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.