He is waiting at the border of the land for one of his patrons or new arrivals, for he has grown bored of patrols and his supplies have warranted no images of beautiful glass objects which to craft and the afternoon is nice enough to warrant a bit of laziness on his behalf. In the past season he has ventured broad and far, seeing places he might not otherwise have seen had he not grown so much in the midst of these tall trees, and no longer was he a young man but a handsome and well toned stallion.

He, of course, had not noticed. As far as he is concerned, he has always been the same, the sort to judge himself more fully on what was contained inside his heart than that which housed it. His thoughts, as they often are, linger on the Queen of the Edge, her beauty astounding and the havoc she had managed to inflict on his simple life staggering; it wasn’t as if she’d even meant to, really. It was all a failure of his own designing, one he had clung to with hope and dreams of a child while she had lived her life as a woman.

He shouldn’t be surprised that his jewel had been set into the crown of her King; he was only ever her student, a small note in the deep song of their land, and he cannot blame her for missing the droll and humble song he held inside of himself when it competed with the brazen and glorious sound of Kaj’s strength and honor. It soured him, of course, to think that the finest equine he had ever laid his eyes upon was slipping from the path of righteousness and purity, and it was all the more bitter to have his upbringing proven false right before his eyes yet again.

At least he’d learned to accept that life was not as his father had taught him, at least not entirely; those days had died in Helovia, perhaps had never lived anywhere but Isilme, and Isilme was nothingness in this era, empty and hollow as the souls of those who had ruled it. But if he had no culture to rely upon and no maternal or butterfly laced smile to guide his actions, what did he have?

His glass, he supposes, but even that is only so fulfilling. He may also have friends, but its not like he goes out of his way to prove his loyalty or usefulness to them; ever since Mirage slipped away and he took notice of the romance between the golden King and the Edge’s rarest flower, he feels as if he has been more alone than even when he’d wandered on his own to this place. What made it even more unbearable was that Aaron had left him with the task of creation to his own, and while a more ambitious man might revel in it, Dragomir is unhappy; it was honorable, to be sure, but also such a large amount of stress on his behalf that the simple thought of having to be in charge of the other crafters made him want to hide in his hollow and never leave.

As if fate hears him, she knocks loudly right outside the worn glass wall.

At first he thinks that it’s someone talking to himself, because he only hears one set of hooves and a young voice sounding out in the mostly silent wood. Raising his features slightly from his depressed and pondering stance, he takes a few deep breaths to smell out the stranger; unknown, foreign, but he’s not alone. The smell is also unfamiliar and he’s not sure what sort of thing it belongs to but it is an animal, with fur rather than feathers or scales.

He looks left, then right. No one else is coming or here to talk to the unknown person outside the wall but him.

Cue the deep, desolate sigh of not wanting to do this.

”What brings you to World’s Edge?” he asks as soon as he’s out of the glass lining of their home, discomfort with the situation visible only in the way all four hooves are firmly planted to the earth now that he’s come to a stand still and how his eyes don’t leave the young unicorn or his big… cat.

”I don’t know,” says the stranger, and a faint snort of displeasure at the fact that someone was here ruining his perfectly solitary day for no particular reason at all rises from his dark muzzle. The unicorn does at least seem to realize that this is not a suitable response to such a question and elaborates, to which Dragomir’s expression softens and his demeanor eases into one of less hesitancy. If he had lived here at some point, then he surely understood that violence was not tolerated.

Either way, he needed to find time and a way past his own bitterness to speak with Kahlua about this; it was a bit much for random passerby to utilize the Edge as a place to sight see and gawk at, in his opinion, and would be a giant waste of their time if the idea of tourism in his home caught on.

”Dragomir,” he replies, not allowing such friendly terms as a nickname such as the purple tinted male, mostly because he’s not the sort to approve butchering the name your mother gave you for the sake of expediency or feeling closer to someone. It’s also because he feels no desire to be close to this stallion for any longer than it takes to assure he moves on and away from the dragon’s nest, a place that the young painted bay is overly protective of for reasons he does not fully understand.

While he has tried to rise above how he was raised, he cannot help but observe the boy as a vagrant cur seeking to ruin all that is sacred and holy in Dragomir’s life. He doesn’t comment that he hasn’t seen him around because he’s only truly been here for a year, and so it’s possible he’d missed the time in which the other male had lived here and it seems a bit much to assume he’s lying; he does, however, hold a grudge against the horn on his face and the way he has so unceremoniously come to stare into the forest uninvited.

The two things don’t pair well with the painted lad’s view on the world.

It seems the wall has missed the other one’s attention as he now suddenly takes great interest in it, turning his face inquisitively towards Dragomir and asking what it is gleaming back there, both in terms of purpose and materials. ”It’s a glass wall. That section is mostly gone,” he explains, remembering the strength of the thing when it had been whole and new, an expression of all the hopes that had been scattered as it fell. He doesn’t go into why its broken or how long its been that way, or whether or not its being fixed or serves any use at all anymore.

It’s none of this one’s business, anyway.

@[Azarel]

The boy has a lot of questions and comments.

Dragomir wonders if he was like this, when he was young, staring at him perhaps too blankly as he cares very little for explaining things about his home to a stranger who once lived here and obviously not very long if he doesn’t know him. The colt is barely into his horn and all legs and lanky muscles, barely old enough to have been grazing at the most when he and his family had left, and it makes him really wonder if this one is really all that he says he is and if he shouldn’t have just chased him off rather than trying to be kind and befitting of his people’s reputation.

”It’s about as old as you are, I’d say, maybe younger by a few months. Couldn’t tell by looking at it,” he says, glancing over at the ruins of the wall with a bit of sadness and angst framing his face; that all that work had been for next to nothing aside from the memories he held of those weeks they’d worked together, the wraiths seemingly arriving at its completion to demolish its existence.

The next question makes him frown quite resolutely as he glowers at the boy. Obviously if his mother had told him so and he had been born here and he still held the impression that they might be some sort of horn wearing club, he came from a dam who looked the same as him at least. Either way, being compared to the Aurora Basin wasn’t something that settled well with the paint, knowing from what Mirage had told him that they weren’t exactly decent – and that had nothing to do with his views on keeping only unicorns in a mountain herd, that it was a stain to his own race and one that must be watched carefully.

Mirage said they were dangerous, and while Azarel means no offense, Dragomir takes it.

”The Edge is home to any willing to follow our laws,” he says with a brow rising as he looks at the gangly youth and wonders just who the hell he’d come from if he knows so little about his alleged birthplace; it surely meant his mother didn’t know much either. If she were here, Dragomir would tell her to shut her trap about things she couldn’t properly inform people about, but she wasn’t. He was left only with the remnants of her stupidity. ”You’d do well not asking those sort of questions around here again. Bigotry is not tolerated,” he rumbles, deep voice gravely in his agitation that he’s having to teach a boy lessons that he should already know from the very weave of this land, a lesson he fights against every day so that he can continue to grow among his family here, ”not even the suggestion of such a thing.”

As he’s come to expect from the boy, an answer leads to another question, and he almost sighs in annoyance that the kid has come here for a history lesson and has brought nothing in exchange for it other than an intrusion into Dragomir’s time. Thankfully, however, the sound of glass dislodging and falling to the earth draws his eyes towards the wall and the descended frame of Semira, a faint smile crossing his lips as she approaches and offers an answer for the colt, sparing the paint another row of words he’d rather not use.
”Afternoon, Semira,” he says, nodding hello in return, and answering her question with far more usefulness than any he had offered to Azarel so far, ”and no, we weren’t.” He chuckles briefly, a few rippling sounds embracing the air before dying as he looks over to the colt and back to his dragon friend. ”He says he used to live here, with his mother.”

If Azarel had asked Dragomir why it was he felt the wall had fallen, he would have answered that it had little to do with the darkness; in his mind, the wall had come down with the one who had designed and built it, upheld the rights for it stand along the border of the Moon’s land. When Mirage had vanished, the Moon had wiped away the remnants of her rule, so that others might know and remember the consequences of not guarding that which should have been most important to them – not their land, a vain thing, but those who made it more than just a forest in which food grew, those who made it a home.

It signified the end of one story and the beginning of another. Whether the monsters, the darkness, or the Moon herself had done it were of no importance; it was still planned, a divine event, and he looked to the crumbling wall as Mirage’s signature at the end of her short farewell.

As the youth raises his brow and takes an imposing step forward, the Glazier feels his chest clench in agitation and his head swiftly rises, limbs planting themselves more firmly against the earth below him as he glowers back at the impudent unicorn.

Spared a bit of shouting by the crafter as Semira arrives and immediately cools the rising temperature of the paint, falling into her company and, for the most part, ignoring the purple tinted idiot at their doorstep; he manages to get some words in after the friendly banter between the two friends, however, and Dragomir looks over at him with a raised brow that wonders why in Moon’s tits this daft child has come to stare at a land he doesn’t even remember well enough to recall a single name or face aside from his mother.

Whoever she was needed to quit making kids or at least insure they didn’t go around making total fools out of themselves in front of strangers.

Semira answers her questions, some of the some curious expressions rising to her face and the replies quite short and terse for one so young and normally friendly. She was, at least, supplying answers, which was more than Dragomir wanted to do at this point after the little puke had stepped towards him as if he was going to do more than continue to ask questions and take up the Glazier’s time; everything about this boy had grated against him since they'd first met and it has all culminated into a final and explosive boiling point.

”No one recognizes you. You know nothing of this place beyond the hallucinations and dim dreams of a child, and I’ve heard quite enough,” he snaps, blue eyes cold and glinting, old hatreds rousing insults in the back of his mind that are aimed at this one’s lineage and appearance, but he does not care or shun them; it is boys like this one who have put room for racism in the world, those who give an excuse to rely on old and false hatreds (and it doesn’t help he’s still heartbroken over his beautiful Queen and the missing figurehead that had guided his life until her disappearance and is thus, perhaps, overly bitter and acidic), ”you have no respect for our people, laws, your own place upon this earth, or even the vaguest understanding of the truth of the world you live in, and yet act as if you deserve something of us for simply being. You deserve none of our hospitality, or any more of my time.”

Disgruntled, he snorts and stamps a hoof. ”Leave, as the Dragon Queen asked of you and your kin last year,” standing his ground but wishing he could look over to Semira for support because he’s not entirely sure he has rights to demand such a thing of anyone, he finishes quite tersely, ”come back again when you’ve got enough sense and humility to act like a stranger where you are one.”

What had been controlled anger roused into fire at the words suddenly flying out of the unicorn’s dark lipped trap, the large stallion’s brows clenching together and his own bulk stepping forward with his own threats in reply to the fluffing of the young boy’s chest in response to being cast off their doorstep. The words were not really what held the primitive stallion’s more violent side in rapture, rather the way every ounce of this little punk seemed to read “hit me,” at the moment.

But then his mind caught up to the irrational fervor of his subconscious, hearing what he was saying and catching insults tangled with, what Dragomir believed, further proof to his words, that the boy and his family were strangers to the Edge who had been ghosts along its border, not a part of its many friendships and branching connections. He’s just staring to piece together a theory that the stupid cow who had told them that the Edge was a racist band of unicorns led by a golden dragon had been trespassing while giving birth to her equally stupid child when several things happen at once.

The boy bursts into flames while he froths at the mouth and Semira leaps in front of him, barring the path that would lead him directly towards the burning idiot as he wants to when presented with such an obvious challenge (that was, truly, more of an accident), and he himself rears up in a helpless fit of fury and beats his hooves against the air while glaring with a snarl on his face down at the unicorn who burns along their border, seemingly defusing all while Dragomir burns and burns all the more inside, the raging loud enough to drown out Semira’s shout from reaching his conscious mind (stilling, however, his forward momentum behind her frame).

Slamming back down to the earth at the accusations slipping from the young unicorn’s mouth, his head snakes across Semira’s back and his body presses as far forward as it can without knocking it over, all his aggravation towards the other male and what has transpired in his life over the past year relentlessly pouring out from him as his teeth grip down hard on his tongue, anger making him too dumb to bother with words when all he wants to do is smash the boy’s head into the remnants of the wall.

He grunts as the foul mouthed and wickedly tempered youth flees the border as he was asked, just as any cowardly fool would; a true warrior would have stood his ground where this one only flashed his useless toys and then dissipated into the wilderness. To his receding hind end the crafter mutters a gravely, hate filled insult, probably only heard by the dragon princess keeping him from chasing after the coward.

”Moronic babe,” he snarls with a rough snort, tossing his nose back over Semira’s back and agitatedly pacing back towards the Edge a few steps, his ears pinned and white and ebony tail lashing viciously against his sides.

He’s still pissed when his friend directs words to him, to which he makes a sharp, barking laugh and growls out a terse answer. ”Harsh? Some would have beat him to death and let the wyverns have him for such stupid questions,” he surges forward a few paces and aggressively pivots to repeat the same path he just walked, attempting to ease his rancor but finding it less simple to soothe on this occasion than it had been in the Grove. Perhaps age, perhaps circumstance; he cannot know anything more at this time other than he is deeply offended by that unicorn ever having been here. ”Spouting off about all he remembers while asking if our Queen is a giant golden dragon who keeps a fold of only unicorns, a despicable display of contradictions and illusions to his claim to have ever belonged.”

”Curiosity, my ass,” he mutters harshly while passing, ”believing in such fairytales. It’s plausible to assume that his family all has punitive brains as well and thus his dam gave birth to him while trespassing, as idiots might be daft enough to attempt. Dragons do not attack without cause.”

He laughs, a dark sounding thing, his anger ebbing but his irritation and loathing towards the fool boy known as Azaron still lodged deep in his chest. ”Perhaps they wanted to spare the world its experience of him.”

She was not a border he could not break, at least not in truth, but he was loathe to roll a princess across the ground in his haste to tear at the idiot and, while he is sometimes unable to make use of his better judgment, it wins out in this case. His mind still is blurred by the irrational outrage he feels towards the unicorn child, his youthful training mixed with his abundant pride for his home having spurred him, once again, into the churning waters of his emotions – and unlike sadness, which was terrible in its own way, anger made the water red with blood and broke everything into pieces.

As he prowls with his ears pinned and his coat dampening with the sweat of adrenaline, he can feel Semira’s eyes on him but refuses to look to her for a time as his words cut the air and his anger burns out in his heart. He doesn’t want to know if he’s embarrassing himself or making the dragon princess uncomfortable with his outrage, and he cares even less to see shame writ across her face if that is the case he will find. Her voice reaches him still, rising over the embers that crackled and smoked within him and the sway of her tail almost dragging his eyes to her. His ears still settle hard against the top of his head, blue eyes narrowed in disbelief that it had only been unease among the dragons that had caused the assault; everything happened for a reason.

Everything.

”You don’t have to be angry anymore,” she says, and he does look at her this time, still hot headed but easing into his normal state of peace as he lets his fervent eyes glaze along her figure as she reaches out to touch him, the warmth of her body seeping into the already heated lining of his own. Her breath is gentle and he can tell from her words that she only means to soothe him, but he cannot understand why she is not upset at the antics of a fool when his words had been targeted at the land of her birth. A deep breath breaks from his nostrils, his exhalation hot in the air and heating his sensitive muzzle until he snorts the last of his aggravation out in a giant sound and a shaking of his head, a fore hoof slamming into the ground for one last hoorah before he settles into the slowing pace of his heart and tries to explain with a more clear mind.

”I don’t trust him, regardless,” he says resolutely, ”nothing in this world comes to pass without cause. To think so is to invalidate your Gods and their ability to protect you, and what Gods are they then?” He stares out into the wood at the still swaying branches that Azarel had darted through, the heat in his eyes now replaced with a cool shadow that told of the fury he had just let go of. ”If he comes back I’ll snap that stick off his head and use it as a carving tool.”