I cannot say that I am particularly driven to exploration. Maybe it is the fact I lack a stallion's urge to roam, or maybe it is simply my inbuilt laziness, but I tend to stay close to places I know. This means I have something of a conflict of interest with the patrol I have been assigned - I now have a duty to the herd, but I am also bone-idle. Still, I am trying to shed my bad old habits as I shed my winter coat, because it looks like I will be spending the forseeable future in Helovia. I know I need to change; I cannot survive here as the sedentary, selfish, cowardly horse I was accustomed to being when I had humans to cater to my every whim. Now I have to get up off my fat ass and do things myself. It has taken some getting used to, but I have managed to survive the long, cold winter, which is a start. Now, as spring blossoms over the landscape, it is time for me to be reborn as well, as Badger v2.0.

The first part of my change to be a better man has been the way I have taken to healing like a duck to water. When I helped Shadow give birth despite my fear, and when I trudged across Helovia with her family to ensure their safety, I felt a warmth in my chest that I'd never had before. A warmth that came because I helped. It was a good feeling, and one I became keen to repeat. Then the bear fight happened, and I aided Ashamin with my herbs; again came the warm fuzzies in my chest, and again I felt the thrill of being useful. Now, I walk around with herbs stuffed in my halter and countless stashes of them throughout the Throat, ready to heal the ass off anybody who gets hurt whilst in my general vicinity.

So deigning myself to patrol with the plebians is just the next stage in my development. Admittedly my enthusiasm, questionable to begin with, had waned somewhat when I had to wait by the land-bridge for three hours for somebody to let me through so I could leave the Throat - the absence of wings is draining for land-lubbing equines like myself. But I try not to let the delay dampen my hunger to fufill my duties, and I quickly make my way through Helovia to the uncharted territory of the Veins.

The sight of another godforsaken land-bridge makes me roll my eyes, but thankfully this one doesn't seem wont to disappear randomly and only open in the presence of someone with a key. Tentatively I walk across it, breaking into a trot just in case it chooses to poof beneath me and cast me into the ocean. My ears are folded half-back as I scan my new surroundings, drinking in the blue veins, the ominous volcano in the distance, the aura of power. There's not even a speck of grass in sight, and a land without food is not my kind of land.

I stand in the middle of the Veins, careful to perch on a piece of solid rock nowhere near the creepy blue lava. I lift my head and scan around for the rest of my patrol, hoping they arrive soon. I might be doing my level best to become a better man, but that doesn't mean I'm not still scared of my own shadow and most certainly do not want to be left here alone. ""