The bastard can feel Cynder's pleasure as the white returns her request to play, and she throws herself from the Rotunda roof in a shower of snow. Coupled with her desire to socialise, Tyradon can feel something else in her, a strange emotion he's never felt from her before; the desire to mother this youngster, to take her under her experienced wing and teach her everything there is to know of being a dragon. It hasn't escaped the stallion's notice that Cynder has never borne hatchlings of her own, despite the fact that she, too, is nine years old, albeit with the current age of a nine month old. She had simply never found a male dragon to mate with, as her prime years had been spent with equines who had never bonded. Meeting a young dragon brings out all the maternal instincts in her that Tyradon had never realised she possessed, and as she follows the white he senses her asking in a draconic series of chirps and hums - can you hunt? If the answer was no then the jade war-dragon would be more than happy to teach her new white acquaintance, as a mother would a hatchling.

It is strange for the monolith to feel such things coming from his companion, who he has always regarded as asexual - it had never crossed his mind that she might be remotely broody. With a shake of his massive head he switches his attention to the colt, whose build suggests he will grow into a large adult, probably courtesy of his equine heritage, as Tyradon finds unicorns to be dainty, slender little wisps. Breakable. His silver gaze shifts to the horns upon the youngster's head and his mask of neutrality threatens to slip into one of distaste, but he forces it aside even as he listens to the colt speak. He talks of how he met his egg; that he was given her because he was the strongest there. The bastard bites back a rebuke along the lines of whoever gave you it must have been addled in the head, when there are decent pureblood equines craving such a gift. "I don't doubt it," he says instead, perfectly pleasantly. "I bonded to my dragon when I was but a boy, too. It is the highest gift Nieque can give." But what would possess Nieque to give an egg to a hornhead? It wouldn't have happened in Isilme, that was for sure.

God, he feels like a crotchety old man when he thinks things like that. It wouldn't have happened in my day. When did his old soul turn so bitter?

He gives a small, self-deprecating snort as he looks back to the youngster. "How did you handle killing to feed your newborn?" he asks, baritone voice curious. Tyradon himself had been a particularly dark and morbid little colt - his sire had offered help with finding food for the egg, but he had refused. He wanted to do it himself, as it was his dragon that he had been given, and thus he had embraced his task with gusto. Oh, he'd been a mere two or three months old, but he had seized the opportunity to kill and had fallen upon rodents and birds like a dark angel, crushing their skulls with his still-wet hooves and ushering them from this life with naught but a swing of his reaper's sword. But he knows not all boys are like him - had this one struggled with the idea of ending life for the sake of one's bonded?