Talk is easy, he teaches Ka’Ora, perched as she from far above; her eyes are brown and tender as she watches the skittering of the female below, and behind her eyes there throbs a deep, knowing melancholy, for she knows what lurks behind her master’s face; it is a thing that makes her heart weary and sad so soon in her life. She weathers it—endures it—embraces it, for these vices serve to build the image of her master within his stony mold, and she cannot help her love for him.

Talk is easy; it comes easy from his black lips, grey eyes set dazzling and amused in the deep facets of his face. He looks down upon the female--Anzanie--and keeps the scoff of her name from his face. He is interested. “I belong to no herd,” he says, and grey eyes cast over the frozen pond, contemplating the frost that licks the waves into a solid whole, “I was raised by my mother, in the meadows…she first brought me here as a foal, to learn the ways of her warrior heart.” It does not pain him to speak of mother, not anymore; her name and image flow from his mouth almost thoughtlessly, and his heart barely bucks with it anymore.

“…however,” he decides to pour insignificant things to her, because talk is easy, and it soothes, “I’ve resided in the Dragon’s Throat for some time, to care for my sister there before she travels to her father’s side…and I’ve grown fond of the desert, there. I plan to offer myself and my services to the Throat, if they should have me.” His heart had indeed settled firmly in the fire pits of the south, and it soars and aches and longs for the summer heat to burn his back once more.

*"How did you come to find yourself in the forest?"*

He smiles at her, careless and simple, taking note of the false steel creeping into her voice. It must be false—she has grown no bigger. “I love the Throat,” he says simply, and his voice is ever soft, a cultivated whisper since the days of his boyhood, “but sometimes I love my solitude more. I come here to remember my mother, when things are quiet….”

The voice trails; the eyes go back to contemplating the frosted glass of a frozen pond. “Tell me, Anzanie,” he says the name, caressing its nasty commonness with a forked, sultry tongue, “do you have any family that you like to think of often?”

”Watch for Circe.”