When he had lived amongst the trees, there was a sort of silence that had been soothing and unnerving at the same time.

Even now, he knows that the wooden lips of the forest have stories to tell, and while he would never hear of them, he knew the smell of sweat and blood, and he knew that something terrible had happened here.

Perhaps that was the reason with which Persephone approaches him with a well disguised distrust, but he knows the look well. To her, he appears as an apparition in red, someone unknown and strange in these lands, inching in on her home and threatening her family. He finds respect in this, and watches as she accepts the graceful dip of his skull, softening her stance only a little as he does so. She is a woman living on the edge, and as Vercingetorix looks up at her, he listens eagerly.

So something had happened here.

“There was something in the air- I suspected something had happened here.” While he was gone. While he abandoned the forest. While he left the trees to rot in his absence. It stings, on the inside, the endless wonder if he would have been able to prevent whatever terrible thing had happened here if he had stayed, but he knows that the sea called to him, and his children had grown and gone, and there had been little tying him to this place.

Only the soft whistle of the wind through the trees that sang to his soul.

Relaxing his body, he tips a toe to the earth and rests a leg, showing her that he is no threat, and simply a traveller that wants to rest and stay for a while. “Then I promise you will find in me a loyal follower and soldier, if you so wish. I came to the trees for shelter many years ago, for the same reason I am here now.” There was comfort in the shadows, and the red stallion cared little if he had to live beneath the rule of another. “Can I ask what happened?