He stands there, two seasons into his ‘incarceration’ finding no reason at all to wish to be elsewhere. He is not starved, he is not beaten, he is not given any reason to think that he ought to free himself. Perhaps it was a case of boiling frogs in hotsprings, but so be it.

The low level of inhabitants had left him free to do much investigating and many days of exploration. He knew where each of the unique hidden troves of beautiful views and amazing natural occurrences were now. The high-altitude meadow snuggled in the mountains like a heavenly grassland. The hot-springs that snuggled even higher, even harder to reach, in the rocky peaks. The dragon-canyon that were spire-straight rock formations that zigged and zagged until rock spines turned into ice and then into a hidden glacier. The redwood forest that had hollowed fallen trees big enough for even himself to pass through without needing to bend his head

Today, the hot springs were enough, though. He wades in, basking in the steam that warmed his chest and neck - the biting heat that was just on one side of too-hot. He had come here only sparingly, but usually when he was sore or of bad disposition. Grumpiness and pain both seemed easily soothed by a bit of self-care.

He does not think about his captor, Naydra, any more than any other female here - but he does sometimes wonder where any of the rumored Amazonian women were. Had the Peak simply dwindled? Had he been taken for any purpose other than to bask in the skyward-most reaches of the territory - a pale ghost of a man to appear and disappear like human rumors of unicorns?

His tail swirls on the rippling, disrupted surface of the water when he hears the first sign of life-- "Hello?"