The anxiety at seeing a stranger moving very quickly toward him dissipated just as quickly when Aether saw that it was a mare, and quite a petite one at that. Her coat shone in the sun like molten gold, as though she had materialized from the depths of the sands themselves like some kind of spirit. But as angelic as she looked, unease curled in Aether's stomach. The mare circled him like a vulture who had discovered carrion, and something about her expression was predatory too.

Aether's dark eyes were wide and his expression guarded as he answered her sing-song questions. "I don't know who that is." Though, of course, he gleaned the mare's meaning well enough: Lucifer must have been the guardian of this land. And indeed, Aether could already seen a huge black figure approaching, rippling with muscle seasoned by years, his call ringing out across the dunes. It seemed Aether was about to learn exactly who Lucifer was. Something shrivelled inside him then. For all his own height, he still carried the lean and lanky build of a two-year-old, and he had precisely no experience in physically defending himself from a real attack.

For a few moments he froze, watching the swiftly-approaching figure as though he could not quite believe what he was seeing. The huge black stallion clearly meant business: his ears were pinned, his teeth bared, and the thunder of his hooves reverberated up through the earth into Aether's chest. Perhaps it was just a display meant to intimidate, and this possibility is what delayed Aether's reaction. When Lucifer was just a few paces away, instinct finally gripped Aether's limbs, spinning him around in a half-circle out of range of Lucifer's bared teeth and putting the little palomino mare between them. Part of him thought how ridiculous he must have looked, a stallion hiding behind a much-smaller mare.

"Please, I mean no harm!" he pleaded. "I will leave, by sand or sea, whatever you want. I was just looking for the desert herd and got turned around." His tailbone stung, and he realized then that Lucifer had ripped some hair free from it.