Something draws near: fire in the underbrush, twigs cracking beneath the leisurely assault of cloven hooves. Silver ears draw slowly up and forward, answering the sound. He watches, eyes glimmering in one part fear and two parts open curiosity. A flame – a brilliant orange half obscured by shadows and the coming dark – appears between the trees. It takes the form of a unicorn, spear curling like an old tooth from between the eyes – blue eyes.

        The wraith blinks blue eyes back at it.

        Something unhappy lingers on the orange creature’s face, as if he finds the scene unsatisfactory. “Hello.” His voice, though, travels gently through the shadow-heavy air. In answer, muscles pull the long silver neck around. They slacken though along the slender legs and through the haunches, shifting like light on the surface of a lake. “Hello.” The wraith’s voice lingers quietly around the soft skin of his lips, bright but low. Thoughtfully, he studies this newcomer: sturdier than he but smaller. Something indefinite colors the orange stallion the lead in this conversation, though – it lingers in the difference between them, the ease of muscle under orange skin compared to the push and pull of tension under finer silver hide. The stranger knows the forest, and fears nothing in it.

        All this the wraith assumes, though he bets the future of this interaction on his intuition guessing right. In answer to the stranger’s smile, he merely cocks his head. The question afterward is trickier – can the homeless ever be lost? Or perhaps the youth has always been lost, so accustomed to that way of life he fails to understand any alternative. His head tilts farther, leaning out on the thin curve of his neck. Blinking, he turns the question over, the answer rising from his chest in a curious hum. “Lost? Hmm.... No, I’m okay.” He simpers back, wondering why the question was asked, at all. It carried no menace or threat, but he expects those words to mean as much, by now. It threads together to a logical conclusion, and daring to remove his eyes from the stranger for a moment, he regards again the trees, those mighty things so different from the only ones he’s ever known.

        “Do you live in here?” asks the boy, supposing perhaps he is in trespass, though unsure as to whether he regrets the act. When he bothers to scent the air, he does taste the faint, intermingled smell of others lost to time; the indefinite nature of the evidence clouds his expression briefly with the nearest thing to a frown, one ear sweeping delicately back before those blue eyes return again to the other stallion’s face. He wonders if he ought to say more, but under no threat save his own imagination, he waits for an answer to his question first. There is no hurry, really, though he struggles to avoid checking the progress of the sun, wondering how this world looks in the true darkness of night.