Noises of welcome sounded out from somewhere behind him, the youth abandoning his gemstone discovery to peer over his shoulder towards the source. Unvoluntarily, his muscles tightened as he caught the sillouette that had called out to him, the dark shape of a wing rising from the frame of the horse, a smaller winged being hovering nearby the shape. The windless day drew a frown of displeasure to his lips, muzzle working away at the particles of air that met their open and eager breaths to no avail; the pair might as well be ghosts in this weather, from this perspective. Still, he was not over enthused to approach the bizarre pair, staring at their shadows with a rather grim expression painted upon his young face, a long silence stretching itself between his notice of her beckoning and the present.

Looking hard at the pegasus and what was surely a bonded creature of some sort, he decided that it was liably a female or a young male; the muscles along the slender and lean frame did not hint at masculinity, the jawline delicate and feminine, not robust as a man's should be, the absence of the high, heavy cheekbones he had seen on all aged stallions leading to his decision. He could defeat a female pegasus, or another male slightly younger than himself; he was only three, but the year of muscle that had built upon him since his second set of seasons showed great promise of substancial physical power, and already, testosterone had begun to reshape the youth of his face into a more wisdomed and adult look. The same changes had thickened his mane and tail, the waved locks longer and less easy to manage than they had been when he was still a boy; they knitted together in places where he couldn't be bothered to untangle the complex knots that had bred around whatever stick or bramble had found him.

He mourned his solitude as he took his first step towards her, bid forward by Mirage's foreboding words in the Threshold; of all things, he desired to be accepted by the Gods of this land. The deities his father had passed on to him, Nieque and the prince Aarde, would always remain the most prominent of his spiritual totems, but Dragomir was a smart boy. He knew that to be beloved by the powers of a land was to have power of your own, and he knew also, through the teachings of his parents, that the approval of a being so great to be called God meant a more fruitious life. His Gods were dead, for all he knew, lifeless as their lovingly crafted land, and their bones would serve him little in this kingdom of three-faced divines; they would serve him even less with the lady Mirage, and so he half heartedly attempted a task that would please both the great powers in his new life. Besides, she was not a unicorn; as far as he knew, the only ones to truly avoid wore horns.

As he approached, he noticed what could not be seen from his previous distance; she, for it was indeed a woman, wore only one wing. It was hard not to stare - his pale eyes widened at the sight, immediately drawing a figurative blush to the easily embarrassed male; diverting his gaze quickly to the bird thing that accompanied her. It was surely pretty, that was to be sure. Such a deep black that it glistened violet in the right light, shimmering with diamond dust, but it's talons made him uneasy, the shining curve of its beak an ill omen he wished no longer to gaze upon. An so, he looked to her eyes, smiling uncomfortably at himself. "Hello," he stated simply, his voice deep as mid-ocean waters and just as dark, a wandering ear slipping backwards as his teeth remet another with a silent clack. It was all he would say, feeling no great kinship towards the disfigured stranger; he didn't know what else to open with, really, even though his curiosities were numerous. Where was she from? The feathered woman smelled of sand and heat, the ever present must of wings. His brain wandered south, past the pit and towards the desert that sprawled outside of it's red, rocky girth. Surely there wasn't a herd located out there, in that inhospitable wasteland, and if there was - how did they survive?

And, most pressing - had she been born as she was now? Even if he craned his head, he couldn't see her shoulder where the other wing should be, and knowing from his current vantage this fact he didn't even attempt it, merely ruminated various theories within his head to explain the oddity of this already odd being. Perhaps it had been ripped off at her her birth, by parents who knew she would never be as great as her equine half disfigured as she was by the blight of feathered blood in her veins. It was possible, also, that something more heinous had occured - unicorns, he thought to himself, pondering away at just what this seemingly good natured mare had done to insult the venemous swordsmen, or if that had even been the case, half heartedly awaiting her reply.

@[Africa]