She smells the wound before they spy the man. Up above Caneo's ears, the serpent's tiny skull rises like a periscope. He clings to the shadows as she tastes the air, her forked tongue pointing them between the great trees and on toward something rotten, something dying. Caneo's purpose in the forest has nothing to do with mercy and even less to do with kindness, but he fixates on the oddity nonetheless. What kind of thing comes here to die?

        What a pitiful way for a story to end.

        He calls it curiosity which drags him forth, his stride long and graceful as always. The wanderer never betrays himself with expressions of haste; he strips desperation from his body like weakness and proceeds as if unaffected by the world. Still, behind the vacant mirrors of his eyes is the endless argument between himself and the serpent. Surely there's more interesting prey elsewhere? Surely he should turn around? Go home? Wait for a time when the sun disappears and the light no longer hurts her eyes? When she loses, she buries herself in the sparse threads of his mane, and Caneo follows the noise of footsteps and dragging, though he does not speak — yet.

        Now, of course, there is the crash. The sound of a body falling. He spies light playing off of feathers up ahead and ducks under the nearest low branches, his ears twisting in search of predators worse than he. None make themselves known. For a moment he surrenders the both of them to silence. If the stranger spoke a word before, it was too low and rough for the silver to catch. Caneo knows nothing about this man except he is dying. Certainly, he is dying.

        Now, Caneo approaches.
        (he may not get another chance)

        "Oh, no," the silver voice intones at last. It is, as ever, light and laughing, sweet as song. If the potential death near his hooves disturbs him, he makes a strange mockery of concern. But he pauses some distance away, and down cranes his skinny neck, and awkwardly his head tilts to level a single pale eye with the glassy eyes of the stranger.

"You need a healer, don't you?" Now, Caneo is about as far as one gets from such a thing. "It would be too bad if you died before you saw the rest of Helovia," he muses, his head lifting once more to a comfortable height. He moves to step around the stranger, his gaze searching for the wound he now smells on his own.