A weight lifts from his shoulders when El Aran is spurred into motion by his call. Heart fluttering with nerves, he watches her advance until she has ascended the dune to stand beside him. There's a passing moment in which he's tempted to touch her in reassurance, but, remembering the last time he'd attempted such a thing, he quickly thinks better of it. Averting his eyes, he gazes out across the terrain and says nothing, offering only a small nod of acknowledgement at her words. He's focusing on the landscape before them, the apparent topic at hand, but his mind is elsewhere, concentrating on the tense silence between them.

Eventually he breaks it. "I want to show you something," he says softly, and with a last look behind them to check on what's left of the herd, he leads the way down the hill, hooves sliding in the sand. Once on flat ground, he travels at a brisk trot across the sand and dirt, taking care to avoid puddles where they dapple the earth. The stroll is a long one. He takes El Aran further than they have been before (to his knowledge at least - she may have travelled this far in the past), until he has worked up a light frothy sweat with the sun at their backs and they find themselves standing at the desert's borders. Before them spans a no-man's-land: a flat prairie of cacti, the silver hint of a stream, and more bushels of foliage than he can count. Beyond that, mountains stand tall and ominous like a huge unbroken wall.

"I checked all around here. No one has touched this place in a long time. I was thinking we might call it ours, and expand our territory. There's enough to keep us well-fed for the coming seasons. We could move here or leave it as a cache for hard times." He turns to gauge El Aran's reaction and flicks an ear back. "What do you think?"