His brother was always closeby, he knew, but there was something vaguely thrilling about feeling like he’d escaped and was all on his own in his territory. He stood proud as he had seen his father do on occasion, preening more like he’d seen Carbon do, and he did his best to challenge the various bushes and cacti to duels right up until he landed leg first into a baby saguaro.

It had taken a full two weeks to heal properly, but he had come to respect the plant-monsters that dotted the landscape here or there.

Todays game, however, was a proper game of tag-with-tumbleweeds. There were several that his bulky black form could scuttle off after across the desert. One of them streaks in front of his feet and with a shrill child’s whinny, he chases after it with fully extended flailed limbs and a broken forward movement that might have seemed more spastic than entirely necessary when considering that the boy had always been a more sobered seeming individual.

He was not so doormat as Vulcan, not so spirit as Carbon, but he was somewhere in the healthy in-between. He was incredibly handsome, so black that the caves all seemed perfectly sunny by comparison, and he had the gold eyes of his mother to foil the depth of his hide. He was destined to grow into something worth looking at and even with his tsunami impression full of limbs… perhaps others might be getting curious enough to see it.