There is a voice crying in the bitter wind, a bugling voice that sings and crescendos with passion and perfected deliverance. Romina's large, soft ears swivel towards the sound, tiny body lifted high and leonine tail flicking like an angered feline. She is a child, and with that title comes the curse of curiosity. Romina was an adventurer, a vagabond, made for wandering and exploration. Someday she would rip her brother from this blasted frozen wasteland, and they would find their places in the world. They would find a place to set their stone and build an empire. But in the meantime, the agony of boredom and the enticement of something new and exciting was too drastic a dichotomy. It was a simplistic choice from that point of awareness.

Little heels kicked up, bounding across the snowy landscape with ease and height that no equine could hope to achieve. Large ears swiveled to try and pinpoint the voice as she neared it, errant hooves dancing across scorched earth in search of this familiar cousin of the songs she sings with her altered vocals. There's something old and familiar in the tone that sings, the words growing slowly clearer as she bounds across the dry, crackling grass, her cervine legs powerful and fast. The lyrics take shape in the hollows of her ears, a tale, a warning of wolves and swift death that is assuaged only by the valiant fight against it. She does not fear wolves as deeply or instinctively as she should, confusion like a miasma in her brain as she bounds ever closer, a shape taking form on the horizon. Alice is no real wolf, more hell than hound, but she resembles one strongly enough that Romina has only ever known wolves to be companionable. Protectors. And Mama often referred to the herd as a pack, terminology from Alice's brain slipping easily onto her tongue.

The song ends on a long, bugled note, and Romina can't help but slow and lift her own head to the sky, a soprano warble of her own. The contact call is the only one she knows, has heard it resonate in the forests where she wanders, though she cannot commune with the deer themselves. Skipping delightedly forward towards the massive, frozen shape, her wide orange eyes drink in every detail of this odd creature. He is like her but also not, same eyes and tri-toed legs. Romina knows he must be like her, for he had been speaking and singing. Thin fawn legs dance closer, fearless and curious as her horns blaze into colorful fire in her excitement. We're not alone, she can't help but think, already thinking about telling Ru'in about this. He would likely not find it as interesting as she, but Romina didn't mind. He loved and was devoted to her, he didn't need to find interest in this stranger even if she did.

"You're like me!" she gasps in breathless delight, long tail swaying excitedly behind her. The princess hesitates for a moment, face crumbling subtly. "Well...kind of." And if there's a bit of pain in the corners of her eyes, well. She didn't belong in any realm, and though her mutations had not cursed her as they had her brother, she would never have a place in any herd or in the wilds. She was a deer but not fully. She was a unicorn but not fully. Stuck somewhere in between, and for a moment she is bitterly hateful of this majestic creature, for being fully wild and untampered with, yet still capable of their language and societal structure. But there is nothing she can do as of yet, no way to change herself or steal from him the luck and blessings he has been given.

Instead she tries to focus on the thrill of the discovery, bounding in front of him in skips and hops of delight. "I'm Romina! What's your name?" Maybe he held the answers, maybe he understood the terrible feeling of not fitting in anywhere. Especially with his odd snowy coat. Maybe he could help her stop feeling so abnormal.

Whatever response Romina had anticipated is washed away like silt beneath the strong tide of his handsome, paternal smile. She feels as if the ground is shifting beneath her, starlight breaking overhead, because at last she has found someone who may not be exactly like her, but who understands. Someone other than Ru'in, who wouldn't dare to outwardly disagree with her regardless of the circumstances. The Banshee felt like a shriveled sponge, vying for information and wisdom that she could glean from the magnificent creature before her. She was lost, with no guide, in a world that was already cruel towards those of different blood and breed. Her parents had not made her this way, and she had no one else in the world like her but Ru'in. Until now, at least.

He greets her with odd words, quite alike her father in his gentlemanly eloquence. But she knows what doe means, and her heart skip-thumps eagerly in her chest. Oh what she would give to be a real doe sometimes! For she is too large with her equine lineage to be as truly graceful as the ones she would bound behind in the forest. Their beauty had stirred the first inklings of envy in the girl, prompting her to strive towards a pleasing physical aesthetic with careful grooming and posturing that she emulated from her mother. She enjoyed her differences too much to long for life as an equine, but had no qualms with desiring the wildness of the woods and her inspired blood.

At last he proffers his name, and she grins, faltering only when she can't recall the proper title for him. She takes a leap of faith on the faint memory of her mother's lessons. "Do I call you stag-Leif Or is it buck?" An innocent, eager questions as her sinuous tail sways eagerly behind her like an overly excited pup.

A flush of pleasure caresses her features in a shy smile as he compliments her song. "Ru'in does not like to sing, and nobody else can. I don't get to practice very much." Especially because Romina would not sing around those liable to mock her for the squawking she sometimes experienced when trying to test the limits of her voice. An ember of orange fire leaps into her gaze as an idea strikes her, low flames burning on her antlers in her excitement.

"Could you teach me? To sing like you?"