Caneo;

Sky -

Cracked open wide, eggshell blue and thin as a baby's legs. It beckons from its throne above him. Because nothing else calls (but north, a cold wind winding in his mind and gnawing on his limbs) Caneo climbs. And he knows he'll never reach that blue vault spreading high above him, but soon enough the air bites in his lungs. And soon enough, the wind is its own voice, soft and clear, and he has never seen this place before: the grasses at the top of the world.

Atop the path he stops, himself a statue glowing silver in the sunlight, like a beast carved of moonlight or pure metal. Against the sky his skeleton is rendered impossibly thin, precariously long, almost too strange to be alive. Then he sighs, and something of the spell is broken, and he continues on, his cloven hooves sharp in the new grass. Upon his brow the serpent is unwinding, bored and vacuous. She slips down the nape of his neck and pools across his spine, blue and grey and very small against the faint, faint hollows of his ribs. The Dragon's Throat takes care of him, but he will always be a frightful thing, rendered in the bleak vision of a far-away god, a god of hunger and nothing more.

Caneo is hungry now.

It might be more right say: the snake is hungry. He no longer differentiates well between his feelings and hers; they're collapsing, intertwined, sometimes the same being and sometimes not. So he could pretend he's scouting or something for his herd but really he's just bored and wanting for meat, for some kind of little fast thing his new soul can sink her teeth into. She writhes in restless waves across his bony haunches, her tongue seeking and seeking, her black eyes bright as chips of obsidian. She makes him little more than a vessel for now, a set of legs to move her farther, faster -

And it's at a little pool they stop, something probably caused by rains. Caneo's long neck bends back and the serpent catches his horn again, curls tightly round its base as he moves her from his back to a spot near the ground. And the ground is alive with little noises, croaking and singing, small beasts trying to live. The curl of blue scales unravels once she scents grass and she slips along the edges of the tiny pond like a shadow, herself hunting shadows, until she's near enough one of the frogs and then - (fast).

He watches all this from a distance, afraid of scaring the frogs away. Now she has one in her mouth, though, and he shifts just a little nearer, protectively. His blood is up, cold and quick; something predatory shifts his heart and his eyes skate over the grasses before they move back to the snake, calculating. Restless. He sort of wants to hunt, but it's a foreign feeling to the unicorn. He sort of wants to run, too, but he's trapped. His tail twists in frustration.

all the children painted diagrams of god upon their hands

Caneo;

Alone — and not.

Something fractures in Caneo's memory and the moment the stranger appears he no longer knows how things looked before. It is: alone, not alone; emptiness, black. He forgets, destroys, rewrites the moment his mind first screams danger! even as it occurs, so that instant disappears, and with it the skip of his heart, and with it the warning.

He looks on someone else.

And his body quiets, not by degrees but instantly, the way rabbits grow still when scenting a wolf, the way deer stop when their eyes catch headlights. In the back of his mind, the snake swallows. He steps over her almost unconsciously, and makes no other movement. The silver ears fix forward; the long tail hangs. Those blue, blue eyes yawn wide and empty from the spare architecture of Caneo's face. When the stranger speaks, there is no indication of how long they stood before the sound. Maybe it was the space of a breath; maybe it was longer. A small frown twists one of the silver ears back, and Caneo's eyes flick to the space behind the black as if he hasn't heard it speak. He's aware - terribly aware - of the transparency of the thought, but he can't figure out where the stranger just came from. It appeared almost as if it stepped out of the air; was born, godlike, while he blinked.

He dislikes it.

But the frown vanishes as Caneo glances down at the serpent once more. His ears twitch in what resembles almost-mocking confusion. And he looks up at the stranger again, simpers. "You want a frog?" he asks, all innocence and light. The moment she finishes her meal, Caneo swings his head down toward the serpent and she curls up onto his horn, makes herself again a crown. The way the other gazes at her - Caneo's hooked horn might look better in that seeing eye. He still affects a tranquil sort of stupidity as he steps away from the puddle. "They're free."

all the children painted diagrams of god upon their hands

Caneo;

The laughter strikes him like a handful of cold water. Though Caneo does not visibly flinch, something in his eyes tightens almost imperceptibly; something stills in the dormant hollow of his chest. Beneath the black beast's skin, beneath its voice and scars and the crazed expression carved irreversibly by injury, something is wrong. Madness, maybe. Caneo isn't sure, only his first inkling of weird increases by the moment, and he has survived too long in places worse than this to be anything but wary. He stands, tall and slim and quiet. He smiles still, though the smile grows sharp and glints too bright. In his mane, the snake curls lazily, fat with her meal. He feels - out of his depth. And Caneo hates it.

He responds with a snort to the question, genuinely dumbfounded as to whether the threat is meant in earnest or in jest. "That would be funny," Caneo returns. He has seen old soldiers do stranger things than that, hasn't he? Black water shivers at the back of his mind and he puts it away. He is here, in the meadow. Here, grown and fast. The beast before him may smell of danger but it looks weak, too, and something frays at the edges of it like a water-damaged photograph. Maybe he should run away.

"Hmm - " Caneo says instead. He looks younger with his face canted this way, with his ears up and his eyes bright. He lies with more effort now, determined to be unafraid. Determined, also, to unravel the mystery unspooling before him. "You feel okay, Uncle? Are you tired? You look pretty old, and there are better things to eat around here for the likes of us." The grass whispers around his fetlocks as he shifts, himself half skeletal even in good weight, his coat the color of mercury in the sun. "I could walk you home, if you want." Perhaps, in the language of warriors, this is an insult. Perhaps even Caneo means it as one. But he knows he is speaking part truth, and he wants to know where the beast came from.

all the children painted diagrams of god upon their hands

Caneo;

He is trying. Caneo's features for the first time pull taut, his pale eyes narrowed and his ears canted back against the fury of this unnecessary explosion. Evidently, he has struck a nerve — or opened a vein of something caustic. Weaving ever so slightly, the silver creature steps back, and he winces at the sound of the black thing's voice. Why? He has not seen anything so damaged in a long time. When last he did, he was young and fearful; now he examines the horror with pity. It is a shame, isn't it? Why are you yelling, Uncle? My ears are fine, you see....

"Sorry," Caneo offers frankly when a pause comes in the storm. His own head tilts to mirror the mad stallion's more obscene posture. Did kindness trigger this? Even Caneo's poor excuse for it? Or did pity spark the whole fire, awake whatever beast lay sleeping under the scars and dull black flesh? Caneo thinks, though he doesn't know, it may burn out sooner than later. And what then? Does it even have a home to walk back to?

One of Caneo's ears twitches as the stranger carries on. Children? he thinks; he has not mentioned them. Something sly crinkles the edges of his mouth. Yours, maybe he thinks, and his tail twitches. He says nothing, of course. The old one still rambles; Caneo listens despite himself. He thinks, maybe the apparition at the beginning was a trick of his own mind, a fallacy, and there is nothing about the stranger worth keeping. He thinks, maybe he ought to let it wend down on its own, when it chooses —

The snake recoils.

Caneo moves, too, almost at the same time. Nervous impulse strikes them both the moment the shadow launches forward. And if it thought his stillness meant lack of readiness — inexperience — it was mistaken. Maybe Caneo has never been a hunter, but he knows everything about what means to be prey. He's not about to succumb to the jaws of a toothless wolf yet.

He darts to the side, his cloven hooves flicking nimbly up out of the grass, as the serpent twists her coils tight around his ears and through the sparse silver hairs of his forelock. The sensation annoys him enough that he must concentrate to avoid tossing his head and throwing her off; in a moment he hesitates and she readjusts, and he is tenser now, watching watching watching, wondering if the black thing will charge through the place where he was and go over the edge, finding the quick way down.

And would that be a tragedy?

"Really?" He says, the words a little rushed around the quickness of his breath. But he's careful to make certain there's no fear in them, no single hint of real concern for his well-being or his soul-partner's. "Why would you kill us? I'm not any son of yours."

all the children painted diagrams of god upon their hands