Perhaps it was something to do with hormones , but as soon as Orhan's baby fur had begun to shed, he had truly begun to question his own existence and the world around him for the first time.

His world was a simple one, in which he was completely at the mercy of his mother's whims and the changing environment around him, but it was one which he more or less enjoyed thoroughly. He could not describe the thrill merited by galloping at full pelt down the steep, sliding side of a sand dune, or the intrigue he had felt the first time he'd come face-to-face with a snake and inspected its flicking tongue before instinctively dancing out of reach of its deadly strike. He had accepted it all as part and parcel of the universe.

But when the dark stripe of countershading down his back had begun to fade, he had looked at the sky and wondered why it was blue, and when he began to notice the freckles of rich golden hair taking over his soft creamy fur in increasingly larger patches, he had begun to wonder just who this 'father' was that El Aran had mentioned a few times in passing.

Today he stands at the sheltering rock that looms over the main oasis, the one his father had once spent so much time resting beside. His mother is hidden from his view, but he knows she is on the other side of the boulder next to the water. He can hear her, in fact, breathing in the silence of the sweltering desert atmosphere. But his attention is elsewhere. Dark brown eyes are focusing on a little tuft of stray horse hair, pale gold like his own, tucked into a tiny nook in the rock and half-buried in the sands of time.

Though he has never seen another horse, and though the hair has been hidden in this natural orifice for so long that it has been almost completely stripped of odor, the prospect that another equine had once stood here and relieved an itch against this rock is almost too exciting for his tiny mind to handle.

It's the voice of his mother that brings him back to earth, and the word 'father' in particular that pricks his interest enough for him to step around the side of the rock obediently and approach her at an enthusiastic canter. Nickering, he halts once he has reached her side and rears to lean playfully against her on two legs and nibble at her withers.