His dam's voice jerks him from his impassive assessment of the corpses, and he turns to face the tribrid giantess. He feels himself relax slightly, the tension and panic of his upset routine beginning to filter slowly out of his body. His mother, more than anybody except Otem, can calm him with a mere look. Her voice, like his own, is devoid of emotion or the bewildering, unpredictable ups-and-downs that denote feeling or emphasis. Whenever other people talk, it's so confusing for Vulkán. Not only does the tone of their voice dart around in a cacophony of noise, but a simple movement of their eyes can utterly change their meaning, before even getting started on the myriad muscle twitches and ear flicks that add a whole different layer to a conversation. The volcano-boy just doesn't comprehend these bizarre cues, and especially not when other horses insist on telling lies, or making odd jokes that make no sense in his mind. Other living things - other conversations - are vast puzzles that Vulkán struggles each day to solve.

Not his mother. She speaks in ways he can understand - he wishes everybody was like her. The world would be a far simpler, more orderly place if everybody just said what they meant using just their words instead of inserting utterly pointless layers of meaning into their posture and tone.

He is about to greet her with Mother, then he hesitates. He isn't sure what to call her, and hasn't yet asked what she prefers, so he settles instead to use the term his father had taught him in that odd guttural language of his. "Anya," he greets. Mother. "Burying them would be a waste, as they could feed another animal. We should move them." He nods his white-painted head decisively.

At her question, the colt finds himself staring at her, trying to comprehend her meaning. It seems like such an odd question...why would it trouble him? "Should it? It does not affect me or my family in any way." He speaks so matter-of-factly, so maturely for a colt of his delicate age, yet he genuinely cannot understand why his mother would think him upset by the death of two little birds. There was that stirring in his gut that told him he should feel something, but there's lots of things he should do and doesn't.

He glances down at the corpses, then back up to his giantess mother. "What is death?" he asks her in that monotone voice of his. It is a concept he understands the basics of - these birds are no longer able to move, nor do they need to eat, nor will they ever reach adulthood, so they appear suspended in a state of eternal youth - yet not the mechanics of. Why do herbivores like themselves fight so hard against predators? What causes that primal will to survive? What can be so terrifying that it seems to incite such emotions in others?