His hooves are wearing circles in the dirt. Helovia is wearing circles in his head. Caneo returns to the Thistle Meadow without knowing why (again). Or — he does know why but he ignores it, feigning disinterest in the memory of dancing lights. Truly, Caneo has nowhere to go. He has nowhere better to be. The Dragon's Throat loses its hold on him with Tallsun beating down, and no one from there places any claim on his allegiance. He wanders, as he always has. It's in his blood.

        Like a ghost he traces familiar paths through the brittle grass. It had been green when last he passed through; now he looks down and thinks of fires. Up between his ears, the serpent loops her narrow coils in his mane and buries her face beneath it, thinking he needs to make up his mind. He is running; he has always been running away, too. Today it takes him along the course of the river, and one of his ears tilts toward the laughter of water, the noise of smaller creatures going about their lives ignorant of him. There's never anything interesting in the Thistle Meadow, is there?

        In answer, the snake pokes her head out of his mane enough to taste the air, because Caneo is dim when it comes to smelling and she already catches something up ahead, a horse smell like his and a cold smell like Lena's. His ears fix forward in answer, curiosity warring with his present distaste for almost everyone. "Well?" he says, very quietly. And the serpent cannot answer; her languages are all silent and mostly consist of various words for hunger. She retreats into the hair between his ears, her tail curled around one of the fluted silver appendages, and Caneo breathes a quiet sigh. He's alone even when he's not; he makes the decision to keep on.

        And he doesn't expect it to be Lena, because the snake would remember Lena more distinctly. But there's a nagging sensation of familiarity when it comes to the Basin — as if he can pick up what he lost when he abandoned that place. He had been greener then, softer, easier to know. Now he's merely curious, and his tail swings as he approaches the black and white pattern nestled under the trailing branches of a stray willow tree. His gait is slow and undemanding, though in the back of his mind Caneo does wonder if the stranger isn't hurt, or if she isn't stupid, kneeling in public with no one else around to watch her back. He casts a wary eye back at the meadow then swings his long neck forward, ears picking up. He doesn't speak until he sees she's got something trapped, actually, and it glitters like silver in the water.

        And it makes him think of Aquila.

        And the snake twists now to peer into the shadows, curious and bristling, though she only ever looks wide-eyed and frail. "Are you going to eat that?" Caneo asks. He chuckles just under his breath when the serpent recoils, her visceral no! more a feeling than a word, but nonetheless undeniable. He tries to understand how fish are that much worse than frogs, and he can't. So he studies the stranger instead, his eyes falling on the smooth thrust of her horn, the warning in the way she looks down at her captive (like a spider). If they are both hungry things, her hunger differs from Caneo's surely. He isn't sure yet how to judge it.