A wall; the word she speaks is no, but it's wrapped up in other words, bright and smiling. For just a moment - half a heart beat at most - Caneo wants to strike out. Anger strikes brittle as flint against the edges of want; he had never pegged Lena as particularly clever. She turns away his probing with a note of laughter, though, as gentle and precise a no as he has ever heard, and he will not ask again what she's been up to, what secrets she keeps between the high walls of the mountains and the empty, obscene face of the sky. He didn't even care that much, he tells himself, but failure stings. And though he's quiet still, vacant still, the serpent curls herself into a smaller, tighter knot. It presents as a sudden shyness, maybe weariness (she is young, after all).

        Caneo laughs, light and musical (he will never forget his manners). "Something only a healer would know." And I am not a healer, is the unspoken half of that statement. And I would never care to be, is the third. And true, he's sharper now than the boy who came here years ago. His growing self has grown into harder, sharper angles - sleeker lines - less kind. The yearning he perhaps mistook for loneliness is something else. His expression is passive when she tells him Roland isn't here and it's - the last no Caneo wants to hear.

        Where is he, then? The child in his heart, distraught.

        (it doesn't matter)

        And Lena is reflected in the cold blue of his eyes: Lena, looking away now. Lena, the Songbird, potentially distraught. Caneo neither remarks upon nor stores this away as a particular point of weakness - he needs none when it comes to her. The silver stallion looks away as well, disregarding the sad mystery of her face and drinking instead the Basin. And he doesn't know if he wanted this or wanted the possibility of the past. And he stinks of sand, of heat and sunlight -

        Caneo sighs.

        Nothing is ever how he wants it. A decisive gesture, a quiet flick of his tail and he buries the child he was. Leaves it to smother. The serpent retreats into the sparse threads of his mane, and though it's not enough to hide in it's enough to cover her tiny face. It's only now - too late - that Lena offers him what he thought he came for all along. It's only now Caneo wants to throw the offer out, because he would never be happy. Because all Helovia is, is a nightmare of his. Its gods dream in different colors than whatever ancient made him. "Am I?" he wonders more softly. Not a hint of malice or of discontent makes it into the question, but he thinks his answer lingers there already.

        He cannot.

        He cannot go back. He cannot be what he might have been - just what he is. Maybe he ought to thank Roland, wherever Roland is, for giving him this last honest thing. Caneo turns before he speaks again. He doesn't breathe another word of want, of loss. Sorry serves no one. Halfway on the road to home, though, the silver stallion pauses and regards his friend again. And there's sadness in his eyes, though it's tempered by a thousand other things. "Sorry, Lena. I live in the Dragon's Throat now." And maybe there's a tiny flicker of disdain as he speaks those words. Maybe he can't keep his irritation back - for the many many wings and the smell of sweat and beasts bigger and stupider than he. Caneo simpers; almost an apology for the lapse.

        "If you need anything..." He hesitates, because it's a very sincere thought coming from a place of emptiness. He doesn't know if he cares about her. He doesn't know if he ought to. They do have this particular loss in common, at least. His tail twitches again, restless. "If the Basin needs anything..." Well it doesn't hurt to leave the offer open. Winter was never his color, but he does love it in the way he never loved the sun. "This was my first home."