"Be careful where you step."

The voice seemed to echo, rebound off every tree, rock and leaf surrounding the stallion. It was a soothing, warm and comforting voice, though it was laced with a true and dire warning. The stallion walked the forests of the Edge, a land named very aptly, for in places, the forest simply stopped, and nothing but a great drop, with sharp rocks and a thrashing sea, would welcome one's body into its deadly embrace. My nape arches, as I purposefully step in the stallion's path, the mists lingering about my form as they so often do. Every move I make seems to drag them along with me, they protect me, you see, guide me, show me where my path shall be turned. I know them well, just as this steed may come to know them.

"I am Hellena." I proffer my name, something that I do not do in every meeting I find myself in. "You walk in the World's Edge, stallion, a land where the herd named the Qian reside." The information is something I usually hold onto, but he walks without the air of an intruder seeking to cause harm upon our land, our herd. Perhaps he is seeking something else, something that the land can provide for him? I smile, my otherwise impassive façade softening as I do so, my nape bending as I nod graciously to this steely Goliath. With a sweeping, intentional stroke of my leonine tail, I part the mists that lie before us; and they drop, revealing just how close the Edge of the World lays. I do this so that he might appreciate the warning I gave him, the choice I made t interfere with his path, to offer him something more than a quick drop over the edge of our home.

I wish to offer him something to do with his destiny.

The thick curtain of foggy air seemed to settle now, clearing the way for one's eyes to behold all that existed around them. Though the mists never led me astray, for I knew how to read them, they were a danger of this land, one that its residents learned to overcome. Once accepted here, they provided comfort to those who sought the solicitude of solitude, and to me, the Seer, they provided answers for questions I barely had to whisper. I was born into these mists, on a moonlit night, they have been my companion for a lifetime and then some, I did wonder at when they would choose another to orchestrate their graceful, alluring and sometimes deadly dance.

Svelte ears bend forwards, leaning towards the stallion as he speaks, proffering information, bowing deep and bringing a curious smile to my lips. My clear, violet pools regard him with a playful seriousness; though we are speaking on friendly terms, there is an undercurrent that may pit us as enemies. But he offers nothing more than cordial tones and polite stories, tales of a wanderer. Such journeys I had never been on, at least not physically - the mists had shown me potentials of what lay beyond the Helovian world, beyond the Threshold, and such things did not capture my interest, I rarely felt attraction enough to pull me from the clutches of my misty home, let alone the unknown adventures beyond.

A sea breeze picks up my ivory strands, a hue that matches this dark grey's own mane and tail, and my nostrils fill with the reminder of our proximity to the Edge. It bothers me naught, being born here, I am used to peering across the horizon from what feels like the top of the world. "A pleasure indeed." My voice speaks kindly, though the words contain a faraway, distant feel to them, like maybe I was referring to a different kind of pleasure, and not the one he suggested. The smile upon my lips lingers, whimsical in its firm grasp upon the pewter curves of my mouth.

"This land offers many things; refuge, shelter, or a swift drop to one's demise." Once again the tones of my voice are factual and kindly, but though my lips move and it is certainly my voice that presents the words, I feel as if I am speaking for the very trees that eavesdrop around us. "We welcome those who are willing to lend their bodies to protecting us, to heal us, to create with us, or to learn with us." It was unclear what 'us' I might be referring to, was I speaking of the herd that resides here? Or of the land itself?

"Tell me Thayne, what would you do upon finding settlement here?" A tilt of my chiselled tiara emphasises the query, my eyes seem to narrow to a pinpoint as they drink his own dazzling viridian stare. My bodice has brought me a step closer to this stallion, though I do not recall whence I commanded my limbs to do so. And still, that smile lingers upon my gentle lips, and my angelic voice hums with the harmonic orchestra of the forest around us, I wait, ever the patient sentinel, for the stallion to give me his answer.