The monster's breath is fetid and rank as he exhales over Rehoboam's face and the young stallion fights the urge to recoil with curled nostrils and pinned ears. Every time the paling vulture creeps closer, Rehoboam finds his courage tested anew, and each time he only just holds his ground on knees that tremble in the face of something insurmountable. The grullo boy's jaw clenches as the creature leans in again - his entire bearing something else, something not entirely equine - and he braces himself for… something he cannot name.

My darling, he mutters, all rusted hinges creaking against each other, doors opening that should have stayed closed and locked and bolted. My kind does not exist. A shiver races down the young boy's spine - though he tries to conceal it with a re-stiffening of his body: neck craned back, shoulders braced as he leans back, tail tucked - and he swallows, hard. His answer raises more questions and offers no answers. Rehoboam's mind skips through images in rapid succession: crows cawing in the trees, drowning out all other noise; a circle of mushrooms in the grass, undisturbed and unexplainable; a castle portcullis clanking open as a rabid horde of enemies approach; a lean black wolf watching him from the Cove's foothills, his yellow eyes glaring, jaws gleaming with drool.

You are something to me, the monster is saying and Reh's ears tip back and then prick forward, unsure if he wants to hear what he has to say but certain he should not ignore him. He offers the young boys knives wrapped in velvet, promising to undo every small thing that the boy has ever worked for; and yet Reh does not shy away. He does not know if this is some sort of elaborate hazing ritual offered to new Lagoon residents or if hell itself has split apart to offer him a demon of his very own, but he knows that he cannot turn away.

The last thing he wants to do is to show a weak spot.

"Answers," he finally manages in a soft pant, his breath having been held for far too long to make speech comfortable. The soft mewl of it, like a small frightened child in comparison to the metallic tang of the creature before him. Again the boy swallows, his throat uncomfortably tight as if suddenly aware of how thin, how delicate, how vulnerable his neck was. Again he tries to brace himself - a breath drawing his shoulders up, his neck back - and he tries again. "My mother was from here. She-I have history here." He breathes out shallowly and tries to straighten himself. Tries to remember who he is. To remember he wasn't a lost frightened colt, but a grown stallion, chasing his own destiny.

"I want to know her." He finally says, unsure of why such honesty had been pumped out of him by the fear that sparked through his chest. Because that was the gist of it, wasn't it? It wasn't that he wanted to learn about the Lagoon, or to be one of the boys, or to change their path. He wanted to know the mother that had chosen to abandon him so many years ago. To understand why he hadn't been good enough for a woman that loved the Lagoon.