He was dismissed. He left the gathering on soft feet, not a word of protest moving from his lips. As a child, he had learned only futility in begging – so he grew without that habit, accustomed to letting go when the time came. Nothing convinced Caneo to linger, yet nothing beyond the meadow called his name. He wandered its width, passing beyond the presence of the god as his thoughts moved.

        He walks now, too. His toes brush the soft grass and his velvet skin glitters beneath that pale eye of the sun. Does the Aurora Basin know his absence? Does anyone? He thinks of Roland, Lena. Of the story-telling mare and the hornless girl with skin the color of flame. He had seen a few of them there, in the burning lord’s presence. He might have spoken to them, might have helped them with the task even if his own heart yearned for nothing like subservience to others.

        Why didn’t he?

        His heart beats in his chest, but it becomes a black thing slithering across the ground, as well. A dream; a nightmare. It lingers just behind him, this foreign thing, unknowable, keening in a language he’s forgotten. Caneo doesn’t understand; his heart is hollow and he walks as if to leave it behind. What good was it in the desert? What good will it be here, where it cries only for more than he can give?

        The ceaseless movement of his limbs tapers off. He stands alone, a statue the color of rotten snow, a pair of eyes like the too-far emptiness of the winter sky. He does not remember purpose. He does not remember anything beyond the awful striving for this life, this empty life, which beats unceasingly inside of him.

        He is alone – and then he is not.

        More hooves abuse the path behind him. Caneo turns, the muscles under that slim neck blade sharp. Someone like fire moves against the grass, the sky. Someone like fire, yet unburning...

        Those knives behind his eyes retract an inch. He moves to face the orange girl with cool reserve. He knows her; knows the name she gave him then, at the mouth of the glittering cave. “Tandavi.” One piece of a silver song, broken and glimmering. The music of his voice plays flat; he stares at her, eyes tracing the line of her back and resting for a moment on the flower in her tail – that flower. The look on his face isn’t malice, but surprise. Caneo blinks at her again. For the moment, he swallows his congratulations.

        Those blue eyes sweep down to Natraj instead. “Hello, Natraj,” he murmurs, smiling that same empty smile he knows well how to wear but not as well how to act. He falls silent again and waits for Tandavi to speak. She followed him; she must have followed him. He saw her there and now sees her here – but what does she want? Has she not already won something? Doesn’t she have family, a herd, a sisterhood of people like those people in the Basin whom he ignores?

        Caneo watches Natraj still when Tandavi speaks. His narrow ears sweep forward to catch the words, holding them for a moment before giving back any of his own. Why are you sad? Is it sadness inside him? If it is, then he is always sad; always, and yet no one has asked that for a long, long time. Because I am alone, he thinks, but doesn’t say it. The solitude hangs on him like a shroud, pinned by the jutting angles of his bones.

        For her, for those kind eyes he meets now with warmth, Caneo smiles again. The effort this time lights him up, though still that black thing in his chest beats hollow. Cold. “Do I look sad?” he wonders. “I was thinking about something. That’s all.” He lies and even as he speaks, he isn’t sure why. This body moves without permission, slipping like a new machine.

        Smoothly, Caneo’s limbs move, and he turns to blink again at the flower, that pretty flower, nestled in the braids of her pretty tail. Yes; it suits her, though she is warmer than the man of light in all the ways that count. “Did the burning man give you that flower?” he asks. “It looks very nice.” His narrow face turns to meet her eyes again; something liquid and confusing move within them, something he keens toward like a moth beating around a candle’s flame, terrified of burning and yet unable to fly away.

        Tandavi looks at him, and mildly the silver boy endures her gaze, accustomed to having eyes on the tips of his bones, the muted glimmer of his hair. From her, the sensation breeds a little less resentment – she searches not for weakness but for something else. He cannot fathom what. He only just managed to evade her first question but another quickly takes its place, this one more difficult. Caneo hesitates, mulling over the words.

        What was he thinking of? Why does she even care to know? What will the knowledge give her, this strange flame-kissed girl with the voice like midnight and the warm black eyes? Caneo lifts his own eyes and watches her, wondering. His smile fades, and showing through it a bleak, solemn mask rests over the lean curves of his face. “Where I should go,” he says at last. And it resembles truth; his hooves wander on their own even if they might, in this place, pause to rest. “It gets boring,” he adds, as if the revelation matters less than it does, “wandering around on my own.” And he might go and make a home within the Basin, but in some deep place his heart lacks the knowledge even to begin that task, to be anything but outside. He moves; he has always moved. And he has always done so alone.

        He changes the subject quickly enough. Delight blooms openly across her face after his compliment, and secretly Caneo preens, himself shining more brightly in the warm light of her smile. Her laughter is a dark sound, heavy and yet fluttering like the wings of birds. “Burning man?” she parrots the words, and for a moment Caneo wonders if he misspoke. He doesn’t mind her laughter, really, but he wonders what inspired it.

        Without warning the girl moves, and instinct drives him back a half-step, head up, blue eyes flashing with a brief, sharp warning. But she only watches him some more, and he stares back, a question hanging on his features, vague and yet unasked. She must want something but her questions are all about him, about small, unimportant things, and wariness clamors like the awful screech of an alarm bell against the insides of his brain. “Why did you seek the Sun God?” Such a simple question, but it strikes his ears and rattles all the way down, and he hesitates and for an instant quivers, as if touched by some strange cold, some ghost of memory far better left in peace.

        Caneo turns to blink over one shoulder, peering at the place he left. “That’s who he was?” he asks, his voice lighter than it should be, shaken by a sort of airy laughter. In the back of his mind an older voice rumbles, deep and merciless as chains across the ground. There are no gods in this world, boy. And he laughs, because he can do nothing else – because it seems absurd he should have crawled to this place and found it so wondrous long after he’d given up on wonder, on beauty, on everything he ought to hold still dear within his heart.

        Caneo snorts and turns back to Tandavi. “Are you sure?” He has always thought of god as an awful frightening thing, the implacable creep of death, the sharp scent of blood and the prick of horn against throat. He has always seen the sun as a distant, unkind thing, not capable of mirth or joviality, not capable of anything like thought. She must be lying – but she says it with such quiet candor, as if her question is the interesting thing and not her assumption.

        Caneo quiets by degrees. He wonders, bemused, if he should have been more polite. But he can hardly fathom speaking to a god and coming back alive. It burns like absinthe in his brain, and makes him look down on Tandavi with a strange mix of pity and mirth. “I wanted to see what would happen,” he tells her, honest for the first time. Why does anyone approach a god? To die, he would have said before. He doesn’t understand; this place defies him like some awful puzzle and he watches it unfurl with incredulity.

        “Why?” Caneo adds, made bold by his outburst, candid now as fire simmers somewhere in the cold depths of his veins. “Why did you seek him out?” She knew what she was doing; and maybe she can tell him what he should ever want with a god, when gods have never touched him before, and ever been content to sit back watching as he wandered back and forth across this ugly world.