Ordinarily, Rille would not depart so soon from a land so recently become his responsibility. Need draws him out of the woods and away from the Thicket. He cannot heal the land all alone, at least not within his singular lifetime, and he is not arrogant enough to attempt it. Other await him, somewhere, and Rille follows that knowing out of the ocean and onto another island likewise teeming with life. The variety here is different from Luthien, but in some ways the same. Birds sing, the wind blows, and all around him are signs of a thriving world.
A voice calls him. It rolls in the air like thunder, unceasing, insistent. The dappled black stallion shakes out his pale mane and ventures toward it, his small, dark ears pricked forward curiously. He comes upon a pair of mares murmuring together under the magnificent roar of a waterfall: it pours itself over a high cliff, feeding the water below with its ever-extended tongue. He admires it as he draws closer to the women, and he places himself within their company as if he has been there all along, his gaze turned away from the falls and his attention now given in full to the bay and gray companions.
He has not heard what words have passed between them, and may in fact be interrupting, but Rille is very much at ease as he adds his voice to the conversation. “Of the birds, I find the males are commonly more eye-catching than their counterparts. A strange choice of nature, no? Especially when the opposite is often enough true over a variety of animal-kind, and sometimes not a truth at all among our own kin.” His eyes shift to the rich red-brown mare whose legs and mane and tail contrast directly to his own hair and feathers. Her coat carries the light, while his absorbs it like night falling over the land, and the other— she is a pale cloud, her hair wafting like cirrus wisps about her feet and shoulders, the mist of every morning backlit by sunrise. “For kin we must surely be,” he continues as he looks between them, and though his voice is confident there is a question in his deep mahogany eyes.