The golden aura of innocence and delight that had framed the wiry little stallion and the even smaller bird is lost to the worry and fear that had tensed the former some moments before, and as I look from one face to another among the gathering I find that, even to me, the sudden lack of cheer is evident as the sunlight playing on the melting white mounds beyond us.

Despite the assurance of the raven, the copper crowned stallion seems barely uplifted at all, perhaps due to the fact that I had stood there staring at his emotional outburst with the silent comfort of an ebony and aureate statue (albeit a good looking one). Of course, I’m not looking at him, and all I get is the slow, almost question like statement that Kipling answers the foreign one with – and it makes me wonder why it is he’d sound so.

Had he not done right by his home to begin with? Maybe he was some delightfully cheerful and insidious criminal, not unlike I remember the former Haruspex of my youth, Zikar Sin, to have been. Were Imonada and I holding court with a wanted murderer, an eater of babies?

Somehow I doubted it. Still, the notion was exciting enough – I even fraternize with the idea as I finish my tree and look back up upon my temporary companions, most of my looks and consideration given to the unicorn rather than the feathered wench.

They both complement me and each other, like good Helovians do. I smile, reveling in the delight of their words but sharing none of my own, finding it ludicrous to complement squiggles, and foolish to repeat that which has been said twice already.

I don’t notice when the little raven stares at me, I don’t notice in all the ways I would have basked in her stare were she horned and wingless rather than a diminutive little feathery speck like she is – she has a fine figure and baring, and surely is beautiful to eyes unclouded by familial and found faith. I don’t notice and so the conversation turns to where we are from most seamlessly, my golden eyes flashing for only a seconds passing towards the mare as she leaps to the answer, her strange drawl lilting through the mountain air.

Hidden Falls. I smirk, remembering all to well of my mother’s description of a land that had been ripped asunder by the very God that had made it, transformed from fields that rolled and rippled to rivers and falls, bound by a rocky landscape and ruled by a gallant, winged imbecile known as Midas.

That Midas is dead and the Falls is very much changed from my knowledge of the Earth’s realm is outside of my reach – no one has mentioned the land but for Erebos, who described only that the World’s Edge had taken the land for their own, and so I am left to assume that most of the former denizens either live in the wilderness, or took to the leaders who claimed by might what faith had allotted before. While I have seen death and I have seen war, I do not pause to think that, in this battle, they had rode together, as they so often did.

"I must decline your offer," I answer almost sarcastically, not interested in living in some land where bloodlines mingled and fools wore crowns, "I live just a short walk from here in the Aurora Basin.

"You are welcome to come and see it, Kipling," I say with more kindness than I had directed towards Imonada, "I myself have come home not so long ago, and can promise they hold no adventures against a fellow."


[ OOC: BUNNIE TOOK FOREVER - I hope my muse is back now and I can be more swift. ^^ ]