I laugh as he jumps – because I’m the sort of ass who does such a thing at the expense of others, unwilling to hear of it on my own behalf. The sound of my chuckles is rich and full of friendliness, however, not so obviously a mockery of his weak constitution, though the thoughts are there, a rude little gaggle of brutes that taunt the fear of others to make their own shadows feel smaller for the moment.

For whatever reason the stag was startled (don’t know, don’t care, don’t even stop to think about it), he does oblige me with conversation – and a question, which draws a smile that rightfully brims with laughter, and yet does not spill, to my lips, golden eyes glittering delightfully at the notion of the Threshold being all of Helovia.

My kin and their den of wolves wouldn’t have had as much trouble winning it then, I don’t think.

"Aha, no," I humorously respond, ears angled forward and step high and in good cheer, "Helovia is much, much larger, stretching well beyond this forest – the Threshold."

It is then that our gathering is interrupted by a third, forth, fifth presence, somewhere along the lines stirring my slow plod alongside the stranger into an absolute lack of plodding; I know only one of them and count none of their companions, having gathered some idea in my youthful idiocy that the beasts were lesser than the masters who wielded them – though I do eye the massive cat that approaches with some measure of interest, having held a soft spot in myself for felid creatures most of my life.

I’d even asked for a robotic one from my father, once.

Bless the heavens he’d declined; such a disgrace to their kind it would have been, clanking and clonking about with out an ounce of stealth, steam puffing audibly from the cracks in its gleaming (and obvious) metal shell.

Ciceron, as the unicorn with the tiger says, is a handsome bloke covered in dapples that, as long as his word can be trusted (and something about the noble fellow says that I can), hails from the Hidden Falls. The stranger, quickly announcing himself to be Tamorin, looks down at the tiger with an expression that is so blank and wondrous that even my eyes pick up that this is the first bonded pair he has encountered – and while I myself have never known a life without them, my mother had warned that there were many to whom the ways of Helovians would be new, sometimes downright foreign and offensive.

"She is his companion," I try to explain, golden eyes alive with thought as I rifle about for the best way to word just what such a friendship entailed, "bound to him through heart and soul, so that they are essentially one creature. You’ll see a lot more who’ve bonded, the longer you live here, to far more fantastic beasts than a tiger."

But my gaze says all the cat needs to know: I think nothing less of her grace, her strength, but that she is outclassed by many a bonded in this land, a truth surely even she knows and accepts. If only the hornless could adopt such a view...

"Rikyn, of the Aurora Basin," I say with a nod, finding my eyes stolen by the ebony and violet figure of Zandora, remembered from our meeting with Ashamin and d’Artagnan, from a conversation with the delightful Tiamat in the heat of the Veins; her smile is met with a fuller version of my own, my dark muzzle reaching towards her in greeting so that our horns might touch (if she would permit such a thing), an ancient greeting for the crowned kind. I am surprised to find that she is talkative today, which was previously an adjective that would not have met with her name if I was asked to describe her.

Perhaps, instead, distant, chilly, withdrawn – certainly not the pseudo warmth that radiated off of her now. My gold eyes search her curiously, the need to know of youth leaping about frantically in desperation to discover what change had overcome her in the past weeks that would have lightened her melancholy so – or if she was simply mad, like so many I had met in my days.

Either way she offers good words to the conversation, and I smile and nod to Tamorin in agreement that I am his map and his guide, should he need such a thing of me.

That I am only such things for the furthered favor the Lord Deimos, and the power to be won beneath his smile, is of no consequence. A boy does what he must to remain a prince of the throne he’d been born to rule, with both his parents either gone to some misty wood of the past and the other seemingly gone all together. And, unlike my dam, a friendship is a welcome thing - something that can potentially be won from just about anyone, Tamorin included.

The shy approach of a hornless woman earns a much colder gaze than has yet met with those who have gathered to greet the gilt stranger, a glimpse into the steely truths of the mountain easily spied on the tautness of my features, the lack of welcoming grins that dance across my lips at the sight of the inferior and slight creature. She is beautiful, more deeply upsetting than any other factor about her – that she was so close to perfect.

Quick is the cold gaze which wanders to her, more quickly still faceting back upon Tamorin, the warmth returning (making the cold that much more obvious).