king of the neon lights
_{wore the crown on friday nights}

It was nothing new that many of my brothers had just so easily stumbled upon dragons, precious eggs laid out without a caretaker, abandoned by distant mothers (me?) or forgotten completely. For a time I tried not to be upset about it, tried not to let it get to me that they had been given dragons so casually, discovered them by sheer luck and raced away merrily with the— but slowly, steadily, it began to burn in my gut, sizzle in the back of my mind, smoke before my eyes. I was the eldest and what did I have? Not a single companion to show for it, only my toxic blood and weak bullets.

Somewhere, I think I wanted to replace the missing pieces of my family (Sabre, Mother) with something else, something better— something I know can never leave me, something I can share experiences with and develop with. A king needs an adviser, a companion to take along an his grand endeavors and diplomatic quests, someone to stand beside him as he commands a mighty military or addresses his kingdom with poise. And I continue to search for that companion, hoping that I may be as lucky as my brothers in the search (I won't be, I have never been very lucky).

I have returned to the land I first met Zhu, distant and silent as my hooves draw over the small pools of water that reflect cold, macabre features back at me. Some days I forget how empty I sometimes am, how quiet my heart is, how different I feel against the grain of the outside world. I fail to recognize the face staring back at me, the boy man looking through me with bubblegum eyes.

Behind my vanity I can feel the pulse, the surge, the crowd that gathers around some peculiar force that has so casually waltzed onto our land. It is a strange object with wild looking creatures gliding out of it, sticking out against the horizon like a sore thumb as they stand barely at the knee with their long ears and numerous eyes.

I've drawn closer now, recognizing the faces of not just one, but two children of Volterra. One fails to have the telltale bone marking (typically a skull, in some cases a bone, like Zhu), instead the filly is covered in crimson webbing stretching across the white of her body, while the younger carries the marks of Volterra— I look over them only momentarily, assessing their appearances in hopes to figure out whether they're healthy or not, wondering where their mothers are (so young, are they in the Throat with Volterra?). "Szia," I address them both briefly, the greeting slipping off of my lips with ease. I pride myself heavily in the versatility between tongues, my ability to switch so smoothly from the native Helovian tongue to my father's language.

I look to the small, hovering equine-like beings that have descended from the ramp, curious as to what they were and what they wanted, why I was drawn to them and the Flats— there was something about them that drew us all here, and I wanted to know what it was. Perhaps just the curiosity, the wonder of seeing such odd little creatures? Maybe there was something more. "What are you?" It is neither a boom nor a demand, but spoken firmly, not quite with a threatening authority but there was confidence and no hesitance in how I addressed them, focused on their alien bodies as they hovered before the crowd.
"talk talk talk"