World's Edge, Mesec calls the place. A lot more information follows, and as you walk the words spin and stumble around in your brain, tilting and clattering off of each other like smooth stones. You never thought about your father having his own mother before. You'd always sort of assumed your parents just existed, like gods themselves, or like trees, or anything else in the world. Your head tilts and your ears twitch as you absorb this new information. Slowly, your hooves swallow distance, and the shape of the world changes so slightly it might be the same — except you know it's not.

"What's a god," you mutter at last when you do speak, and the timber of your voice is dull, almost uninterested. You don't even know if your father hears it. Your eyes track toward a nearby pebble and you flick it out of the way with a toe, your tail twitching. It's the change feeling like snakes on your skin. It's knowing you were ignorant before. Even now, grasping at your father's story, you fail to understand. You want to wrap your teeth around this word. You want to swallow it.

Your head only jerks up when you notice the landscape ahead changing: the glass glittering in the sun, the great gate rising like a predator out of the mist. Both ears snap forward and the look of boredom disappears. Now your gait slows; slows, to bring you behind the safety of Mesec's body where you can peer out around his haunches like a frightened chick. He tells you he's going to yell, but still, you startle at the sound.

You're such a delicate thing.

And here, here in this strange place with strange thoughts swarming your head, you feel as if you've somehow ceased to be a part of the world. Or maybe — you've never been more a part of it, but it's too big, and you can't fathom where you fit in all of this, what you mean. Your heart beats in a sick, crooked way back in the direction of north, where you roamed the valley like a prince and disdained the silence of the peaks, the unchanging features of the pines. You press your small body toward the only thing near enough and known enough to strip even a little comfort from, and a part of you really wants to go further and crawl under Mesec's belly and hide, but you don't.