The air tastes bitter here. A roar grows in the distance, like the voice of some large animal, churning and howling on the salty wind. Caneo approaches on long, careful limbs. As ever, caution wars with curiosity inside his narrow breast. He wants – needs – the bright eyes and the singing voices of his own kind. Even if they all intend him harm, he seeks them out, endlessly and without fail.

        But the wind is strange. It breeds in his quiet blood a sense of caution beyond even his usual state, and every step occurs as if he expects to find a trap lying beneath his cloven hooves. What lies waiting for him, just over the rise? Around the trees? His long tail wanders like a great, blind snake behind him, its meager tassel wavering in the breeze. Forward. This word describes his sole philosophy. Forward. He only ever regrets when he looks back.

        The deer, of course, catch Caneo by surprise. He wanders through a stand of trees, and wonders idly if they bear fruit. But his nostrils catch instead the warmth of blood and hair and breathing animal, and there between the trunks are things like him but clearly not. Caneo freezes as the deer freeze, and his ears come forward. They wear crowns as he does – better crowns. He utters a quiet, confused snort and as one they turn away, their white tails flashing, hooves like his but lighter, fleeter. Gone.

        “Goodbye.” A sharp note lingers in the melancholy singsong of his voice. Resentment grows in him, eating away at wonder. Bit by bit he learns this new land and his curiosity fades, as the stars have faded, leaving him alone with the pale, rotting daylight and the unforgiving eye of the sun.

        The trees bear nothing of interest and Caneo steps past them. He moves in silver light and quiet grace, too tall and too sharp to ever be a thing alive or breathing – yet he does both. His eyes cleave through the shadows with a sullen brilliance. Already, the air promises a strange, wet heat and his thin skin shudders in annoyance. Something moves beyond himself; he watches it, the searchlights of his gaze narrowing down onto that single, fleeting darkness. Not a shadow; not a deer.

        A hornless unicorn.

        This one wears no feathers, but runs naked and fearless across the earth. As suddenly as they ceased, Caneo’s limbs move him again. Who are you? The question keens through his mind. What are you? It becomes another, and another, until he brims with questions, full of them. He has grown bold in understanding the shadows of trees and the thudding of hooves. He no longer flinches, but draws near, his gaze wary still and untrusting even as it scours the strange patterns of the other stallion’s skin – as if a story lingers there, written in a language Caneo fails to understand.

        He pauses well back, and his tail twitches again as slowly, slowly, that long, narrow face tilts on the end of his swan’s neck. He doesn’t say hello. He doesn’t say anything at all, but lingers there instead, himself half ghost.