There was no particular rhyme or reason for his mischievous rapture: vivid explorations into devilish plights or misgiven triumphs, an unknown cauldron smoking and fuming from within. A careful, scrutinizing observer, the colt watched in rapt, riveted attention. An impish sensation of glee entangled its way through his frame as he caught the strangers’ reactions: the mare appeared frozen, the wolf awaiting orders, statues lined up for predatory or prey machinations. He’d only have a moment or two of amusements before they broke into fight or flight, but the sentiments were ebullient and vivacious, bobbing through his veins like a vicious little spell, and he tried to tuck his maw in between his forelegs to muffle the stream of laughter bubbling through his throat. The enjoyment was short-lived, spoiled and dismayed, however, at the swift sound of the canine approaching (and he remembered the pack of beasts wandering into their icy peaks and glacial caverns, craving blood, coveting flesh), and he began to back away from the opening of the caverns, from the thundering of the remaining occupants. Somehow the joke, the derision, the succinct, miniscule essence of diversion had rebounded and miscarried back upon the child, and he was running out of time. A more creative or experienced individual may have been capable of coasting and ghosting away from the scene, a phantom of the rocks and rubble, a wraith of the ice and snow, but the lad sorely lacked the noteworthy skills to presume anything other than a cold, chilling panic. What would they do to him, the wolf and the lady? Ensnare him deep into the dungeons? Tie and tether him to the stalactites? Tell his parents of his naughty, nefarious adventures (though – there had been others, perhaps more significant than merely wandering and making obnoxious echoes, one involving a world of sand and dunes came to mind)? So he ended up doing absolutely naught but remain, a poltergeist found and stunned, at the entrance of the runes and warrens. Now, who was the hunted?

He stared for a few tender moments at the wolf, chiseled and refined his breath to something more stately, more composed, and not hollowed granules of panicked endeavors, and even twisting his cranium to the maiden as she bounded in with ferocious glints and concerning questions. An inward struggle grappled in his young, inept frame, hesitating on whether to bury his head in the sand, apologize, make merciful claims and bestowals, or foster a brave front. While the former was an option he was sure his mother would snare, the latter was one his father would ultimately prosper (because the world adhered to him, not the other way around) – so he partook in the bestial haze, tampered and seared the trembling in his bones or the rounded edges of his nares. Erebos’ gaze narrowed, and a devilish smirk chiseled its way along his mouth, looked every bit as eager, as innocent, as juvenile, as boyish, as the world would take him for. “I don’t think so,” he responded to her query, because he certainly wasn’t insane (whatever that may be – but it didn’t sound very wonderful, brave, or malevolent), tilting his head and confirming foolhardiness with every essence of his breath. The boy ambled a little bit away from the raised hackles and the larger mare, as if predicting his escape, his liberation, from any further trials, when curiosity struck far too hard and he rambled into the peculiar horizon. “Did I scare you?”