He knows this place.

        It belongs to his dreams. The silver creature moves between the trees on quiet feet, cloven hooves pressed to moss like a finger pressed daintily to his lips. Shh. He is not the same beast he was when last he tread these paths. He comes without the butterfly, this time. Without the burden of memory a raw wound on his mind. The movement of his legs is too organic, to graceful, to call machine-like but something of the unicorn is less like horse and more like knives.

        He calls this inheritance.

        No observer could now brand him child with sincerity. He has grown into every promise his soiled bloodlines ever made, and yet he is not the prodigal son setting foot on the soil he was birthed from. No; he is simply a traveler, a wraith passing through again as if called by business left unfinished. He hesitated before, when he was small. Now he drifts between the trees without apology: usurper, trespasser, traitor. A cold part of his heart beats slow recognition. The sparse, silken strands of his whiskers quiver as he fills his lungs with pine, with mountain air and the promise of snow. And in his dreams, in every one he set foot here, he walked this way - was drawn. In his dreams, there was a reason.

        A part of him wonders if he is dreaming now. He hesitates, though nothing in the forest threatens him. Briefly, curved silver ears cup forward and the blue, blue winter of his eyes seeks out in the shadows the promise of flame, familiar and cherished.

        None is there.

        He knows she will not come. He knows he left her far behind for no reason other than his own carelessness. Caneo wonders if the snake now eating up his heart is called grief, or if that, too, is merely his birthright. He stands a while tasting it, whatever it is, feeling it pulse in his veins. The evening stinks with the promise of a coming winter, and his thoughts shift to the cold, to machinery and great, horned creatures laboring through snow. Does he return to them? Does he seek the desert elsewhere, the daughter of a god he despised? Or is it the moon, the cunning moon, who sings to him now in her own sweet voice? She is just visible behind him, a crooked white sickle to mirror the silvered sheen of his coat. And Caneo knows uncertainty.

        This is the only gift Helovia ever gave him.

        He is wary now, as he peers into the woods. Because a moving target is a more difficult one, he presses on. No specific destination calls him; no face floats in the surface of his mind, begging to be found. Those who would be there are drowned in memory. Those who will come... he looks forward to them, instead. New faces. A new self. He is not the boy who left, not the stunted creature begging for something like family. All that softness has bled from him like the black bled from his coat once, long ago. Now, he is a knife.

        He wonders if tonight will find for him a wielder.

        He does not expect to be hunted.

        The soft footfalls of his pursuers only catch the unicorn's attention when they close; the wolf he doesn't hear at all until it calls to him. Then everything under his skin turns electric; muscle flares to life, rippling in hard whorls over slim struts of bone. He wants to spin and face them, but he freezes. Shadows dance inside the flare of black velvet nostrils. Breathe, he tells himself. In. Out. 1, 2, 3.

        When he does turn, he turns slowly. His tail flicks into the motion, betraying agitation otherwise contained. The smooth cup of his ears speaks only of interest; the delicate tilt of the head is amused. I do not fear you, says everything else. "Wolf," Caneo voices the word. His voice is a song, light and smooth. Anywhere else, such a creature might mean danger, but not here. The timber of its cries tell him this one is tame; the looseness in its body befits greeting or play, not hunt. The moment he discerns this, he looks past it for the one it belongs to.

        “Are you heading to some place in particular?” She finds him first.

        Moonlight illuminates white markings on her face, framing the strange mare's features in icy light. Looking at her smells like falling snow; he doesn't know why. "Never," he says lightly, as if it's a joke. "Are you looking for someone in particular?" A counter to her opening move. Caneo's eyes move carefully across her frame, as if he can leech secrets from her skin. He knows this, at least, from looking: the shadows hold a body bigger than his own. They hold her at a distance, though. She is fearful or cunning - or both. Intrigue prickles up and down his skin, like cold.

        Caneo's thoughts swarm at something hiding in periphery. He watches it without watching, waiting for the thing in his head to surface as he eyes the mare. All this fires in reaction to her; she means something, but he can't remember what. Did they meet before? Was she a member of the Basin - but no horn. Something else, then. Eyes a little harder than they were a moment ago, he studies the white framing her features. Dark makes a trick of everything; rarely has Caneo ever wished for morning, but now he almost does.

        Of course, he takes the path etched by patience, instead. The almost-stranger answers his question with a question. This conversation hums pleasantly somewhere in his chest, banishing whatever sharpness welled in there before. The hollowness of him will never vanish - cannot be filled - but maybe for a portion of this night he can pretend to forget. Laughter silvering his voice, he says, "I guess not." Past encounters taught him the threshold forest was a place for winning minds, but maybe something else moves her feet - or maybe she is more cunning than the rest. He wonders, briefly, if his mind is close to being won, but after five years walking this earth, Caneo's heart still sings for no one.

(fireflies dance, treacherous, in a discarded memory)

        When the stranger asks her next question, Caneo's ears twitch, betraying surprise. Almost flattered, he laughs. "Are you sure you weren't looking for me, Huntress?" But silently, Caneo wonders what sort of game this is. He keeps half an ear cocked to the rest of the night as he glances, once more, at the wolf. Perhaps they have met somewhere else; he passed through too many places on his last visit here, and remembered all of them too poorly.

        But he does remember cold.

        Maybe this meeting is worth more than killing time, if he wants it to be. Caneo recalls the very real emptiness of his guts during his last months in Helovia and the kindness of his mood declines. He will not - cannot - weather that again. He says nothing about it, but the truth of cold starvation colors his thoughts when he next speaks. "I guess I don't mind staying here a little longer," Caneo allows, "but how can I keep you company from so far away?" He cocks his head, all innocence. "I'm harmless compared to your friend."

        Distance presses down on him: an accumulation of time wasted on his lonesome, speaking only in vague glances at the stars and conversations in his memory. Has he missed this place? Has it left hooks in his heart, to pull him steadily back with each step he took away? Caneo longs to move again, but now only to drag his body nearer this stranger. He expected nothing from tonight, but now he remembers too keenly the stretch and flutter of his heart when last he stood under the Threshold trees.

        “Maybe you are,” fails to satisfy him. Maybe is a teasing word. Caneo stares at the wolf as if in search of a better answer. Once, the sharpness of its teeth would have inspired fear. Now... The desert lies too far behind him. The sharp end of the moon, the smell of blood, the blackness of the water... dulled by memory. A thousand other things pile atop his childhood, bending the sharp lines already drawn. Has he forgotten fear?

        Curiosity remains. When at last the stranger moves, Caneo grows very still. Not like a moment ago; now he waits like his childhood self once waited for a butterfly to rest its wings upon his nose. The moment hangs fragile over them both. In the stark palette of moonlight, she is dark, but Caneo thinks, brown. Brown like a forest floor to match the green of her eyes, and the shafts of white spilling around them. (colors dancing in the throes of summer, glass between Caneo and the sky)

        He shivers.

        It's a nervous twitch, reaction to that word she calls him at the same time delight rings through her laugh. For a strange, terrible, unreal moment, Caneo fears he might wake up. And what if he finds himself alone with the stars again, with only memories of those he met before?

        But he doesn't wake, and as the feeling passes, a real memory draws into focus: snow falling, the scent of cold, the muted glass a false sky overhead.

        Exhale.

        In this land of gods and magic, time repeats itself. He blinks at her, remembering she is a sleuth, like Roland. The name escapes him but everything else pours in. He promised her something, didn't he? Caneo isn't sorry, but he does feel... something. Like watching figures in the distance shrink to dust.

        "Good," Caneo breathes, echoing the mare. He chuckles. "Did... you ever see it without snow?" Wishes suddenly she was looking for him.

        He didn't even know what snow was, then.

        But the thing yawning in his chest leaves him vulnerable, and instinct moves to close it off. Shifting his weight, he nods a bit. Perhaps age makes him braver, but he is no fool, and he hates the way he wants to stay here, wallowing. "I left," as if it isn't obvious. "Are things the same here?" Is there anything worth coming back to?

        Dreamer. Was that all he did? Caneo peers back at his old self with a cold eye. What a sad, foolish, vulnerable little boy. The child in his memory stares back at him with sorrowful eyes. Caneo must remind himself to breathe. He forces his mind to the present, to this mare he knows and does not know. Now words flow between them too quickly, and he wants to be clever but his mind is still far away. Sometimes it seems Caneo was born in such a way.

        "Sorry," he says without feeling. What good are gods, anyway? "I don't remember him." Staring at the trees, Caneo wonders how much of the Helovia in memory is a dream. It feels too strange now for his waking mind to grasp. Most of the past is that way. Perhaps everything is imagined.

        Whether or not the mare is real - whether or not she even matters - Caneo listens to her story. Maybe his younger self was right in sensing kinship when they met. That little warmth, like a newborn flame, burns softly inside him. Not alone. Not right now. But her story turns sad, sadder than his recent tales, and with nothing to say, Caneo remains silent. He wonders if invasion means death. Does she know loss, as well? Does she look out at the world and see emptiness, as he does?

        In the moment of her silence, one of Caneo's ears moves gently back. He lifts up his face to bring the velvet nose nearer to her, a tentative motion. Just a brief touch on the neck, unless she moves away. He doesn't know why, but he anticipates a warmth in her skin, and so the act is not entirely altruistic. He doesn't move, though, and should the barest flinch bring her beyond his range, he will not pursue.

        Essetia begins to speak again. It sounds like a good story, but maybe too raw to press. Such things are best after aging, maybe even through generations, so the voices telling them feel only wonder instead of pain. "It is a lot," Caneo agrees. Privately, he thinks these gods are probably more trouble than they're worth. What good do they ever do? But then his eye catches the hook of the moon at his back and he regrets it. Didn't she lead him here, once?

        Was that kindness?

        When Essetia speaks of the Dragon's Throat, Caneo nods. "Sounds hot." He is still thinking of the Hidden Falls, but maybe the place doesn't matter as much as the person showing him. "Do you like it there?" Caneo wonders. She had spoken of the Falls with joy, as if it were a treasure to be shared. This new land... the name reminds him of white sand, the cruel scent of an omnipresent sun. Perhaps the desert calls him once more, this time cloaked beneath a new face. Better or worse?

        Caneo decides not to answer the invitation yet; wariness threads through his bones as certainly as blood. He must know more before he decides anything, and still the north calls to him from a long time ago, and a red stallion there, and somewhere... a girl with sunlight in her eyes. He dares not disregard even those old dreams when he has nothing else.

(yet)

        They return to each other worn, like toys taken out too often. The sharp edges have gone and reformed elsewhere. Things once bright, once so important to who they were, no longer exist at all. And yet they are the same. Caneo, quiet now, even his harmless curiosities bottled up, and Essettia, soft with weariness, with the weight of some suffering he cannot guess. His heart flutters its tired wings in triumph when the mare softens under his touch. That was a daring thing, a new thing, an action his past self would never have dared take. He does not regret it, now. He gazes at her with softer eyes, a little warm, a little happier. Perhaps the anchor pulling him back to Helovia is not here; perhaps that was not what he needed to find.

        "Okay," he says gently in response to the first statement. One of his ears turns back, painting a mild frown across his features. He wonders what exactly she suffered, what she has lost. And is there some way to return it? Or are certain parts of them truly lost, gone forever to the whims of age and time? Does that make them broken or simply different? He isn't sure. Caneo has always felt something missing from himself, but outside the minds of others, he cannot judge whether or not such an experience renders him unique. He knows he wants Essetia to be happy, though. He wants to feel the joy and mystery she evoked in him on their first meeting, under the snow and the dim glow of lights.

        So maybe he can take her there again.

        Maybe growing up means nothing more than living through mistakes. Caneo listens to her speak about the Dragon's Throat. His own face mimics, shyly, the smile opening on hers. "I grew up in a warm place," he muses aloud. His younger self remembered sunlight like a wound, remembered only fear chasing his heels across the endless white sand. But there were good things also, weren't there? Things which made him what he is now, fragile thing refusing to break, hollow thing trying to fill. This Dragon's Throat sounds softer than his past, but maybe pleasingly familiar, too. Something in Caneo's blood aches for sunlight and the stretch of miles under his legs just as his heart cries to the moon and the voices in starlight. "Home," he breathes, softly, after the mare. And when was Caneo home?

        He has spent a lifetime in search of such a thing.

        "It's different," he allows, "from any other place." And how much can he tell her? And how much can he admit to himself? "I think there are things here I can't forget." Caneo frowns again, and sighs. "I came back because I couldn't leave." If that is home, it feels somehow less substantial than he expected it to. He returns the cold blue of his eyes to the vibrant green of hers, his gaze steady, expression fathomless again but hardly unwelcoming. "I want to see your Dragon's Throat. Not someday, but today. Or tomorrow." Plans fall apart and get forgotten; he tires of dreaming only to be led astray, but he allows a little extra time, assuming they will walk some distance. He recalls Helovia is large, a vastness once important to his dreaming mind. He hesitates then, maybe fearful his next words will break something of what is between them. But the knowledge he wants to give is knowledge those close to him must have, if he intends to keep anyone close.

        "My name is Caneo," he says. The first person he said this to laughed at him. That was a long time ago, though, and the bones of that creature have long been picked clean. Such is the fate of those he has held dear. But if Helovia is kinder, if Helovia is home... He gives his name now to someone he would choose for a new family. "I guess you should know it."