Each night, Vulkán sleeps beneath the same tree. It's a large palm tree which stands alone a short distance away from the Throat's oasis, and its fronds are large enough to give the colt shade during the day and shelter during the night. When he lies curled up in the faded brown grass that denotes his sleeping spot, he can see a rock in the distance. There's a notch just about visible on this rock, and he knows that when the sun hits it, that means it's time for him to get up.

Getting up at the same time every morning is just...good sense, isn't it? Routine is what the world is built upon. Even if the large foal happens to wake up before the sun hits that notch, he'll remain lying down until the designated time. Only then will he rise to his stout little legs and begin his day.

Today, he's overslept. By the time his eyes open, the sun is already a fraction past the notch on the rock, and with a loud bleat of horror Vulkán clambers to his hooves. He shakes the night's detritus off himself, but he's quivering with an odd tension that he can't shake off. "No," is all he can mutter. "Wrong." The colt shudders, his entire body radiating with spasms of anxiety as he stares accusingly at the notched rock, as though it's the rock's fault that he's missed his chosen waking time.

Borne of his frustration and worry, a few thin streams of lava begin to trickle down his right shoulder.

He needs something to distract himself, else he dwell on this break in his routine for so long he'll go mad. He glances to the side, and there's...something that isn't usually there. Frowning, the colt leans down to sniff this odd object, his pain momentarily forgotten. It's a nest, far smaller than the one Otem had found her egg in, and it's shattered on the floor. Ah, yes, it was quite windy last night, waking the colt up several times, which is probably why he'd overslept.

Next to the nest are two dead hatchlings. They're so small and fragile that Vulkán wonders if they were ever actually alive, as their tiny little wings and shrunken beaked heads just seem too miniscule to survive. Unsure what to do, the quad-horned boy just stares dumbly down at the nest and its expired inhabitants, and there's a strange chasm in his chest where he thinks there should be an emotion. But there isn't.

His dam's voice jerks him from his impassive assessment of the corpses, and he turns to face the tribrid giantess. He feels himself relax slightly, the tension and panic of his upset routine beginning to filter slowly out of his body. His mother, more than anybody except Otem, can calm him with a mere look. Her voice, like his own, is devoid of emotion or the bewildering, unpredictable ups-and-downs that denote feeling or emphasis. Whenever other people talk, it's so confusing for Vulkán. Not only does the tone of their voice dart around in a cacophony of noise, but a simple movement of their eyes can utterly change their meaning, before even getting started on the myriad muscle twitches and ear flicks that add a whole different layer to a conversation. The volcano-boy just doesn't comprehend these bizarre cues, and especially not when other horses insist on telling lies, or making odd jokes that make no sense in his mind. Other living things - other conversations - are vast puzzles that Vulkán struggles each day to solve.

Not his mother. She speaks in ways he can understand - he wishes everybody was like her. The world would be a far simpler, more orderly place if everybody just said what they meant using just their words instead of inserting utterly pointless layers of meaning into their posture and tone.

He is about to greet her with Mother, then he hesitates. He isn't sure what to call her, and hasn't yet asked what she prefers, so he settles instead to use the term his father had taught him in that odd guttural language of his. "Anya," he greets. Mother. "Burying them would be a waste, as they could feed another animal. We should move them." He nods his white-painted head decisively.

At her question, the colt finds himself staring at her, trying to comprehend her meaning. It seems like such an odd question...why would it trouble him? "Should it? It does not affect me or my family in any way." He speaks so matter-of-factly, so maturely for a colt of his delicate age, yet he genuinely cannot understand why his mother would think him upset by the death of two little birds. There was that stirring in his gut that told him he should feel something, but there's lots of things he should do and doesn't.

He glances down at the corpses, then back up to his giantess mother. "What is death?" he asks her in that monotone voice of his. It is a concept he understands the basics of - these birds are no longer able to move, nor do they need to eat, nor will they ever reach adulthood, so they appear suspended in a state of eternal youth - yet not the mechanics of. Why do herbivores like themselves fight so hard against predators? What causes that primal will to survive? What can be so terrifying that it seems to incite such emotions in others?

Creatures...under his feet? With more than a hint of concern, the colt lifts each feathered hoof in turn as though expecting these fabled creatures to be hanging underneath them, burrowing into his legs. "Creatures? Like us?" He's picturing horses like themselves breaking upwards out of the soil to join their land-walking brethren; it's a rather worrying concept, even if the boy struggles to understand the full depths of this worry.

The giantess smoothly corrects him and Vulkán hangs his head, somewhat abashed. Her explanation causes him to frown with concentration, trying to put together the event and the affect inside his mind - his dam saw his leaking lava, and assumed that the dead birds caused that particular emotion. The volcano-boy shifts awkwardly. If he was capable of lying, he'd agree with his mother, say that he was quite perturbed by the deaths and that's what caused his lava to betray him. Alas, like his father, the colt seems incapable of lying, even if he can see the benefit of doing so on this occasion. If he tells the truth - that he was more upset by waking up a few minutes late than he was by the deaths of two birds - then his mother might think him odd, bordering on sociopathic.

He reminds himself that she is his mother, thus morally bound not to judge him too much. "No, the birds did not trouble me. It's just...." He averts his gaze from her own. He doesn't like eye contact at the best of times, but usually forces himself to maintain it in a vain attempt to pick up any of those none-verbal cues expressed in other horses. This time, though, he stares pointedly at the floor, and his lava bubbles a little bit more. "I rose late from my bed this morning. It has...disturbed me." It is not a lie, but nor is it fully the truth. No words exist to describe the sheer panic that the bay foal feels whenever his order his thrown out; it's crippling, making him want to curl into a ball and sob until somebody makes it better. He cannot possibly vocalise that, so he leaves it as it is.

The mare begins to explain the concept of death, and Vulkán listens keenly. Any knowledge is eagerly digested by him, absorbed like a sponge into his depths so he can repeat the interesting facts at random intervals. He hums slightly, pondering the question at the end of his dam's explanation. "What I have seen leads me to believe that it is a bad thing. I've seen animals crawl over themselves to try and avoid it, and if the screams I heard last night are anything to go by, these particular hatchlings fought hard against it." He'd assumed it was a nightmare, those screams - the hatchlings had thrashed, calling for their mother, calling for salvation. Nothing had arrived, and now they are...no more.

"But it seems to me as though it is something to be embraced, not feared. If it will come for us all one day, then it is quite normal, as normal as eating or sleeping. It is routine." The smallest of smiles begin to edge across his face - there's little emotion in it, save for an odd, manic sort of happiness at the thought of death being something that grips them all. It is orderly, it is routine, it is unavoidable. It is something that can be truly relied on, far more than waking up based on a notch on a rock, or sleeping beneath the same tree under the assumption that the tree will always be there. "Do you think it is bad?" He thinks of the mother-owl trying to defend the eggs from the snakes; is it a mother's perogative to loathe death and try to defend her children against it?

"I mean...are they capable of sentient thought, like us, or are they alive in the same way that the trees are?" No sooner has he asked the question than his dam has answered it, and with a sterile tilt of his head the colt hums as he digests the information. "Interesting." He glances down, resolving to be more careful with his footsteps from now on. "What is my grandfather, the God of the Earth, like? His name seems to imply a certain level of power, although I am aware that names can be misleading." This is a cause of much concern for the odd young boy. Why is the Dragon's Throat called what it is, when in fact it is a dry desert with absolutely nothing to do with a dragon? His own name at least describes what he is - a volcano in equine flesh - as does his twin's, but what is a Volterra, an Isopia, an Ampere, a Vastra?

She does not dig further about his mention of routine, which he's quite relieved about. He slowly peels his gaze from off the floor and looks back to her, enjoying this conversation as much as one as emotionally stunted as him can enjoy anything. There's so much for him to discover, and his mother is a positive font of information.

As Isopia continues, the boy listens intently. Advanced as his mind is for his age, he still struggles with some of what she's saying, as after all he is only a few weeks old and has a lot to learn about the world before he can truly enter into such a debate with an intellectual like his mother. "Is there any such thing as right and wrong, then, or just....our perceptions of what would be considered right and wrong?" A fragile distinction, but a distinction nonetheless. To some, killing might be seen as wrong, however to a predator it's just a part of daily life. Perhaps they aren't advanced enough to pass judgement, as his mother points out.