He half-hoped to find another monster in the midst of the ruthless copses and overgrown hedges; a Sphinx turning her riddles, a Minotaur lunging at his sacrifices, a ferocious unwinding unlike his controlled, composed skirmishes amongst brethren – something real, something tangible, something maddening he could sink his teeth into and devour. It was a primordial, heathen hope sunken into his chest, into his marrow, into his flesh, where it pierced along his membrane and conjured Machiavellian qualities; narrowed, funneled, wicked, just as licentious as the rest of his hardening prowess. But there was nothing. No turbulence curved across the wind or slashed like a blade. No destruction tore through the clouds, roared, or howled its ancient aspirations. No scythes, no rapiers, no mauling, bestial, barbaric savagery burst through the seams and rows of tree trunks; all he left was the pure, haunting silence, and he hated it. It only fed into anguish, it only bled into torture, it only conjured memories that chilled him, that unraveled him, that uncoiled and wreaked havoc; and only when he glanced into the canopy did the carnivore motions clamor through his blood again – Orsino, murmuring something within their lifeline, like a shout, like a haze, like a thundering proclamation, and the boy, the prince, the General turned and twisted from his stare into the horizon (building something between ferocity and dreams; watching them unwind before his very eyes) towards the huffs and hisses of his kitsune. Another, the voice finally blistered and scorched through his membrane, and his stare finally caught the length of dragon exterior – gilded, silvern, scales, leathery wings – grasped with hooves and rasped with scars. He almost did naught at first, simply examined, caught in his own chiseled webs, uncertain of where to go or how to proceed, because there was a stranger curled amidst the fronds and ferns. She should’ve been familiar, for he would’ve remembered a face, notable features, characteristics of two halves making a whole, but he had no name for her face, no rhyme or reason to puzzle over distant memories. “Hello,” he finally sculpted, whittling his voice into charismatic whims, capricious to a fault, a small smile managing to find its way to his mouth. Curiosity dug him into a deeper hole, and Enyo nearly bounded over towards the other companion, “What are you-“
 
But there was an interruption, a throng, a shout, and he riveted his attention on the turning of his ears, on the voice coiling amidst the warren, recognition binding him to the once-filly’s flames. “Kiada!” He beckoned, grin turning much more genuine, easy-going, real, not a fabrication, not a pretense. A sense of ease, of calm, pervaded his torn soul, because she was known (and evidently not one of the many he’d come across in their childhoods to fall victim, to succumb, to a vicious act, to a vile ruin), had grown, had prospered, in the wake of wherever she’d been. She wasn’t a ghost on the edge of his sight. She wasn’t a phantom sent to haunt him. She wasn’t a beast to slay. She was simply Kiada, the little girl who’d sprouted from the flames. “How are you?” He questioned with a slight arch to his brow, Orsino’s eyes resting on the gold and argent femme (still and silent, attempting to process the hows and whys and whats), Enyo wildly exuberant and overwhelmed, wings spread out, feathers fanned, eager, delighted.