(the boy dreams — )

        It begins with a girl; these things always do. Here, the girl is one part flame and she watches the horizon with eyes darker than the spaces between stars. Her voice smells of brushfires, but nothing in the meadow burns (does he?). He and the girl, they are always in the meadow. He is always a boy, and he is always lost.

        He is in the meadow now. He forgets how old he is. He knows his belly is empty, empty again, and he moves like a wraith for water. And he is silent, gaunt, and empty as the sky while he stands at the banks of the river and watches the snake hunt her meals. Every day now, the snake grows a little longer, a little faster, a little more terrible. She slips along through darkness without sound, her tongue tasting for blood. She detests the sun.

        His heart beats. He wanders from the river bank, leaving the serpent to her work. If she is little, if he fears to lose her to the careless tramp of hooves or the hungry mouths of bigger things, he doesn't show it. He is looking at the stars, instead, which once held meaning for him —

        "Look for me."

        He can't remember how much of the girl was a dream (he's looking now). Sometimes he thinks he's been in search his whole life, but when he skirts the meadow, when he dares to sully its face with his hooves, he does not find her there. Maybe their last meeting was a lie, something he crafted for himself out of hope, treacherous hope, that thing he always knew better than to trust too much. He feels strange now, empty and new, sullied and bent, a sharp glint of something cast off from a larger, long-forgotten monument. He has grown sharp with wear.

        Sharp!

        A little lance of pain; something tears inside. And Caneo's head snaps around; he returns to the present with a snap, a rubber band pulled too far. His body stills. His eyes narrow. His tail is a whip, cracking once at his back. There is nothing —

        “O!” he says, his voice unusually mirthless. Where is she? He wheels, and steps once toward the river bank, vibrating. And all around him is dark, dark, dark...

        But he no longer dreams.

        To be small again —

        Fear shoots through his veins in spurts and gasps. The sensation whips down deeply engraved paths in his brain, in his body, like water flooding dry creek beds. It is at once familiar and terrible. But through it all, Caneo is blind; the ground shakes (but the ground is still) — a shadow (but he stares upon the naked sky) — oh —

        The noise shot from his throat is not his own.

        It belongs to some other creature, something thin and desperate, something simultaneously killed on the sands of a homeland far from this meadow and breathing, breathing, breathing its last breaths near the rush of the water. He cannot move. He sees again the moon, though it was thinner that night than it is now, and feels again his heart churn, restless, begging for life. He had run then faster than he has ever run, so fast he thought his heart would burst, selfishly grasping at survival while his only family bled, bled, bled.

        He is selfish now.

        When he moves, he is a bullet, a streak of light — fastest in a straight line. The silver body wheels and his hooves spit chunks of root and soil as he shoves away. His body is his, and not. It is a boy's, and not. It is a limbless thing, shrinking as the shadow comes down, whipping and coiling in on itself as the knife slices through blue scales and muscle and toward the little bones beneath. (no —)

        It isn't far. He sees the monster first, and his silver voice trembles out again, a raw and terrible sound. For a moment he looks like something, someone else — like the soldier he would have been in Grandfather never died. Muscle stands out against the strange, thin architecture of his body and like this they are opposed: the beast in armor and the ghost built of spiracles and glass. He digs in his haunches and he stills, stills, and his tail hurts as if it bleeds though he knows, knows he isn't bleeding. Something in his eyes narrows, cold and immediate, as he looks on the monster. Slowly, Caneo stalks forward, and it isn't menace in his gait but it is — something.

        “Oh no,” he says, too sweetly and too sharp, a joke and an insult at once. Caneo's gaze searches the grass erratically. Every inch of him calls come back. What sort of fool abandons his heart to a place like this? If he were lucid, if he were self-aware, he might be laughing at himself, for here was where he left Tandavi, too.

        But he is not laughing.

        “Do you kill big things, too?” Caneo wonders, one ear tilting back. “Or just the little ones?” (come back) He wonders if it is distracted by him. He has never been a shield, but this feels less like shielding and more like.... preservation. His other ear comes forward, and he halts. His heart still beats.

In the grass, near the creature's front legs, the part of him down small upon the ground recoils. She was intrepid a moment ago, but now she bleeds a little from one end, her perfect armor torn, her serrated body tired and fearful and so very alive with the shadow of death still on her. The distant isn't so great, but she is very small; her silver one seems an eternity away.

        Now, he doesn't really expect the monster to speak. If his head were clear instead of corrupted by the raw fear beating through the snake, Caneo would never have approached. He's half terror though, blind and sacrificial. Triumph arches through him when those blue eyes peel from the ground and up toward him, even if her gaze is severe. Even if it finds him wanting. He's distracted her enough to keep his two lives for the moment. That's what matters. That, and he's a fool — but he knows this.

        Lighty, the silver stallion steps forward again, his long neck bending downward, tilting just slightly. Not quite insane enough to pick the snake up with his teeth, he offers her the usual perch of his horn. Feebly, she finds him and reaches up to it, her latter half trailing. Then, reunited, he steps back sharply, his tail a whip behind him, his eyes sharp and nervous as they haven't been in such a very long time (it hurts). He dares not investigate the wound too carefully while the.... thing.... still stands there. He just tilts his head the other way, helping his friend back into his forelock, and across one side of his brow and through the silver threads of his forelock, she leaves a trail of dark blood.

        “No,” he tells the mare when he does speak. Her words weren't lost on him, though her boasting about murder draws forth no impression of awe. It does explain.... well, a little. Caneo's usually lovely features crease with irritation. He thinks about running away, but has no desire to be chased, and too often the act of flight draws predators afterward — like an instinct. He's trapped. “I'm not a hunter,” he says instead. “Just a spy. For the Dragon's Throat. We have a lot of warriors there, if you're looking for something to fight.”