestures with his nose to the green, who lacks Cynder's flame-tail, leading the titan to wonder quite how much diversity there was amongst the draconic species.