Rehoboam listens to the metal-on-metal grating of his voice, and takes to heart the warning underlaid beneath his poetry. The Lagoon is no place for soft hearts, it whispers. You are the fuel to feed its fire, not the smithy who will bend this forge to your own purpose. This place, these men, they will crush you between their gnashing teeth until there's nothing left of who you were. Until all of your dreams have become dust and your hopes mere memory.

It should deter him. And in a way, it does. His heart recoils against the depravity implied by the dark messenger's words, and yet he does not allow himself to shy away from the implicit challenge. Only time would tell if it was youthful bravado or something more that allowed the tobiano's gaze to meet his companion's, but rise it did.

The young stallion had spent hours in quiet introspection before making his decision. He had cataloged every depraved act that he could imagine, and looked realistically at what it would take for him to commit it. And then when he was done - when he had a rolodex of ready-made sins - he went through them again and stripped each act bare of the judgment of outside forces. His father's opinion, his mother's disappointment, his brother's censure. What he found surprised him. Rehoboam felt no more pull to rape and pillage than he did before the exercise, but they were no longer so distant from himself.

Realizing that each act had a price was not nearly as startling as acknowledging how low it truly was.

"I wish to be something," He says finally, his jaw setting firm as he finds the truth amongst his uncertainty. He could not live beneath his father's shadow for all of his life any more than he could go on not knowing what made the Lagoon home to his mother. Regardless of how wise (or sane) his decision to come here had been, he had already made it. There was no going back to the Cove and pretending that he was the good, dutiful son that he had always been. After a breath, he continues, his words still twisted with the uncertainty of his position. "Although whether the Lagoon and I shall find each other unpalatable is yet to be seen."

Rehoboam had his hopes, although they were fragile and guarded. He imagined the Lagoon as something other than the infected canker it had become on the islands, but he was not so naive to think that a change would happen quickly. The heart of the Lagoon lay in it's men. Men who had become accustomed to living without consequences for their crimes. Men who took first and never bothered with the asking later. Men who held no space in their hearts for gentleness. He came to understand them, and if he were lucky, perhaps to influence them toward something more… constructive.

Refocusing back on the dappled monster before him, Rehoboam's head lifts almost defiantly. "And what about you? Are you among your own kind?"