When the painted mare approaches, Dragomir looks up at her with a sort of anxious happiness, unwilling to let even an encounter with a stranger tarnish his excitement at having, at last, hit a break through.

At the very least, she’s a beautiful stranger, with a pale face and kind eyes, and he notices her prettiness with the slightest twinge of guilt (was it a betrayal to think of another woman as pretty? he wonders, never having had a love before from which to learn, as he did now, with Ranjiri). He looks at darkly painted, ivory sylph with less reservation than he does most, however, her figure familiar with her hornless, wingless, and otherwise blessedly normal body, and he instantaneously finds a peculiar kinship with her (as he does with almost all equines), though she’s making fun of him. Perhaps it is because the strangely behaved man is often looked at oddly or made commentary of at his behest, he takes it with a grain of salt, his dark lips quirking up into one of his inept smiles.

You cannot imagine how much so, he states, because he does not imagine she can. Surely, he looked half mad, pitching stones at the earth, now that he ponders it, using a mental frame different than his own; still, there is some truth in it. The endless question as to how and where the dragon statuette, and later the bear, had come was a nagging one, persistent enough to have kept him up at night. Ranjiri often fussed at him sweetly about how he would never think of anything but sleep if he did not take the time to rest, but, at last! He could rest easy, almost entirely sure of the solution, now that he had seen metal flake shining in the heart of a stone, which, surely, the beach was quite literally strewn with, as was all the earth.

Almost sure, of course, as there were further studies to be done; studies which this mare could be present for, if she chose to remain.

I was looking for metal, in the stone, I mean, he explains, not wanting her to continue thinking him an irrational buffoon for long, which may sound odd, but is certainly less so than why I sought it in the first place…

Staring down at the fragmented iron stone, he drifts off into his thoughts for a moment, before realizing he has done so. Quickly seeking to amend the all to often made mistake, he clears his throat and returns his eyes to the stranger, a smile and array of words seeking to mend that particular gap between them.

I am Dragomir, he greets, a Mason of the Hidden Falls.