Mother told him not to wander away from the Edge. You're too young, she said, ever so sternly, using that patented Death Glare that only a mother can possibly summon. If you want to go outside the Edge, I'll come with you. She'd said the same to Esinakh, and Arakh wonders if his twin has as much disregard for their dam's instructions as he does.

Probably. They're two halves of the same whole, after all.

He'd been content to heed her command for a couple of weeks, happy to frolic inside the Edge with Esi and get to know their home, and follow joyously on the handful of occasions when Nyx took her twins to interact with their father. But any adventurous little boy soon feels the call of the wild, and the bull-horned youth is no different. He feels a heavy stab of remorse at leaving his twin behind, as they do so much together, but he'd wanted to make his first proper journey outside the Edge alone. It is like a coming of age, a rite of passage...and he wouldn't want to get his sister in trouble, because he's quite sure Mother is going to be furious when he returns home.

After he's illicitly darted over the Edge borders at a headlong gallop, there's only one direction Arakh has any intention of going. Mother has ensured that her twins regularly meet their sire, the great behemoth of a man whom Arakh holds an untold amount of awe for, but he's never interacted with Gaucho alone. Esi and Mother are always there, and the colt simply wants to meet his Ave when it's just him. So his path immediately turns to take him towards the Throat, following the scent-trail caused by Mother's many jaunts between Edge and Gaucho's herd.

He alternates between a trot and a gallop, his wings trailing along behind him like a pair of feather dusters. He hasn't yet started learning how to fly, so he's resigned to the ground during his long trek. Soon, he is aching and tired, because this journey hadn't seemed nearly as long when he'd had a regular supply of his mother's milk to keep him nourished. He doesn't dare stop and rest for too long, for fear he will be eaten by an opportunistic predator, and his stout young legs are soon wobbling weakly from the effort.

Just when he's beginning to wonder if he has made an awful mistake, the exhausted colt reaches the edge of the world itself. This is familiar to him, and he looks expectantly for the land bridge to lower. It doesn't. He frowns, waits a little bit longer; still nothing. Well, that won't do. Mother will have realised he's gone now; she'll be searching for him soon. He's losing valuable minutes by waiting here, minutes that he could be spending with his beloved Ave.

Arakh pouts, furrowing his brow. The Throat island doesn't look that far away....flying surely can't be that hard....the colt makes up his mind quickly, spurred on by his desire to spend as much time with Gaucho as possible. He unfurls and ruffles his wings, admiring them for a moment. They appear sturdy enough...and think how proud Ave will be when his youngest son lands, ever so elegantly, upon his shores! The boy reverses, deciding that a run up is the best way to do it...he breaks into a gallop again, his tiredness forgotten in his eagerness to taste flight for the very first time...

He leaps off the cliff and, for one glorious moment, he catches the wind beneath his wings. He's flying, and it's amazing...the early evening light catches the waves beneath him and causes them to reflect their light back at him, it's gorgeous, it's stunning, he's flying...

Until he's not. He wobbles, and suddenly his wings are angled all wrong; they're not catching any air beneath him, they're not strong enough, he's falling. An ungainly feel of weightlessness sends his stomach lurching as he falls, crashing into the ocean below with an almighty splash. He thrashes, upside down, water filling his nostrils, ears, eyes; he can't see, he can't breathe, until by some stroke of fortune he finds which way is up and bursts through the surface, gasping in the salty air. His feathered wings fill with water and weigh him down, and he doesn't know how to swim - he flails his legs, hoping that will keep him afloat, and panic grips his heart like a vice. "Ave! Ave! Arakh need help!" he yells, as loud as his exhausted lungs can manage. Oh, what if his Father isn't home? What if nobody ever finds him? What if this is where he's doomed to die - drowning in the sea, drowning from his own stupidity?