They return to each other worn, like toys taken out too often. The sharp edges have gone and reformed elsewhere. Things once bright, once so important to who they were, no longer exist at all. And yet they are the same. Caneo, quiet now, even his harmless curiosities bottled up, and Essettia, soft with weariness, with the weight of some suffering he cannot guess. His heart flutters its tired wings in triumph when the mare softens under his touch. That was a daring thing, a new thing, an action his past self would never have dared take. He does not regret it, now. He gazes at her with softer eyes, a little warm, a little happier. Perhaps the anchor pulling him back to Helovia is not here; perhaps that was not what he needed to find.

        "Okay," he says gently in response to the first statement. One of his ears turns back, painting a mild frown across his features. He wonders what exactly she suffered, what she has lost. And is there some way to return it? Or are certain parts of them truly lost, gone forever to the whims of age and time? Does that make them broken or simply different? He isn't sure. Caneo has always felt something missing from himself, but outside the minds of others, he cannot judge whether or not such an experience renders him unique. He knows he wants Essetia to be happy, though. He wants to feel the joy and mystery she evoked in him on their first meeting, under the snow and the dim glow of lights.

        So maybe he can take her there again.

        Maybe growing up means nothing more than living through mistakes. Caneo listens to her speak about the Dragon's Throat. His own face mimics, shyly, the smile opening on hers. "I grew up in a warm place," he muses aloud. His younger self remembered sunlight like a wound, remembered only fear chasing his heels across the endless white sand. But there were good things also, weren't there? Things which made him what he is now, fragile thing refusing to break, hollow thing trying to fill. This Dragon's Throat sounds softer than his past, but maybe pleasingly familiar, too. Something in Caneo's blood aches for sunlight and the stretch of miles under his legs just as his heart cries to the moon and the voices in starlight. "Home," he breathes, softly, after the mare. And when was Caneo home?

        He has spent a lifetime in search of such a thing.

        "It's different," he allows, "from any other place." And how much can he tell her? And how much can he admit to himself? "I think there are things here I can't forget." Caneo frowns again, and sighs. "I came back because I couldn't leave." If that is home, it feels somehow less substantial than he expected it to. He returns the cold blue of his eyes to the vibrant green of hers, his gaze steady, expression fathomless again but hardly unwelcoming. "I want to see your Dragon's Throat. Not someday, but today. Or tomorrow." Plans fall apart and get forgotten; he tires of dreaming only to be led astray, but he allows a little extra time, assuming they will walk some distance. He recalls Helovia is large, a vastness once important to his dreaming mind. He hesitates then, maybe fearful his next words will break something of what is between them. But the knowledge he wants to give is knowledge those close to him must have, if he intends to keep anyone close.

        "My name is Caneo," he says. The first person he said this to laughed at him. That was a long time ago, though, and the bones of that creature have long been picked clean. Such is the fate of those he has held dear. But if Helovia is kinder, if Helovia is home... He gives his name now to someone he would choose for a new family. "I guess you should know it."