He wanders because he is all full of restlessness.
An insatiable need to move.

He has met many a soul who blame their wandering on an inherent unhappiness but he has never felt that way. He is spurred across Beqanna by a sort of breathless wonder, a want to swallow the world whole. He wants it all to live in the cage of his chest where he can nurture it and love it and let it shine.

A silly thing to want, certainly. But he is still just a boy, wide-eyed and naive. There has been nothing yet that has fettered his bone-deep joy.

He moves now to the river as a wolf because he has always been more comfortable that way. A shaggy animal with gold-laced fur. And, though he wears wings as an equine, he has no wings as a wolf. He pads right through the mud, reveling in the way it squishes between his individual toes. And he smiles but it looks something more like a snarl, all teeth, in this form.

He goes to the water and he sees her there. A pretty thing that makes his heart pulse sideways (the pretty things always do) and he shifts seamlessly from his canine form back to his equine. Because he is prettier as a horse, he knows.

Not that he should be at all preoccupied with the way he looks.

“Hello,” he calls from the shore and tilts his head. The smile looks less threatening on the horse’s mouth. “Aren’t you cold in there?”

It does not occur to him that perhaps she had not wanted to be disturbed, that maybe she had been enjoying her solitude before he’d come along and shattered it.

He is a social creature by nature, friendly and extroverted and always keen for conversation, so he often forgets that not everyone is the same as he is. Not everyone is fond of company. And she looks up at him and he realizes too late that there is a good chance his intrusion is not welcomed. It is not lost on him that her smile does not reach her eyes but he does not yet understand the sensation of foreboding as it curls itself into the pit of his gut.

But she returns his greeting rather than shunning him and that helps to temper whatever trepidation he feels. He sinks a little closer and then closer still until his opal hooves have disappeared beneath the surface and the water licks cold at his ankles. The frigid temperature chases a shockwave down the length of his spine, hitches his breath and makes him shudder.

He wonders if it’s magic that makes her impervious to the cold or if it’s something else entirely but he does not ask. He simply studies her a long moment, smiling still. He glances down at the water then, tilts his head, watches the current sweep a flower petal down the long stretch of river.

“I think so,” he answers and does not feel embarrassed at having admitted it, even if his dislike of the cold might be construed as a weakness. He laughs quietly and shakes his head, oblivious to the several flower petals that fall from his mane and chase the first petal along with the current. “I don’t have much experience with it, but I don’t think I like it much at all.”

He is such a simple creature, Lumineer.
He is eager and naive and trusts the dark things because he does not know how to recognize them as dark things.

She stands there in the depths and all he can think that she must be such a powerful thing. He does not think about the price one must pay in order to be so powerful.

She comes closer and her approach kicks his heart into a frenzied pace that hitches his breath and makes his smile falter at its edges. Perhaps if he were a shy thing he might have looked away, hidden his gaze, let heat and color pool in his cheeks as if he were something bashful. But, while he is not particularly bold, he has never known how to shrink, so he just goes on looking.

Something strange splinters through his mind then, as they look each other steadily in the eye. He had felt some primal impulse to abandon the water, to retreat back onto the shore where the cold could not reach him, but it has all but completely dissolved by the time she speaks.

There is something new and enticing in those depths and his smile deepens again as he tilts his fine, striped head and nods. There is something vacant in the boy’s pale blue eyes as he begins to move, sinking into the depths.

“I guess the cold isn’t so bad,” he murmurs, though the frigid temperature spirals through his veins like an electric shock to his system. It arrests the air in his lungs and a sigh shudders past his lips. And still, he cannot look away.

It could kill him and he would never know the difference.
His willingness to allow her to take hold of his mind could spell an untimely end and he would go with that same strange, stilted smile on his face.

He has no opportunity to save himself because he is young and impressionable and the mind is still weak as a result. He has no conviction, Lumineer, not yet. If only because he has never encountered a situation where he needed to defend himself. Not like this.

He sinks deeper into the frigid water and it continues to kick the air out of his chest in shuddering sighs. The muscles tremble and spasm, misfiring in response to the cold. The cold, which burrows its way under his skin and into the marrow of his bones. The cold, which makes the mind even hazier.

It’s not so bad, he says and she says it back and it echoes and rattles in his head. It is bad, the logical brain thinks, but he cannot reach this thought through the fog.

Rosebay, she tells him and how long will he have to remember it? “I’m Lumineer,” he murmurs in response. Polite, even under her spell. His mother would be proud.

She looks away and there is a moment of startling clarity where he realizes what he’s done and wants desperately to turn back for the shore. But she reaches for him, touches him, and finds his eye again. And he is too young, too foolish, to look away. Too foolish to know how to save himself.

Would he drink until his belly burst? He had not been thirsty but his tongue feels suddenly dry. Thick and useless.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Maybe.”

He only barely remembers what answer he’d given. When he tries to reach through his mind to retrieve it, he finds the memory gone. Or, at the very least, buried in mud he can’t seem to dig through.

He feels every bit a child as she kisses his cheek, praised for something he has no memory of. And this troubles him deeply, Lumineer, and he thinks that he should dredge himself out of the depths and return to the warmth and safety of the shore. It feels wrong to be rewarded for doing something he hadn’t meant to do and a bashful heat finally pools in his cheeks, every ounce of heat left in his body gathering in the stretch of flesh that had felt the brush of her lips.

He is such a simple boy, so easily manipulated, and he follows her back to the river’s edge. His own teeth chatter and he longs for the sort of magic that would instantly grant them warmth. Were he not so cold, perhaps his embarrassment would have been enough to heat him from the inside out. (Embarrassment born from her admonishment -- he had not meant to keep her in the water so long and, indeed, has no memory of inviting her into the current).

She need not use magic to spur him promptly into action and he sidles up beside her, stretching a wing across her back and using it to hold her close. The most he can offer her is the slowly regenerating heat of his body. His teeth continue to chatter as he exhales a shaky breath.

“That wasn’t very smart of us,” he murmurs and then fashions up a smile that struggles to stick to his trembling mouth.