This place again. Strange he has known Helovia long enough to say it like that: again. The land is big but hardly big enough; Caneo traces its contours until they hold familiar in his mind. How long ago did he last gaze up at the sky for guidance? So long; he was a boy, then. Idly he drifts, cataloging landmarks like any other native, forgetting the voices of the stars and the promises they made when he was lonely, when they were the only voices he knew. They fade now; dawn overtakes them all. If he says goodbye too late, it isn't the first time.

"Are you hungry?" he asks aloud, though there isn't any need. The small thing riding now upon his back threads through his thoughts in smooth arcs; she is he as he is she, their thoughts the interplay of water between sea and stream. She shifts a little at the feel of his voice nonetheless; it trembles like frost in the wind, a thin bright sound moving from between his ribs. Of course, the snake is always hungry, but the snake is peering at the sky and tucking down her head.

Pausing Caneo cocks one pale eye at her. He almost wishes he had found her long ago, when he too craved the touch of night and loved the moon and knew nothing of what danced beneath the sun. Unfortunate for both of them he feels the music of dawn, too, thrumming in the soles of his feet and in the cool of the foggy air. "Fine," he says with a sigh and a shake of his head. His stride takes them over the green, toward the winding path and the way back down, though it's far yet. He has no business at the top of the world if she has no business at the top of the world. Caneo merely cocks an ear back as she burrows back into his mane.

And he doesn't mean to run into anybody else, but he does — almost literally. With his thoughts scattered and the way still half-hidden by fog, he fails to clock the girl exactly where she is, and then suddenly she's there, and Caneo's ears come up and he stops dead, everything about him conveying surprise. "Oh." The sound's light, a chiming bell, as his long face tips to the side and one pale eye takes in wings, takes in what happened to that ear? Is it desert he smells on her? Is it sand? And would he call her family if it was? "Good morning." With a simper, Caneo flicks the end of his tail at nothing in particular, and the snake curls more tightly around the thin strands of his mane. "Did you know, I met someone once who watched the sun rise like that every morning. His eyes melted out of his head."

Caneo...