Green. So much it threads in through his lungs and becomes part of him, damp and alive. Such a space compresses and inflates, both at the same time, warping everything within. Caneo is at once thin and burgeoning, claustrophobic and sick with wonder. He chokes on the color as his eyes take it in, but never stops feasting. Maybe this is masochism more than it is any statement on the forest; he seems to enjoy the terror of this place the same way he enjoyed dancing the Halcyon Flats. Helovia springs wonder after wonder upon him until he is sick with joy, so sick of it he wants to flee again. Days pass, and he falters under the growing sensation of entrapment.

         Now he is alone, because even the thought of cherished company (if such a thing exists) threatens to drive him mad. He is loneliest with others, a stranger to his own skin, aware of the distance between beating hearts when he hears another nearby. Maybe he would be different now, if not for this - if ever he sought out the comfort of those nomads passing long ago beneath the stars. If Caneo regrets, though, he isn't aware of it. Regret and sorrow are different things, after all, and he moves most easily alone. His eyes leap from shadow to shadow with only the mild quickness of fear as a background noise. Drip, drip, drip says the forest, and out of sight the grey sky has opened its mouth to pour out all this... So music plays alongside the steady drum of his footsteps, the hollow beat of his heart. It's a cold wetness, one he might avoid if he went home, but he won't swim the frigid seas and he won't wait to be helped across, so he goes elsewhere instead. Experience warns of how he might forget, might wander off, but he has made a promise to himself. Live, says his own voice from days past, says the Caneo filled with wonder and joy who stood at water's edge and gazed with clear eyes at the Firedancer. That Caneo is fleeting; he wonders sometimes where that one goes.

         Now he is alone.

         Something shoots past on the ground, a different green from the stalks of the forest, and he hesitates, head cocked, to peer back under his legs: a frog. It hopes again and stills, throat pulsing, huge eyes staring up at him, mindless and empty. He smiles, and it hops again, eager to disappear. Caneo has nothing else to do, so he half turns, giving chase though no objective lies at the end. That's when a drop of water, significantly larger and colder than the rest, lands directly in one of his ears.

         With a start, Caneo rockets back. He goes too fast, too far, and his long legs tangle up enough to hurl him down, hard on his backside. "Ack!" Uttering a sound somewhere between a cry and a curse, he sits down like a dog, ribs heaving, and stares at this forest which so easily defeated him - and he didn't know they were fighting! Maybe it's a little like the desert, then. Eyes narrowed to blue slivers of light, Caneo peers about. He isn't in the mood to be battered; his hooves and his shivering hide reject the notion of flight at the same time the muddy soil laughs at any plan for fight. So if the green place intends to kill him, well...

         Plop, it says, and deposits something else on his head. This thing is rather harder than the first one; his head recoils with a jerk, and scowling he points his muzzle skyward. Something rustles in the branches; a pointed brown face appears from the dim heights above, grins enough to bare pointed teeth. But Caneo is bigger than it, and with a strangled shout he leaps up enough to brandish his too-small horn and snap his untried teeth. And the pointed face disappears, and he finds himself standing again, wringing excess water from his sodden coat. "Bye," he intones bitterly. With a shake of his head he goes to move forward again, but he hesitates because - something is there just below him.

         It's the last thing that fell, not water but a pale stone with a network of cracks on the facing side. One of Caneo's ears tilts back; he cocks his head to get a better look. Because stones don't crack that way, not usually, and he can't remember one that wiggles in such a way, either.... With a snort, he jumps back. And it wiggles again, the cracks widening, until a blunt, dark snout pushes through one of them. Caneo's ears snap forward. The snout is slowly followed by a tiny, tiny face and dark eyes gleaming like perfect marbles in the rain. A fragile whip of a body slowly uncoils from the ruins of the stone (egg) and it is too small, too impossibly small to ever survive alone amongst the rain and the ugly trees and the magic of Helovia. It looks at him.

         He looks back. One of his ears twitches. "What is this?" Caneo asks, though no one answers. "A worm?" It is a very quiet worm, a very small worm, and it is cold. He doesn't know how he knows this, why he knows this, but he knows it suddenly - completely. Caneo frowns again, the way he does when he is thinking. Slowly, he steps forward again and sniffs at the - worm. It smells of mud and dampness, too small even to have its own scent. But not too small to be threading through him like a ghost, like a needle, a keening silence terribly akin to his own. Caneo does a strange thing, then, and tilts his head so the little (worm?) thing can curl its tiny, tiny self around the smiling edge of his horn. It tucks its body nearly into the threads of his mane and there it stays, a tiny forked tongue flickering from its mouth. And he smells warm, and he smells safe, and it is the first time in Caneo's life he's ever smelled that way, to anyone. His blue eyes angle up as if he can see it still (he can't) and he says, very softly, "Okay."

         And that's all there is.

just to watch them falling

I'LL BE YOUR NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET
a loaded god complex, cock it and pull it

Z è K L è
am i more than you bargained for yet?

A noise; more noise. Caneo's slender ears twitch to cup the sound, and under his skin a thousand string draw slowly taut. Practice makes the tension subtle, almost insignificant, though the sharpness of his eyes betrays everything else. And he is brutally aware of the walls closing him in, the rustle of leaves and the scarcity of light. He can't run properly; the shadow coiling upon his brow echoes fear, echoes confusion, dreams of hunger already - a void yawning wide somewhere between his ribs. "Hello," says Caneo, loud for him, before the dark head pushes through and into sight. Behind it are wings, black and blue, and the screws in him begin to loosen.

"Ampere." Surprise makes it almost a question. As if self conscious, the serpent retreats behind his ears, her wet scales churning the thin hairs of his forelock. And his chancellor speaks, and Caneo's blue eyes turn up as if to regard the thing again. A worm, he'd called it, and that's all it is to him now, except the sight of someone else makes Caneo inexplicably possessive, and the machinery of his body hasn't quite let go, entirely, of run. His ears twitch; confusion plays in the blue of his eyes - confusion and something else without a name. You've bonded. She may as well be speaking another language for all the purchase these words gain in the slick mire of his thinking mind. "Yes?" he agrees, because he does not wish to provoke. But she is speaking still, a waterfall of words, and inside Caneo is shrinking, shrinking, around the darkness in his chest. He thinks of water -

Something else moves behind her.

Now the silver creature shudders, every muscle snapping, and for a brief instant his hooves leave the ground as he leaps back, not a sound leaving him other than the soft hiss of breath, the impact of his hooves into the soil below. He lands again and steps back, head up, genuine surprise boiling in the blank, blank fathoms of his eyes. Yes, there is something behind Ampere, maybe two somethings - Caneo snorts.

The newest thing starts talking - a lot. Caneo stares down at it with furrowed brow, his courtesy robbed of him. "....Name?" Caneo repeats blandly. The blunt snout of the creature pushes around his ear, and a pair of button-black eyes regard young Zero in the keen way snakes regard all things. Her tongue is a flickering light, pale pink, tasting the wetness of the air. Metal, it relays, and Caneo knows this though he isn't sure how. He's beginning to reach his breaking point, and fears it's obvious - the twitching of his tail, the shuddering of his thought, all plainly visible, laid out here for the world to see. "No -" he protests, and his tail thrashes again, "It's private." Which is probably the weirdest thing he's said yet, but there it is, Caneo stalling for time. His gaze flashes back to Ampere, almost accusatory. What is she doing here, haunting him so far from the Throat, surrounded by these kids?

He steps back again, something sharp in his gaze, in his movements. He becomes brittle, his whole body threatening to break and bite back if it's touched. Caneo wants to disappear - into the forest. Into himself. "She's afraid of you," he says a little sharply, a little accusatorily, and it's a quick lie and it might be easy to see through it if anyone know snakes and bothers to pay even the slightest attention to the way this one regards them. But it's all he has; he wants to go away. His thoughts are a hornet's nest. So he retreats. Retreats. Retreats.

Hopes they will not give chase.

just to watch them falling