He moved quietly in the coming dawn, lifting each pale hoof and placing it carefully on the slushy, half-melted earth beneath him. He was climbing steadily upward, he noticed, evidenced by the increasing amount of remaining snow and the incremental increase of strain on his haunches and shoulders. He welcomed the heavier pull on his body as an old friend. He had grown in a region similarly mountainous in terrain and as a young lad, had raced his beautiful sister on her dark, slender legs across the rigid, broken slopes of their mountains. She is untouched and perfect in his memory, a beautiful little bird that flitted and tipped on the breeze ahead of him as he laughed and thundered along behind her. He couldn’t count the times he had let her win their little races and how each time, it was that much harder to keep up the charade of letting her win.

He comes to a small hill crest and pauses, interrupting his own thoughts with the beautiful view that spread beneath and above him. Sunlight touched the rough edges of the world, gilding it in gold, shrouding the valleys and pits in deep, velvet saturations of their true colours. He reveled in it, inhaling deeply of the fresh pine and musky, wet earth that accompanied this mountain morning.

It had been an educational winter, spent here and there among the islands. He had kept much to himself in the last few months, quietly observing and taking notes on this new world he had become a part of. He had considered making the infamous Lagoon his new home, but the place reeked of ego and rudeness, two things he simply could not abide in this world. This place, the Peak, was much cleaner and fresher – something undoubtedly he appreciated equally as much as its female inhabitants. Oh yes, he knew he was trespassing into the Amazonian lair and welcomed all the wonderful avenues that this new chapter could open for him.