Thick legs of ebony and ivory carry the man away from the Aurora Basin, decidedly slower than his mad race to his children and Rexanna. Though the unease for Rexanna and the twins’ safety had settled, a new apprehension replaced it: how would he be present in the twin’s lives? How would he be their father, not just their sire? His ears tilted back, trying to wrestle the painful hope that Rexanna would bring herself and their children to the Edge when he returned for the festivities she spoke of. She had never returned with him before; and the single time she had attempted to come to the Edge, Orithia had run her off—his foals in her womb.

What would he do with the rose-blushed mare? She was fiercely loyal, as much as she was fiercely his. A sigh pushed out his nostrils as he plodded southward, legs crossing over the vast expanse of permafrost and tundra. The dry, high meadows were awash with dry grasses; it reminded him of the Dorobian plains. Except these were cold, even in the day’s ‘heat.’ How differently life would have taken him if he had followed Rexanna to the Basin that fateful day he had crossed the Threshold…

But his introspective thoughts were shattered by a rapidly plummeting white, winged form. It dove from the sky; faster and faster; a pearlescent streak amid the blue-hot heavens. His strides drew shorter, brows raising first in surprise and then in concern—was this thing (a pegasus?) destined to crash into the earth?

But, at the last moment, the figure drew up, floating around him with surprising grace. “Erthe?” His thick, black-splashed skin twitched at the whisper-soft tickles of her satin, white feathers against his side. When had her wings become so long; so graceful? When had the awkwardness of yearling-dom begun to leave her legs and flanks? It still clung there slightly, but Erthe was definitely closer to mare than filly, now. Cobalt eyes sharpened, rising out of his self-imposed gloom, to truly see the little filly (despite his realizations, she would forever be his little, brazen filly).

His head followed her as she landed alongside him, with surprising grace that he had not yet learned to expect from his small friend. “You’ve taken well to flying, it seems,” a shadow of a lopsided grin crossed over his face as his warm compliment fell between them. He was happy to see her flying rather than hobbling. It seemed more… freeing.

Though his grin faded as her question sank in, his navy eyes glancing away from the dazzling white of her coat. In the presence of her cheerful playfulness, he was tempted to brush aside her question with a noncommittal answer. But the Elephant was too tired, too emotionally raw, from his race to the Basin and subsequent meeting of Rexanna and their children, to form an half-truths in answer to her question.

So, instead, the Elephant quietly replied, “I went to visit my children, in the Basin.” And then, amid his exhaustion, the King fell both still and silent, eyes on the dry earth and struggling plants.