A distant memory stirs on the sand – a flickering like flame blown by the sea wind, red mane curling against a sinuous neck. Slowly, Caneo’s eyes lift from the water and meet the dappled stallion’s hide. Recognition glitters in those eyes, brilliant and sharp, joyful and terrified all at once. He draws straight up, a statue cut from fine veins of rigid silver, and his ears twitch as the question answers his own – not directly but nearly enough.

        Almost coldly, the lost child regards the thief. “Roland.” The word is a murmur for all he wants to shout; his throat constricts over the syllables, squeezing his voice down, muting the smallest flicker of emotion. This man insists somehow upon appearing when Caneo is most lost; he floats in with gentle eyes, his voice like that of a teacher. It puts the boy’s hackles up; he wonders why again with a terrible urgency. Instead of asking, though, Caneo blinks at the ocean with slitted eyes. “What’s wrong with it?” he asks, answering the inquiry obliquely, stubborn perhaps or just nervous. His nostrils flutter, baring raw pink insides. There is too much and it smells wrong. Something of his expression is akin to disgust.

        They stand in silence then, momentarily, and Caneo is reminded of another man who walked beside him once but towered much higher and spoke with a voice like rocks falling. The silver boy is too old now to follow like a wounded duckling and yet too young to understand just what it is he wants from anyone, Roland perhaps most of all. He studies the turning of the waves, and the tip of his tail moves rhythmically in answer to the surf. It is strange; it is all too strange.

        And Roland speaks again.

        Caneo expected this. He has been gone from the north too long, though a part of him wonders why anyone might miss the ghostly creature without skill or loyalty or drive. How many even knew his name? He glances at Roland again, quietly. He thinks of turning and walking away – again withholding his goodbye. He has no answer for the things he does, no reason and no charted course. “I couldn’t find you,” he says at last, lying with so little effort it seems he expects the thief to know. His voice is dull; weary. Caneo is a creature weighted with distraction and yet unable to confess his thoughts. He feels half prepared to climb out of his own skin.

        With a small jerk, his head lifts up and he blinks, as if a thought has occurred to him. When he speaks, though, he does it in the same gentle monotone. “No one in the Aurora Basin is like me.” He thinks of the needling mare with the scent of frost and pine on her skin; he thinks of Deimos, that dark lord; and he wonders if even Lena shone as brightly as she pretended. He is better off alone, perhaps. It scours him clean, the loneliness – it leaves him vulnerable only to a familiar hurt. And yet... he peers into the wind and feels glad Roland is here.

        He doesn’t know why.