If the arrival of a wayward son were the first even of his life, Joachim would dance with joy. The roan child - for he is indeed a child - that now resides within The Dunes has been protected beneath a wing that once provided shelter to a tiny spotted colt. The winds of change are fiercely unforgiving. The forced removal of Bastien from his mother's side may be most upsetting, yet does the boy not wish to find his own space to bloom and blossom into the man he is intended to become? Though Joachim has been painted in every ugly shade an enemy can possess, he did not kidnap his half-brother from a place of unkindness. The spotted stallion truly seeks to know this newly found branch upon his familial tree. Meeting the boy who took his place - his replacement - shall not be easy for him either. Yet the speckled brute will approach the situation with a mind unmarred by the poisonous lies implanted by a spiteful mother.

If he knew the hatred already looming within his brother's mind, he may have left him to rot away into a moss covered stepping stone beneath Marceline's hooves. That is all the crimson tinged boy will become if he remains in the shadow of their mother. The woman uses people, dissects them, and then discards that pieces that provide no use to her schemes. For exhibit A: Joachim himself, abandoned in their old home with only the gallows awaiting him as she traipsed into the sunset. He does not wish a similar fate upon the stranger he has fought to meet out from beneath her judging gaze. While Bastien breathes dissent at a brother he has never truly met, Joachim seeks to further Bastien's future beyond a perpetual lifetime of skating upon thin ice. God forbid the roan boy were to misstep and fall through.

The curdling cry that pierces his ears colors his gaze with mild interest. He is not surprised that someone has come - for someone always does - yet he does wonder exactly who has journeyed within his borders. He had been lipping at the scraggly desert grass with disinterest and he quickly abandons the action in favor of answering the demanding whinny. A brisk jog across a handful of his plethora of dunes quickly finds him face to face with the very object of his most recent musing. Bastien.

The excited smile upon his pink-tipped lips is extinguished as it begins. Seems as though he has inherited her affinity for insults the stallion muses quietly as his experience remains vacant. He refuses to be goaded into lashing out and prove himself to be the monster he knows he has been painted to be. "I would not have to spite her, as you claim, if she had not cost me my birthright and abandoned me to die." His words, though harsh, hold no malicious tone. "You can choose to squander this time by being a sulking child - or you can ask me the questions that burn at the back of your mind. Tell me...do you not wonder why I am so insistent on pestering a woman who seems wholly content to simply populate the entire earth?" He moves closer, maneuvering himself beside his companion. He is close enough to breathe his hot breath upon his brother's neck and he will not neglect the chance to make the boy uncomfortable - he could use the awakening that discomfort often provides. "Do you not want to know the darkness that you live with daily?" His words are the slithering hiss of a snake coiled and ready to deliver a venomous blow. "All you have to do, dear brother...is ask."