Like a wound he bleeds into sight, a crack opening only to let a dark whisper pour from its mouth. He does not know what to say, who to address or where to look but he knows – instinctively and fiercely so – that he cannot leave yet. He knows neither of them (that hesitant question is polite enough to answer itself) and yet there is something in him that does. Undoubtedly and incontestably a sense of familiarity, a vague recognition of something intangible, shivers underneath taut muscle, sinew and tripe.

But he does not know why and, what is more, he does not know what to make of it all.

Softly, the voices flutter against and into his ears; he looks at the twins first with question in his eyes and then to the gossamer starglow of Irrydae’s wings. Much like one of the twins – they are like an oilspill cloven in two and he finds it hard to distinguish one from the other – his eyes linger a little too long at the pegasus before slipping to the unicorn. The mares smell of here, this place of wretched magic and implausibility; it is not they who tug impatiently at the very core of him, it is not they who demand a strange and boyish longing from him. He shrugs and a small thought is brave enough to settle between his ears – they smell of home, wherever that is.

How complicated, since Skywalker has never known home.

And yet he knows: they are from the same place. The same blood?

No. That's not it. Something else.

Kutulu them a condensation of this world that seems mostly true, albeit a little filigreed by the taint of her experiences – but who is he to judge? Irrydae presents them with the prospect of answers to whatever questions might dangle unanswered and ripe in the vast unknown that stretches beyond these sylvan shadows and whimsy, mossy dapples of half-light and mystery. Skywalker will not object and remains silent for a long while, struggling to fathom the gravity of this introduction – how, why?

Do you, Skywalker? Do you know these two?

“No,” he answers simply and rolls his shoulders into a hopeless and honest shrug, because he does not.

He just knows that they belong together, somehow. These three black figures folded neatly into the gaunt and grave shadows of epic history. “But it feels like I do,” it does not suit him, this unabashed and childish sincerity.

“A world like any other,” he adds at the end of Kutulu’s words. A pause and a flickering ear here. No smiles here, either, “and all the usual nonsense that comes with it.”

“I am Skywalker.”