It was funny how he seemed to be associating with those who neighbored his own little grove of rest, from the gardener to the Glazier. The gentle and sweet tones of his teacher call out to him from her nearby residence, and his chocolate ears rise eagerly to catch her words as they slip through the misty air. The first word is a name, and it is not his own, but the next fits him well enough and he is quickly on his way towards the sound of the pretty overo.

What was even stranger, while he had experienced a mild racing of the heart at the sound of the Glazier’s summons, was that when he laid eyes upon her, as always seemed to happen, that slight racing turned into full fledged pounding, the butterflies bullying their way through his belly once more. It had been going on long enough – the wall building, the herd meeting, the arrival of the singsong angel to the gardener’s club – that he was beginning to piece it together.

The sensation was similar to that which he felt when looking upon Semira or another’s bonded dragon in that they were beautiful and alluring, though he felt no reverence for the painted mare as he did the wyverns. He felt only the bright fluttering of things that were pleasant to look upon, and after pondering it for endless hours, he had finally decided what was wrong with him anytime he got near miss Kahlua.

And he didn’t like it.

It added an extra stitch of nervousness to his steps, having found that, unusually, awareness hadn’t eased his mental discomfort as it usually did when faced with the unknown. Of all the things his parents had taught him, neither had shared the secrets of the heart beyond compassion, honor, and respect, and he found himself so sorely ill equipped to deal with this sort of social pressure that, when he arrived before the Glazier, he stood still and silent for a long while, an anxious gleam burning in his eyes that he hoped came across as nerves over his first true crafting experience.

He definitely was not ready to start talking about his feelings with the source of his inward struggles, especially not when he was so covered in the smut of his sin. Kahlua was a bright white light; Dragomir knew that his own had dimmed greatly in the wake of he and Ricochet nearly murdering the black pegasus mare, and he would not let her light shallow if he could help it. If that meant he would always pine for her along the sidelines, he could accept that – so long as Kahlua remained smiling and beautiful, he could admire her from afar and it would cost neither of them a thing.

He would learn what he could from her, share in her company and delight in every moment, but there were certain things he knew he could never know. Swallowing hard after realizing he’d been standing there quite too long to be polite, he nervously clears his throat and smiles softly in the direction of one of his few friends. Could he even call her that? "Miss Kahlua," he says, bowing his head in a sweeping motion that touches his muzzle to his chest, the same gesture that he has given to Mirage anytime the pair have met, or his father; while he may find his teacher a splendid sight to be behold, she was still his superior. He couldn’t learn if she would not teach him, and for that, she had earned the steadfast respect of the young stallion.

He notices her scorpion as his eyes return to their normal level, interest peaking in him as he gestures with a dark toned nose in the direction of the sharply whirring contraption. ”When did you get that?" he asks, genuinely curious, finding the fact that it smelled like nothing else a live he had ever encountered, but was very much living; the tiny tufts of steam that jutted from the seams of the metal playfully teased his eyes as he observed its gleaming shape, the pointed barb on its highly arched tail.