For a long moment Conquistador watches the gulls, his little ears turned outward to express his uncertainty while the palomino mare speaks. He doesn't really want to disappoint Dia, but reluctance is as natural to the yearling as eagerness is to the mare - as if he were the cautious elder, and she the exuberant child. Teeth grasping lightly at his lower lip, Conquistador shakes his lengthening mane, still dithering over whether or not to proceed by the time his companion asks her question. But slowly, inexorably, Dia's restless energy seems to be seeping into the colt's own limbs; suddenly he wants nothing more than to throw caution, and himself, to the wind beside her.

"I'll chase them," Conquistador starts softly, his voice strengthening with each word that he speaks. "But no biting - I don't want to hurt them." There is a subtle authority beneath these words; he may be young, but Conquistador has already determined what he will stand for as a man. He still struggles to lift himself above the frailty that plagues him, and the fateful events that had delivered him here, but he will not take to bullying the weak to build the illusion of his strength.

Then he turns to grin impishly at the golden woman beside him, and suddenly he is as young as he should be - nothing more or less than a boy who desperately longs to be like any other. "Besides, you're it!" Tapping Dia's shoulder with his muzzle, he dodges swiftly around the mare's slender figure, racing out from the jungle and onto the beach. Dozens of gulls take to wing before him, their cries of alarm intermingling with Conquistador's laughter as he gallops into the surf.