Young colt isn't so defective anymore- isn't so little, either. He gallops atop strong pillars and cuts the Deep Woods' breezes with a thickly built form. His father's bridle hangs more tightly upon his features; even feels tight in a few places. Beside him runs a fully healed pup by the name of Manhattan, her tail whipping behind her madly, her lips parted to expose a dark pink tongue and create the expression of a grin. For the first time in either of their lives, they feel joy. They chase each other through the place he was born and the place he considers his home. They play games of fetch with every loose stick that graces the forest floor, they run through patches of leaves dried by the Tallsun heat and stir up the creatures of the forest with their racket. They call out into the open air with reckless abandon, filling the woods with wild echoes of traded barks and whinnies. They leave pawprints and hoof marks in the soft forest floor, they leave a clear path behind them, and have no care in the world.

After his second visit to the corpse of his father, the bridle had choked him and flooded him with memories of the Sentinel's life. The Deep Woods had ever since reminded him of the great Woodlands and those his father had loved and protected there. He had longed ever since that day to meet some of those his father had watched over; to hear the sweet words of Evangeline and experience himself the seductive nature of Giselle. And he longs, too, to see the land his father had left behind.

He now experiences life in a different manner. He knows no wicked whispers in his mind, breathes the forest air as if it is a tonic that brings him life, and runs with Manhattan and knows that what he feels for her is that strange emotion described to him by the deformity in that frozen cave- love. He feels it strike his heart each time he gazes upon his companion.

And then, once more, at the sight of the chestnut mare and her all too familiar dragon.

He considers the experience he has had to be unusual, but despite the drastic change it has stirred within him, he manages to lack all social cues. He wishes to call out, but should he really say her name? How strange it would be to her to see a colt like himself for the first time and hear him speak her name. No, better to say something formal. Like Miss. Or perhaps M'am? He wasn't sure which was the most polite of the two.

Miss, he decided as he strode forward at a slow trot. "Hello there Mi-" he began, until realizing that, no, perhaps m'am was the correct greeting, and continuing to form a broken word of seemingly his own invention. "-m. Have we met before? You and Tallis seem... familiar."

He speaks the orange's name without realizing, thus ruining his attempt to enter subtly. His head cocks to the side with a childish curiosity, and by his hooves Manhattan settles into the ground and presses herself against him for support as she pants wildly.